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October Term 2023

View this list sorted by case name.

October Sitting

Pulsifer v. U.S., No. 22-340 [Arg: 10.2.2023]
Issue(s): Whether a defendant satisfies the criteria in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(1) as amended by the First Step Act of 2018 in order to qualify for the federal drug-sentencing “safety valve” provision so long as he does not have (a) more than four criminal history points, (b) a three-point offense, and (c) a two-point offense, or whether the defendant satisfies the criteria so long as he does not have (a), (b), or (c).
Issue(s): Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that the statute providing funding to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 12 U.S.C. § 5497, violates the appropriations clause in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, and in vacating a regulation promulgated at a time when the Bureau was receiving such funding.
Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer, No. 22-429 [Arg: 10.4.2023]
Issue(s): Whether a self-appointed Americans with Disabilities Act “tester” has Article III standing to challenge a place of public accommodation’s failure to provide disability accessibility information on its website, even if she lacks any intention of visiting that place of public accommodation.
Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC, No. 22-660 [Arg: 10.10.2023]
Issue(s): Whether, following the burden-shifting framework that governs cases under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a whistleblower must prove his employer acted with a “retaliatory intent” as part of his case in chief, or whether the lack of “retaliatory intent” is part of the affirmative defense on which the employer bears the burden of proof.
Issue(s): Whether, under federal admiralty law, a choice-of-law clause in a maritime contract can be rendered unenforceable if enforcement is contrary to the “strong public policy” of the state whose law is displaced.
Issue(s): (1) Whether the district court erred when it failed to apply the presumption of good faith and to holistically analyze South Carolina Congressional District 1 and the South Carolina General Assembly’s intent; (2) whether the district court erred in failing to enforce the alternative-map requirement in this circumstantial case; (3) whether the district court erred when it failed to disentangle race from politics; (4) whether the district court erred in finding racial predominance when it never analyzed District 1’s compliance with traditional districting principles; (5) whether the district court clearly erred in finding that the General Assembly used a racial target as a proxy for politics when the record showed only that the General Assembly was aware of race, that race and politics are highly correlated, and that the General Assembly drew districts based on election data; and (6) whether the district court erred in upholding the intentional-discrimination claim when it never even considered whether—let alone found that—District 1 has a discriminatory effect.

November Sitting

Culley v. Marshall, No. 22-585 [Arg: 10.30.2023]
Issue(s): Whether district courts, in determining whether the due process clause requires a state or local government to provide a post-seizure probable-cause hearing prior to a statutory judicial-forfeiture proceeding and, if so, when such a hearing must take place, should apply the “speedy trial” test employed in United States v. $8,850 and Barker v. Wingo or the three-part due process analysis set forth in Mathews v. Eldridge.
Lindke v. Freed, No. 22-611 [Arg: 10.31.2023]
Issue(s): Whether a public official’s social media activity can constitute state action only if the official used the account to perform a governmental duty or under the authority of his or her office.
O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, No. 22-324 [Arg: 10.31.2023]
Issue(s): Whether a public official engages in state action subject to the First Amendment by blocking an individual from the official’s personal social media account, when the official uses the account to feature their job and communicate about job-related matters with the public, but does not do so pursuant to any governmental authority or duty.
Vidal v. Elster, No. 22-704 [Arg: 11.1.2023]
Issue(s): Whether the refusal to register a trademark under 15 U.S.C. § 1052(c) violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment when the mark contains criticism of a government official or public figure.
Issue(s): Whether the civil-liability provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act unequivocally and unambiguously waive the sovereign immunity of the United States.
U.S. v. Rahimi, No. 22-915 [Arg: 11.7.2023]
Issue(s): Whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits the possession of firearms by persons subject to domestic-violence restraining orders, violates the Second Amendment on its face.
Rudisill v. McDonough, No. 22-888 [Arg: 11.8.2023]
Issue(s): Whether a veteran who has served two separate and distinct periods of qualifying service under the Montgomery GI Bill and the Post-9/11 GI Bill is entitled to receive a total of 48 months of education benefits as between both programs, without first exhausting the Montgomery benefit in order to obtain the more generous Post-9/11 benefit.

