Davis v. Ayala

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
13-1428	9th Cir.	Mar 3, 2015 Tr.Aud.	Jun 18, 2015	5-4	Alito	OT 2014

Holding: Any federal constitutional error that may have occurred by excluding the attorney for a defendant in a capital murder trial from part of the Batson hearing was harmless.

Judgment: Reversed and remanded, 5-4, in an opinion by Justice Alito on June 18, 2015. Justice Kennedy and Justice Thomas filed concurring opinions. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan joined.

SCOTUSblog Coverage

A “view” from the Courtroom: A bonus day for opinions (Mark Walsh)
Opinion analysis: How habeas courts should assess harmless error in a procedural Batson challenge (Steve Vladeck)
Argument analysis: AEDPA deference, Brecht deference, and a Lackey tangent in a California capital case (Steve Vladeck)
Argument preview: A Ninth Circuit capital habeas case with a complicated doctrinal twist (Steve Vladeck)
Privacy of hotel guest lists at issue (Lyle Denniston)
Petition of the day (Maureen Johnston)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
May 27 2014	Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due June 30, 2014)
Jun 18 2014	Order extending time to file response to petition to and including July 30, 2014.
Jul 21 2014	Order further extending time to file response to petition to and including August 13, 2014.
Aug 13 2014	Brief of respondent Hector Ayala in opposition filed.
Aug 26 2014	Reply of petitioner Kevin Chappell, Warden filed.
Aug 27 2014	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of September 29, 2014.
Oct 6 2014	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of October 10, 2014.
Oct 14 2014	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of October 17, 2014.
Oct 20 2014	Petition GRANTED In addition to the question presented by the petition, the parties are directed to brief and argue the following question: "Whether the court of appeals properly applied the standard articulated in Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619 (1993)."
Oct 30 2014	The time to file the joint appendix and petitioner's brief on the merits is extended to and including December 11, 2014.
Oct 30 2014	The time to file respondent's brief on the merits is extended to and including January 20, 2015.
Dec 9 2014	Joint appendix filed. (Statement of costs filed)
Dec 9 2014	Brief of petitioner Kevin Chappell, Warden filed.
Dec 22 2014	SET FOR ARGUMENT ON Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Dec 22 2014	Record requested from U.S.C.A. 9th Circuit.
Dec 22 2014	Record from U.S.C.A. 9th Circuit is electronic and located on PACER.
Jan 7 2015	CIRCULATED.
Jan 9 2015	Record received from U.S.D.C. Southern District of California, (12 Boxes, one box of the record is SEALED)
Jan 20 2015	Brief of respondent Hector Ayala filed. (Distributed)
Feb 12 2015	Letter from counsel for the petitioner regarding change in party name.
Feb 18 2015	Reply of petitioner Ron Davis, Acting Warden filed. (Distributed)
Mar 3 2015	Argued. For petitioner: Robin Urbanski, California Deputy Attorney General, San Diego, Cal. For respondent: Anthony J. Dain, San Diego, Cal.
Jun 18 2015	Judgment REVERSED and case REMANDED. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Kennedy, J., and Thomas, J., filed concurring opinions. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, JJ., joined.
Jul 13 2015	Petition for Rehearing filed.
Jul 16 2015	DISTRIBUTED.
Aug 10 2015	Rehearing DENIED.
Aug 10 2015	JUDGMENT ISSUED.
Aug 11 2015	Records from the 9th Circuit and from U.S.D.C. Southern District of California has been returned.

Featured Posts

Challengers urge justices to dismiss census case after district court ruling (Updated) – Amy Howe

Reargument analysis: Justices seek a “middle position” in takings litigation case – Miriam Seifter

Argument analysis: Justices have strong views about removal of class actions – Ronald Mann
Email Digest Sign-Up
Receive a daily email digest from Feedburner by entering your email.
Merits Case Pages and Archives

