Petitions to Watch | 4.3.09

This edition of “Petitions to Watch” features cases up for consideration at the Justices’ private conference on April 3. As always, the list contains the petitions on the Court’s paid docket that Tom has deemed to have a reasonable chance of being granted. To access previous editions of Petitions to Watch, visit our archives on SCOTUSwiki.

Docket: 08-818
Title: Adena Regional Medical Center, et al., v. Charles E. Johnson, Acting Secretary of Health and Human Services
Issue: In calculating the Medicare disproportionate share hospital  adjustment, must the Secretary of Health and Human Services include all patient days attributable to patients who are eligible for medical treatment under an approved State Medicaid plan or only those patient days for which a hospital actually receives payment from the Medicaid program?

• Opinion below (DC Circuit)
• Petition for certiorari
• Brief in opposition
• Petitioner’s reply brief

Docket: 08-822 ; 08-948
Title: McLaughlin v. Missouri ; Anderson v. Louisiana
Issue: Whether Apprendi applies to the weighing of aggravating and mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of a capital trial and if a state law requiring the defendant to prove the greater weight of the mitigating evidence violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.

• Opinion below (Supreme Court of Missouri)
• Petition for certiorari
• Brief in opposition
• Petitioner’s reply brief
  
• Brief amici curiae for Legal Academics

• Opinion below  (Supreme Court of Louisiana)
• Petition for certiorari
• Brief in opposition
• Reply brief for petitioner

Docket: 08-985
Title: Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, v. Meyer & Associates, Inc
Issue: Are state courts required to apply and follow the Tribal Exhaustion Doctrine and can a Native American tribe be forced to litigate claims in a state court when an ostensible waiver of sovereign immunity is not valid under that tribe’s law?

• Opinion below (Supreme Court of Louisiana)
• Petition for certiorari
• Brief in opposition