October Term 2024
View this list sorted by case name.
October Sitting
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Issue(s): (1) Whether a post-removal amendment of a complaint to omit federal questions defeats federal-question subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331; and (2) whether such a post-removal amendment of a complaint precludes a district court from exercising supplemental jurisdiction over the plaintiff’s remaining state-law claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367.
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Issue(s): Whether exhaustion of state administrative remedies is required to bring claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in state court.
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Issue(s): (1) Whether “a weapon parts kit that is designed to or may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive” under 27 C.F.R. § 478.11 is a “firearm” regulated by the Gun Control Act of 1968; and (2) whether “a partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frame or receiver” that is “designed to or may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to function as a frame or receiver” under 27 C.F.R. § 478.12(c) is a “frame or receiver” regulated by the act.
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Issue(s): (1) Whether a party must obtain a ruling that conclusively decides the merits in its favor, as opposed to merely predicting a likelihood of later success, to prevail on the merits under 42 U.S.C. § 1988; and (2) whether a party must obtain an enduring change in the parties’ legal relationship from a judicial act, as opposed to a non-judicial event that moots the case, to prevail under Section 1988.
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Issue(s): (1) Whether the state’s suppression of the key prosecution witness’ admission that he was under the care of a psychiatrist and failure to correct that witness’ false testimony about that care and related diagnosis violate the due process of law under Brady v. Maryland and Napue v. Illinois; (2) whether the entirety of the suppressed evidence must be considered when assessing the materiality of Brady and Napue claims; (3) whether due process of law requires reversal where a capital conviction is so infected with errors that the state no longer seeks to defend it; and (4) whether the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals' holding that the Oklahoma Post-Conviction Procedure Act precluded post-conviction relief is an adequate and independent state-law ground for the judgment.
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Holding: Revocation of an approved visa petition under 8 U.S.C. § 1155 based on a sham-marriage determination by the Secretary of Homeland Security is the kind of discretionary decision that falls within the purview of Section 1252(a)(2)(B)(ii), which strips federal courts of jurisdiction to review certain actions “in the discretion of” the agency.
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Issue(s): Whether economic harms resulting from personal injuries are injuries to “business or property by reason of” the defendant’s acts for purposes of a civil treble-damages action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
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Issue(s): Whether the Clean Water Act allows the Environmental Protection Agency (or an authorized state) to impose generic prohibitions in National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits that subject permit-holders to enforcement for violating water quality standards without identifying specific limits to which their discharges must conform.
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Issue(s): Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims must ensure that the benefit-of-the-doubt rule in 38 U.S.C. § 5107(b) was properly applied during the claims process in order to satisfy 38 U.S.C. § 7261(b)(1), which directs the court to “take due account” of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ application of that rule.
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November Sitting
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Issue(s): Whether reimbursement requests submitted to the Federal Communications Commission's E-rate program are “claims” under the False Claims Act.
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Issue(s): Whether the phrase “entitled ... to benefits,” used twice in the same sentence of the Medicare Act, means the same thing for Medicare part A and Supplemental Social Security benefits, such that it includes all who meet basic program eligibility criteria, whether or not benefits are actually received.
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Issue(s): Whether the burden of proof that employers must satisfy to demonstrate the applicability of a Fair Labor Standards Act exemption is a mere preponderance of the evidence or clear and convincing evidence.
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Holding: Certiorari dismissed as improvidently granted.
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Issue(s): Whether, when a noncitizen's voluntary-departure period ends on a weekend or public holiday, a motion to reopen filed the next business day is sufficient to avoid the penalties for failure to depart under 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(d)(1).
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Issue(s): Whether a crime that requires proof of bodily injury or death, but can be committed by failing to take action, has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force.
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Holding: Certiorari dismissed as improvidently granted.
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December Sitting
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Issue(s): Whether the court of appeals erred in setting aside the Food and Drug Administration’s orders denying respondents’ applications for authorization to market new e-cigarette products as arbitrary and capricious.
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Issue(s): Whether a bankruptcy trustee may avoid a debtor’s tax payment to the United States under 11 U.S.C. § 544(b) when no actual creditor could have obtained relief under the applicable state fraudulent-transfer law outside of bankruptcy.
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Issue(s): (1) Whether historical commingling of assets suffices to establish that proceeds of seized property have a commercial nexus with the United States under the expropriation exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act; (2) whether a plaintiff must make out a valid claim that an exception to the FSIA applies at the pleading stage, rather than merely raising a plausible inference; and (3) whether a sovereign defendant bears the burden of producing evidence to affirmatively disprove that the proceeds of property taken in violation of international law have a commercial nexus with the United States under the expropriation exception to the FSIA.
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Issue(s): Whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,” violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
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Issue(s): (1) Whether deception to induce a commercial exchange can constitute mail or wire fraud, even if inflicting economic harm on the alleged victim was not the object of the scheme; (2) whether a sovereign’s statutory, regulatory, or policy interest is a property interest when compliance is a material term of payment for goods or services; and (3) whether all contract rights are “property.”
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Issue(s): Whether a federal civilian employee called or ordered to active duty under a provision of law during a national emergency is entitled to differential pay even if the duty is not directly connected to the national emergency.
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Issue(s): Whether the National Environmental Policy Act requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority.
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Issue(s): Whether an award of the “defendant’s profits” under the Lanham Act can include an order for the defendant to disgorge the distinct profits of legally separate non-party corporate affiliates.
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January Sitting
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Issue(s): Whether the First Step Act’s sentencing reduction provisions apply to a defendant originally sentenced before the act’s enactment, when that original sentence is judicially vacated and the defendant is resentenced to a new term of imprisonment after the act’s enactment.
