Petitions of the week

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether a law enforcement officer’s membership in a joint state-federal police task force managed, in part, by a federal agency precludes the officer from acting “under color of state law” for purposes of Section 1983, and whether Section 1 of the Sherman Act preempts state laws facilitating unsupervised private price-fixing.

The petitions of the week are below the jump:

CACI Premier Technology Inc. v. Al Shimari
19-648
Issue: Whether an order denying a federal contractor’s claim of derivative sovereign immunity is an immediately appealable final order under the collateral-order doctrine.

Pavatt v. Sharp
19-697
Issues: (1) Whether the Supreme Court should summarily reverse the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit’s clearly erroneous procedural ruling; and (2) whether, if the Supreme Court grants plenary review, a state’s application of an aggravating factor to justify the death penalty violates the Eighth and 14th Amendments—and conflicts with both the Supreme Court’s precedents prohibiting the arbitrary imposition of capital sentences and the decisions of other appellate courts—when it makes punishable by death any homicide in which the victim does not die immediately.

Connecticut Fine Wine and Spirits, LLC v. Seagull
19-710
Issue: Whether Section 1 of the Sherman Act preempts state laws facilitating unsupervised private price-fixing, such as Connecticut’s—which requires private beer, wine and liquor wholesalers to “post” their prices in advance so that all competing wholesalers can match them, to “hold” those prices for a month and to refrain from offering quantity discounts to retailers; the wholesalers in this scheme determine not only the case prices paid by retailers, but also the minimum bottle prices paid by consumers.

King v. Brownback
19-718
Issue: Whether a law enforcement officer’s membership in a joint state-federal police task force managed, in part, by a federal agency precludes him or her from acting “under color of state law” for purposes of Section 1983.