Author: Andrew Hamm

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether a noncitizen, who may not apply for relief from removal if he has been convicted of a disqualifying offense listed in the Immigration and Nationality Act, is barred from applying for relief if his record of conviction is merely ambiguous as to whether it corresponds with an INA offense; and whether the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the Treasury had statutory authority under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 to expand the conscience exemption to the contraceptive-coverage mandate. The petitions of the week are below the jump:

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether compulsory display-and-describe ultrasound laws, such as the Kentucky Ultrasound Informed Consent Act, abridge physicians’ freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment; whether a floral designer’s First Amendment rights to free exercise and free speech protect her from having to create custom floral art celebrating same-sex weddings; and whether a Massachusetts ban on the possession of firearms and ammunition magazines for lawful purposes infringes an individual’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The petitions of the week are below the jump:

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether a person can be “seized” under the Fourth Amendment when he is not confined to a particular space, in a case arising out of Officer Darren Wilson’s “move on” order to Dorian Johnson and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and whether, in a case involving the mid-1930s purchase of artwork on behalf of a German state from a consortium of German Jews, an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides jurisdiction over claims that a foreign sovereign has violated international human-rights law when taking property from its own national within its own borders. The petitions of the week are below the jump:

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether the First Amendment invalidates a longstanding state constitutional provision limiting judges affiliated with any one political party to no more than a “bare majority” on the state’s highest courts and whether the Virgin Islands Supreme Court is bound by the Supreme Court’s equal-protection decisions when Congress explicitly applied the equal protection clause to the territory via a federal statute. The petitions of the week are below the jump:

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether district courts have inherent authority to release grand jury materials in extraordinary circumstances, as in the case of a researcher investigating the 1956 Galíndez affair, and whether Congress intended a statute giving a competitive-bidding preference to providers owned and controlled by veterans to trump the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act, which directs the government to acquire certain goods and services from nonprofit entities that employ blind and severely disabled individuals. The petitions of the week are below the jump:

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether the phrase “crime involving moral turpitude” in the Immigration and Nationality Act is void for vagueness and what showing is necessary to satisfy scrutiny of laws affecting the freedoms of speech and association outside the election context. The petitions of the week are below the jump:

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, the constitutionality of Ohio’s elevated burden of proof for certain criminal defendants seeking a new trial on the basis of newly discovered evidence; whether the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating public camping and sleeping constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment”; and whether three federal statutory provisions violate the First Amendment by conditioning the size of contributions to a political party on the content of the party’s speech. The petitions of the week are below the jump:

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether a school district’s decision to educate a child with disabilities outside the regular classroom violates the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s mainstreaming mandate and whether a court evaluating prejudice under Strickland v. Washington may hypothesize that the jury may have disbelieved the state’s case, as well as four legal questions arising out of the Flint water crisis. The petitions of the week are below the jump:

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether federal courts have the authority to impose partial filing fees on habeas petitioners, whether a federal removal statute is unconstitutional under the suspension clause as applied to the respondent, whether the Uniform Code of Military Justice allows prosecution of a rape that occurred between 1986 and 2006 only if it was discovered and charged within five years, and whether the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act’s predicate exception encompasses alleged violations of broad, generally applicable state statutes, such as the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act. The petitions of the week are below the jump:

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether Alaska’s $500 individual-to-candidate and individual-to-group contribution limits violate the First Amendment, whether Indian tribal courts have jurisdiction to adjudicate civil tort claims against nonmembers, and whether the Fifth and Sixth Amendments prohibit a federal court from basing a criminal defendant’s sentence on conduct underlying a charge of which the defendant was acquitted by a jury. The petitions of the week are below: