U.S. Supremes Not Coming to Rescue Civilly Committed Sex Offenders, at Least, not Soon

United States Supreme Court announced today that it would not hear a case concerning the constitutionality of Minnesota's sexually violent predator law. The committed people won in the trial court, the State of Minnesota took it up on appeal to the United States Court of Appeal for the Eighth Circuit, which overturned the trial court. The committed people had asked the United States Supreme Court to hear it, but the high court did not. With very few exceptions, SCOTUS gets to choose the cases it wants to hear. About 7,000 to 8,000 cases are brought to SCOTUS each year that someone wants them to hear. About 80 get the full treatment-- merits briefing and oral argument, and about a 100 get some kind of ruling without oral argument, etc. The chances of SCOTUS taking any case in particular is a little more than one out of a hundred.

Today, the first Monday in October, is the beginning of the court's term for this year. The Justices' main holiday is from the end of May to September. You may ask what do the Justices do in September before the official beginning of the court's term. What they do is prepare and have the Long Conference. The Justice meet together most Fridays to choose what cases to hear and which justice will supervise the writing of court's opinion in each case. But they don't have such meetings over their summer vacation. When they come back, they have about three months' requests for cases to be taken, and they get rid of those summer requests in one long meeting-- the Long Conference in September.

On that first Monday in October, SCOTUS announces that it is taking or refusing to take about one-third of the cases for the year.

The Beaumont Court of Appeals is still responsible for far more of the appeals of sexually violent predator civil commitment matters than the other courts. If SCOTUS had taken the Minnesota case mentioned above, SCOTUS could have decided to make major changes in that law that would have affected every state, including Texas. But those old rivers, the Potomac and the Neches will likely keep on flowing the way they always have, at least for another year.