Ross v. Blake

Editor's Note :

Ross v. Blake

Court will review census citizenship dispute this term – Amy Howe

Argument preview: Justices to examine rejection of contracts in bankruptcy – Ronald Mann

Argument preview: Justices to consider ability of government to challenge patents in administrative process – Ronald Mann

SCOTUSblog Coverage

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Feb. 2019

Featured Posts

Email Digest Sign-Up

Merits Case Pages and Archives

This Week at the Court

Major Cases

Recent Decisions

Current Relists

Recent Special Features

Statistical Snapshot

Live Blog Archives

Twitter Feed

Calendar: February 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

Conference of February 15, 2019

Conference

Holiday

Orders

RETURN MAIL INC. V. U.S. POSTAL SERVICE (17-1594)

MISSION PRODUCT HOLDINGS INC. V. TEMPNOLOGY INC. (17-1657)

Opinions

Conference

Orders

MANHATTAN COMMUNITY ACCESS CORP. V. HALLECK (17-1702)

UNITED STATES V. HAYMOND (17-1672)

MONT V. UNITED STATES (17-8995)

THE AMERICAN LEGION V. AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION (17-1717)

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
15-339	4th Cir.	Mar 29, 2016 Tr.Aud.	Jun 6, 2016	8-0	Kagan	OT 2015

Holding: The Fourth Circuit's unwritten "special circumstances" exception, which can excuse an inmate's failure to comply with procedural requirements before challenging prison conditions, is inconsistent with the text and history of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Judgment: Vacated and remanded, 8-0, in an opinion by Justice Kagan on June 6, 2016. Justice Thomas filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Justice Breyer filed an opinion concurring in part.

Opinion analysis: Justices hold door open to prisoner suit even while rejecting “special circumstances” exception to PLRA exhaustion requirement (Steve Vladeck)
Argument analysis: Justices seem likely to DIG or remand prisoner-exhaustion case (Steve Vladeck)
Argument preview: A dispute over what is actually in dispute in state prisoner exhaustion case (Steve Vladeck)
Court to rule on drunk-driving tests (Lyle Denniston)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
Sep 14 2015	Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due October 19, 2015)
Sep 23 2015	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs, in support of either party or of neither party, received from counsel for petitioner.
Oct 14 2015	Order extending time to file response to petition to and including November 18, 2015.
Oct 19 2015	Brief amici curiae of West Virginia, and 21 Other States filed.
Nov 2 2015	Brief of respondent Shaidon Blake in opposition filed.
Nov 16 2015	Reply of petitioner Michael Ross filed. (Distributed)
Nov 17 2015	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of December 4, 2015.
Dec 7 2015	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of December 11, 2015.
Dec 11 2015	Petition GRANTED.
Jan 15 2016	The time to file the joint appendix and petitioner's brief on the merits is extended to and including January 27, 2016.
Jan 22 2016	The time to file the joint appendix and petitioner's brief on the merits is further extended to and including January 29, 2016.
Jan 22 2016	The time to file respondent's brief on the merits is extended to and including March 3, 2016.
Jan 29 2016	SET FOR ARGUMENT ON Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Jan 29 2016	Joint appendix filed. (Statement of costs filed)
Jan 29 2016	Brief of petitioner Michael Ross filed.
Feb 5 2016	Brief amicus curiae of United States filed.
Feb 5 2016	Brief amici curiae of West Virginia and 38 Other States filed.
Feb 8 2016	Record requested from U.S.C.A. 4th Circuit.
Feb 11 2016	Record received from U.S.C.A. 4th Circuit is electronic and located on PACER.
Feb 18 2016	Record received from U.S.D.C. Dist. of Maryland Southern Div. is electronic and located on PACER. Sealed records are also electronic, not on PACER.
Feb 23 2016	CIRCULATED.
Mar 1 2016	Proposal of counsel for respondent to lodge bound copies of non-record materials cited in respondent's brief on the merits.
Mar 3 2016	Brief of respondent Shaidon Blake filed. (Distributed)
Mar 7 2016	Motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate in oral argument as amicus curiae and for divided argument filed.
Mar 8 2016	Brief amici curiae of Legal Aid Society of New York and Morningside Heights Legal Services, Inc. filed. (Distributed)
Mar 10 2016	Brief amicus curiae of National Police Accountability Project and Human Rights Defense Center filed. (Distributed)
Mar 17 2016	Proposal of counsel for petitioner to lodge copies of non-record materials cited in the reply brief on the merits.
Mar 18 2016	Motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate in oral argument as amicus curiae and for divided argument GRANTED.
Mar 21 2016	Reply of petitioner Michael Ross filed. (Distributed).
Mar 23 2016	The Clerk has approved respondent's lodging proposal. Copies of non-record material received and distributed.
Mar 24 2016	The Clerk has approved petitioner's lodging proposal. Copies of cited material received and distributed.
Mar 29 2016	Argued. For petitioner: Julia Doyle Bernhardt, Assistant Attorney General, Baltimore, Md.; and Zachary D. Tripp, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D. C. (for United States, as amicus curiae.) For respondent: Paul W. Hughes, Washington, D. C.
Jun 6 2016	Judgment VACATED and case REMANDED. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Ginsburg, Alito, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in part.
Jul 8 2016	JUDGMENT ISSUED

