SupremeCourt.gov Upgrade – Mouseover of Slip Opinions Reveals Summary of #SCOTUS Case

January 26th, 2015

The Supreme Court’s web site has a feature on its page listing slip opinions. If you hover your mouse over the name of the case, a box will pop up providing a one-sentence summary of the decision. I’ve never noticed this feature before, but all of the cases going back to 2009 seem to have this feature.

For example, this is what appears when you mouseover Holt v. Hobbs.

The Arkansas Department of Correction’s grooming policy, which generally prohibits inmates from growing beards, violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA) insofar as it prevents petitioner, a devout Muslim, from growing a ½-inch beard in accordance with his religious beliefs.

A slightly different statement appears in the syllabus:

The Department’s grooming policy violates RLUIPA insofar as it prevents petitioner from growing a 1⁄2-inch beard in accordance with his religious beliefs.

While the syllabus, per United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337, is not part of the decision, I hope no one takes these short summaries to be part of the Court’s order.

In case you are curious, here is the HTML summary of NFIB v. Sebelius:

This suit challenging provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is not barred by the Anti-Injunction Act; the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate—which requires persons who do not comply with the mandate to pay a “penalty” to the Federal Government—may be upheld as within Congress’s power under the Taxing Clause; the Medicaid Act’s severability clause applies to a Medicaid Act provision permitting the Secretary of Health and Human Services to withhold all federal Medicaid funds based on a State’s refusal to comply with the expanded Medicaid program

Here is a screen shot.

scotus-title

This feature works on Windows, but not a Mac.