December Sitting

Brown v. U.S., No. 22-6389 [Arg: 11.27.2023]
Issue(s): Whether the "serious drug offense" definition in the Armed Career Criminal Act incorporates the federal drug schedules that were in effect at the time of the federal firearm offense or the federal drug schedules that were in effect at the time of the prior state drug offense.
McElrath v. Georgia, No. 22-721 [Arg: 11.28.2023]
Issue(s): Whether the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibits a second prosecution for a crime of which a defendant was previously acquitted.
Wilkinson v. Garland, No. 22-666 [Arg: 11.28.2023]
Issue(s): Whether an agency determination that a given set of established facts does not rise to the statutory standard of “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” is a mixed question of law and fact reviewable under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D), or whether this determination is a discretionary judgment call unreviewable under Section 1252(a)(2)(B)(i).
Issue(s): (1) Whether statutory provisions that empower the Securities and Exchange Commission to initiate and adjudicate administrative enforcement proceedings seeking civil penalties violate the Seventh Amendment; (2) whether statutory provisions that authorize the SEC to choose to enforce the securities laws through an agency adjudication instead of filing a district court action violate the nondelegation doctrine; and (3) whether Congress violated Article II by granting for-cause removal protection to administrative law judges in agencies whose heads enjoy for-cause removal protection.
Issue(s): Whether the Bankruptcy Code authorizes a court to approve, as part of a plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, a release that extinguishes claims held by nondebtors against nondebtor third parties, without the claimants’ consent.
Moore v. U.S., No. 22-800 [Arg: 12.5.2023]
Issue(s): Whether the 16th Amendment authorizes Congress to tax unrealized sums without apportionment among the states.
Issue(s): Whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in transfer decisions absent a separate court determination that the transfer decision caused a significant disadvantage.

January Sitting

Issue(s): Whether respondent’s claims challenging his placement on the No Fly List are moot given that he was removed from the No Fly List in 2016 and the government provided a sworn declaration stating that he “will not be placed on the No Fly List in the future based on the currently available information.”
Campos-Chaves v. Garland, No. 22-674 [Arg: 1.8.2024]
Issue(s): Whether the government provides notice “required under” and “in accordance with paragraph (1) or (2) of” 8 U.S.C. § 1229(a) when it serves an initial notice document that does not include the “time and place” of proceedings followed by an additional document containing that information, such that an immigration court must enter a removal order in absentia and deny a noncitizen's request to rescind that order.
Issue(s): Whether the appropriate remedy for the constitutional uniformity violation found by this court in Siegel v. Fitzgerald is to require the United States Trustee to grant retrospective refunds of the increased fees paid by debtors in U.S. Trustee districts during the period of disuniformity, or is instead either to deem sufficient the prospective remedy adopted by Congress or to require the collection of additional fees from a much smaller number of debtors in Bankruptcy Administrator districts.
Issue(s): Whether a building-permit exaction is exempt from the unconstitutional-conditions doctrine as applied in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission and Dolan v. City of Tigard, Oregon simply because it is authorized by legislation.
Smith v. Arizona, No. 22-899 [Arg: 1.10.2024]
Issue(s): Whether the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment permits the prosecution in a criminal trial to present testimony by a substitute expert conveying the testimonial statements of a nontestifying forensic analyst, on the grounds that (a) the testifying expert offers some independent opinion and the analyst’s statements are offered not for their truth but to explain the expert’s opinion, and (b) the defendant did not independently seek to subpoena the analyst.
Issue(s): Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit erred in holding that a failure to make a disclosure required under Item 303 of SEC Regulation S-K can support a private claim under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, even in the absence of an otherwise misleading statement.
Devillier v. Texas, No. 22-913 [Arg: 1.16.2024]
Issue(s): Whether a person whose property is taken without compensation may seek redress under the self-executing takings clause of the Fifth Amendment even if the legislature has not affirmatively provided them with a cause of action.
Issue(s): Whether the court should overrule Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.
Issue(s): Whether the court should overrule Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.

