In today’s issue of Edith Robert’s Tuesday Round-Up, she highlights a unanimous decision pertaining to the penalization of presidential electors who vote for candidates they did not pledge to support; the ruling here was that laws that punish electors do not go against the Constitution.
Another decision she documents relates to the legality of robocalls to cell phones, naming that the exception of government debt collection calls was unconstitutional; the federal ban of robocalls to cell phones remains in place. Roberts also highlights a few recent articles reflecting on recent Supreme Court decisions and law practices.
_______
Yesterday the court decided unanimously in Chiafalo v. Washington and Colorado Department of State v. Baca that state laws that penalize or remove presidential electors who do not vote for candidate they pledged to support do not violate the Constitution. Amy Howe has this blog’s opinion analysis, which first appeared at Howe on the Court. Nina Totenberg reports at NPR that the decision “is so strong that it would seem to allow states to remove faithless electors even without a state law.” At Fox News, Tyler Olson and Shannon Bream report that “[m]embers of both parties feared that if the Supreme Court did not issue a ruling on the faithless electors issue, a close election in 2020 could see just a handful of electors move to sway the result.” At Education Week’s School Law Blog, Mark Walsh talks to one of the electors, Micheal Baca, who “hopes that even with the defeat for faithless electors, a larger debate over the Electoral College will gain new momentum.” Additional coverage comes from Brent Kendall and Jess Bravin for The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and Kevin Daley at The Washington Free Beacon. Derek Muller unpacks the decision at Excess of Democracy. At the Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen writes that “a contrary decision … could have led to great chaos.” At PrawfsBlawg, Gerard Magliocca and Howard Wasserman debate the use of pop culture references in the decision, here and here. Additional commentary comes from Ciara Torres-Spelliscy at the Brennan Center for Justice.
_______
You can read the full post on SCOTUSblog.com.