Today in Supreme Court History: June 14

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (decided June 14, 1943): explicitly overrules Minersville v. Gobitis, 1940, and holds that refusal to salute flag and recite pledge as part of regular school day was protected by First and Fourteenth Amendments (Court holds that this was impermissible “compelled speech”; plaintiffs were Jehovah’s Witnesses; school had softened earlier versions of the pledge which other parents had said sounded “too much like Hitler’s”)

Taylor v. Mississippi, 319 U.S. 583 (decided June 14, 1943): companion case to Barnette, holding that speech urging that the flag not be saluted is protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments

Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1 (decided June 14, 2004): atheist father did not have standing to challenge school requiring daughter to say “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance as violating First Amendment (mother, who had legal custody, intervened to oppose and even liberals criticized father for putting his daughter into a publicized Constitutional as well as family dispute)

National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (decided June 14, 1977):  The Court criticizes Illinois Supreme Court’s use of its “shadow docket” to in effect decide the merits (in 2026 this sounds strange).  Suit to enjoin American Nazis from marching in a town filled with Holocaust survivors.  The state court lifted a lower court’s stay, i.e., the march would happen before the appeal could be heard.  Court holds that removal of the stay acted as an appealable final judgment, treats motion to reinstate stay as a direct appeal, grants motion, remands to state court to decide if Nazis’ First Amendment rights had been curtailed without procedural safeguards.  (State court then held that they had been, allowed march to go forward, 373 N.E.2d 21, which it did on June 25, 1978, and it was a dud, outnumbered by protesters.)  (This incident resulted in a very nuanced TV movie, with a cast of Jewish actors familiar to my parents’ generation playing survivors, headed by Danny Kaye in his only dramatic role.)

Greer v. United States, 593 U.S. 503 (decided June 14, 2021): jury instruction that conviction for possession of firearm while a convicted felon required a showing that the defendant knew he had felony convictions not necessary in this case because with a multiple felony record defendant could be presumed to have known it

Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, 585 U.S. 1 (decided June 14, 2018): ban on entering a polling place while wearing a political message violated First Amendment (here, a “Don’t Tread on Me” shirt)

Animal Science Products v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co., 585 U.S. 33 (decided June 14, 2018): federal court doesn’t have to follow foreign government’s construction of its own law as submitted in its official brief, though must give it weight (class action alleging price-fixing under Sherman Act against Chinese sellers of Vitamin C; Chinese government asserted that pricing regime was mandated by Chinese law) (verdict had been for plaintiff; on remand Second Circuit dismissed anyway on international comity grounds, 8 F.4th 136)

Pennsylvania State Police v. Suders, 542 U.S. 129 (decided June 14, 2004): where plaintiff alleges “constructive discharge” (sexual harassment so intolerable she had to quit) defendant has burden to show that she failed to mitigate harm (e.g., by filing complaints, which it looks like this woman did, though to little effect)

Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217 (decided June 14, 1971): no Equal Protection violation when city after being ordered to desegregate public swimming pools instead closed them (I used to live in a Southern town which did that, but it had only one pool and it was whites only; this city had a pool for blacks which got closed along with the whites-only pools) (wrinkle in this case is that city was the lessee on one of the white pools and owner then reopened it as whites-only); 5 - 4 decision

McDonald v. Pless, 238 U.S. 264 (decided June 14, 1915): denied motion to set aside verdict by applying the common law rule that a juror cannot testify as to jury deliberations (here, an impermissible quotient verdict) (that’s not the rule in New York, at least not now, though one can’t formally question a juror post-verdict without a good reason)

West v. Gibson, 527 U.S. 212 (decided June 14, 1999): 1991 amendment to Title VII allows EEOC to award “appropriate” (language from original 1972 Act) compensatory damages instead of just back pay (“Words in statutes can enlarge or contract their scope as other changes, in law or in the world, require their application to new instances or make old applications anachronistic [citations]”, see also American Sugar Refining, May 28)

Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. 406 (decided June 14, 2024): adding “bump stock” (which allows machine gun-speed firing) to semiautomatic rifle doesn’t make it a “machinegun” under statute restricting access even though it allows hundreds of rounds to be fired “in a matter of minutes” (invalidating ATF redefinition instituted after bump stock-assisted mass shooting in Las Vegas)