Latest Case: Weiss v. People ex rel. Department of Transportation (Real Estate & Property Law)

The Future of Faithless Electors and the National Popular Vote Compact: Part Two in a Two-Part Series

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR

In this second of a two-part series of columns about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the “faithless elector cases, Illinois Law dean and professor Vikram David Amar describes some good news that we may glean from those cases. Specifically, Amar points out that states have many ways of reducing elector faithlessness, and he lists three ways in which the Court’s decision paves the way for advances in the National Popular Vote (NPV) Interstate Compact movement.

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Impoverishing Women: Supreme Court Upholds Trump Administration’s Religious and Moral Exemptions to Contraceptive Mandate

JOANNA L. GROSSMAN

SMU Dedman School of Law professor Joanna L. Grossman comments on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the Trump administration’s religious and moral exemptions to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Grossman provides a brief history of the conflict over the growing politicization of contraception in the United States and argues that the exemptions at issue in this case should never have been promulgated in the first place because they have no support in science or public policy.

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Weiss v. People ex rel. Department of Transportation

Docket: S248141

Opinion Date: July 16, 2020

Judge: Groban

Areas of Law: Real Estate & Property Law

In this inverse condemnation action, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the court of appeal reversing the judgment of the trial court, holding that the trial court erred in borrowing section 1260.040 from the Eminent Domain Law and using to it making a dispositive pretrial ruling on inverse condemnation liability. The public entity defendants in this inverse condemnation action asked the trial court to use Cal. Code Civ. P. 1260.40, which authorizes a pretrial motion for a ruling on "an evidentiary or other legal issue affecting the determination of compensation," in inverse condemnation procedure. The trial court granted the motions and entered judgment in the defendants' favor. The court of appeals reversed, concluding that the procedure at issue did not meaningfully supplement existing pretrial procedures governing a summary judgment motion. Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) this Court declines to import section 1260.070 into inverse condemnation procedure; and (2) the trial erred in entering judgment on the defendants' "Motion for Legal Determination of Liability," holding that the trial court erred in using the procedures because the summary judgment statute was available for that purpose, and any disputes could have been resolved in a bench trial.