Petitions

Whether Article III of the Constitution precludes Congress from assigning to the Secretary of Labor the initial adjudication of proceedings to collect monetary remedies from employers who violate the terms and conditions of participating in the H–2A visa program.

Whether, when a government official acts in an obviously unconstitutional manner, that is sufficient for the violation to be clearly established, or it is a violation clearly established only if there is binding precedent in a factually indistinguishable case.

Whether Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier applies (1) whenever student speech might be erroneously attributed to the school; (2) when student speech occurs in the context of an “organized and structured educational activity”; or (3) only when student speech is part of the “curriculum.”

(1) Whether courts must reverse for Griffin v. California error without examining a prosecutor’s comment in context and without finding prejudice; or (2) whether Griffin should be overruled.

(1) Whether courts must reverse for Griffin v. California error without examining a prosecutor’s comment in context and without finding prejudice; or (2) whether Griffin should be overruled.

Whether an arbitration agreement governing disputes in a professional sports league is categorically unenforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act because it designates the league commissioner as the default arbitrator and permits the commissioner to develop arbitral procedures.

(1) Whether in determining if a constitutional error had a prejudicial effect on the outcome of a trial a court must consider only that evidence that was presented to the jury at the trial; and (2) whether the prejudice from the Giglio v. United States violation in this case met the standards for relief under Giglio and Brecht v. Abrahamson.

Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the AR-15.

(1) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit disregarded this court’s precedents, including Graham v. Connor and Plumhoff v. Rickard, by artificially parsing a six-second event into discrete segments; (2) whether the 9th Circuit effectively adopted a new and more extreme “moment-of-threat” rule than that articulated by the court in Barnes v. Felix; (3) whether, in denying qualified immunity, the en banc 9th Circuit evaluated whether the right at issue was “clearly established” at an impermissibly high level of generality, contrary to this court in Kisela v. Hughes, City & County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, and Ashcroft v. al-Kidd; and (4) whether this case presents a novel opportunity to clarify Fourth Amendment guidance that while officers should be encouraged to continue to reassess a situation, they must also be judged in light of the rapidly evolving and life-threatening circumstances they confront.

Whether a ban on the possession of AR-15-style rifles and firearm magazines with a capacity in excess of 10 rounds violates the Second Amendment.

Whether the Second and 14th Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.

Whether the limits on agency deference announced in Kisor v. Wilkie and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo constrain the deference courts may accord the Sentencing Commission's interpretation of its own rules via commentary.

(1) Whether a ban on the possession of exceedingly common ammunition feeding devices violates the Second Amendment; and (2) whether a law dispossessing citizens, without compensation, of property that they lawfully acquired and long possessed without incident violates the takings clause.

(1) Whether, in the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness-of-a-seizure context, a law enforcement officer’s intended level of force is relevant to determining whether an officer’s use of force should be analyzed under a deadly-use-of-force standard or a general use-of-force standard; and (2) whether, in analyzing an excessive force claim brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, an officer’s mistaken use of force being higher than what he or she intended entitles the officer to qualified immunity, so long as the mistake is reasonable under the circumstances.

Whether ammunition feeding devices with the capacity to hold more than 10 rounds are “Arms” presumptively entitled to constitutional protection under the plain text of the Second Amendment.

Whether Title 18, Section 25137(c)(1)(A) of the California Code of Regulations violates the Constitution's commerce clause, import-export clause, and due process clause.

Whether the court should bar California and Washington from issuing commercial learner's permits and commercial driver's licenses "to applicants who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents" and from issuing "non-domiciled CDLS to applicants who do not meet the requirements of 49 C.F.R. § 383.71(f)."

