[Matal v. Tam (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The Disparagement Clause prohibits trademarks that disparage the members of a racial or ethnic group and violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. delivered the opinion for the 8-0 majority. The Court held that, the plain meaning of the text clearly indicated that the Disparagement Clause applied to racial and ethnic groups, and therefore the Clause applied to the mark at issue in this case. The Clause also facially discriminated based on viewpoint, as giving offense constitutes a viewpoint. Because the PTO simply approved trademarks, they were not government speech--to which the First Amendment prohibitions on viewpoint regulation did not apply--and holding otherwise would constitute a massive and unwise expansion of the government speech doctrine. Similarly, PTO approval of a trademark did not constitute government-provided subsidy, an area of cases in which viewpoint discrimination was sometimes determined to be constitutional. The Disparagement Clause was also not a permissible regulation of commercial speech because it was not narrowly drawn to serve a substantial interest. Any asserted interest of avoiding offense clearly contravened the purpose of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech, and the Clause was too broad to serve the government’s other stated interest of protecting the orderly flow of commerce.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment in which he argued that the First Amendment’s protections against viewpoint discrimination clearly applied in this case. There are very narrow and specific categories in which the government may regulate speech--such as fraud, defamation, and incitement--and the trademark at issue here did not fall within these categories. Instead, the Disparagement Clause specifically singled out a subset of messages that the government determined to be offensive and prohibits them, which was plainly unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. Justice Kennedy also wrote that the majority opinion does not govern how any other provisions of the Lanham Act should be interpreted under the First Amendment, nor was the government speech doctrine at issue in this case. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Elena Kagan joined in the opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. In his separate opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that all government regulation of commercial speech should be analyzed under the strict scrutiny standard.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Dean v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
Levon Dean, Jr. and Jamal Dean were brothers who agreed to participate in a robbery of a local drug dealer known as J.R. with Jessica Cabbell and Sarah Berg. On April 15, 2013, Levon and Jamal accompanied Berg to the Palmer House Motel in Sioux City, Iowa, to confront J.R. Jamal pulled a gun on J.R. and hit him on the head with the firearm. Berg, Jamal, and Levon fled the scene with J.R.’s car, cell phone, and methamphetamines. Later that month, Levon and Jamal robbed another methamphetamine dealer, C.B., at gunpoint in his home. In a similar manner, Jamal hit C.B. with his gun and fled the scene in C.B.’s car with $300, methamphetamines, and other electronics. During this robbery, the Deans ordered Hope Marsh who was living at the residence to come with and live with them. The Deans were eventually arrested in May of 2013.
The Deans were convicted of multiple crimes including robbery in violation of the Hobbs Act, which requires that a crime “obstruct, delay, or affect commerce.” Levon Dean, Jr. was sentenced to 400 months, including a 360-month mandatory minimum consecutive sentence pursuant to the sentence for possession of a firearm in furtherance of a violent crime under 18 U.S.C. §924(c). Without the mandatory minimum, Levon’s sentence guideline would have been 84-105 months. On appeal, Levon Dean challenged the sufficiency the evidence to establish a nexus to interstate commerce as the Hobbs Act requires, the sufficiency of evidence for his firearm convictions, and the reasonableness of his sentence. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the district court’s decision to follow the precedent it established in United States v. Hatcher, which held that the district court did not have discretion to reconsider mandatory minimums in sentences. The appellate court held that the district court’s sentence of 40-months to be served consecutively with the 360-month sentence was “substantively reasonable and not an abuse of the district court’s discretion.”


