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Biestek v. Berryhill

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
17-1184	6th Cir.	Dec 4, 2018 Tr.Aud.	Apr 1, 2019	6-3	Kagan	OT 2018

Holding: A vocational expert’s refusal to provide private market-survey data during a Social Security disability benefits hearing upon the applicant’s request does not categorically preclude the testimony from counting as “substantial evidence” in federal court under 42 U. S. C. §405(g).

Judgment: Affirmed, 6-3, in an opinion by Justice Kagan on April 1, 2019. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion. Justice Gorsuch filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Ginsburg joined.

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Opinion analysis: Court rejects per se rule on cross-examination in Social Security disability cases (David Super)
OT2018 #11: "A Lot Of Meatballs" (First Mondays)
Argument analysis: Justices wrestle with scope of cross-examination of social security experts (David Super)
Argument preview: Justices to consider social security disability claimants’ ability to scrutinize data on which benefits denials are based (David Super)
Court sends battles over services for same-sex couples, North Carolina gerrymandering back to lower courts (Updated) (Amy Howe)
Petition of the day (Aurora Barnes)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
Feb 21 2018	Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due March 26, 2018)
Feb 21 2018	Pursuant to Rule 34.6 and Paragraph 9 of the Guidelines for the Submission of Documents to the Supreme Court’s Electronic Filing System, filings in this case should be submitted in paper form only, and should not be submitted through the Court’s electronic filing system.
Mar 20 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response from March 26, 2018 to April 25, 2018, submitted to The Clerk.
Mar 21 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is extended to and including April 25, 2018.
Apr 20 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response from April 25, 2018 to May 14, 2018, submitted to The Clerk.
Apr 20 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is further extended to and including May 14, 2018.
May 14 2018	Brief of respondent Nancy A. Berryhill, Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Social Security Administration in opposition filed.
May 21 2018	Reply of petitioner Michael J. Biestek filed.
May 22 2018	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 6/7/2018.
Jun 11 2018	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 6/14/2018.
Jun 18 2018	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 6/21/2018.
Jun 25 2018	Petition GRANTED.
Jun 25 2018	As Rule 34.6 provides, “If the Court schedules briefing and oral argument in a case that was governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2(c) or Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 49.1(c), the parties shall submit electronic versions of all prior and subsequent filings with this Court in the case, subject to [applicable] redaction rules.” Subsequent party and amicus filings in the case should now be submitted through the Court’s electronic filing system, with any necessary redactions.
Jul 13 2018	Joint motion for an extension of time to file the opening briefs on the merits filed.
Jul 13 2018	Joint motion to extend the time to file the opening briefs on the merits granted. The time to file the joint appendix and petitioner's brief on the merits is extended to and including August 27, 2018. The time to file respondent's brief on the merits is extended to and including October 15, 2018.
Aug 03 2018	Blanket Consent filed by Petitioner, Michael J. Biestek
Aug 03 2018	Motion to dispense with printing the joint appendix filed by petitioner Michael J. Biestek.
Aug 27 2018	Brief of petitioner Michael J. Biestek filed.
Sep 04 2018	Brief amicus curiae of National Association of Disability Representatives filed.
Sep 04 2018	Brief amici curiae of National Organization of Social Security Claimants' Representatives, et al. filed.
Oct 01 2018	Motion to dispense with printing the joint appendix filed by petitioner GRANTED.
Oct 09 2018	SET FOR ARGUMENT on Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Oct 15 2018	Record received from the U.S.C.A. 6th Circuit.
Oct 15 2018	Brief of Nancy A. Berryhill, Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Social Security Administration not accepted for filing. (Revised brief submitted - 10/16/18)
Oct 15 2018	Brief of respondent Nancy A. Berryhill, Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Social Security Administration filed. (10/16/18)
Oct 19 2018	CIRCULATED
Nov 14 2018	Reply of petitioner Michael J. Biestek filed. (Distributed)
Dec 04 2018	Argued. For petitioner: Ishan Bhabha, Washington, D. C. For respondent: Anthony A. Yang, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D. C.
Apr 01 2019	Adjudged to be AFFIRMED. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Breyer, Alito, and Kavanaugh, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Gorsuch, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined.