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Issue(s): Whether, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, a former employee — who was qualified to perform her job and who earned post-employment benefits while employed — loses her right to sue over discrimination with respect to those benefits solely because she no longer holds her job.
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Issue(s): Whether 18 U.S.C. § 1014, which prohibits making a “false statement” for the purpose of influencing certain financial institutions and federal agencies, also prohibits making a statement that is misleading but not false.
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Issue(s): Whether a voluntary dismissal without prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41 is a “final judgment, order, or proceeding” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b).
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Issue(s): Whether the court of appeals erred as a matter of law in applying rational-basis review, instead of strict scrutiny, to a law burdening adults’ access to protected speech.
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Issue(s): Whether a manufacturer may file a petition for review in a circuit (other than the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit) where it neither resides nor has its principal place of business, if the petition is joined by a seller of the manufacturer’s products that is located within that circuit.
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Issue(s): Whether the Hobbs Act required the district court in this case to accept the Federal Communications Commission’s legal interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
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Issue(s): Whether courts should apply the "moment of the threat" doctrine when evaluating an excessive force claim under the Fourth Amendment.
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Issue(s): Whether a plaintiff can state a claim by alleging that a plan fiduciary engaged in a transaction constituting a furnishing of goods, services, or facilities between the plan and a party in interest, as proscribed by 29 U.S.C. § 1106(a)(1)(C), or whether a plaintiff must plead and prove additional elements and facts not contained in the provision’s text.
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February Sitting
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Issue(s): Whether Article III standing requires a particularized determination of whether a specific state official will redress the plaintiff’s injury by following a favorable declaratory judgment.
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Issue(s): Whether, even though Congress excluded 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(A) from 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)’s list of factors to consider when revoking supervised release, a district court may rely on the Section 3553(a)(2)(A) factors when revoking supervised release.
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Issue(s): Whether, in cases subject to the Prison Litigation Reform Act, prisoners have a right to a jury trial concerning their exhaustion of administrative remedies where disputed facts regarding exhaustion are intertwined with the underlying merits of their claim.
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Issue(s): Whether, in addition to pleading the other elements of an employment discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a majority-group plaintiff must
show “background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”
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Issue(s): Whether plaintiffs must prove minimum contacts before federal courts may assert personal jurisdiction over foreign states sued under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
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Issue(s): Whether Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6)’s stringent standard applies to a post-judgment request to vacate for the purpose of filing an amended complaint.
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Issue(s): (1) Whether the production and sale of firearms in the United States is the proximate cause of alleged injuries to the Mexican government stemming from violence committed by drug cartels in Mexico; and (2) whether the production and sale of firearms in
the United States amounts to “aiding and abetting”
illegal firearms trafficking because firearms companies allegedly know that some of their products are unlawfully trafficked.
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Issue(s): (1) Whether the Hobbs Act, which authorizes a “party aggrieved” by an agency’s “final order” to petition for review in a court of appeals, allows nonparties to obtain review of claims asserting that an agency order exceeds the agency’s statutory authority; and (2) whether the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 permit the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license private entities to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel away from the nuclear-reactor sites where the spent fuel was generated.
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Decided without oral argument
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Holding: The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to clarify the basis for its decision affirming the district court’s judgment that Joseph Clifton Smith is ineligible for the death penalty due to intellectual disability.
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Cases Not (Yet) Set for Argument
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Issue(s): Whether a final action by the Environmental Protection Agency taken pursuant to its Clean Air Act authority with respect to a single state or region may be challenged only in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit because the agency published the action in the same Federal Register notice as actions affecting other states or regions and claimed to use a consistent analysis for all states.
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Issue(s): Whether venue for challenges by small oil refineries seeking exemptions from the requirements of the Clean Air Act’s Renewable Fuel Standard program lies exclusively in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit because the agency’s denial actions are “nationally applicable” or, alternatively, are “based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect.”
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Riley v. Garland,
No. 23-1270
Issue(s): (1) Whether 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1)'s 30-day deadline is jurisdictional, or merely a mandatory claims-processing rule that can be waived or forfeited; and (2) whether a person can obtain review of the Board of Immigration Appeals' decision in a withholding-only proceeding by filing a petition within 30 days of that decision.
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Rivers v. Lumpkin,
No. 23-1345
Issue(s): Whether 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2) applies only to habeas filings made after a prisoner has exhausted appellate
review of his first petition, to all second-in-time
habeas filings after final judgment, or to some
second-in-time filings — depending on a prisoner’s success on appeal or ability to satisfy a seven-factor test.
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Issue(s): Whether the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.
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Issue(s): (1) Whether the majority of the three-judge district court in this case erred in finding that race predominated in the Louisiana legislature’s enactment of S.B. 8; (2) whether the majority erred in finding that S.B. 8 fails strict scrutiny; (3) whether the majority erred in subjecting S.B. 8 to the preconditions specified in Thornburg v. Gingles; and (4) whether this action is non-justiciable.
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Issue(s): (1) Whether Congress violated the nondelegation
doctrine by authorizing the Federal Communications Commission to determine,
within the limits set forth in 47 U.S.C. § 254, the amount
that providers must contribute to the Universal Service Fund; (2) whether the FCC violated the nondelegation doctrine by using the financial projections of the private company appointed as the fund's administrator in computing universal service contribution rates; (3) whether the combination of Congress’s conferral
of authority on the FCC and the FCC’s delegation of administrative responsibilities to the administrator violates the nondelegation doctrine; and (4) whether this case is moot in light of the challengers' failure to
seek preliminary relief before the 5th Circuit.
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