Whether the Civil Service Reform Act impliedly strips federal district courts of jurisdiction over a pre-enforcement challenge to a broad prior restraint on the speech of federal employees, even where: (a) the challenge could not be raised at all under the CSRA’s review scheme; (b) the CSRA’s review scheme would not guarantee judicial review of the challenge in any event, because the availability of judicial review would turn entirely on agency officials’ unfettered and unreviewable discretion; and (c) any judicial review would come too late to remedy the “here-and-now” injuries caused by the prior restraint.

Whether the due process clause allows courts to exercise personal jurisdiction by imputing an unaffiliated nonparty’s forum contacts to a defendant with no forum contacts of its own.

(1) Whether the state’s use in a capital sentencing proceeding of rap lyrics composed by a Black defendant to argue to a nearly all-White jury that the Black defendant must be a violent and dangerous person because he wrote the rap lyrics, violates due process, fundamental fairness, and equal protection under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; and (2) whether the state’s introduction of a state-employed and out-of-court expert’s serology report and findings at trial, via the testimony of another expert who testified to and relied upon the absent expert’s out-of-court statements as a basis of the second expert’s own findings, violates the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution under Smith v. Arizona.

Whether the state’s considering race as a basis for striking prospective jurors, shown by its listing prospective jurors by race on a spreadsheet used during jury selection, and now confirmed by newly disclosed evidence of similar notations on a chart used during jury selection at Petitioner’s co-defendant’s trial and by newly obtained affidavits from three struck prospective Black jurors, violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment under Batson v. Kentucky.

(1) Whether the decision below — in which the court of appeals held, without notice to or briefing by the parties, that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 does not preclude suit in district court when “a factual record” shows that the CSRA is not “function[ing] as intended” — should be summarily reversed for violating the party-presentation principle; and (2) whether the decision below should be summarily reversed for failing to adhere to this court’s precedents holding that the CSRA generally precludes challenges to federal personnel actions in district court.

Whether, when alleged bribery rests solely on lawful campaign contributions, the government must prove an explicit, unambiguous quid pro quo conditioning an official act, or a conviction may rest on such ambiguity.

Whether the requirement of a “quid pro quo” under McCormick v. United States is satisfied when a political candidate accepts a political contribution knowing that the donor believes the candidate will take official action because of the contribution.

(1) Whether the Second Circuit violated the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act by finding a state jury instruction invalid under Missouri v. Seibert; and (2) whether the Second Circuit violated AEDPA by finding that a single response by a state trial judge to a jury note necessarily infected the jury verdict, when the state courts found that there was more than sufficient evidence of the defendant’s guilt that was unaffected by the response.

Whether a multiemployer pension plan that terminated through mass withdrawal before the 2020 plan year is eligible for Special Financial Assistance under 29 U.S.C. 1432(b)(1)(A).

Whether, when a foreign sovereign that is a party to the New York Convention agrees to arbitrate a dispute governed by the Convention, it impliedly waives immunity from an action in U.S. courts to recognize a valid foreign judgment confirming the arbitral award in another member state.

(1) Whether Federal Rule of Evidence 415 overrides Rule 403’s requirement to balance the probative value of temporally remote propensity evidence against its prejudicial effect before such evidence can be admitted?; (2) Whether Federal Rule of Evidence 413(d) authorizes the admission of temporally remote propensity evidence that the defendant committed the “crime” of “sexual assault” when the alleged prior act did not constitute a crime or a sexual assault?; and (3) Whether Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)(2) permits the admission of “modus operandi” or “corroboration” evidence of prior “bad acts” without establishing a non-propensity purpose of the evidence, such as identity, absence of mistake, or another enumerated exception in Rule 404(b)(2)?

(1) Whether a police officer must wait until an armed, fleeing suspect turns and points his gun at the officer before using deadly force where, as here, the suspect refuses to comply with an officer’s commands to drop his weapon, proceeds to flee with the gun in his hand, and could turn and fire upon the officer; and (2) whether the court of appeals violated existing Supreme Court precedent by merely citing the general rule in defining a clearly established right, and by failing to identify any case where an officer acting under similar circumstances was held to have violated the Fourth Amendment.

