A decision in CLS v Martinez is expected during the next two weeks before the end of the Court’s term and its summer recess. Opinions are now being announced every Monday with additional dates being added (Thursdays generally) to accommodate the forthcoming opinions. With 15 decisions and less than two weeks remaining, we’re into crunch time.

So which Justice is drafting the CLS v. Martinez decision? Obviously, we won’t know the answer to this question until the Chief Justice tells us who has the opinion of the Court. But we do have some chips now for the next edition of Supreme Court Bingo, indicators that might help us begin determining who the author of the opinion might be.
Opinions are assigned by the Chief Justice or, if he is not in the majority, by the most senior Justice in the majority.

For those new to the game of Supreme Court bingo, as Jordan has previously explained, the Court generally balances its workload by assigning opinions evenly from each month of arguments or “sitting.” If the Court hears 9 cases in a given month, then it is generally the case that each Justice will write one decision from a case argued that month. There is no firm rule, of course, and a Justice might be drafting a “per curiam” opinion for the Court that is unsigned by any Justice or may have originally been assigned an opinion only to lose the opinion along the way as votes shifted. But it is unlikely for one Justice to have been assigned two opinions from a sitting and another Justice to have been assigned none.

Now, let’s apply this to the April sitting in which CLS v. Martinez was heard. Eight cases were heard in April – meaning that at least one Justice will not write at all, but that it is very likely that the remaining Justices will each write once. After this morning’s decisions, 4 of the 8 April cases have now been decided. Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Thomas had previously written April opinions. Justice Kennedy announced the Court’s decision today in Quon, the text messaging case. This leaves four cases, including CLS v Martinez, and 5 justices: Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Stevens, and Ginsburg. Notably, Justice Stevens has already issued two opinions from the March sitting (which had 11 cases, one of which was later dismissed as improvidently granted) making him a candidate to sit out April.  But since he is retiring at the end of the term, he may also not want to go out sitting in the dugout for the last inning.

We should get more decisions on Monday (and likely Thursday) of next week, and even if CLS v Martinez is not among them they will help fill in the Bingo card. But at this point, it seems that one of those five Justices is presently writing the decision in CLS v Martinez.