“McConnell vents over ‘fake news'”: Alexander Bolton of The Hill has a report that begins, “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday vented about his ‘frustration’ with media coverage of the Biden administration’s exploration of expanding the number of seats on the Supreme Court.”

“Justice Amy Coney Barrett sells Indiana home, listed for $899G; The justice’s husband Jesse Barrett said the South Bend home is ‘kind of a part of us'”: Janine Puhak of Fox News has this report.

“‘Retroactive’ Liability after Barr v. AAPC: Judge Stephanos Bibas ‘does not see how’ he can follow the plurality opinion.” Will Baude has this post at “The Volokh Conspiracy” about a notable federal district court decision issued yesterday.

“Supreme Court to Tackle a Rare First Amendment Test of Freedom of Association”: Tony Mauro has this post at Freedom Forum.

“Why the Supreme Court may need court-packing to keep its integrity: The court expansion debate may test the legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself.” MSNBC Opinion columnist Chris Geidner has this essay.

“‘It would be glorious’: hopes high for Biden to nominate first Black woman to supreme court.” Tom McCarthy of The Guardian (UK) has this report.

“Democrats press Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to recuse in major First Amendment case”: John Fritze of USA Today has this report.

“State Supreme Court Diversity — April 2021 Update; Across the country, state supreme courts fail to reflect the diversity of the communities they serve and the diversity of the legal profession”: Janna Adelstein and Alicia Bannon of the Brennan Center for Justice have this report.

“Jury finds Madras man guilty of unlawful use of a gun in 2017 road rage encounter on U.S. 26”: Maxine Bernstein of The Oregonian had this article back in March 2019.

Yesterday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued this decision overturning the conviction, holding that federal prosecutors had improperly “assimilated into federal criminal law Oregon’s unlawful use of a weapon statute” to apply to a a road rage incident on a highway in the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon.

“Sixth Circuit Grants Habeas Petition for Lower Court’s Objectively Unreasonable Application of the Confrontation Clause; A liberal result (granting a criminal defendant’s habeas petition) from a quite conservative judge (John Bush)”: Jonathan H. Adler has this post at “The Volokh Conspiracy” about a ruling that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued yesterday.

“A woman in Lakeland was killed by deputies. A judge rules the case should move forward.” Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tennessee had this report back in December 2020 about a decision of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.

According to Connolly’s article from last December, “In an unusual step, the judge published his own analysis of the available videos in the case, commenting on several individual frames.”

Yesterday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued this decision reversing the district court’s denial of qualified immunity.

According to yesterday’s Sixth Circuit ruling:

To the extent that the district court relied upon screen shots, as it apparently did here, to decide whether it was objectively reasonable for the officers to use lethal force, it erred. The deputies’ perspective did not include leisurely stop-action viewing of the real-time situation that they encountered. To rest a finding of reasonableness on a luxury that they did not enjoy is unsupported by any clearly established law and would constitute reversible error

So the lesson of yesterday’s ruling appears to be that video of fatal police-citizen encounters is good, but screen shots from the video to evaluate what’s going on are bad.

“Tribes and ANCs present grammar puzzle to Supreme Court, with $530 million at stake”: Liz Ruskin of Alaska Public Media has this report.

“Former Judge Michael Luttig Talks First Amendment, Impeachment and Coca-Cola; Michael Luttig chats with us about redesigning a first amendment icon”: Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal has this report.

“An ‘insane’ covid lockdown two miles from the Capitol, with no end in sight; For a year, 1,500 people held at D.C. jail have been confined to cells 23 hours a day in what experts call a grave human rights abuse”: Peter Jamison of The Washington Post has this report.

“You Can’t Fight Big Condiment”: Online at Courthouse News Service, columnist Milt Policzer has an essay that begins, “Big Condiment wins again. I’m speaking, of course, of a ruling issued last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that mostly favored Kraft Heinz Foods Company over a small-time sauce maker.”

“High court seems ready to send virus funds to Alaska Natives”: Jessica Gresko of The Associated Press has this report on an oral argument (audio and transcript link) that the U.S. Supreme Court heard today in Yellen v. Confederated Tribes of Chehalis Reservation, No. 20-543.

“Amy Coney Barrett has book deal with conservative imprint”: Hillel Italie of The Associated Press has this report.

“Supreme Court Seems Poised to Back Limits on Green Cards; The justices heard arguments on whether immigrants with ‘temporary protected status’ who entered the country illegally may apply for lawful permanent residency”: Adam Liptak of The New York Times has this report.

Robert Barnes of The Washington Post reports that “Supreme Court seems likely to back limits on immigrants seeking green cards.”

David G. Savage of The Los Angeles Times reports that “Supreme Court weighs whether immigrants granted TPS can get green cards.”

Jess Bravin and Brent Kendall of The Wall Street Journal report that “Supreme Court Weighs Whether Protected Noncitizens Get Green Cards; Justices express skepticism that status conferred due to disaster translates to lawful permanent residency.”

And John Fritze of USA Today reports that “Supreme Court justices push back on allowing temporary immigrants to apply for green cards.”

You can access via this link the audio and transcript of today’s U.S. Supreme Court oral argument in Santos Sanchez v. Mayorkas, No. 20-315.

“Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers keynote speech at Oklahoma City bombing ceremony”: Josh Dulaney of The Oklahoman has this report.

