Scotuscast

On February 27, 2017, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Packingham v. North Carolina. Lester Packingham was convicted in 2002 of taking “indecent liberties” with a minor in violation of North Carolina law, and sentenced to prison time followed by supervised release. In 2010, he was arrested after authorities came across a post on his Facebook profile--which he had set up using an alias--in which he thanked God for having a parking ticket dismissed. Packingham was charged with, and convicted of, violating a North Carolina law that restricted the access of convicted sex offenders to “commercial social networking” websites. -- Packingham challenged his conviction on First Amendment grounds, arguing that the North Carolina statute unlawfully restricted his freedom of speech and association, but the Supreme Court of North Carolina ultimately rejected his claim. The website access restriction, the Court concluded, was a content-neutral, conduct-based regulation that only incidentally burdened Packingham’s

On February 21, 2017, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in McLane Co. v. EEOC. Damiana Ochoa worked for McLane Company, a supply chain company. After returning from maternity leave, Ochoa was required to take a “physical abilities” test, which she failed three times. Ochoa was fired by McLane but then filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging that McLane violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC opened up an investigation and issued a subpoena for information McLane withheld, including either “pedigree information” for each test-taker or reasons the test-taker’s employment was terminated. When McLane refused, EEOC filed a subpoena enforcement action. The district court granted enforcement of the subpoena with respect to some information (such as the gender and score of each test taker) but declined to require the production of pedigree information or the reasons why others who had failed the test were terminated. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ni

On February 21, 2017, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Hernandez v. Mesa. In 2010, Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, a fifteen-year-old Mexican national, died after being shot near the border between El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico by Jesus Mesa, Jr., a U.S. Border Patrol Agent. Hernandez’s parents, who contend that their son was on Mexican soil at the time of the shooting, sued Mesa in federal district court in Texas, alleging violations of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. After hearing the case en banc, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ultimately ruled in favor of Mesa, concluding that Hernandez could not assert a Fourth Amendment claim and that Mesa was entitled to qualified immunity on the parents’ Fifth Amendment claim. -- There are three questions now before the Supreme Court: (1) whether a formalist or functionalist analysis governs the extraterritorial application of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unjustified deadly force, as applied to a cross-border shooting of an un

On February 22, 2017, the Supreme Court decided Life Technologies Corp. v. Promega Corp. Promega Corporation owned four patents for technology used in kits that can conduct genetic testing and was the exclusive licensee of a fifth patent. In 2010, Promega sued Life Technologies Corporation (LifeTech) for allegedly infringing on these patents. A jury found in favor of Promega but the district court nevertheless ruled for LifeTech, concluding that Promega had failed to present evidence sufficient to sustain the favorable jury verdict. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed that judgment, holding that the four Promega patents were ultimately invalid but agreeing that LifeTech had infringed the fifth patent and remanding to the district court for a determination of damages. In the course of its ruling, the Federal Circuit concluded that LifeTech’s supplying of a single, commodity component of a mulit-component invention had exposed LifeTech under federal law to damages liability on worldwide

On November 8, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami, which was consolidated with Wells Fargo & Co. v. City of Miami. In this case, the city of Miami sued Bank of America Corporation and similar defendants under the Fair Housing Act (FHA), arguing that the banks engaged in predatory lending practices that targeted minorities for higher-risk loans, which resulted in high rates of default and caused financial harm to the city. Miami also alleged that the banks unjustly enriched themselves by taking advantage of benefits conferred by the city, thus denying the city expected property and tax revenues. -- The district court dismissed the FHA claims and held that Miami did not fall within the “zone of interests” the statute was meant to protect and therefore lacked standing under the statute. The court also held that Miami had not adequately shown that the banks’ conduct was the proximate cause of the harms the city claimed to have suffered. The U.S. Court of Ap

On January 18, 2017, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Ziglar v. Abbasi, which was consolidated with the cases Ashcroft v. Abbasi and Hasty v. Abbasi. Ziglar v. Abbasi was part of a series of lawsuits brought by Muslim, South Asian, and Arab non-citizens who were who were detained after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and treated as “of interest” in the ensuing government investigation. These plaintiffs contended, among other things, that the conditions of their confinement violated their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection. The defendants included high-level officials in the Department of Justice (DOJ) such as Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller, and Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar, as well various detention officials. Some of the parties reached settlements, and the district court eventually dismissed some of the allegations against the DOJ officials for failure to state claim. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the

On January 18, 2017, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Lee v. Tam. Simon Tam of The Slants, an Asian American rock band, applied to register the band’s name with the U.S. Trademark Office, but the application was denied. The Office claimed that the name would likely be disparaging towards “persons of Asian descent,” citing the Disparagement Clause of the Lanham Act of 1946, which prohibits trademarks that “[consist] of or [comprise] immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter; or matter which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.” Tam appealed to a board within the Office but was again denied. On appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a panel of judges determined that the Office officials were within their rights to refuse the application. The Federal Circuit then reviewed the case en banc and found that the Disparagement Clause violated the First Amendment an

