Late yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a 17-page opinion blocking the broadcast of the trial proceedings in the lawsuit seeking to declare California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional. You can find the ruling here. Four justices -- Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor -- dissented. The Court did not rule more broadly on whether, and under what circumstances, federal trial proceedings can be broadcast. Rather, it found that the specific procedure for permitting such broadcast had not been followed by the district court in this instance. As the per curiam opinion states in its first paragraph, "the broadcast in this case should be stayed because it appears the courts below did not follow the appropriate procedures set forth in federal law before changing their rules to allow such broadcasting. Courts enforce the requirement of procedural regularity on others, and must follow those requirements themselves."
Is the very predictable, 5-4 ideological split on this rather minor, procedural point a preview of how the Court will ultimately rule on the merits if and when the case gets there? I think there is reason to think it is. But that is still probably years away, so who knows?