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State Court Oral Arguments to Watch for in December
Issues on the dockets include taxpayers’ standing to sue, incarcerated people’s rights to acquire property, and claims Instagram’s design is addictive.
Stary v. Ethridge
Texas Supreme Court held that due process requires a heightened evidentiary standard to support a protective order prohibitng contact between a parent and child for longer than two years, likening such an order to a government's termination of parental rights. Instead of the ordinary civil preponderance of the evidence standard, a court must find the statutory requirements for such an order by clear and convincing evidence and must consider the best interests of the child.
Hilo Bay Marina v. State of Hawaii
Hawaii Supreme Court held the state constitution’s provision against state establishment of religion prevents the state from enforcing a deed restriction requiring property to be used “for Church purposes only.”
Symposium: The Power of State Constitutional Rights
How are state constitutions providing means to protect rights in the face of federal retrenchment?
Glen Oaks Village Owners v. City of New York
New York Court of Appeals upheld New York City law establishing greenhouse gas emission limits for large city buildings, concluding state climate law that sets emissions targets statewide does not preempt the field of regulating emissions.
The Landmark Case That Extended Speech Rights on Private Property
In 1980, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Princeton University could not exclude members of the public from distributing political materials on campus.
State ex rel. Hilgers v. Evnen
Nebraska Supreme Court held that provisions of a criminal justice reform law expanding parole eligibility, including retroactively to already-sentenced offenders, do not have the effect of substituting milder punishments for the ones already imposed, so do not infringe on the Board of Pardons’ exclusive commutation power under the state constitution.
State Department of Education & Early Development v. Alexander
Held that statutes permitting local school districts to operate correspondence study programs as alternative to traditional schooling and authorizing allotments of public funds to purchase nonsectarian educational services and materials did not facially violate state constitutional prohibition on using public funds for the direct benefit of religious or private educational institutions
State v. Cohee
Held that the state was entitled to a writ of prohibition to effectively compel a lower court judge to impose a recidivist life sentence, finding that the state’s pursuit of such a sentence did not violate equal protection and the imposition of such sentence for fleeing from a law enforcement officer with reckless indifference would not violate proportionality clause of state constitution
