The solicitor general's office, reflecting the policies of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, urged the court to grant the cases and to rule for the employees in both.
Before granting the case on March 26, the justices considered the case in four consecutive weekly conferences and also sent to the 10th Circuit for the full record.
Before granting the case today, Ring v. Arizona, No. 01-488, the court had already agreed to hear two Apprendi-related cases in the current term.
Under state law, if their petition is granted, the case would go to a different arbitrator, selected by the two parties.
In granting the case class-action status in May, she condemned what she called the city's "deeply troubling apathy towards New Yorkers' most fundamental constitutional rights".
My initial thought was that in granting the case, the court was giving itself a way out in the event that it got into too much of a wrangle on the merits.
Although the justices granted the case at the request of the Indiana Democratic Party and the American Civil Liberties Union, the action could well prove to be an example of "watch out what you wish for" if the result is to uphold the statute at issue and to encourage other states to follow Indiana's lead.
Both Texas and the organizations that have filed briefs on its side devote considerable energy in the briefs to trying to convince the justices that granting the case was a mistake, a choice of tactics that is usually an indication of concern that a decision that does reach the merits will be unfavorable.
When the court granted the case on June 29, it appeared that the patients' rights legislation then moving through Congress might make it moot in a matter of months, because the bill that passed the Senate that same day would have guaranteed outside review as a matter of federal law.
There was no way to tell whether the court was divided on the wisdom of granting the case or whether perhaps the court as a whole, sensing that the problem in Florida might be spinning out of control, had concluded that it was prudent to intervene sooner rather than later.
