The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, reversed the lower courts and held that President Trump had the lawful authority to impose a travel ban on people seeking to enter the United States from  Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Chad, North Korea and certain officials of Venezuela.  The lower courts had concluded that the ban was unconstitutional based upon all of the countries, except North Korea and Venezuela, being predominantly Muslim.  The Supreme Court concluded that the ban, which applied to only 8% of the world’s Muslim population, was facially neutral and withing the power of the president to authorize.

The Supreme Court sided with the privacy rights of cellphone users in a dispute over law enforcement tracking their movements. At issue is whether the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment requires a search warrant for the government to access a person’s cellphone location history. Chief Justice Roberts stated: “We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information. The fact that such information is gathered by a third party does not make it any less deserving of Fourth Amendment protection. The Government’s acquisition of the cell-site records here was a search under that Amendment.”

Get ready for price increases for on-line purchases.  The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 opinion, ruled that states can require payment of sales tax for all on-line purchases.  Before today, a seller was only required to collect and remit sales tax if the seller had a physical presence, such as a bricks and mortar store or warehouse facility, in the buyer’s home state.

“Whatever the confluence of speech and free exercise principles might be in some cases, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s consideration of this case was inconsistent with the state’s obligation of religious neutrality,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.  The decision wasn’t even close, decided on a 7-2 vote in favor of the baker.  Only Justices Ginsgurg and Sotomayor dissented.

In a unanimous decision, the Florida Supreme Court sided with cities using red-light cameras for issuing traffic citations, concluding that such conduct was constitutional.  Motorists challenged Aventura’s use of red-light cameras as improperly delegating government police functions to private companies operating the red-light cameras.  The Court concluded that Florida law authorizes a local government to contract with a private third-party vendor to review and sort information from red light cameras, in accordance with written guidelines provided by the local government, before sending that information to a trained traffic enforcement officer, who determines whether probable cause exists and a citation should be issued.

In Pinellas County v. Richman Group of Florida, a Florida appellate court recently affirmed that neighborhood opposition is a legitimate, valid basis for denying a developer’s request that a land use designation be changed to permit construction of an industrial park.  Nearby residents opposed the developer’s request, and hundreds of residents from the surrounding area attended the hearing and expressed their opposition to the land use change. The residents articulated specific, rational concerns that amending the land use designation to allow Richman’s planned development of the property would cause traffic, transportation, safety, and economic problems.  As a result, the county planning board unanimously denied the requested land use change.

The developer then sued the county, arguing that denial of the land use change violated the developer’s constitutional rights, and that the county was legally required to approve the land use change because the project was “consistent with all relevant criteria.” The trial court agreed with the developer, determining that the board’s “final decision was based on a desire to appease the Safety Harbor residents, whose forceful opposition was brought to bear throughout the Countywide amendment process.” The trial court concluded that “neighborhood opposition is not a legitimate basis for denying a land use application.”

The appeals court reversed this conclusion by the trial court, instead concluding that “resident opposition, provided it is motivated by legitimate concerns, can provide a rational basis for a government’s land use decision.”  The appellate court cited to multiple prior precedents, including a case holding that in most cases, citizen input may be a sufficient basis for a rational government land use decision: “Where, as here, citizens consistently come before their city council in public meetings on a number of occasions and present their individual, fact-based concerns that are rationally related to legitimate general welfare concerns, it is not arbitrary and capricious for a city council to decide without a more formal investigation that those concerns are valid and that the proposed development should not be permitted.”

This case may very well be relevant to the Weston City Commission’s upcoming decision on whether to grant a developer’s rezoning request to convert one of the two golf courses in Weston Hills Country Club to be rezoned for multi-story condominium construction.

On April 2, 2018, the US Supreme Court, in Kisela v Hughes, ruled that a police officer who shot a woman holding a large kitchen knife, who had taken steps toward another woman standing nearby, and had refused to drop the knife after at least two commands to do so, was entitled to qualified immunity from a civil lawsuit for money damages based upon 42 USC §1983.  Qualified immunity attaches when an official’s conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.

The Court reversed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, observing that the 9th Circuit’s reliance on a particular case “does not pass the straight-face test.” A dissenting justice asserted that the Supreme Court misunderstood the facts, misapplied the law, and was sending a signal that officers “can shoot first and think later” and that the Court’s opinion “tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct [by police officers] will go unpunished.”