On the first day of the new U.S. Supreme Court term, it was business not quite as usual.

Eight high-back, black leather chairs, instead of the usual nine, stood tall behind a curved mahogany bench designed to host nine justices. And as usually happens when a justice departs, seniority forces musical chairs of a sort for all but the center seat occupied by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.

As for the chief justice, he now finds himself, following the July retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, bookended on his right by the new senior associate justice, Clarence Thomas, and on his left, by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Inside the courtroom, there was no sense of the confirmation drama continuing to unfold across the street as the U.S. Senate awaited an FBI report on sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. But outside, in the long line of audience hopefuls that snaked around the corner, the confirmation turmoil was a hot topic, as well as inside the court building packed with lawyers seeking admittance to the Supreme Court bar or waiting to hear the day's arguments.

Before the arguments began, the wives of Justices Thomas and Stephen Breyer took their seats in a section reserved for the justices' guests.

Roberts' first business of the day was to officially close the October 2017 term and open the October 2018 term. He then noted that today was the 25th anniversary of the investiture of Ginsburg. He congratulated her on her “distinguished service” and added, “We all look forward to sharing many more years with you in our common calling.”

Not surprisingly, after the summer hiatus, the number of lawyers waiting to be sworn into the bar was large. Judge Patricia Millett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit—the same court on which Kavanaugh sits—introduced and attested to the qualifications of members of the Military Spouse J.D. Network, which, since 2011, has advocated for licensing accommodations for military spouses, including bar membership without additional examinations. A group from New York Law School, among others, also was admitted to the Supreme Court bar.

With bar admittances wrapped up, the justices plunged into the arguments of the day—classic examples of the court's bread-and-butter business: statutory interpretation. How should “critical habitat” in the Endangered Species Act be defined? The lives of dusky gopher frogs may well depend on the answer. And what is the meaning of “also means” in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act? The court's interpretation could bring state agencies and political subdivisions of all sizes under the job bias law.

The justices gave an equally hard time to Mayer Brown's Timothy Bishop and Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler in the frog case, Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But it appeared that in arguing for broad coverage by the age-discrimination law, Stanford Law School's Jeffrey Fisher, counsel to John Guido, just might have the edge over E. Joshua Rosenkranz, the Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe partner representing the Mount Lemmon Fire District in Arizona.

With an eight-justice court, there is always the potential for a 4-4 split decision, which leaves the lower court ruling in place.

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