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.

Texas Court System's Adaptation to and Beaumont's Ninth Court of Appeals's Closing for Tropical Storm Harvey

Texas's Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals have encouraged state courts to be lenient with people suffering delays because of Harvey-- more than a few people are trapped in their homes and won't be able to get out for days.  Beaumont's Ninth Court of Appeals's appears to have closed Friday, August 25, 2017 at five PM and will not open until further notice.

Texas Indigents Freed from Paying Court Costs in Their Divorces

Poor people should not be oppressed by costs imposed by courts. The federal Justice Department thinks so. As to attorneys' fees for services rendered to paupers, San Antonio's Fourth Court of Appeals agrees. The estimable Jani Maselli Woods believes so. E.g. Peraza v. State, 457 S.W.3d 134, (Tex. App.-- Houston [1st Dist.], Dec. 4, 2014)  reversed at 467 S.W.3d 508, (July 01, 2015).
The Texas Supreme Court joins them as to filing fees for civil suits filed with uncontested pauper's oaths. The case is Campbell v. Wilder, No. 14–0379, 2016 WL 1267876 (Tex., Apr. 1, 2016) (Hecht, C.J.) (slip op.) (Lehrmann, J. not sitting).
Seven people-- Campbell along with six others--  who got divorced for free by filing uncontested affidavits of indigency, also known as pauper's oaths, under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 145 got cost bills from Tarrant County District Clerk Thomas A. Wilder. Those bills were in amounts around $300 and threatened that if they were not paid, the sheriff would take property in lieu of the money.
The Texas Advocacy Project objected as to some of the plaintiffs. Wilder said he was bound by the decrees saying that each party had to pay their own costs and that the unhappy indigents should return to court and have the cost charges altered.
Plaintiffs sued in Tarrant County's 17th Judicial District Court, which had made none of the divorce decrees for injunctive relief, inter alia.  After a hearing, it found that the
District Clerk:

" . . . has a policy, practice, and procedure that his office will seek to collect costs against

parties who have filed an affidavit on [sic] indigency under Tex. R. Civ. P. 145 where the

affidavit was not contested, where the contest was denied, or where the contest was

withdrawn based on judgments or final orders in which there was no specific finding

expressly stated in the judgment or final order that the indigent party’s action resulted

in a monetary award, and no specific finding expressly stated in the judgment or final

order that there was sufficient monetary award to reimburse costs[.]"

The Second Court of Appeals, the one in Fort Worth, poured the plaintiffs out for lack of jurisdiction in a divided opinion. The Austin Supremes took it up and some prominent appellate lawyers joined the team for the plaintiffs, e.g. former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson.

The Texas Supremes overruled Evans v. Pringle, 643 S.W.2d 116 (Tex. 1982) (per curiam), holding that the 17th District Court's injunction affecting other trial courts' judgments was allowable.

They also quoted the Tex. R. Civ. P. 145 that the affidavit of indigency was in lieu of costs. That is, once the time for challenging the affidavit of indigency passed-- there were not any costs for that party in the case, and that family courts were freer to assign costs than other civil courts were, made no basis for indigents to incur court costs.

 
Thoughts on this case:

As to indigents lacking liability to pay court fees, this decision appears to comport with the plain language of Rule 145. For a prince of the GOP to ignore the letter of the law to take the property of poor people named Odell, Shaunta, and Tairhonda sickens people with sensitivity, who are also known as swing voters.

Effective September 1 The Texas Supreme Court Changes Juvenile Certification Appellate Practice

The Texas Supreme Court ordered that juvenile certification appeals be accellerated and that juvenile courts tell a respondent of that person's right to an immediate appeal, effective September 1.  A juvenile court certifying a juvenile to stand trial as an adult must must tell the juvenile and the juvenile's attorney orally on the record in open court and in writing of the right to immediately appeal the certification decision and the accelerated nature of the appeal. As far as reasonably possible, those appeals are to get to final disposition within 180 days.

Federal Court of Appeals Decisions without a Trial Court Judgment

There are very few exceptions to the general rule that you cannot have an appeal without a prior trial court dispute. 

One apparent exception is that the Supreme Court of the United States is not merely an appellate court. The United States Constitution says in Article III, Section 2 in the second paragraph says that "[i]n all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction." In these cases, the Supreme Court commonly appoints a master to take the facts in a case and then renders a legal decision on those facts. thought it need not according to Supreme Court Rule 17 and other law.

In order to understand the one ordinary exception to this rule, you have to understand the difference between courts that are created under Article III of the United States Constitution, the main ones being the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals and the United States District Courts and non-Article III tribunals. Article III courts are the courts which are the models for America's judicial independence. The judges' pay cannot be reduced during their time in office and Article III judges cannot be removed except by impeachment of the House of Representatives and conviction by two-thirds of the Senate. Non-Article III judges lack these protections- they are chosen for fixed terms and are easier to remove. Non-Article III courts are generally decision-making bodies for specialized agencies, for example, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, or the Environment Protection Agency. Federal statutes often provide that the final administrative decisions of such bodies may receive their first Article III proceeding in a court of appeals instead of a district court. E.g. Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Schor,  478 U.S. 833 (1986)

The Texas Supreme Court Changes a Common-Law Rule

In the beginning was Carnation Co. v. Wong, 516 S.W.2d 116 (Tex. 1974) holding that evidence of use or nonuse of seat belts would not affect plaintiffs' recovery in auto negligence suits.  Eleven years later the legislature enacted a law that evidence of use or nonuse of seat belts was not admissible in a civil trial, then swept that pro-plaintiff rule away in 2003. So the Carnation rule sprung up again, but the Texas Supremes reverse it now, arguing that the rule was to protect plaintiffs from the old rule that any responsibility of the plaintiff would cause the plaintiff a total loss. Now that rule is gone, and seat belts are required by law. Justice Jeff  Brown wrote for a unanimous court.  Well Services v. Romero, No. 13-0136 (Tex. Feb. 13, 2015)

From the Irritated Appellate Lawyer Department

Heard a news report last night that said that "New York's Supreme Court" had found New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's ban on large-serving-size sugary drinks unconstitutional. This may technically be true, but for the vast majority of listeners it's likely misleading. You see, in New York state, "supreme court" is what they call one of their type of trial courts, and cases from there are appealed to the Supreme Court-- Appellate Division, which is what happened to the ban-- an Appellate Division court overruled it. What nearly all of the rest of the American states call a supreme court--  their highest courts-- is called the Court of Appeals in New York State.
Here's my new favorite song that mentions the State of New York.