Whether, when a plaintiff alleges that the application of a state policy infringed a fundamental right “‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,’” a court can deny relief because the infringement did not “shock the conscience."

Whether Bethel School District v. Fraser permits schools to censor nondisruptive political speech that is not plainly profane or lewd.

Whether a downstream purchaser’s liability for mishandling nuclear material that the purchaser obtained for private benefit, but that was originally produced more than a decade earlier under a government contract with another party, is subject to indemnification by the United States under the original government contract because it qualifies as “public liability arising out of or in connection with the contractual activity” under 42 U.S.C. 2210(d).

(1) Whether the court of appeals’ order departed from this court’s instructions and the separation-of-powers principles that this court articulated in Cheney v. United States District Court; and (2) whether a court may order broad discovery against an Executive Office advisory body—potentially providing much information sought on the merits of a plaintiff’s FOIA claims—to determine whether FOIA’s disclosure requirements apply in the first place.

Whether Congress violated the vesting clause of Article I by giving an executive agency unbounded discretion to choose which private parties are entitled to participate in a multibillion-dollar market.

(1) Whether the Federal Meat Inspection Act imposes additional or different—even if non-conflicting—requirements on pork producers, and is thus preempted by the FMIA under principles of express or implied preemption; and (2) whether the FMIA violates the dormant commerce clause or the other constitutional doctrines sufficiently pleaded in the complaint.

Whether Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. 794, authorizes a private right of action for retaliation.

(1) Whether a government reporting requirement is subject to intermediate First Amendment scrutiny, and satisfies such scrutiny, so long as it aims to correct “information asymmetries” that are “product-specific”; and (2) whether entities that operate in “highly regulated” industries categorically lack reasonable investment-backed expectations in their trade secrets for purposes of the takings clause.

Whether the U.S. Trade Representative’s streamlined authority under Section 307 of the Trade Act of 1974 to “modify” an existing tariff action confers on the agency essentially unlimited power to expand the scope of that initial action, as reflected in the tenfold expansion challenged here.

(1) Whether the Federal Arbitration Act's equal-treatment requirement is violated by a rule deeming arbitration agreements procedurally unconscionable when they incorporate the American Arbitration Association’s rules because those rules are “subject to change”; and (2) whether California’s arbitration-specific severability doctrine—under which the Ninth Circuit refused to enforce the severance provision in the parties’ arbitration agreement—violates the FAA’s equal-treatment rule.

Whether the First Amendment overrides antidiscrimination laws when the discrimination furthers the defendant’s views about “diversity,” “equity,” or “inclusion.”

Whether the public trial clause of the Sixth Amendment requires case-specific determinations of necessity and narrow tailoring before a Military Rule of Evidence (M.R.E.) 412 hearing can be closed to the public.

Whether the Fifth and Sixth Amendments prohibit federal courts from increasing a criminal defendant’s authorized punishment based on conduct—including uncharged, dismissed, or acquitted conduct—that was never admitted by the defendant or proven to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

Whether Pennsylvania’s requirement that mail-in voters provide a handwritten date when signing a preprinted declaration on a ballot return envelope violates the First or Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

(1) Whether a non-discriminatory rule imposing the usual burdens of voting is constitutional; (2) whether a mail-voting rule is subject only to rational-basis review when the state makes in-person voting available; and (3) where Anderson-Burdick applies, whether a minimally burdensome voting rule is subject only to rational-basis review, and whether a rule’s burden is measured by the cost of compliance or the consequence of noncompliance.

(1) Whether the Eighth Amendment requires state corrections leadership to implement an overall “reasonable” statewide response to a public-health emergency in the aggregate, across multiple years and facilities; and (2) whether it was clearly established for purposes of qualified immunity that the State of Oregon’s overall response to the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and May 2022 would constitute cruel and unusual punishment, despite a federal judge ruling in June 2020 that the response met constitutional standards.