[Dean v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
A sentencing court may use its discretion when calculating an appropriate sentence for a felony serving as the basis for a conviction under 18 U.S.C. §924(c). Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., delivered the opinion for the unanimous Court, which held that §924(c) did not prevent sentencing courts from exercising the discretion that they have traditionally enjoyed when tasked with evaluating factors of a case. Although the government argued that sentencing should be calculated purely for each individual offense under §924(c), which made it a separate offense in a drug trafficking crime to use or possess a firearm, without considering the sentences the defendant might be facing on other counts, the Court determined that the law did not require such an approach. Therefore, a sentencing court could consider the other sentences, and their mandatory minimums, that a defendant might be facing in determining an overall appropriate sentence under 18 U.S.C. §924(c).


[Hernandez v. Mesa (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
On June 7, 2010, Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, a fifteen-year-old Mexican national, was playing with friends on the cement culvert of the Rio Grande that separates El Paso, Texas from Juarez, Mexico. Hernandez and his friends took turns running up the incline of the culvert to touch the barbed-wire fence on the U.S. side of it and then running back down the incline to the Mexican side. Jesus Mesa, Jr., a U.S. Border Patrol Agent, arrived on the scene and detained one of Hernandez’s friends at the U.S. border, while Hernandez retreated to the Mexican side of the River and hid behind the pillars of the Paso del Norte bridge. Mesa, still standing on the U.S. side of the border, fired at least two shots at Hernandez, one of which struck him in the head and killed him.
Six months after Hernandez’s death, his parents sued Mesa in federal district court in Texas and alleged that Mesa violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution through the use of deadly force and the failure to use of reasonable force when making arrests. Mesa moved to dismiss and argued that Hernandez lacked constitutional protection because he was an alien without voluntary attachments to the United States who was standing in Mexico when he was killed. Applying a formalist test, the district court concluded that the Constitution’s deadly-force protections stop at the border for non-citizens like Hernandez. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part and held that the Fifth Amendment protections against deadly force applied but not the Fourth Amendment protections. The appellate court also held that Mesa was not entitled to qualified immunity. Rehearing the case en banc, the appellate declined to answer the Fifth Amendment question, but held that Mesa was entitled to qualified immunity and that Hernandez could not assert a claim under the Fourth Amendment because he was a Mexican citizen without a significant voluntary connection to the United States who was on Mexican soil when he was shot and killed.


[Hernandez v. Mesa (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
Qualified immunity may not be granted based on facts that were unknown to the officer at the time of the incident, and a court should consider whether an implied right of action is appropriate under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents before addressing sensitive Fourth Amendment questions. In a per curiam opinion, the Court held that the lower appellate court erred in addressing the Fourth Amendment question in this case before considering whether there was an implied right of action under the Bivens precedent. Although this approach is appropriate in many cases, in this case the resolution of the Fourth Amendment question has such potentially far-reaching consequences that it may not be appropriate for the judicial branch to answer. Recent precedent established that a Bivens remedy is not available when there are “special factors counseling hesitation” from the courts, which might apply in this case. The Court also held that, because qualified immunity analysis was based on whether a reasonable officer would know that his actions were unlawful, the only relevant facts were what the officer knew at the time of the incident.
In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that a remedy under the Bivens precedent should only be available in cases that are meaningfully similar to Bivens. Because this case was not, a Bivens remedy should not be available. Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he argued that precedent had established that the extraterritorial reach of the Constitution was determined by functional concerns, not formal ones. In this case, because the officer was a U.S. official who did not know whether he was shooting at an American citizen or whether the bullet would land in U.S. or Mexican territory, the constitutional protections of the Fourth Amendment should apply. Not applying the Fourth Amendment to the facts of this case based solely on the location of the injury relative to the border line would create an anomalous precedent that would be difficult to apply to other border cases. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined in the dissent.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Lewis v. Clarke (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
On October 22, 2011, Brian Lewis was driving southbound on Interstate 95 in Norwalk, Connecticut, when William Clarke crashed into him while driving a limousine owned by the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority. Lewis sued Clarke, claiming that he was injured as a result of Clarke’s negligent and careless driving. Clarke filed a motion to dismiss the complaint and argued that, because he was driving the limousine as an employee of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because he was entitled to tribal sovereign immunity. The trial court denied the motion and held that it did not lack subject matter jurisdiction under the doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity because Lewis sought damages from Clarke personally, not from the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority. The Connecticut Supreme Court reversed and held that tribal sovereign immunity extended to Clarke as a member of the tribe acting within the scope of his employment as a limousine driver with the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority.


