Increasing partisanship in Congress makes it harder to address important civil rights issues, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said during an interview that aired yesterday on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show. “The current Congress is not equipped really to do anything, so the kind of result that we got in the Ledbetter case is not easily achieved today,” Ginsburg said. The Hill has more on Ginsburg’s interview, which also touched on gender equality, abortion rights and the 81-year-old justice’s health.

Challenges by religious nonprofits to the contraceptive coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act have reached the U.S. Supreme Court and more are expected as federal appellate courts soon will rule on a wave of pending cases, according to the National Law Journal. A ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Feb. 11 was the most recent appellate decision on the fundamental claim that the government's means of accommodating nonprofits' religious objections to contraceptive insurance violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Supreme Court justices will take their first close look at one potential vehicle during their Feb. 20 conference.

So why did U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg nod off at the last month’s State of the Union address? Well, she told a  George Washington University audience yesterday, the blame lies partly with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who brought wine to a dinner before the speech. “I vowed this year just sparkling water, stay away from the wine,” Ginsburg said. “But in the end, the dinner was so delicious, it needed wine to accompany it."  The ABA Journal has more.

The Center for American Progress has launched “Hear the Nine,” a months-long campaign designed to influence the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding the Affordable Care Act. The group will release nine personal stories — one for each justice — that highlight citizens who have benefited from health care under ACA. Business Clarksville has more.

If the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down tax credits for people buying health insurance on the federal exchange, about 8.2 million Americans in 34 states could lose their coverage under the Affordable Care Act. According to the Times News, most of the people likely to be affected are white, employed, low- to middle-class residents in the South.

Same sex couples across Alabama were legally allowed to file for marriage licenses this morning after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to impose a stay on a ruling finding the state’s ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional. In a "stinging dissent," though, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia said the move inappropriately signaled how the court would rule on cases from the Sixth Circuit later this term. On a related note, some Alabama judges remained unsure how to proceed after state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore issued an administrative order instructing probate judges not to issue or recognize marriage licenses for same-sex couples. The president of the Alabama Probate Judge’s Association said he was aware of four counties that were not issuing licenses but hoped to get clarification on the issue soon. The Associated Press has more on the story.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said if she could overturn any of the decisions made by America’s highest court in the past 10 years, it would be the Citizens United ruling—the sweeping 2010 decision that expanded corporate personhood. “I think our system is being polluted by money,” Ginsburg said during a presentation at Georgetown University Law Center. She said she is optimistic that “sensible restrictions” on campaign financing will one day be in place, the Guardian reports.

More than 50 law professors and lawyers are collaborating to analyze how U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence would look if seminal cases had been adjudicated from a feminist perspective, the ABA Journal reports. The book "Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court" will contain 24 rewritten decisions on topics such as reproductive rights and substantive due process to show how feminist legal reasoning might change the course of law. The book aims to prove that stare decisis can mask what is really a masculine viewpoint, and that hidden gender bias — not stare decisis — may be what drives the reasoning and results in much of the nation's jurisprudence.

Two Supreme Court justices who once seemed open to the idea of cameras in the courtroom said Monday they have reconsidered those views, the Associated Press reports. The move dashes whatever hope there was that April’s historic arguments over gay marriage might be televised. In separate appearances, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said allowing cameras might lead to grandstanding that could fundamentally change the nature of the high court. WRCB-TV has the AP story.

In a one-sentence order, the Supreme Court yesterday granted a stay of execution to three inmates who had challenged Oklahoma's use of the drug midazolam as a part of its lethal injection protocol, WCYB reports. The inmates, all convicted murderers, contend that Oklahoma’s planned use of midazolam could violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishments. The sedative failed in the state’s bungled execution last April of Clayton Lockett, who awoke and apparently writhed in pain before dying of a heart attack 43 minutes after being injected. Arguments are scheduled for April 29, with a decision expected before July, the Wall Street Journal reports.