Archives

or

This Week at the Court
The Supreme Court will release orders from the January 18 conference on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. There is a possibility of opinions on Tuesday at 10 a.m.
The justices will meet next for their February 15 conference.
The calendar for the February sitting, which will begin on Tuesday, February 19, is available on the Supreme Court's website.
Recent Decisions
- New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira A court should determine whether the Federal Arbitration Act’s Section 1 exclusion for disputes involving the “contracts of employment” of certain transportation workers applies before ordering arbitration; here, truck driver Dominic Oliveira’s independent contractor operating agreement with New Prime Inc. falls within that exception.
- Stokeling v. United States The Armed Career Criminal Act’s elements clause encompasses a robbery offense that, like Florida’s law, requires the criminal to overcome the victim’s resistance.
- Culbertson v. Berryhill The Social Security Act’s fee cap of 25 percent of past-due benefits imposed on attorneys who successfully represent Title II benefit claimants in court proceedings applies only to fees for court representation and not to aggregate fees for both court and agency representation.
- Henry Schein Inc. v. Archer and White Sales Inc. The “wholly groundless” exception to the general rule that courts must enforce contracts that delegate threshold arbitrability questions to an arbitrator, not a court, is inconsistent with the Federal Arbitration Act and Supreme Court precedent.
- City of Escondido, California v. Emmons The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit failed to conduct the analysis required by Supreme Court precedents in determining whether two Escondido police officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
- Shoop v. Hill Because Danny Hill’s intellectual disability claim must be evaluated based solely on holdings of the Supreme Court that were clearly established at the time the state-court decisions were rendered, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s reliance on Moore v. Texas -- which was handed down much later -- was plainly improper.
see all this term’s cases »
Current Relists
- Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda Whether the prohibition in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1), against employment discrimination “because of . . . sex” encompasses discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation.
- Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia Whether discrimination against an employee because of sexual orientation constitutes prohibited employment discrimination “because of . . . sex” within the meaning of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2.
- 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.
More Petitions »
Major Cases
- 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.
- Department of Commerce v. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
  Whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701 et seq., 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—when there is no evidence that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis.
- 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.
see all this term’s cases »
Recent Special Features
Statistical Snapshot

Cases argued 43

Cases decided 9

Summary reversals 2

Merits cases granted to date 73

see all »
Live Blog Archives
See all
Twitter Feed

Tweets by @SCOTUSblog

Full Calendar Submit Event

Jan. 2019

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
		1 Holiday	2	3	4 Conference	5
6	7 Orders MERCK SHARP & DOHME CORP. V. ALBRECHT (17-290) OBDUSKEY V. MCCARTHY & HOLTHUS LLP (17-1307)	8 HERRERA V. WYOMING (17-532) FOURTH ESTATE PUBLIC BENEFIT CORP. V. WALL-STREET.COM, LLC (17-571) Opinions	9 FRANCHISE TAX BOARD OF CALIFORNIA V. HYATT (17-1299)	10	11 Conference	12
13	14 Orders THACKER V. TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (17-1201) RIMINI STREET INC. V. ORACLE USA INC. (17-1625)	15 HOME DEPOT U.S.A. INC. V. JACKSON (17-1471) AZAR V. ALLINA HEALTH SERVICES (17-1484) Opinions	16 KNICK V. TOWNSHIP OF SCOTT, PENNSYLVANIA (17-647) TENNESSEE WINE AND SPIRITS RETAILERS ASSOCIATION V. BLAIR (18-96)	17	18 Conference	19
20	21 Holiday	22 Orders Opinions	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Orders/Opinions
Arguments
Conferences

Events
Holidays
Multiple

Download our App in the Apple Store
First Mondays see all
Videos see all

Justice Sotomayor at Harvard

On November 13, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and Judge Susan Carney of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit presided over the final round of the 2018 Ames Moot Court Competition at Harvard Law School.

Peabody Award
Awarded the Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media.
Sigma Delta Chi
Awarded the Sigma Delta Chi deadline reporting award for online coverage of the Affordable Care Act decision.
National Press Club Award
Awarded the National Press Club's Breaking News Award for coverage of the Affordable Care Act decision.
Silver Gavel Award
Awarded the Silver Gavel Award by the American Bar Association for fostering the American public’s understanding of the law and the legal system.
American Gavel Award
Awarded the American Gavel Award for Distinguished Reporting About the Judiciary to recognize the highest standards of reporting about courts and the justice system.
Webby Award
Awarded the Webby Award for excellence on the internet.

Cases argued	43
Cases decided	9
Summary reversals	2
Merits cases granted to date	73

Editor's Note :

Davis v. Ayala

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Featured Posts

Challengers urge justices to dismiss census case after district court ruling (Updated) – Amy Howe

Reargument analysis: Justices seek a “middle position” in takings litigation case – Miriam Seifter

Argument analysis: Justices have strong views about removal of class actions – Ronald Mann

Email Digest Sign-Up

Merits Case Pages and Archives

Recent Decisions

Current Relists

Conference of January 18, 2019

Major Cases

Recent Special Features

Live Blog Archives

Jan. 2019

Download our App in the Apple Store

First Mondays see all

Videos see all

Peabody Award

Sigma Delta Chi

National Press Club Award

Silver Gavel Award

American Gavel Award

Webby Award