Whether (1) the Takings Clause’s protection against unconstitutional permit conditions encompass an evidentiary requirement (as opposed to a legislative process) by which the government bears the burden to demonstrate that its development permit exaction complies with Dolan v. City of Tigard's “rough proportionality” standard; and (2) an impact fee can be roughly proportional when imposed on one discrete class of development (residential) for the purpose of addressing impacts caused by another discrete class of development (commercial).

Whether a public employer’s threats against an employee can suffice to establish a First Amendment retaliation claim, if those threats would dissuade a reasonable employee from speaking on a matter of public importance.

Whether the First Amendment protects the means of acquiring or creating speech when the speech is non-political.

(1) Whether a voter who is moved into a new district and a legislator whose district is reconfigured by a court-drawn remedial map have standing to challenge that map or the underlying determination of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act liability that caused the remedial map to be drawn; and (2) whether a map drawn to remedy racial vote dilution is subject to strict scrutiny under the equal protection clause when it is race conscious.

Whether Tex. Elec. Code § 86.0105, which makes it a crime “to compensate another person for assisting voters” who vote by mail or to “solicit[], receive[], or accept[] compensation for” doing so, runs afoul of Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10508.

Whether a plaintiff may establish specific jurisdiction over a non-resident defendant based on its forum-agnostic “business model,” or whether the plaintiff must allege that the defendant undertook specific, claim-related activities in or directed at the forum.

Whether Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10508, preempts a state law that prohibits eligible voters from compensating their chosen assisters or from choosing trusted assisters who are compensated.

Whether Monge v. California, which addressed the nature of an “offense” under the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause, in the context of a prosecution that sought to apply a recidivism enhancement to the defendant’s sentence, should be overruled.

(1) Whether private plaintiffs may maintain a suit in equity for declaratory and injunctive relief against state actors to prevent the continued enforcement of a state law preempted by Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10508; and (2) whether Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act is enforceable by private plaintiffs.

(1) Whether the Fourth Circuit violated the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the party-presentation principle by granting habeas relief based on its de novo review of the state court’s decision; and (2) whether the Fourth Circuit violated AEDPA and the party-presentation principle by granting habeas relief on a state-court judgment that was not before it.

(1) Whether the Federal Circuit has wrongly extended the prohibition on patenting an “abstract idea” – such as mathematical formulae, fundamental economic practices, or methods of organizing human activity – to also prohibit patenting concrete technological processes; and (2) whether the Federal Circuit has wrongly held that, as a matter of law, a computer-implemented technological invention is patent-eligible only if it claims improvements to computer functionality itself.

Whether 18 U.S.C. § 2515's exclusionary rule, which provides that “no part of the contents” of an intercepted communication “and no evidence derived therefrom may be received in evidence in any trial, hearing, or proceeding” before any state or federal court or governmental body “if the disclosure of that information" would violate Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, contains an unwritten clean-hands exception.

Whether 18 U.S.C. § 4246(a), which exists as one of several statutes that collectively provide for the involuntary civil commitment of certain individuals in “the custody” of the federal government, exceeds the constitutional limits of Congress’s powers insofar as it permits the federal government to civilly commit a person who has not been convicted of a federal offense and whose federal criminal charge has already been dismissed.

Whether post hoc speculation about emotional harm that speech could cause to other students is insufficient to meet Tinker’s “substantial disruption” standard.

Whether an individual who did not commit the qualifying predicate offenses required to trigger the Armed Career Criminal Act’s 15-year mandatory minimum sentence enhancement in a noncapital case can assert the actual innocence exception to procedural bars on habeas corpus relief.

Whether and in what circumstances public employers may discipline employees based on their expression of controversial views while off the job.

Whether federal courts have the power to issue sanctions under their inherent authority without first finding “bad faith,” and, if they do, whether they have the power to issue sanctions under their inherent authority even for “unintentional or merely negligent conduct.”

