Supreme Court grants rare media access to oral arguments audio

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted a request from several media outlets to release on the same day the audio recording of oral arguments in a major Voting Rights Act case, a Legal Times blog reports.

In a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. on March 27, C-SPAN, along with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox News, requested same-day audio access for Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder.  The case may be "a potentially landmark dispute over the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act," Legal Times notes.

Typically, audio recordings of oral arguments are not publicly available until the following court term. But a procedure for immediate release of audio in high public interest cases was implemented in the much-scrutinized 2000 case Bush v. Gore, Legal Times said; the last approved request for-same day audio came for last spring’s major gun rights case, D.C. v. Heller.