[Lewis v. Clarke (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
Tribal sovereign immunity is not implicated in a suit against a tribal employee in his individual capacity, and an indemnification provision cannot extend tribal sovereign immunity to conduct that it would not otherwise cover. Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the 8-0 majority. The Court held that the fact that an employee was acting within the scope of his employment for the tribe when the tort was committed was not sufficient to give rise to tribal sovereign immunity. In deciding whether sovereign immunity applies, courts traditionally look at whether the relief sought is actually from the sovereign. Because an individual-capacity lawsuit is only against that individual, the sovereign is not a real party in interest and the individual cannot assert sovereign immunity. These principles apply equally to tribal sovereign immunity cases. The Court also held that an indemnification provision does not alter who is the real party in interest and cannot extend tribal sovereign immunity to conduct that it would not otherwise cover.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment in which he argued that tribal sovereign immunity does not extend to suits arising out of commercial activity conducted off of the tribal territory. In her separate opinion concurring in the judgment, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that tribes interacting with non-tribal members outside of the tribal territory should be subject to general non-discriminatory state laws.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
Juan Esquivel-Quintana was admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 2000. In 2009, he pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor under the relevant statute in California. In California, unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor is defined as an act of sexual intercourse with a person who is a minor and not the spouse of the perpetrator. The statute further provides that anyone who is convicted of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is more than three years younger than the perpetrator is guilty of a misdemeanor or a felony.
After 2009, Esquivel-Quintana moved to Michigan, which is where the Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings against him based on the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA states that a non-citizen may be removed from the United States if he is convicted of an aggravated felony such as sexual abuse of a minor. An Immigration Judge ruled that Esquivel-Quintana’s conviction under California law constituted sexual abuse of a minor and ordered his removal. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed and held that the term “sexual abuse of a minor” in the INA encompassed convictions under the relevant California statute without looking at the individual facts of the case. The U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the BIA’s decision. The appellate court determined that the BIA’s decision was entitled to deference as a permissible interpretation of an ambiguous statute under the Supreme Court’s precedent in Chevron, USA, Inc v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., and that the rule of lenity--requiring that statutory ambiguity be resolved in the defendant’s favor--did not apply in a civil case.


[Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The crime of “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” as defined by California law cannot be categorically considered the aggravated felony of “sexual abuse of a minor” for the purpose of mandatory removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion for the 8-0 majority. The Court held that, to determine whether an underlying conviction qualifies as an aggravated felony for the purpose of removability under the INA, courts presume that conviction rested upon the least of the acts criminalized by the statute. In the case of the California law criminalizing “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor,” a minor is someone 18 years old or younger, so the minimum activity that the statute criminalizes was consensual sex between an 18-year-old and a 21-year-old. The Court held that, in the context of statutory rape offenses that criminalize sexual intercourse based solely on the ages of participants, the term “sexual abuse of minor” refers to minors under the age of 16. The language and structure of the statute, as well as related federal statutes and state criminal codes all support this interpretation. Because the least criminal activity that the California law criminalizes is not included under the INA’s definition of “sexual abuse of a minor,” the California law cannot be categorically considered “sexual abuse of a minor for the purpose of removal under the INA.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Midland Funding v. Johnson (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
In 2014, Aleida Johnson filed for bankruptcy in Alabama bankruptcy court under Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code. In 2003 and years prior, Midland Funding had purchased a bundle of debt worth almost $2,000 from Johnson, so after she filed for bankruptcy, Midland Funding filed a proof of claim in the same court. Because the date of the last transaction in the account in question occurred in 2003 and the statute of limitations for collecting unpaid debt in Alabama is six years, Johnson sued Midland Funding in federal district court argued that the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) prevented bankruptcy actions that had passed their statutes of limitations.
