It's gonna be a big term at the Supreme Court starting October two. But don't take my word for it. Here's Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking this week at Georgetown Law School. There's only one prediction that's entirely safe about
the upcoming term, and that it will be momentous. In addition the cases involving wedding cakes and voting maps, there will be fights over worker class action lawsuits, cell phone privacy, and of course Donald Trump's travel band with us to talk more about this momentous term and perhaps makes some not so safe predictions is Greg gar. He's a partner at Latham and Watkins here in Washington and formally the U. S. Solicitor General under President George W. Bush. Greg, thanks for
joining us. Let's see how many of these cases we can get to. Uh, tell us a little bit about the very first case case the Court's going to hear involving the rights of workers depressed class action lawsuits even though they've signed arbitration agreements. Thanks Greig, and thanks for having me on. So the very first case of the term, that's an opportunity for the Court to revisit an area that has split the justices along five four lines, and
that's the enforceability of employee arbitration agreements. And in this case, the question is whether or not employer employer employer employee agreements to resolve work related disputes through individual arbitration violate the federal labor laws. So in the in a specific case, the employees suit their employer in court for wage and overtime violations on a class basis. But they had one problem. They had already agreed to resolve any employer related claims
through arbitration on an individual basis. UH. The the employers then sought to enforce that agreement and kick the cases out of court, at which point the employees argued that they had a right under the National Labor Relations Act to bring that sort of class litigation under provision that grants to employees the right to engage in quote, concerted activities for the purpose of to bargaining or other mutual
aid or protection. UH. They rely on that provision to claim that the individual arbitration agreements that they assigned are unenforceable under federal law. And so this case really presents a clash between the National Labor Relations Act and the Federal Arbitration Act, which the Court has recognized in a series of cases, presents a strong presumption in favor of enforcing arbitration agreements. The employees have tended to lose these sorts of cases by five for majority, and with the
Justice Course selling Justice Lee a seat um. There's no particular reason to think that the result in this case will be any different. But either way, I think everybody agrees that this case is of tremendous importance to employers and employees alike given the prevalence of these sorts of arbitration agreements greg there will be a major test of digital privacy coming up with the case involving whether you need a warrant to obtain mobile phone tower records. Tell
us about that absolutely so. Any time, any time you have a smartphone in your pocket, your location is constantly being tracked by your cellular service provider, which is pinging cell towers nearby to send data to and from your phone. Um The cellular provider collects this data, and in this case, the government want to the service provider and asked for four months of this so called cell site location information in order to determine the defendants whereabouts in connection with
the criminal investigations and charges that are brought. And the very important question present in this case is whether the government's collection of that UH SELL site location information UM is a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment UH.
To you go back for a while, the government generally has been allowed to collect phone records from UH from your phone companies under the Communications Storage Act, and the theory that it's just collecting data that everyone should realize could be collected by the phone companies and the government isn't invading your reasonable expectations of privacy. But this case really presents the Court to reconsider reasonable expectations of privacy
and this smartphone age. And if there's one thing that's where it comes to from the Court's recent Fourth AMDENDMIC cases, is that the justices are generally wary of embracing force Fourth Amendment principles that can limit their own privacy. And I think it safe to say that probably all the justices carry smartphones, so that may give a little bit of a boost to the challengers in this case. We know Justice Brier carries a phone because his inadvertently rang
during a couple of arguments last term. UM Greg, we could spend an entire show talking about Donald Trump's travel bands. Let me but let me just ask you one question about it. So really big issues here, the president in control of the borders, the allegations of bias against Muslims. But there is this issue that the band that's in place now is scheduled to expire on Sunday, and we're anticipating the administration may issue something new, perhaps a longer
travel ban affecting more countries. What do you think the chances are that the court will actually decide any of those big issues or do you think it's more likely that the travel ban case will will go away in one way or another? Right? I mean, I think right now it's a big if, and that's about all I
can say. And as as you mentioned, the order itself is before the court is scheduled to expire on Sunday, and if it expires, then presumably um there be a big question of muteness over whether the case could go for it at all. But even if the President renews the order in some form, then that would present a question of whether this is the right time for the Supreme Court to decide the issue, or whether it should go back for more briefing, more decisions from the lower court.
And so I think you're quite right that there's a significant question as to whether the Supreme Court will issue any decision in this case, and then even if it does, there's a big question about how broad or narrow the court would go um. Thus far in the litigation, the Supreme Court has seemed to try to resolve issues that have come up on a you know, something of a consensus basis, or at least not a five four basis.
For example, in July, they held that grandparents and cousins can't be excluded under the travel order, but that refugees claiming a relationship with the resettlement Agency in the United States could be UM. So I think if the case does go forward, there'll be a big question about how narrow or broadly the Court decides this case. And it's hard to see the Court, especially out of the block um, having much of an appetite as a whole for deciding
this case on very broad, momentous constitutional grounds. Speaking of broad questions, is this going to be an ideologically divisive term with Justice Kennedy generally in the middle, Yeah, I think I think that's very likely. Um, we're coming off of unique curier in which the Court with a h justices has really sought to go out of its way to find consensus. And you know, one of the big pictures questions going into this term is whether or not
that will hold. But it looks right now, with all these divisive issues on the court stocket, that Justice Kennedy will be the pivotal justice again and that we're likely to see more five four decisions and more of this sort of contentious five four decisions that we've seen from the Court going back before Justice Galia's passage. So it's it's going to be a really fascinating term to follow.
I want to thank Greg gar from our solicitor general now partner at Lathaman Watkins for foreshadowing some of the many issues we'll be talking about on Bloomberg Law over the next nine months. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law. We'll be back tomorrow thanks to our tech
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