High court won’t hear bathroom case:

5-3 decision pries into sanctity of jury room, dissent says

Justices are leaving transgender rights to lower courts for now.

@richardjwolf USA TODAY WASHINGTON he said. “A constitutional rule that racial bias in the justice system must be addressed — including, in some instances, after the verdict has been entered — is necessary to prevent a systemic loss of confidence in jury verdicts.”

It was the second high court ruling in the space of 12 days implicating racial overtones in court proceedings. Last month, the justices ruled 6-2 that a Texas death row inmate deserved a new sentencing hearing because of racially discriminatory testimony presented by his own defense team.

The latest case involved a racetrack employee’s conviction for sexual battery involving teen-age girls and a single juror’s statements — revealed by two other jurors only after the verdict was announced — that he must be guilty “because he’s Mexican, and Mexican men take whatever they want.”

Jeffrey Fisher, the lawyer for Miguel Angel Peña-Rodriguez, argued in October that such “racial bias is never the lesser evil” among competing interests. “Race is a particular poison,” he said.

That appeared to be a winning argument with most of the court’s liberal justices. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan took strong stands on the defendant’s behalf, agreeing with Fisher that race and ethnicity should get extra protection — as they already do in 17 states.

“We have the best smokinggun evidence you’re ever going to see about race bias in the jury room,” Kagan told Assistant Solicitor General Rachel Kovner, whose office sided with Colorado.

But Alito, in his dissent, said one exception to the sanctity of jury deliberations inevitably will lead to others.

“The court’s decision is wellintentioned. It seeks to remedy a flaw in the jury trial system,” he said. “But as this court said some years ago, it is questionable whether our system of trial by jury can endure this attempt to perfect it.”