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SCOTUS has ruled on 23 cases since our June 17 issue. The court has finished issuing rulings in the 69 cases it heard this term. Click here to read more about SCOTUS’ 2018-2019 term.
Click the links below to read more about the specific cases SCOTUS ruled on since June 17:
Looking back at the 2018 term
SCOTUS is in recess until October. It will begin hearing cases for the 2019 term on October 7. As of June 27, the court had accepted 42 cases. Of the 42 cases, 10 are consolidated. They are:
Click here to find out more about the upcoming 2019-2020 term.
The Federal Vacancy Count tracks vacancies, nominations, and confirmations to all United States Article III federal courts in a one-month period. This month’s edition includes nominations, confirmations, and vacancies from May 30 to June 26, 2019.
A breakdown of the vacancies at each level can be found in the table below. For a more detailed look at the vacancies on the federal courts, click here.
The following judges left active status, creating Article III vacancies. As Article III judicial positions, they must be filled by a nomination from the president. Nominations are subject to Senate confirmation.
As of June 26, 118 of 870 active Article III judicial positions on courts covered in this report were vacant—a vacancy percentage of 13.6 percent.
Including the United States Court of Federal Claims and the United States territorial courts, 127 of 890 active federal judicial positions are vacant.
For more information on judicial vacancies during President Trump’s first term, click here.
New nominations
President Trump announced three new nominations since the May 2019 report.
The president has announced 191 Article III judicial nominations since taking office on January 20, 2017. The president named 69 judicial nominees in 2017 and 92 in 2018. For more information on the president’s judicial nominees, click here.
Between May 30 and June 26, 2019, the Senate confirmed 11 of the president’s nominees to Article III courts. Since January 2017, the Senate has confirmed 123 of President Trump’s judicial nominees—80 district court judges, 41 appeals court judges, and two Supreme Court justices.
Need a daily fix of judicial nomination, confirmation, and vacancy information? We maintain a list of individuals President Trump has nominated.
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On June 27, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that public-sector unions cannot require non-members to pay agency fees to cover the costs of non-political union activities. Let’s take a look at the potential effect Janus has had on membership.
Broad effects: The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) are the nation’s two largest public-sector labor unions. Together, they represent about 4.3 million public-sector workers — roughly 20 percent of the nation’s total public-sector workforce.
Challenges when assessing membership changes’: There is no consensus opinion when it comes to assessing Janus‘ effect on union membership rates. Generally speaking, groups that support the Janus ruling tend to point to figures suggesting declines in public-sector union membership. Unions tend to cite figures suggesting minimal effects on membership. This difference of opinion is a consequence of the complexities involved in measuring union membership rates. What makes tallying union membership so difficult?
Ballotpedia’s approach to this question: Earlier this week, Ballotpedia published a methodology describing how we will navigate these complexities and produce our own membership data set, which we expect to publish in full by the end of this summer. For a more complete discussion of this topic, see our methodology article or check out our webinar, where we present some of our preliminary findings.
We are currently tracking 101 pieces of legislation dealing with public-sector employee union policy. On the map below, a darker shade of green indicates a greater number of relevant bills. Click here for a complete list of all the bills we’re tracking.
Below is a complete list of legislative actions on relevant bills since the beginning of the year. Bills are listed in alphabetical order, first by state and then by bill number.
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The Checks and Balances Letter delivers news and information from Ballotpedia’s Administrative State Project, including pivotal actions at the federal and state levels related to the separation of powers, due process and the rule of law.
This edition:
In this edition, we review the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision declining to uphold the nondelegation doctrine, a SCOTUS decision requiring notice-and-comment rulemaking for changes to Medicare policy, an effort to standardize cost-benefit analysis procedures at the Environmental Protection Agency, and two recent SCOTUS cases demonstrating the reluctance to apply Chevron deference.
At the state level, we highlight an Idaho proposal to simplify or retire roughly one-third of the state’s regulatory code, a new Michigan law that seeks to protect citizens against civil asset forfeiture, a ruling from the Texas Supreme Court aimed at protecting citizens’ due process rights in spite of agency misinformation, and the Texas governor’s executive order to prevent the expiration of the state’s plumbing regulations. As always, we wrap up with our Regulatory Tally, which features information about the 220 proposed rules and 264 final rules added to the Federal Register in May and OIRA’s regulatory review activity.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in May released a new issue of the Ten Thousand Commandments—the group’s annual report detailing the scope of federal regulatory activity and its economic impact. Below is a selection of the report’s conclusions:
The Pacific Legal Foundation provided the following summary of the report’s key findings:
Click here to read the full report.