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Perez v. City of San Antonio
Texas Supreme Court held that a 2021 amendment, which bans the state and localities from prohibiting or limiting religious services, is absolute and categorical when it applies, but its applicability does not extend to the government’s preservation and management of publicly owned lands.
McCarty v. Missouri Secretary of State
Missouri Supreme Court held that plaintiff business groups and voters had failed to show that the ballot summary and fiscal note summary for an approved measure increasing the state's minimum wage and providing paid sick leave were inadequate or unfair. The court also held that its constitutionally and statutorily derived original jurisdiction over post-election contests is limited to matters related to the election process and does not extend to claims about the validity of a ballot measure.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic v. South Carolina (Planned Parenthood 2)
South Carolina Supreme Court held that a "fetal heartbeat" — as defined in a state law banning most abortions at the point such a heartbeat is detected — occurs when electrical impulses are first detectable as a "sound" with diagnostic medical technology and a medical professional observes those electrical impulses as a "steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart." Although declining to define that point in terms of a number of weeks, the court said it "occurs in most instances at approximately six weeks of pregnancy." The court also held that the law is not unconstitutionally vague.
Republican National Committee v. Eternal Vigilance Action, Inc; Georgia v. Eternal Vigilance Action
Georgia Supreme Court ruled invalid under state nondelegation principles four of seven rules passed by the Georgia State Election board, while upholding one rule. The court did not decide the validity of two other rules, holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the provisions.
Kaul v. Urmanski
Wisconsin Supreme Court held that an 1849 law, which a local prosecutor had claimed was a near-total abortion ban, is impliedly repealed as to abortion by subsequent legislation and does not ban the procedure in the state.
Sync Title Agency, LLC v. Arizona Corporation Commission
Arizona Court of Appeals held that juryless administrative hearings for civil securities charges do not violate the state constitution's jury trial right. The court relied on the same holding reached by a separate panel of the appeals court in EFG America v. Arizona Corporation Commission. The company plaintiff in EFG has petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court for review of this issue.
Foresman v. Foresman
Hawaii Supreme Court upheld law that reopened civil claims based on sexual acts with a minor "that constituted or would have constituted a criminal offense,” finding it established a statute of limitations, not an independent cause of action, and only imposed liability for acts that were crimes when the conduct occurred
Nathaniel M. Fouch
Nathaniel M. Fouch is a law professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio.
The Education Wars Return to Ohio
A trial court found that Ohio’s voucher program violated the state constitutional educational guarantees and prohibitions on state funding of religious schools.
Commonwealth v. Govan
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that imposition of GPS monitoring as a condition of pretrial release for a defendant whose conduct directly implicated state interests in protecting alleged crime and domestic violence victims and potential witnesses was constitutional under Massachusetts's search and seizure clause. The court also held that an officer’s subsequent retrieval and review of an hour of defendant’s GPS location data in connection with investigating a new crime was not a search for state constitutional purposes because the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the accessed information.