Cases Not (Yet) Set for Argument

Issue(s): (1) Whether the laws’ content-moderation restrictions comply with the First Amendment; and (2) whether the laws’ individualized-explanation requirements comply with the First Amendment.
Issue(s): Whether the National Bank Act preempts the application of state escrow-interest laws to national banks.
Issue(s): Whether the First Amendment prohibits viewpoint-, content-, or speaker-based laws restricting select websites from engaging in editorial choices about whether, and how, to publish and disseminate speech — or otherwise burdening those editorial choices through onerous operational and disclosure requirements.
Issue(s): Whether the First Amendment allows a government regulator to threaten regulated entities with adverse regulatory actions if they do business with a controversial speaker, as a consequence of (a) the government’s own hostility to the speaker’s viewpoint or (b) a perceived “general backlash” against the speaker’s advocacy.
Issue(s): Whether a bump stock device is a “machinegun” as defined in 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b) because it is designed and intended for use in converting a rifle into a machinegun, i.e., into a weapon that fires “automatically more than one shot ... by a single function of the trigger.”
Issue(s): Whether a plaintiff’s Administrative Procedure Act claim “first accrues” under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a) when an agency issues a rule — regardless of whether that rule injures the plaintiff on that date — or when the rule first causes a plaintiff to “suffer[] legal wrong” or be “adversely affected or aggrieved.”
Issue(s): (1) Whether the probable-cause exception in Nieves v. Barlett can be satisfied by objective evidence other than specific examples of arrests that never happened; and (2) whether Nieves is limited to individual claims against arresting officers for split-second arrests.
Issue(s): Whether, under the discovery accrual rule applied by the circuit courts and the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations for civil actions, 17 U.S.C. § 507(b), a copyright plaintiff can recover damages for acts that allegedly occurred more than three years before the filing of a lawsuit.
Issue(s): Whether an insurer with financial responsibility for a bankruptcy claim is a “party in interest” that may object to a plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.
Issue(s): Whether a district court may enter a criminal-forfeiture order outside the time limitations set forth in Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.2.
Issue(s): Whether, where parties enter into an arbitration agreement with a delegation clause, an arbitrator or a court should decide whether that arbitration agreement is narrowed by a later contract that is silent as to arbitration and delegation.
Issue(s): Whether in a prosecution for drug trafficking — where an element of the offense is that the defendant knew she was carrying illegal drugs — Federal Rule of Evidence 704(b) permits a governmental expert witness to testify that most couriers know they are carrying drugs and that drug-trafficking organizations do not entrust large quantities of drugs to unknowing transporters.
Issue(s): Whether, to be exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, a class of workers that is actively engaged in interstate transportation must also be employed by a company in the transportation industry.
Issue(s): Whether the Indian Health Service must pay “contract support costs” not only to support IHS-funded activities, but also to support the tribe’s expenditure of income collected from third parties.
Issue(s): Whether the Constitution requires a jury trial and proof beyond a reasonable doubt to find that a defendant’s prior convictions were “committed on occasions different from one another,” as is necessary to impose an enhanced sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act.
Issue(s): (1) Whether respondents have Article III standing; (2) whether the government’s challenged conduct transformed private social media companies’ content-moderation decisions into state action and violated respondents’ First Amendment rights; and (3) whether the terms and breadth of the preliminary injunction are proper.

Cases dismissed from merits docket

Issue(s): Whether individual members of Congress have Article III standing to sue an executive agency to compel it to disclose information that the members have requested under 5 U.S.C. § 2954.