Today at the Court
By 
At least two fairly important cases today:
–In Gundy v. U.S., the Court declined to apply nondelegation doctrine to strike down a provision of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. The plurality opinion, written by Kagan, adhered to the properly deferential standard the Court has applied in practice for more than 8 decades. In a less-than-fully-encouraging concurrence in the judgment only, Alito argued that he was open to a substantial revision of the Court’s nondelegation doctrine but as long as that doctrine remained in place would not single this case out for an exception. (If you want Alito’s vote on this, don’t pick a criminal justice case.)
For why aggressive judicial application of the nondelegation doctrine is a bad idea, see George Lovell’s classic article “That Sick Chicken Won’t Hunt.” Alas, once they find the right case that’s probably where we’re headed.
hey it's a totally normal day the chief justice of the united states just signed an opinion suggesting that the U.S. administrative state is constitutionally suspect and calling into doubt the whole project of modern governance— Nicholas Bagley (@nicholas_bagley) June 20, 2019
–In American Legion v. American Humanist Association, the Court held 7-2 that a sectarian religious symbol (in this case a War memorial) could be prominently displayed on public property at a traffic circle. As Ginsburg observed in dissent, the symbol is unquestionably sectarian, and hasn’t become any less sectarian when it was erected, and hence constitutes the state favoring one religion over other religions over irrelgiion:
RBG: the Peace Cross memorial was a sectarian religious symbol when it was erected and remains one in 2019. Unanswerable, and yet got only one other vote pic.twitter.com/TBF58BpD4D— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) June 20, 2019
Their votes didn’t matter in this case, but as always Breyer and Kagan represent money left on the table. Meanwhile, Thomas is arguing again that the Establishment Clause should not be incorporated against the states:
This is an extraordinary claim by Thomas. If true, then only state legislatures — and not other state officials — are bound by any part of the First Amendment, including the free speech clause: pic.twitter.com/fCjIYrDf3K— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) June 20, 2019
He is not a crank.