Today in Supreme Court History: July 21

NCAA v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma, 463 U.S. 1311 (decided July 21, 1983): White (a former NCAA star himself) stays decision against NCAA because certiorari would probably be granted (lower courts had held that arrangement banning televising of teams not selected by networks was illegal price-fixing under antitrust laws); cert was granted but White got pushed back into his own end zone (i.e., the Court affirmed)

Delo v. Blair, 509 U.S. 823 (decided July 21, 1993): stay of execution denied by full Court because facts similar to recently-decided Herrera v. Collins decision (conviction upheld due to uncoerced written confession despite numerous post-trial witness affidavits); Blackmun, Stevens and Souter dissent, as they had in Herrera, basically on the argument that Herrera was wrongly decided

South Park Independent School District v. United States, 453 U.S. 1301 (decided July 21, 1981): Powell turns down stay of desegregation order because facts are similar to recent case where cert was denied, even though he personally would vote to grant cert and had voted to grant cert in the prior case

Barber v. Ivey, 143 S.Ct. 2545 (decided July 21, 2023): denies stay of execution in Alabama by lethal injection; in dissent Sotomayor (with Kagan and Jackson) point out that same Alabama agency has spent hours searching for veins, causing pain, and sometimes not killing the prisoners, leaving them with (sometimes) “nerve pain equivalent to electrocution”, and refused to disclose why those executions failed (Barber was executed two hours later)