Midland Funding moved to dismiss, and the district court granted the motion. The district court determined determined that, while the FDCPA prohibited the filing of a proof of claim known to be barred by the statute of limitations, the U.S. Bankruptcy Code allowed a creditor to file a proof of claim even after the statute of limitations has run. The district court resolved that conflict by holding that the creditors’ right to file a claim precluded debtors from challenging that practice under the FDCPA. Johnson appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed and remanded the case. The appellate court found that, although the Bankruptcy Code allowed creditors to file claims barred by the statute of limitations, that did not preclude them from liability under the FDCPA for filing the claim.


[Midland Funding v. Johnson (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) does not prevent a creditor from filing a proof of claim on an unpaid debt in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceeding even after the statute of limitations on that debt has run. Justice Stephen G. Breyer delivered the opinion for the 5-3 majority. The Court held that the FDCPA only prohibits a debt collector from asserting any “false, deceptive, or misleading representation” or using an “unfair or unconscionable means” to collect on an unfair debt. Filing a proof of claim on a debt that is unenforceable because the statute of limitations has run does not count as “false” or “misleading” under the FDCPA. Although a claim is defined as a “right of payment” in the Bankruptcy Code, there is no requirement that the claim be enforceable. The Code treats the unenforceability of a claim as an affirmative defense, but the claim may still be filed and does not give rise to the type of practices the FDCPA was enacted to prevent. The Court also held that, while there is precedent that established that the filing of a claim that is known to be time barred was unfair in the civil suit context, that precedent does not extend to Chapter 13 proceedings. The Bankruptcy Code and the FDCPA have different purposes, and to allow an FDCPA suit to proceed in this case would upset the balance between the two pieces of legislation.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent in which she argued that a creditor who knowingly tries to collect a time-barred debt in bankruptcy proceedings has violated the FDCPA. Because invoking the statute of limitations is an affirmative defense, creditors have historically sought to collect on time-barred debts by filing claims and hoping that either the debtors do not respond or do not invoke the defense, which allows creditors to collect default judgments. This is precisely the type of practice that the FDCPA was enacted to prevent, and it has been interpreted as doing so in the civil suit context. Justice Sotomayor argued that the FDCPA should also prevent this practice in bankruptcy court because there are no additional protections for the debtor in that context that make the time-barred nature of the claim more likely to be noticed than there are in a civil suit. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Elena Kagan joined in the dissent.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Kindred Nursing Centers Limited Partnership v. Clark (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
Olive Clark and Joe Wellner were both residents at the Fountain Circle Care and Rehabilitation Center, a nursing home operated by Kindred Nursing Centers Limited Partnership (Kindred Nursing) in Winchester, Kentucky. Prior to their admission to the facility, each had designated their relatives as attorneys-in-fact, which gave the relatives broad authority to enter into transactions and agreements on their behalf. Their relatives, Janis E. Clark and Beverly Wellner, used their status as attorneys-in-fact to sign an alternative dispute resolution agreements with the facility that stipulated that any disputes arising from the Olive’s and Joe’s stays at the facility would be resolved through arbitration.
Olive and Joe both passed away in the spring of 2009, and Janis and Beverly each filed lawsuits against Kindred Nursing for personal injury and wrongful death on their behalf. Kindred Nursing moved to compel arbitration based on the agreements that Janis and Beverly had signed. The state trial court initially dismissed both judicial actions in favor of arbitration, but later reversed in accordance with the precedent the Supreme Court of Kentucky established in Ping v. Beverly Enterprises, Inc. In that case, the Supreme Court of Kentucky held that the power of attorney that authorized an attorney-in-fact to manage the principal’s “financial affairs” and “health-care decisions” did not include the authority to bind the principal to an optional arbitration agreement. The Supreme Court of Kentucky affirmed the lower court’s decision.