Sadie Gurman of The Wall Street Journal reports that “Merrick Garland Highlights Domestic Terror Threat at Oklahoma City Tribute; Attorney general cites current concerns in speech on anniversary of 1995 attack.”

And Josh Gerstein of Politico reports that “Garland returns to Oklahoma City to warn that domestic terrorism is ‘still with us’; The attorney general has vowed to crackdown on a resurgence of violence linked to white supremacist and right-wing militia groups.”

“What packing the Supreme Court would really do”: Elizabeth Slattery has this essay online at CNN.

“Sonia Sotomayor’s Lonely Battle to Give the Voiceless a Voice at the Supreme Court; In two new opinions, the justice continues to provide a small grace to victims of unconstitutional abuses ignored by her colleagues”: Mark Joseph Stern has this jurisprudence essay online at Slate.

“Unchallenged Testimony Sends Trial Over Slain Child to Top Court; The Supreme Court took up a case Monday over gunfire in the Bronx that struck and killed a 2-year-old bystander; One suspect took a plea to a simple gun charge, and the state used that man’s testimony to convict another”: Kaila Philo of Courthouse News Service has this report.

“Cavity Search and Shackles at Trial: Sotomayor Speaks Up on Denied Cases; The Obama appointee urged lower courts to consider alternatives to searches that she called degrading and inhumane, while also dissenting over a man’s shackling in a trial that sent him to death row.” Alexandra Jones of Courthouse News Service has this report.

“Florida Supreme Court’s order blocking diversity quotas for CLE instructors could impact ABA programs”: Amanda Robert of ABA Journal has this post.

“Serious Court Reform: Partisan Balance is the Only Way Out.” Eric Segall has this blog post at “Dorf on Law.”

“Supreme Court passes on Second Amendment cases challenging lifetime gun ownership ban”: John Fritze of USA Today has this report.

“A.C.L.U. Asks Supreme Court to Let It Seek Secret Surveillance Court Rulings; A prominent Republican — Ted Olson — backed the request for high court review of a spy court ruling, which would be the first of its kind”: Charlie Savage of The New York Times has this report.

Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal reports that “Supreme Court Asked to Compel Airing of Secret Intelligence Court’s Decisions; Petitioners say Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court’s rulings shouldn’t be withheld from public without justification.”

And John Fritze of USA Today reports that “First Amendment groups press Supreme Court to publish secret spy court opinions.”

You can access the petition for writ of certiorari at this link.

Today, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University issued a news release titled “Former Solicitor General, First Amendment Groups Challenge Secrecy of U.S. Surveillance Court; In Supreme Court Petition, ACLU, Knight Institute, and Yale Clinic Say Public Has a First Amendment Right of Access to Opinions of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

“U.S. Supreme Court dismisses the last challenge over Pennsylvania’s 2020 election; The case was the last of a torrent of litigation over the conduct of Pennsylvania’s election, which drew intense scrutiny and several appeals to the nation’s highest court”: Jonathan Lai of The Philadelphia Inquirer has this report.

Pete Williams of NBC News reports that “Supreme Court won’t hear Republican challenge to Pennsylvania ballot deadline; The justices have consistently declined to take up any of the post-election challenges from the state.”

And Ariane de Vogue and Rachel Janfaza of CNN report that “Supreme Court tosses out another Republican 2020 election challenge.”

“Biden Inherits F.D.R.’s Supreme Court Problem; Roosevelt tried to pack the Court to protect his ambitious agenda from conservatives; Biden, facing a similar threat, has appointed a commission to study options”: Evan Osnos has this Comment in the Talk of the Town section of the April 26, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.

“The Supreme Court’s Increasingly Dim View of the News Media; A comprehensive look at references to the press in justices’ opinions revealed ‘a marked and previously undocumented uptick in negative depictions'”: Adam Liptak will have this new installment of his “Sidebar” column in Tuesday’s edition of The New York Times.

“The question presented is ‘Where’s the beef?'” So begins an opinion that Circuit Judge Andrew S. Oldham issued Wednesday on behalf of a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

“Appeals court rejects academic’s libel suit over claims of affair with Flynn; The ruling upheld an earlier district court decision throwing Svetlana Lokhova’s suit out in its entirety”: Josh Gerstein of Politico has this report on a ruling that a partially divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued Thursday.

“[D]evices must be regulated as devices and drugs — if they do not also satisfy the device definition — must be regulated as drugs”: So ruled the majority Friday on a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, rejecting the FDA’s arguments to the contrary.

Access today’s Order List of the U.S. Supreme Court: At this link. The Court granted review in one case and requested the views of the Solicitor General’s Office in one case.

In Brown v. Polk County, No. 20–982, Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a statement respecting the denial of certiorari.

And in Whatley v. Warden, Ga. Diag. & Classification Prison, No. 20–363, Justice Sotomayor issued a dissent from the denial of certiorari.

“Bosse to stay in Oklahoma custody while McGirt ruling is appealed to Supreme Court”: Chris Casteel of The Oklahoman has an article that begins, “The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals agreed Thursday to grant a 45-day pause in overturning the murder convictions of death row inmate Shaun Michael Bosse, giving Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter time to seek U.S. Supreme Court review of key questions arising out of last year’s Indian reservation decision.”