(1) Whether the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, established by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is immune from scrutiny under the First and Fifth Amendments although it relies on economic coercion to secure participation; and (2) whether the program unconstitutionally conditions Medicare and Medicaid participation on manufacturers giving up their constitutionally protected speech, property, and due process rights.

Whether the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment allows a state to exercise specific personal jurisdiction over a non-resident retail seller of legal, non-defective, easily transportable products based on the seller’s foreseeability that some such products may – through the agency of third parties – be transported into the forum state without any direction from the seller.

Whether a private party, whose contaminated land clean up is reviewed and approved by a state, likewise enjoys a presumption of substantial compliance with the National Contingency Plan.

(1) Whether the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces has statutory authority to hold that a conviction is factually insufficient under 10 U.S.C. § 867(c)(1)(C); and (2) whether military courts of criminal appeals have authority under 10 U.S.C. §§ 860c and 866(d)(2) to correct an unconstitutional firearms ban annotated after entry of judgment.

(1) Whether the court of appeals must issue a writ of mandamus when a petitioner is erroneously denied a jury trial, without considering whether the right is clear or unambiguous or the petitioner has other potential avenues of relief; and (2) whether the Internal Revenue Code violates the Seventh Amendment and Article III by authorizing the IRS to order the payment of monetary penalties for fraud without providing the taxpayer a jury trial.

Whether a litigant can claim relief from judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) when a change in settled procedural law retroactively vitiates the litigant’s reasonable reliance on the law.

Whether the Second Circuit was correct to uphold Clean Water Act authority over wetlands that are not “as a practical matter indistinguishable” from covered waters.

(1) Whether the term “injury” in 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(6) denotes mere “harm” (detriment in fact) or requires the intent to invade a legally protected interest (legal injury), such that a debtor who intentionally causes harm under a genuine but mistaken belief of legal justification has not inflicted a “willful” injury; and (2) whether a debt arising from the intentional tort of false imprisonment is nondischargeable under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(6) when the debtor held a subjective, genuine belief that confinement would be lawful and justified, or whether a court may obviate that subjective belief by defining the “injury” as the confinement itself and implying malice from the objective “excessiveness” of the debtor’s conduct.

(1) Whether an employer’s practice that has no noted effect on employees’ collective-bargaining rights and is not motivated by anti-union animus is inherently destructive of union rights and violates the National Labor Relations Act; and (2) whether the National Labor Relations Board has the statutory or constitutional authority to order employers to pay “any … direct or foreseeable pecuniary harms” their employees incur “as a result of” an unlawful labor practice.

(1) Whether a federal court may abstain under Younger v. Harris when a state appellate court has held the same enforcement policy unconstitutional, thereby eliminating any ongoing “important state interest” on which abstention could rest; (2) whether physician-petitioners subject to ongoing state disciplinary proceedings for their public speech satisfy all justiciability requirements and are entitled to federal adjudication when: (a) they face concrete enforcement actions establishing Article III standing, (b) the state’s own courts have declared the challenged enforcement policy unconstitutional, and (c) the only barrier to adjudication was Younger abstention, which the state court’s ruling has eliminated; (3) whether petitioners are entitled to preliminary injunctive relief where: (a) the State Medical Commission’s policy is a content- and viewpoint-based restriction on public speech subject to strict scrutiny, (b) the state’s own appellate court has held the policy unconstitutional, (c) respondents presented no evidence of narrow tailoring or less restrictive alternatives, (d) a continuing First Amendment violation constitutes irreparable injury, and (e) enjoining an unconstitutional policy serves the public interest; (4) whether petitioners satisfy Article III standing and all other justiciability requirements to challenge an enforcement policy that restricts access to protected speech on matters of public concern; and (5) whether this court should grant certiorari to resolve professional speech protections in conjunction with Chiles v. Salazar (therapist–client speech, argued Oct. 7, 2025), and Kory v. Bonta (physician–patient speech, cert. pending), as this case presents the third category: physician public viewpoint speech on matters of public concern.

