Supreme Court Decision Syllabus (SCOTUS Podcast)

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...

Send us Fan Mail In a unanimous opinion by Justice Jackson, the Supreme Court held that Amarin failed to plausibly allege that Hikma actively induced infringement of Amarin’s patented cardiovascular-use methods for Vascepa. Although Hikma marketed a generic version of the drug using an FDA-approved “skinny label” that omitted the patented cardiovascular indication, Amarin argued that various state...

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Send us Fan Mail  A showing of pecuniary loss to investors is not required before the SEC may obtain a disgorgement award.   Support the show

Send us Fan Mail If anyone thinks I am pronouncing  Giglio incorrectly, please see: https://documents.law.yale.edu/pronouncing-dictionary In a brief per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court vacated an Eleventh Circuit decision denying federal habeas relief to Florida death-row inmate Gary Whitton. Whitton argued that prosecutors violated Giglio v. United States by allowing jailhouse informant Jake Oz...

Send us Fan Mail Held: When Congress declines to make a sentencing amendment retroactive—as with the change to §924(c)—the resulting sentencing disparity cannot serve as an “extraordinary and compelling” reason that warrants a sentence reduction under 18 U. S. C. §3582(c)(1)(A)(i).  Pp. 8–17. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail In a brief per curiam order, the Supreme Court stayed a federal district court injunction that would have prevented Alabama from using its 2023 congressional map in the 2026 elections. The Court held that Alabama was likely to succeed on appeal because the district court failed to apply the standards the Supreme Court recently announced in Louisiana v. Callais. Under Callais , pla...

Send us Fan Mail Held: A prisoner who collaterally attacks the validity of his conviction must proceed through 28 U. S. C. §2255, not 18 U. S. C. §3582; the supposed invalidity of a conviction is not among the “extraordinary and compelling reasons” that justify compassionate release.  Pp. 5–17. (a) Section 2255 governs collateral attacks on federal convictions and imposes tight procedural constrai...

Send us Fan Mail In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably rejected death-row inmate Terry Pitchford’s claim under Batson v. Kentucky that prosecutors improperly excluded Black jurors during his capital murder trial. The Court concluded that the trial judge failed to complete Batson’s required third step by denying Pitchford’s counsel a meaningful op...

Send us Fan Mail The Supreme Court in Margolin v. National Association of Immigration Judges reversed the Fourth Circuit for violating the principle of party presentation. The National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) challenged a policy about immigration judge's public speaking in federal district court on First and Fifth Amendment grounds, but both the district court and the parties...

Send us Fan Mail Actuaries should probably use the best/most recent predictions about future stuff, and we should not try to tell them not to. Also lets keep track of how many times The Court says: "Stuff that's not in here is not in here for a reason, BONUS POINTS: when the excluded (or desired) terminology is in the same Congressional Act. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A claim that one company negligently hired another to transport goods is not preempted by the FAAAA because States retain authority  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail  Held: The cruise lines’ use of the docks is sufficient to establish that they used “property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government”; Ha vana Docks is not required to establish that the cruise lines trafficked in Havana Dock’s property interest. Pp. 8–16. (a) Title III generally makes any person who “traffics in property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government . . ....

Send us Fan Mail  A federal court that has previously stayed claims in a pending ac tion under §3 of the FAA has jurisdiction to confirm or vacate a result ing arbitral award on those claims as prescribed in §9 and §10 of the FAA; nothing in the FAA precludes the normal operation of federal jurisdiction regarding live claims pending before a federal court.  LokiEsq. Law Rev. RJ Dieken, Esq Support...

Send us Fan Mail  First Choice has established a present injury to its First Amend ment associational rights sufficient to confer Article III standing.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail In Louisiana v. Callais , the Supreme Court held that Louisiana’s congressional map (SB8), which created an additional majority-Black district, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because race predominated in its design without a sufficient justification. The Court clarified that while compliance with §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 can qualify as a compelling interest...

Send us Fan Mail  Because §1446(b)(1)’s text, structure, and context are inconsistent with equitable tolling, Enbridge’s removal was untimely. Pp. 5–14. (a) The fact that the 30-day removal deadline in §1446(b)(1) is non jurisdictional does not automatically render it subject to equitable toll ing. While jurisdictional requirements “cannot be waived or forfeited” and “do not allow for equitable ex...

Send us Fan Mail Totality of the Circumstances is required in considering Probable Cause for a temporary stop. Probable Cause being defined as: "Articulable reasonable suspicion for the officers belief that 'criminal activity is afoot.'" Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A U.S. Army specialist injured while stopping a Taliban suicide bomber at a base in Afghanistan sued military contractor Fluor Corporation for negligence after the attacker—an Afghan hired under the military’s “Afghan First” program—was allegedly poorly supervised. Lower courts dismissed the case, holding that state-law claims against contractors are preempted during wartime under...

Send us Fan Mail  Chevron has plausibly alleged a close relationship between its challenged crude-oil production and the performance of its federal avgas refining duties—not a tenuous, remote, or peripheral one—and has therefore satisfied the “relating to” requirement of the federal of ficer removal statute.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail The Court held that Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy,” as applied to a licensed counselor providing only talk therapy, likely violates the First Amendment because it regulates speech based on content and viewpoint. Writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch concluded that the law does not merely regulate professional conduct but directly restricts what the counselor may say to...