State Court Oral Arguments to Watch for in June

Each month, State Court Report previews upcoming oral arguments in prominent or interesting state court cases.

In June, state supreme courts will take up a wide range of issues, including the state constitutionality of South Carolina’s congressional map, whether Oregon’s retail licenses for tobacco prevent a locality from banning flavored cigarettes, Hawaii residents’ right to access court records that would otherwise be sealed, and more.

Can South Carolina Ban Online Tests for Corrective Lenses? — June 3

Opternative, Inc. v. South Carolina Board of Medical Examiners, South Carolina Supreme Court

The South Carolina Supreme Court will consider whether a law that prevents telehealth companies from providing online vision tests for glasses and contact prescriptions in the state violates the businesses’ equal protection and due process rights under the South Carolina Constitution. The company challenging the law offers this service in about 35 states, but the service is banned in South Carolina.

A trial court rejected an argument by the plaintiff’s counsel, the Institute for Justice, that the law’s purpose is not to protect public health but instead to protect brick-and-mortar optometrists. The law satisfies the deferential test for due process and equal protection, the trial court said, because it rationally relates to reducing the risk diseases go undiagnosed if a patient forgoes more comprehensive eye exams in favor of online convenience.

On appeal, the company argues the trial court erred by upholding the law based on a conceivable basis it presumed. Instead, the company says, the court should have applied a rational basis test that takes account of actual facts, including the lack of any meaningful health difference between corrective lenses and other prescriptions for which the state allows telemedicine. The company asserts that version is consistent with state constitutional history and the approach of some sister courts.

Watch the arguments here.

Clash Between State Tobacco Licensing Law and Local Tobacco-Related Ban — June 5

Schwartz v. Washington County, Oregon Supreme Court

The Oregon Supreme Court will consider whether statutes that establish state tobacco retail licenses and that authorize licensees to sell tobacco products and vaping devices preempt a county ordinance that prohibits the sale of flavored tobacco products and vapes. An intermediate court found the statutes did not preclude the county ordinance.

The plaintiffs, retailers with state licenses, argue those licenses are an express grant of permission to sell the at-issue products statewide and cannot be reconciled with the country prohibition on a subset of those sales. They have garnered amicus support from a tobacco and vapor retail association.

The county’s arguments against preemption are supported by amicus briefs from prominent public health and community groups, including the American Heart Association and American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. They maintain the county’s home-rule authority and provisions in the statutes permitting localities to enact additional “standards for regulating” tobacco sales allow it to issue the ordinance and provide a greater measure of public health protection than provided by the state, particularly for young people.

Watch the arguments here.

Hawaii Residents’ Right to Access Court Records — June 10

Grube v. Trader, State v. Rogan, Hawaii Supreme Court

The Hawaii Supreme Court will take up a reporter’s challenge to two defendants’ requests to seal publicly accessible court records related to their criminal cases after neither was convicted and their charges were expunged. The reporter argues a state law requiring courts to comply diligently with such requests violates the public’s right to access court records under the First Amendment and the state constitutional equivalent. He also says the law interferes with the state judiciary’s inherent authority over its own files and procedures.

The Hawaii high court has said outside the expungement context that to overcome the public access right a trial court must identify a compelling interest in nondisclosure of a document. Mandatory sealing of entire case files under the expungement law is incompatible with that judicial review, the reporter argues, and legislators “cannot accomplish by statute what a judge would be constitutionally prohibited from doing.”

The state office of the public defender and attorney general have filed amicus briefs in support of the law’s constitutionality, asserting that the public right to access applies less strongly, if at all, in closed cases and is outweighed by defendants’ privacy rights.

Watch the arguments here.

Defendants Experiencing Poverty in Washington — June 12 and 24

State v. Sabra Danielson, State v. Simone Nelson, and State v. James Ellis, Washington Supreme Court

The Washington Supreme Court will hear three cases on the constitutionality of criminal fines and fees assessed against defendants who cannot afford to pay.

In Danielson and Nelson, being heard together June 12, the defendants contend it violates equal protection to refund fines or fees paid in cash when a conviction is vacated, but not to reimburse defendants who performed community service at the equivalent of minimum wages to satisfy financial obligations they were unable to pay. The trial courts in these cases drew that distinction after the drug law underlying the defendants’ — and thousands of others’ — convictions was struck down. The defendants argue that a practice of not reimbursing time and labor singles out the poor and infringes on the important right to a refund the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized when an unconstitutional conviction is vacated.

Ellis, set to be argued on June 24, addresses restitution — a court-ordered payment ostensibly to compensate a victim for losses from a crime — imposed as part of a sentence. The state high court will consider whether restitution is punishment subject to the limits on excessive fines in the federal and state constitutions and, if so, whether those clauses require sentencing courts to analyze the defendant’s ability to pay in setting the amount. The defendant and amicus groups, including the Fines and Fees Justice Center and American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, point to the real-life impact restitution has on the “vast majority” of defendants who are poor as evidence that it is categorically punitive and, without regard for poverty, grossly disproportionate.

Watch the arguments here.

Does South Carolina’s Constitution Forbid Partisan Gerrymandering? — June 24

League of Women Voters South Carolina v. Alexander, South Carolina Supreme Court

The South Carolina high court will address whether the state legislature can draw lines for voting districts with the purpose of creating an advantage for a political party.

After the 2020 census, South Carolina lawmakers redrew their congressional district map and, despite modest population changes, made significant changes to the district that contains Charleston. The South Carolina NAACP sued in federal court, claiming the map constituted a racial gerrymander in violation of the U.S. Constitution. During that case, state lawmakers testified their intention was a partisan, not a racial, gerrymander, prompting the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the racial gerrymandering claim on appeal. In doing so, the Court reiterated its prior 2019 holding that partisan gerrymandering is non-justiciable “as far as the Federal Constitution is concerned.”

Turning instead to the state constitution, the League of Women Voters in July filed an original action in the South Carolina Supreme Court, arguing that partisan gerrymandering violates various state guarantees, including South Carolina’s Free and Open Elections Clause and Equal Protection Clause. The Brennan Center, in an amicus brief, argues the state constitution goes well beyond the federal Constitution to protect South Carolinians’ rights to participate as equals in the political process.

Watch the arguments here.

Sarah Kessler is an advisor and contributing editor to State Court Report.

Erin Geiger Smith is a writer and editor at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Suggested Citation: Sarah Kessler & Erin Geiger Smith, State Court Oral Arguments to Watch for in June, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Jun. 2, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/state-court-oral-arguments-watch-june-1