The Supreme Court receives about 10,000 petitions per year. It only hears about 80-100 cases annually, but boy, do they come with a lot of paperwork.
The approximately 1,400 amicus curiae briefs, or friend of the court briefs, it receives every year surely play an important part in providing the justices with perspective. These briefs serve to bolster a point of view in favor of one side or the other, or sometimes to point out an aspect of the case an organization thinks should be analyzed through the lens of certain legal precedents. While amicus briefs don’t have as much sway as oral arguments, the justices do read some of them after their clerks have waded through to find those that are the most important. Often, amicus briefs can provide slightly different information or demonstrate one side’s case in a unique way.
In two important religious liberty cases the Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear, it received a bevy of amicus briefs in favor of religious freedom.
In Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, Georgia Gwinnett College’s speech zone and speech code policies are under scrutiny. The college stopped a student from sharing his faith on campus, and he filed suit, saying that the college’s actions violated his free speech rights.
Even though this might seem like a decidedly Christian or center-right ideological cause, multiple groups from a variety of ideological backgrounds submitted amicus briefs arguing why the Supreme Court should rule in favor of free speech rights.
The American Humanist Association backed religious freedom and free speech in its brief despite being a secular organization. And a brief filed by the Islam & Religious Freedom Action Team of the Religious Freedom Institute states in part, “Our constitutional freedoms are priceless, and the government should not be able to violate them without consequence simply by changing its ways before litigation concludes.”
Briefs such as these, from religions and viewpoints that no doubt differ from the student who filed suit to protect his religious liberties, are encouraging.
Several other groups have also filed amicus curiae briefs for another important case, Little Sisters of the Poor v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which I’ve written about for the Washington Examiner nearly a dozen times. Briefs from 161 members of Congress, 20 states, and many diverse faith groups such as Muslims, Jews, and Christians all recently filed briefs arguing to the Supreme Court that the Little Sisters of the Poor should be exempt from the contraceptive mandate.
Mark Rienzi, president of Becket, the organization defending Little Sisters, explained the importance of having so many amicus briefs from diverse sources filed in a case such as this.
“The broad support for the Little Sisters shows that even in a divided country, people of goodwill can agree that no one needs to punish Catholic nuns for not giving out contraception,” he said.
While undoubtedly not every single Supreme Court justice will be able to read every single amicus brief filed in support of a case they heard, such documents can often reflect the pulse of what society deems important — or at least, what it’s willing to fight over at the highest court in the land. It seems that at some level, polite, persuasive discourse is still alive and well.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