Whether a stock trading on an exchange whose physical headquarters is located in Manhattan suffices to establish venue in the Southern District of New York for insider-trading charges related to that stock.

Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit erred here in recognizing a Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics cause of action.

Whether the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 implicates an interest of pharmaceutical manufacturers that is protected by the Due Process Clause.

Whether Title IX provides employees of federally funded educational institutions a private right of action to sue for sex discrimination in employment. CVSG: 04/09/2026

Whether federal nuclear safety regulations preempt state tort standards of care in public liability actions. CVSG: 04/09/2026

Whether, in order to obtain judicial relief, a party challenging governmental action taken by an individual who remained in office against the president’s wishes due to an unconstitutional removal restriction must show that a hypothetical replacement officer would have taken a different action.

(1) Whether, when proceeding under § 502(a)(3) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(3), a beneficiary may seek surcharge, a remedy that this court has described as being “exclusively equitable”; and (2) whether, if surcharge is unavailable under § 1132(a)(3), a beneficiary may pursue state-law claims arising out of a contract that is separate and apart from an ERISA plan and that is not required by the plan, or whether these state-law claims are preempted, thereby leaving the beneficiary without a remedy under either federal or state law.

Whether plaintiffs adequately plead that defendants engaged in fraudulent concealment, for purposes of tolling the 15 U.S.C. § 15b (Clayton Act) statute of limitations, by alleging that defendants maintained an unwritten agreement.

Whether the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act preempts private state-law unfair competition and consumer protection claims premised on the marketing of compounded drugs without premarket approval.

Whether in private condemnations under the Natural Gas Act, just compensation should be determined by reference to state law.

(1) Whether a bankruptcy court can act as a gatekeeper to screen noncolorable lawsuits against nondebtor bankruptcy participants; and (2) whether a bankruptcy court can to a limited degree exculpate nondebtor bankruptcy participants from liability for conduct arising from the bankruptcy process.

(1) Under Employment Division v. Smith, whether state laws must always be deemed “neutral” unless plaintiffs prove officials acted against them with subjective religious animus and discriminatory motive; (2) under Smith, whether courts determining a law’s “general applicability” must disregard the law’s preference for secular over religious organizations on the grounds that secular and religious organizations are inherently motivated by different purposes and thus incomparable, or alternatively, whether courts must consider the law’s preference for secular over religious organizations so long as their activities pose a similar risk to the government’s asserted interest in the law; (3) whether hostile statements of government actors against religious adherents are sufficient to establish a First Amendment free exercise violation, or whether states may try to justify their hostility by satisfying strict scrutiny; and (4) Whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA)'s exemption for individuals who participate in health care sharing ministries (HCSMs) preempts New Mexico’s determination that those individuals’ HCSMs may not operate in New Mexico until they forfeit their federal statuses as HCSMs under the ACA.

(1) Whether 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(6) allows United States courts to assert jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign without determining whether the sovereign consented to arbitrate differences between itself and the plaintiff; and (2) whether, in suits to confirm foreign arbitral awards, forum non conveniens dismissal is categorically unavailable, unavailable in at least some suits, or depends on the facts of each case.

Whether trademark strength is a question of fact in a likelihood-of-confusion analysis under 15 U.S.C. § 1114.

(1) Whether compliance with state laws directly contrary to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s requirement to provide a reasonable accommodation for religious beliefs may serve as an undue hardship justifying an employer’s noncompliance with Title VII; and (2) whether a state law that requires employers to deny without any consideration all requests by employees for a religious accommodation, contrary to Title VII’s religious nondiscrimination provision, is preempted by Title VII and the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

Whether, when one state breaches another's contract and there are "direct, immediate, grave and irreparable injur[ies] to [a state] and its citizens," the court should grant the harmed state leave to file a complaint in an original action.