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The Supreme Court released orders from the April 18 conference on Monday; the justices agreed to decide Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, consolidated with Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, CITGO Asphalt Refining Co. v. Frescati Shipping Co., Ltd., and Barton v. Barr. The justices also called for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in Putnam Investments, LLC v. Brotherston.
On Tuesday, the justices dismissed Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian as improvidently granted.
On Wednesday, the justices released their opinion in Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela.
On Monday, the justices heard oral argument in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media and Fort Bend County, Texas v. Davis.
On Tuesday morning, the justices heard oral argument in Department of Commerce v. New York. On Tuesday afternoon, they heard argument in Mitchell v. Wisconsin and Rehaif v. United States.
On Wednesday, the justices heard oral argument in Quarles v. United States and Taggart v. Lorenzen.
On Friday, the justices meet for their April 26 conference; John Elwood compiles the petitions relisted for this conference.
Major Cases
- Department of Commerce v. New York
  (1) Whether the district court erred in enjoining the secretary of the Department of Commerce from reinstating a question about citizenship to the 2020 decennial census on the ground that the secretary’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq; (2) whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the APA, a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker -- including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking executive branch officials -- without a strong showing that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis; and (3) whether the secretary’s decision to add a citizenship question to the decennial census violated the enumeration clause of the U.S. Constitution.
- Lamone v. Benisek
  In case in which the plaintiffs allege that a Maryland congressional district was gerrymandered to retaliate against them for their political views: (1) whether the various legal claims articulated by the three-judge district court are unmanageable; (2) whether the three-judge district court erred when, in granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, it resolved disputes of material fact as to multiple elements of plaintiffs’ claims, failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and treated as “undisputed” evidence that is the subject of still-unresolved hearsay and other evidentiary objections; and (3) whether the three-judge district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction despite the plaintiffs’ years-long delay in seeking injunctive relief, rendering the remedy applicable to at most one election before the next decennial census necessitates another redistricting.
- Kisor v. Wilkie
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., which direct courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation.
- Rucho v. Common Cause
  (1) Whether plaintiffs have standing to press their partisan gerrymandering claims; (2) whether plaintiffs’ partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable; and (3) whether North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map is, in fact, an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
- The American Legion v. American Humanist Association
  (1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.
- Gamble v. United States
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause.
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Recent Decisions
- Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela Under the Federal Arbitration Act, an ambiguous agreement cannot provide the necessary contractual basis for concluding that the parties agreed to submit to class arbitration.
- Biestek v. Berryhill A vocational expert’s refusal to provide private market-survey data during a Social Security disability benefits hearing upon the applicant’s request does not categorically preclude the testimony from counting as “substantial evidence” in federal court under 42 U. S. C. §405(g).
- Bucklew v. Precythe Baze v. Rees and Glossip v. Gross govern all Eighth Amendment challenges alleging that a method of execution inflicts unconstitutionally cruel pain; Russell Bucklew’s as-applied challenge to Missouri’s single-drug execution protocol -- that it would cause him severe pain because of his particular medical condition -- fails to satisfy the Baze-Glossip test.
see all this term’s cases »
Current Relists
- Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. (1) Whether a state may require health-care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains, i.e., by burial or cremation; and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus and require abortion doctors to inform patients of the prohibition.
- City of Newport Beach, California v. Vos (1) Whether Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires law enforcement officers to provide accommodations to an armed, violent and mentally ill suspect in the course of bringing the suspect into custody; (2) whether, under the Fourth Amendment “totality of the circumstances” analysis for assessing the reasonableness of force used against a suspect who attacks law enforcement officers, a court must take into account allegedly unreasonable police conduct that took place before the use of force, but foreseeably created the need to use that force; and (3) whether, under the Fourth Amendment’s analysis for use of force, a law enforcement officer’s interest in using deadly force against a suspect threatening an officer’s life is diminished if the assailant is mentally ill.
- Dahne v. Richey Whether prison inmates have a First Amendment right to include threatening, abusive and irrelevant language in grievances.
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Cases argued 70

Cases decided 32

Summary reversals 4

Merits cases granted to date 73

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14	15 Orders IANCU V. BRUNETTI (18-302) EMULEX CORP. V. VARJABEDIAN (18-459)	16 PARKER DRILLING MANAGEMENT SERVICES V. NEWTON (18-389) NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE V. KAESTNER FAMILY TRUST (18-457)	17 UNITED STATES V. DAVIS (18-431) MCDONOUGH V. SMITH (18-485)	18 Conference	19	20
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On March 30, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke with former clerk Brittney Lane Kubisch and Pepperdine University President-elect James Gash at Pepperdine University School of Law. Thomas told the audience that he had no plans to retire from the Supreme Court.

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Cases argued	70
Cases decided	32
Summary reversals	4
Merits cases granted to date	73

Biestek v. Berryhill

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