[Kindred Nursing Centers Limited Partnership v. Clark (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) preempts Kentucky state-law precedent that requires a clear statement in the power of attorney agreement in order to grant an attorney-in-fact the power to bind her principal to an arbitration agreement. Justice Elena Kagan delivered the opinion for the 7-1 majority. The Court held that, under the FAA, arbitration agreements may only be found invalid and unenforceable based on legal rules that would apply to any contract. Rules that apply only to arbitration agreements, even if they do not do so explicitly but focus on contracts that have the characteristics of arbitration agreements, violate the FAA and are therefore preempted. Because Kentucky’s clear statement rule focuses exclusively on the primary characteristic of an arbitration agreement--the waiver of the right to a jury trial--it does not put arbitration agreements on equal footing with other contracts, and therefore the FAA preempts it. To hold otherwise would allow states to undermine the express purpose of the FAA.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent in which he argued that the FAA did not apply in state court proceedings and therefore did not preempt the state-law precedent in this case.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Packingham v. North Carolina (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
Lester Packingham was convicted of taking “indecent liberties” with a minor in 2002, as a 21-year-old college student. Per North Carolina law, he was sentenced to a standard 10-12 month imprisonment, followed by a 24-month supervised release. Aside from being told to “remain away from” the minor, his conviction entailed no special stipulations. Packingham was arrested in 2010 after authorities came across a post on his Facebook profile, thanking God for having a parking ticket dismissed. He was arrested for violating North Carolina’s laws regarding convicted sex offenders, which barred the offender’s access to social media websites.
In his defense, Packingham argued that the law violated his First Amendment rights. He was convicted in trial court, which found that the state had a weighty interest in keeping sexual predators off of social media websites for the “protection of minors.” The North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed and held that the social media website provision of the law was unconstitutional. The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed and held that the law was constitutional by finding that the law was a “limitation on conduct” and not a restriction of free speech. The court found that the state had a sufficient interest in “forestalling the illicit lurking and contact” of registered sex offenders and their potential future victims.


[Packingham v. North Carolina (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The North Carolina law prohibiting registered sex offenders from accessing various websites, where minors are known to be active and have accounts, regardless of whether or not the sex offender directly interacted with a minor violates the First Amendment. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy delivered the opinion of the 5-3 majority. The Court held that, in order to be valid under the First Amendment, a content-neutral regulation of speech must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest. In other words, the law cannot burden substantially more speech than necessary to advance the government’s legitimate interest. In this case, although the government has a legitimate interest in protecting children from abuse, this law too broadly restricted access to all sorts of websites. Even if it were limited only to social media websites, the law would still unconstitutionally restrict speech because of the vast number of functions that social media websites perform in the modern world. First Amendment jurisprudence has never allowed for such a broad regulation of speech, and similarly broad restrictions have been struck down. However, a state could accomplish the same goal by enacting a more narrowly written statute.
Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment in which he argued that the majority opinion erred in equating the entire internet with a traditionally public forum instead of recognizing the importance of allowing states to regulate certain types of websites. The government certainly has a compelling interest in protecting children from potential sexual predation, and the internet is a place that allows sexual offenders to contact children in ways that they might not otherwise be able, so the government should be able to regulate sex offenders’ use of the internet to an extent. However, the North Carolina law at issue here went too far because it encompassed websites that were unlikely to facilitate a sex crime against a child. Because the North Carolina law prohibited more speech than necessary to further the government’s significant interest, it violated the First Amendment. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas joined in the opinion concurring in the judgment.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Coventry Health Care of Missouri, Inc. v. Nevils (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
Jodie Nevils was a federal employee with a Coventry Health Care of Missouri (Coventry) health insurance plan that was governed by the Federal Employee Health Benefits Act (FEHBA), which expressly preempts state laws and regulations governing health insurance and benefits plans. After Nevils was awarded a settlement in a personal injury case, Coventry enforced a claim to the settlement money. Nevils sued Coventry and argued that Missouri law prevented insurance companies from claiming the proceeds of personal injury settlements. The trial court entered summary judgment in favor of the insurance company and held that the FEHBA preempted state law regarding insurance companies’ claims to the proceeds of personal injury settlement. The Supreme Court of Missouri reversed and held that the FEHBA did not preempt state law in this case because an insurance company’s claim to a personal injury settlement does not clearly relate to “the nature, provision, or extent of coverage or benefits.”
