It's the First Monday of October………

Which means that the Supreme Court has begun its new session.

Rather unsurprisingly, the court punted on gay marriage, declining to hear any of the appeals of the recent ruling striking down gay marriage bans.

This has the effect of massively expanding gay marriage, or the recognition of gay marriage:

With not a single dependable hint of its own constitutional view of same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court in one fell swoop on Monday cleared the way for gays and lesbians to wed in a batch of new states — starting first in five more states, and probably adding six more in the coming weeks. If that happens in all eleven, it will mean that same-sex marriages would then be legal in thirty states and Washington, D.C.

In seven one-line orders, released without explanation and with no report on how any Justice voted, the Court surprisingly refused to review any same-sex marriage case now before it and, in the process, prepared to lift a series of orders that had delayed such marriages while the issue remained in the Court. Almost no one had expected that to happen.

It may take a few weeks for the Court’s action to take effect in real-world terms, in the geographic areas where federal appeals courts have struck down bans in five states — the decisions that the Justices have now left intact. Because those appeals court rulings are binding on all federal courts in their regions, those decisions almost certainly dictate the outcome in six more states.

As Maddow noted, it only takes 4 judges to put a case up for review, and the 4 right wing judges voted to support DOMA in US v. Windsor, it means that at least one judge (My money is on Roberts) who voted against gay rights voted against reviewing the cases.

It is either an acknowledgement by one of the conservative justices that society has changed, or it it a tactical decision, hoping that the next justice will be appointed by a Republican to replace Ginsbert.

In addition, we have a very interesting 4th amendment case,  where the question of whether a search is legal if the stop is is based on a misunderstanding of the law.

We also have a patent case, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., where the court is going to review whether the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Patent Court) can review the facts presented in the district court on appeal, or only address matters of law or "clear error."  (Interestingly enough, the Patent Court ruled against the patent, and the district judge ruled for the patent.)

The fact that the Supreme Court is taking it implies to me that at least 4 justices are looking to slap down the Patent Court yet again, which has for a while engaged in a de novo review of patents when it heard appeals.

I'm also interested in Tibble v. Edison International, where workers sued their employer, because their retirement plans were high fee plans, because Edison was getting kickbacks from the plan manager.

It's actually a statute of limitations case, since the investment choices were initially made more than 6 years before the suit was filed, but the plan was maintained for long enough that the last day was within the statute of limitations.

More on other cases here.