Today in Supreme Court History: July 11

Organized Village of Kake v. Egan, 80 S.Ct. 33 (decided July 11, 1959): Brennan grants restraining order preventing Alaska from enforcing statute criminalizing fish traps against Native American tribe because Secretary of Interior had granted exemption and its livelihood depended on them. (Question on full appeal was whether the Secretary’s authority superseded Alaska’s. The Alaska Supreme Court ended up ruling against the Native Americans, and the Court affirmed in 1962, 369 U.S. 60, in which Frankfurter, in one of his last majority opinions, derided traps as a “lazy man’s device”, though he extended Brennan’s stay to the end of that fishing season.)

Rockefeller v. Socialist Workers Party, 400 U.S. 1201 (decided July 11, 1970): Harlan grants stay of the District Court’s order striking down on Equal Protection grounds requirement that the 12,000 voters needed for petition for statewide ballot include at least 50 voters from each county because it overvalued votes in less populous counties (i.e., giving those counties disproportionate veto power over who gets onto the ballot) (the least populous county, Hamilton, had only 1/500th the population of the most, Kings/Brooklyn) (order was affirmed by the Court without opinion on October 12 of that year, 400 U.S. 806, though the District Court’s decision shows that the Socialist Party lost on other issues)