After the Supreme Court of Missouri’s decision, the Office of Personnel Management created a new formal rule. That rule stated that an insurance carrier’s rights and responsibilities with respect to the settlement of an individual covered by that insurance carrier’s plan “relate to the nature, provision, and extent of coverage or benefits” for the purpose of the FEHBA. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently granted certiorari for this case and vacated and remanded the lower court’s decision for reconsideration in light of this new rule. On remand, the Supreme Court of Missouri held that there is no precedent that establishes that a federal agency’s interpretation of a preemption clause receives judicial deference. Therefore, the Supreme Court of Missouri again determined that the FEHBA did not preempt Missouri state law.


[Coventry Health Care of Missouri, Inc. v. Nevils (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The Federal Employees Health Benefits Act (FEHBA) preempts state laws that prohibit insurance companies from claiming the proceeds of personal injury settlements pursuant to their contracts, and the express preemption clause of the FEHBA does not violate the Supremacy Clause. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the 8-0 majority. The Court held that the relevant contractual provisions “relate to the nature, provision, or extent of coverage or benefits,” including with respect to the payment of benefits, under the language of the FEHBA. Because the contractual provisions at issue grant the insurance carriers rights to payments in exchange for the benefits they provide, they clearly fall within the language of the statute. The Court also held that Congress used the language “relate to,” which has traditionally been interpreted broadly with respect to federal preemption of state laws. The statutory context and purpose, along with the significant federal interests at stake, also support this interpretation. Because the federal statute--not the contract at issue--overrides the state law, the Court determined that this scheme did not violate the Supremacy Clause.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a statute that conferred an executive agency the power to create contracts that preempt state law might be an unconstitutional grant of power to the Executive Branch. However, because Nevils did not make that argument, the Court did not address it.
Justice Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[County of Los Angeles v. Mendez (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
In October 2010, Deputies Christopher Conley and Jennifer Pederson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department responded to a tip from an informant that wanted parolee Ronnie O’Dell had been seen in front of the nearby residence of Paula Hughes. The officers were informed that Angel Mendez and Jennifer Lynn Garcia lived together in the backyard of the Hughes residence. Although they did not have a search warrant, other officers directed Deputies Conley and Pederson to search the backyard. After determining that O’Dell was not in any of the three storage sheds in Hughes’ backyard, the deputies proceeded to a wooden shed surrounded by an A/C unit, clothes locker, clothes, and other belongings. The deputies did not knock and announce their presence. Deputy Conley, upon opening the door, saw the silhouette of a person holding a rifle through a curtain in the shed. Conley yelled “Gun!” and both deputies proceeded to shoot Mendez and Garcia. Whether Mendez was merely moving the gun or was pointing it at the deputies was subject to conflicting testimony at trial. As a result, Mendez required amputation of his right leg below the knee, and Garcia was shot in the back.