On December 6, 2016, the Supreme Court decided State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. v. U.S. ex rel. Rigsby. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. (State Farm) administered separate wind and flood damage policies in the Gulf Coast area at the time of Hurricane Katrina. In general, State Farm was responsible for paying wind damage from its own assets, while federal funds would pay for flood damage. The Rigsby sisters were State Farm claims adjusters who allegedly discovered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that, with respect to properties covered under both wind and flood policies, State Farm was unlawfully classifying wind damage as flood damage in order to offload the cost of payment onto the federal government. Rigsby sued on behalf of the United States under the provisions of the federal False Claims Act (FCA), and continued to litigate the case after the United States declined to intervene. The district court focused discovery and trial on a single bellwether claim, and the jury found an FCA violation and awar

On December 6, 2016, the Supreme Court decided Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple. In April 2011, Apple sued Samsung Electronics, alleging that Samsung’s smartphones infringed on Apple’s trade dress as well as various design patents for the iPhone. A jury awarded Apple nearly $1 billion in damages under Section 289 of the Patent Act, and the trial court upheld most of the award against Samsung’s post-trial challenges. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected Samsung’s argument that the district court erred by allowing the jury to award damages based on Samsung’s profits off of its phones in their entirety, rather than just the portion of profits attributable to the smartphone components covered under the design patents. -- The question before the Supreme Court was whether, where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, an award of infringer’s profits should be limited to those profits attributable to the component. -- By a vote of 8-0, the Supreme Court rever

On November 29, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Moore v. Texas. In 1980, Bobby James Moore was convicted of capital murder for the shooting of James McCarble, a seventy-year-old store clerk, in Houston, Texas. Moore was convicted and received a death sentence, which was affirmed on appeal. After a federal court granted habeas corpus relief, a new punishment hearing occurred in 2001, and Moore was again sentenced to the death penalty. His sentence was again affirmed on appeal. Moore sought state habeas relief and argued that, under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia he was exempt from execution, because he was intellectually disabled. The state court granted habeas relief based on Moore’s Atkins argument, applying a definition of intellectual disability used by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD). The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas reversed the grant, noting that the Texas legislature had not yet passed Atkins legislation

On December 7, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corporation. Jevic Transportation, Inc., a trucking company headquartered in New Jersey, was purchased by a subsidiary of Sun Capital Partners in 2006. In 2008 Jevic filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, at which that point it owed about $73 million to various creditors. Jevic’s former truck drivers then sued it for violating federal and state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Acts, by failing to provide the requisite 60 days’ notice before a layoff. Separately, unsecured creditors filed a fraudulent conveyance action. In March 2012, representatives of all the major parties met to negotiate a settlement of the fraudulent conveyance suit. The representatives--except for the drivers’ representative--agreed to a settlement that would provide for payment of legal and administrative fees, a schedule for the payment of various creditors (though not the drivers), and ultimately a “structured d

On November 2, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Venezuela v. Helmerich & Payne International. Helmerich & Payne International Drilling Company owns a subsidiary that, in 2007, contracted to provide Venezuela's state-owned oil corporation the use of Helmerich’s drilling rigs. When unpaid invoices to the state-owned company surpassed $100 million in 2009, Helmerich refused to renew the contract and prepared to remove its equipment. Employees of the Venezuelan corporation, along with the Venezuelan National Guard, blockaded the equipment yards, and then-President Hugo Chavez issued a Decree of Expropriation. -- Helmerich sued in federal district court under the expropriation and commercial activity exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Venezuela moved to dismiss, and the district court granted the motion with respect to the expropriation claim but denied it with respect to the commercial activity claim. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed,

On December 5, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in McCrory v. Harris and Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections. In these related cases, the Court considered redistricting plans introduced in North Carolina and Virginia after the 2010 census. -- Plaintiffs in McCrory argued that North Carolina used the Voting Rights Act’s “Black Voting Age Population” requirements as a pretext to place more black voters in two particular U.S. House of Representatives districts in order to reduce black voters’ influence in other districts. The district court determined that the redistricting plan was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that violated the Equal Protection Clause because race was the predominant factor motivating the new plan. -- Plaintiffs in Bethune-Hill each resided in one of twelve newly proposed majority-minority districts for the Virginia Legislature, created to satisfy Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which requires that any new districting plan must ensure that there

On November 28, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Beckles v. United States. Travis Beckles, who had previous felony convictions (mostly for drug possession and sales), was an armed career criminal under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) and was therefore convicted in district court and subject to sentencing enhancement under the Sentencing Guidelines after being found in possession of a firearm. Pursuant to the Sentencing Guidelines, Beckles was eligible for a sentence range from 360 months to life imprisonment, and the court sentenced him to 360 months in prison, five months of supervised release, and a $5,000 fine. Beckles appealed and argued that the Sentencing Guidelines imposed an unreasonable sentence, that his prior convictions did not qualify as “violent felonies” subject to sentencing enhancement under ACCA, and that possession of a sawed-off shotgun was not a “crime of violence” subject to sentencing enhancement under the Sentencing Guidelines. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleve

