Supreme Court Decision Syllabus (SCOTUS Podcast)

Send us Fan Mail  1. Title IX allows schools to provide separate women’s and men’s sports teams defined by biological sex, and West Virginia has permissibly maintained female sports for biological females consistent with Title IX.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail In Trump v. Barbara , the Supreme Court held that children born in the U.S. to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment, striking down Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship. The Court relied on the common law rule of jus soli and its precedent in Wong Kim Ark , rejecting the Government's domicile-bas...

Send us Fan Mail In NRSC v. FEC the Supreme Court granted Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to answer the question of whether the limits imposed by the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) on how much political parties can spend in direct coordination with their federal candidates violate the First Amendment.  Held: FECA’s political party coordinated expenditur...

Send us Fan Mail  Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail  Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail  The federal election-day statutes do not prevent Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days thereafter; nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by election day.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail In Trump v. Slaughter , the Supreme Court held that the FTC's for-cause removal protection for its Commissioners violates the separation of powers, overruling Humphrey's Executor v. United States (1935) to the extent it survived. The Court reasoned that the Constitution vests executive power solely in the President, who must be able to remove at will any officer—like an...

Send us Fan Mail In Trump v. Cook , the Supreme Court denied the Government's application to stay an injunction reinstating Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whom President Trump had fired over alleged mortgage fraud predating her appointment. The Court held that the Federal Reserve Act's "for cause" removal standard is judicially reviewable, that "cause" requires a...

Send us Fan Mail In Monsanto Co. v. Durnell , the Supreme Court held that FIFRA expressly preempts a state-law failure-to-warn claim demanding a cancer warning on Roundup's label, since the EPA had approved the label without one and federal law requires using the approved label. The Court (per Justice Kavanaugh) reversed a $1 million Missouri verdict; Justice Thomas concurred; Justice Jackson...

Send us Fan Mail The TPS statute bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail In Blanche v. Lau , the Supreme Court held that the Immigration and Nationality Act does not require a border officer to have clear and convincing evidence that a lawful permanent resident has committed a crime involving moral turpitude before treating that resident as an applicant for admission. Lau, a lawful permanent resident, was charged with trademark counterfeiting, briefly...

Send us Fan Mail In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado , the Supreme Court held that an alien standing in Mexico does not "arrive in the United States" within the meaning of the Immigration and Nationality Act by attempting and failing to set foot in the country; arrival occurs only when the alien crosses the border. The case arose from the Government's 2016 "metering" policy, under w...

Send us Fan Mail  The Helms-Burton Act itself abrogates the sovereign immunity of Cuban agencies and instrumentalities  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Hawaii's rules about not allowing people to concealed carry on private property unless the owner posts consent is unconstitutional. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail The proper baseline for measuring “just compensation” following a tax sale is the auction sale price, not the property’s hypothetical fair market value, at least when the sale is fairly conducted in light of the country’s history of tax sales. Pp. 4–11. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail  Individuals may not be held liable in their personal capacities under a Spending Clause statute unless those individuals have voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer lawsuits under the statute; because the individual defendants in this case did not voluntarily and knowingly consent to face RLUIPA liability in an agreement with the federal government, Mr. Landor’s case canno...

Send us Fan Mail  The Supreme Court held that federal courts may no longer create new causes of action for violations of international law under the Alien Tort Statute, effectively closing the narrow door that Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain had left open in 2004. Reasoning that judicial authority under Sosa 's framework was narrow from the start and that the power to create causes of action belongs...

Send us Fan Mail In a per curiam decision, the Supreme Court summarily reversed the Second Circuit’s grant of federal habeas relief to Pedro Hernandez, who was convicted of kidnapping and felony murder in the 1979 disappearance and death of Etan Patz. The Second Circuit had concluded that the state trial judge should have told the jury about the rule from Missouri v. Seibert governing when a confe...

Send us Fan Mail We speak today to say...nothing has changed... Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Because a criminal law appeal waiver must be both knowingly and voluntary a waiver of ineffective assistance of counsel is not really possible. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail The Supreme Court held that the government's prosecution of Ali Hemani under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3)'s prohibition on firearm possession by unlawful users of controlled substances violated the Second Amendment as applied to him. Justice Gorsuch, writing for seven Justices, concluded that the government failed to identify a historical tradition of firearm regulation analogou...

Send us Fan Mail In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court held that Section 47(b) of the Investment Company Act does not create an implied private right of action allowing investors or other private parties to sue for rescission of contracts that allegedly violate the Act. The case arose when activist investor Saba Capital challenged voting-right restrictions adopted by several closed-end mutual funds...

Send us Fan Mail In a unanimous opinion by Justice Jackson, the Supreme Court vacated a Fifth Circuit decision that had barred Thomas Keathley’s personal-injury lawsuit under the doctrine of judicial estoppel after he failed to disclose the claim during his ongoing Chapter 13 bankruptcy. The Court held that when determining whether a debtor’s omission of a legal claim was inadvertent or mistaken,...

Send us Fan Mail In a unanimous opinion by Justice Kagan, the Supreme Court held that a prosecution for falsifying a document in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1519 must be brought in the district where the falsification occurred, not where the federal investigation that the defendant intended to obstruct was located. Ahmad Abouammo, while in Seattle, created and emailed a fake invoice to FBI agents cond...

Send us Fan Mail The Supreme Court held that the FCC’s procedure for assessing monetary forfeitures against regulated entities does not violate the Seventh Amendment because the agency’s forfeiture orders do not themselves impose a legally enforceable obligation to pay and do not conclusively determine the facts underlying liability. Although the FCC may investigate alleged violations and issue fo...