Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court in Texas v. California, (Sup. Ct., April 26, 2021), (SCOTUSblog case page) denied the state of Texas leave to invoke the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction to file a bill of complaint against the state of California. USA Today described the background:
California passed a law in 2016 prohibiting taxpayer-funded travel – such as for state employees to attend conferences – to any state that doesn’t ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Texas law allows foster-care and adoption agencies to deny same-sex couples on religious grounds.
Texas took California directly to the Supreme Court last year, asserting the travel ban was "born of religious animus" and that it violates the Constitution....
The justices had been considering whether to take the suit for months. The court did not explain its decision not to hear the case.
Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented, saying in part:
The practice of refusing to permit the filing of a complaint in cases that fall within our original jurisdiction is questionable, and that is especially true when, as in this case, our original jurisdictional is exclusive. As the history recounted above reveals, the Court adopted this practice without ever providing a convincing justification....
Texas raises novel constitutional claims, arguing that California’s travel ban violates the Privileges and Immunities Clause, U. S. Const., Art. IV, §2, cl. 1, the Commerce Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 3, and the Equal Protection Clause, Amdt. 14, §1. I express no view regarding any of those claims, but I respectfully dissent from the Court’s refusal even to permit the filing of Texas’s complaint.