On December 6, 2016, the Supreme Court decided Salman v. United States. Bassam Yacoub Salman was convicted in a jury trial of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, as well as several counts of actual securities fraud. The government’s theory was that Salman, whose brother-in-law Mounir Kara (along with Mounir’s older brother Maher Kara) worked for Citigroup, had coordinated with Mounir in an insider trading scheme that, over the course of just a few years, grew a $396,000 brokerage account controlled by Salman into one worth more than $2 million. -- Salman moved for a new trial, arguing that there was no evidence he knew that the tipper had disclosed confidential information in exchange for a personal benefit. The district court denied the motion. Salman made a similar argument to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on appeal, urging the Court to adopt the then-recently established standard set out by the Second Circuit in United States v. Newman. Under Newman, the government must present suffi

On October 31, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc. Varsity Brands, Inc. designs and manufactures clothing and accessories for use in various athletic activities, including cheerleading. Design concepts for the clothing incorporate many elements but do not consider the functionality of the final clothing. Varsity received copyright registration for the two-dimensional artwork of the designs at issue in this case, which were very similar to ones that Star Athletica, LLC was advertising. Varsity sued Star and alleged, among other claims, that Star violated the Copyright Act. Star countered that Varsity had made fraudulent representations to the Copyright Office. Both parties filed motions for summary judgment. Star argued that Varsity did not have valid copyrights because the designs were for “useful articles” and cannot be separated from the uniforms themselves, all of which tends to make an article ineligible for copyright. Varsity argued that the copyrigh

On October 11, 2016, the Supreme Court decided Bosse v. Oklahoma. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Booth v. Maryland that the Eighth Amendment prohibits a sentencing jury in a death penalty case from considering victim impact evidence that does not directly relate to the circumstances of the crime. Four years later in Payne v. Tennessee, the Supreme Court clarified that the ban only applied to certain kinds of victim impact testimony. -- Shaun Michael Bosse was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder. The prosecution sought the death penalty and, over Bosse’s objection, asked three of the victims’ family members to recommend a sentence to the jury. All three recommended the death penalty, and the jury sentenced Bosse to death. Bosse appealed, arguing that the testimony violated the Eighth Amendment under Booth. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, holding that Payne had implicitly overruled Booth’s ban as it related to characterizations of the defendant and opinions about the sen

On November 7, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in National Labor Relations Board v. SW General, Inc. SW General, Inc. provides ambulance services to hospitals in Arizona. A union had negotiated “longevity pay” for SW General’s emergency medical technicians, nurses, and firefighters. In December 2012, between the expiration of one collective bargaining agreement and the negotiation of a new one, SW General stopped paying the longevity pay. The union filed an unfair labor practices claim with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which issued a formal complaint. An administrative law judge determined that SW General had committed unfair labor practices, but SW General contended that the NLRB complaint was invalid because the Acting General Counsel of the NLRB at the time, Lafe Solomon, had been serving in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA). President Barack Obama had nominated Solomon--who had then been serving as Acting General Counsel after the General Counsel had resigned--

On November 9, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Lynch v. Morales-Santana. Morales-Santana’s father was born in Puerto Rico but acquired U.S. citizenship in 1917 under the Jones Act of Puerto Rico. Morales-Santana was born in 1962 in the Dominican Republic to his father and Dominican mother, who were unmarried at the time. In 1970, upon his parents’ marriage, he was statutorily “legitimated” and was admitted to the U.S. as a lawful permanent resident in 1976. -- The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which was in effect at the time of Morales-Santana’s birth, limits the ability of an unwed citizen father to confer citizenship on his child born abroad, where the child’s mother is not a citizen at the time of the child’s birth, more stringently than it limits the ability of a similarly situated unwed citizen mother to do the same. -- In 2000, Morales-Santana was placed in removal proceedings after having been convicted of various felonies. An immigration judge denied his application for w

On November 1, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. v. U.S. ex rel. Rigsby. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. (State Farm) administered separate wind and flood damage policies in the Gulf Coast area at the time of Hurricane Katrina. In general, State Farm was responsible for paying wind damage from its own assets, while federal funds would pay for flood damage. The Rigsby sisters were State Farm claims adjusters who allegedly discovered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that, with respect to properties covered under both wind and flood policies, State Farm was unlawfully classifying wind damage as flood damage in order to offload the cost of payment onto the federal government. Rigsby sued on behalf of the United States under the provisions of the federal False Claims Act (FCA), and continued to litigate the case after the United States declined to intervene. The district court focused discovery and trial on a single bellwether claim, and the jury found an FCA vio