Petitions of the week

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether a court can find Article III standing based on its conclusion that a statute protects a concrete interest, without determining that the plaintiff suffered a personal, real-world injury from the alleged statutory violation; whether a state official’s demand for all significant donors to a nonprofit organization, as a precondition to engaging in constitutionally protected speech, constitutes a First Amendment injury; and whether Utah’s tax code—which extends a credit for income taxes paid to other states but does not extend a similar credit for income taxes paid to foreign countries or make other adjustments for foreign income—discriminates against foreign commerce in violation of the dormant commerce clause.

The petitions of the week are below the jump:

Facebook Inc. v. Patel
19-706
Issues: (1) Whether a court can find Article III standing based on its conclusion that a statute protects a concrete interest, without determining that the plaintiff suffered a personal, real-world injury from the alleged statutory violation; (2) whether a court can find Article III standing based on a risk that a plaintiff’s personal information could be misused in the future, without concluding that the possibility of misuse is imminent; and (3) whether a court can certify a class without deciding a question of law that is relevant to determining whether common issues predominate under Rule 23.

Steiner v. Utah State Tax Commission
19-755
Issue: Whether Utah’s tax code—which extends a credit for income taxes paid to other states but does not extend a similar credit for income taxes paid to foreign countries or make other adjustments for foreign income, resulting in a double taxation of income that state residents earn from foreign commerce—discriminates against foreign commerce in violation of the dormant commerce clause.

Pierre-Paul v. Barr
19-779
Issues: (1) Whether a notice to appear must specify the time and place of a noncitizen’s removal proceedings; (2) whether, assuming that a notice to appear must include the time and place of a noncitizen’s removal proceedings, serving the noncitizen with a subsequent notice of hearing containing the time-and-place information can cure a defective notice to appear that lacked that information; and (3) whether filing a valid notice to appear or other charging document in the immigration court is a prerequisite to that court’s obtaining subject-matter jurisdiction over a noncitizen’s removal proceedings.

Institute for Free Speech v. Becerra
19-793
Issues: (1) Whether a state official’s demand for all significant donors to a nonprofit organization, as a precondition to engaging in constitutionally protected speech, constitutes a First Amendment injury; and (2) whether official demands for membership or donor information outside the electoral context should be reviewed under strict or exacting scrutiny.

Voorhees v. United States
19-795
Issue: Whether the principle that criminal statutes must contain a mens rea element, with the exception of strict liability offenses, applies to criminal prosecutions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, when the underlying statute at issue, 10 U.S.C. § 933, contains no mens rea element and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces held below that only a general intent is required using an objective, versus subjective, standard, i.e., negligence, and thus that no mens rea element need be instructed to the jury, even when the “conduct” alleged to be criminal is facially noncriminal.