The Supreme Court completed its second day of its first-ever round of oral arguments over the telephone.
After hearing oral arguments in a trademark case on Monday, the justices listened to a case pertaining to free speech, specifically whether non-government organizations who combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic abroad must denounce prostitution in order to qualify for funds from the United States government.
The high court ruled by a 6-2 decision in a 2013 case, Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, that it was a violation of the First Amendment to require NGOs by force of law to denounce prostitution in order to receive federal funding. Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Elena Kagan dissented, while Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the majority opinion with Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor.
During Tuesday’s oral arguments, Thomas broke his tradition of remaining silent during oral arguments, the second day in a row, and the fourth time he’s done so in approximately a decade.
“The respondent seems to argue that your guidelines … actually support their argument. What do you think of that?” Thomas asked U.S. attorney Christopher Michel.
In a moment of levity, Sotomayor repeated a technological mistake she made on Monday, momentarily forgetting she was placed on mute after Roberts asked to begin her line of questioning for lawyers.
“Justice Sotomayor?” Roberts asked, with a long pause following. “Justice Sotomayor?”
“I’m sorry, chief, did it again,” Sotomayor responded.
Kagan recused herself from the case, presumably because of her work on an earlier version of the case while she was a lawyer at the Department of Justice.
On April 13, the Supreme Court said it would hear arguments for cases involving President Trump’s financial records, religious liberty, and the Electoral College amid widespread shutdowns around the country in adherence to social distancing guidelines designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The court will listen to arguments for these high-profile cases next week.
Going forward, two cases, Trump v. Vance and Trump v. Mazars USA, pertain to subpoenas issued by the district attorney of New York County and the House Oversight Committee for Trump’s financial records.
Chiafalo v. Washington examines a law from Washington state that requires electors to cast their votes for the candidate who wins the popular vote. In 2016, some electors cast their vote for former Secretary of State Colin Powell and were subsequently fined $1,000 by the Washington secretary of state. The Supreme Court will examine whether or not the law violates the electors’ First Amendment rights.
The Supreme Court will also hear arguments in Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, examining if the federal government has lawfully exempted religious objectors from providing their employees health insurance that includes contraceptives.
In 2014’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 constitutionally protects religious objectors from providing health coverage for contraception to their employees as mandated by the Affordable Care Act.
