Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Supreme Court Unveils The First Cases It Will Hear Next Term

U.S. Supreme Court (By Jarek Tuszyński / CC-BY-SA-3.0 & GDFL, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7564770)

The Supreme Court released its oral arguments schedule for October on Friday, which features the first six cases it will hear for its 2023-2024 term.

The Court will hear a major constitutional challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) funding mechanism, an Americans with Disabilities Act “tester” lawsuit against a hotel and a racial gerrymandering case from South Carolina. Oral arguments are set to begin on October 2.

CFPB v. Community Financial Services Association of America, which challenges the CFPB’s funding mechanism, is scheduled for October 3. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals previously found that funding the CFPB through the Federal Reserve was a violation of the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause, which gives Congress the “power of the purse” in appropriating government funds.

NEW: #SCOTUS releases October argument calendar to kick off 2023 term. pic.twitter.com/oOUeteyNxl

— Kimberly Robinson (@KimberlyRobinsn) July 14, 2023

On October 4, oral arguments will be held for Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer, a case that considers whether an Americans with Disabilities Act “tester” has standing to sue a hotel she never visited for failing to offer disability accommodations. Deborah Laufer, who brought the lawsuit, has targeted more than 600 hotels with similar lawsuits for websites she found “insufficiently clear” about accessibility accommodations.

The Court will consider a lower court’s ruling that found South Carolina’s congressional map had been racially gerrymandered in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, which is scheduled for October 11. Republican lawmakers who brought the lawsuit argue the lower court “disregarded the publicly available election data” and failed to examine the South Carolina General Assembly’s intent.