Featured Posts

Court will review census citizenship dispute this term – Amy Howe

Argument preview: Justices to examine rejection of contracts in bankruptcy – Ronald Mann

Argument preview: Justices to consider ability of government to challenge patents in administrative process – 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
On Friday, the justices met for their February 15 conference and agreed to hear oral argument in Department of Commerce v. New York during the second week of the April sitting.
The calendar for the February sitting, which will begin on Tuesday, February 19, is available on the Supreme Court's website.
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.
- 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.
- New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, New York
  Whether New York City’s ban on transporting a licensed, locked and unloaded handgun to a home or shooting range outside city limits is consistent with the Second Amendment, the commerce clause and the constitutional right to travel.
- 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 Decisions
- Helsinn Healthcare S.A. v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. The sale of an invention to a third party who is obligated to keep the invention confidential may place the invention “on sale” for purposes of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, which bars a person from receiving a patent on an invention that was “in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention,” 35 U. S. C. §102(a)(1).
- 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.
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.
- Baxter v. United States (1) Whether a conviction for robbery under Florida law qualifies as a “violent felony” within the Armed Career Criminal Act’s elements clause simply because it requires overcoming victim resistance, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has held, or whether such a conviction fails to qualify as an ACCA “violent felony” because Florida caselaw confirms that overcoming victim resistance does not invariably requires the use of “violent force” as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has held; and (2) whether a conviction for any state robbery offense that includes “as an element” the common law requirement of overcoming “victim resistance” is categorically a “violent felony” within the ACCA’s elements clause if the offense has been specifically interpreted by state appellate courts to require only slight force to overcome resistance.
- 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.
More Petitions »
Recent Special Features
Statistical Snapshot

Cases argued 43

Cases decided 10

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

Orders/Opinions
Arguments
Conferences

Events
Holidays
Multiple

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

Chief Justice Roberts at Belmont University

On February 6, Chief Justice John Roberts spoke at Belmont University College of Law with Alberto Gonzales, dean of the law school and former U.S. attorney general.

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.

15
Conference

19
Orders
RETURN MAIL INC. V. U.S. POSTAL SERVICE (17-1594)

20
MISSION PRODUCT HOLDINGS INC. V. TEMPNOLOGY INC. (17-1657)
Opinions

22
Conference

25
Orders
MANHATTAN COMMUNITY ACCESS CORP. V. HALLECK (17-1702)

26
UNITED STATES V. HAYMOND (17-1672)
MONT V. UNITED STATES (17-8995)

27
THE AMERICAN LEGION V. AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION (17-1717)

Cases argued	43
Cases decided	10
Summary reversals	2
Merits cases granted to date	73