Mendez and Garcia sued Conley and Pederson and alleged that the deputies, in their official capacity, deprived them of their Fourth Amendment rights by performing an unjustified warrantless search and that the deputies failed to adhere to the knock-and-announce rule, which requires that officers announce their presence before they enter a home. The district court found for the plaintiffs on both these allegations and also held that, although the officers’ use of force was reasonable under the circumstances, they were liable for the shooting under the Ninth Circuit’s provocation rule. That rule holds an officer liable for use of deadly force where the officer intentionally or recklessly provokes a violent confrontation via a Fourth Amendment violation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s determination that the search violated the Fourth Amendment but reversed the knock-and-announce rule holding that because there was no controlling Ninth Circuit precedent on whether officers must announce themselves again at a separate residence on the same property. The appellate court also held that the officers were liable under the provocation rule because their unjustified search of the occupied shed led to the shooting.


[County of Los Angeles v. Mendez (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s provocation rule has no basis in the Fourth Amendment, and the lower court erroneously conflated multiple Fourth Amendment violation claims. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., delivered the opinion for the 8-0 majority. The Court held that provocation rule essentially asks whether, once an officer’s use of force has been determined to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, there was a different Fourth Amendment violation that made the otherwise reasonable use of force unreasonable. Because this rule uses one constitutional violation to manufacture an excessive use of force claim that has already been rejected under established Fourth Amendment precedent, it is an improper rule that lacks a constitutional basis. If the defendant has multiple Fourth Amendment violation claims, they should each be analyzed separately. The Court also held that, in its proximate cause analysis regarding the warrantless entry, the lower court erroneously conflated distinct Fourth Amendment claims.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Water Splash, Inc. v. Menon (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
Water Splash, Inc. is a Delaware corporation that makes aquatic playgrounds known as “splash pads” that are popular in urban areas. Tara Menon is a Canadian citizen who lives in Quebec, Canada, and at one point worked for Water Splash as a regional sales representative. Later, Menon began to work for South Pool, a Water Splash competitor. Sometime in 2012, Water Splash learned that South Pool had used some of its drawings and designs when it submitted a bid to the City of Galveston to construct splash pads at two of its city parks, and Water Splash subsequently sued Menon in Texas state court. Water Splash served Menon by mail, as allowed by a Texas Rule of Civil Procedure. When Menon did not respond, the trial court award Water Splash a default judgment.
Menon filed a motion for a new trial seeking to set aside the default judgment because service was not accomplished pursuant to the Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters (the “Hague Service Convention”), a treaty that governs service of process from one member state to another. Both the United States and Canada are signatories to the treaty. The trial court denied Menon’s motion for a new trial but the Texas Court of Appeals reversed and held that the Hague Service Convention did not authorize service by mail. The Texas Court of Appeals denied a motion for a rehearing en banc, and the Supreme Court of Texas denied review.


[Water Splash, Inc. v. Menon (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The Hague Service Convention does not prohibit service of process by mail. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. delivered the opinion of the unanimous Court, which held that the Hague Service Convention allows for different methods of service, and Article 10(a) specifically mentions postal channels as a method of sending judicial documents as long as the receiving nation does not object. Although the text of the Article does not expressly refer to service of process, the text and structure of the Hague Service Convention as a whole indicate that it deals with service of process. Therefore, Article 10(a) must be construed as allowing service of process by mail. Even if the relevant language were interpreted as ambiguous, the drafting history, the Executive Branch’s interpretation, and the interpretation of foreign courts support the reading that the Hague Service Convention does not prohibit service of process by mail.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) protects employees from unexpected losses in their retirement plans by putting in place required safeguards on plans that qualify for ERISA protections. Church plans are exempted from the Act and its protections to prevent excessive entanglement of the government with religion through regulation.
Maria Stapleton and the other plaintiffs in this case are a group of employees who work for Advocate Health Care Network (Advocate), which operates hospitals, inpatient, and outpatient treatment centers through northern Illinois, and are members of Advocate’s retirement plan. Advocate formed in 1995 as the result of a merger between two religiously affiliated hospital systems (though neither system was owned or financially operated by the church with which it was affiliated). Advocate is also affiliated with a church, and though it is not owned or financially operated by the church, it maintains contracts with the church and “affirms [the church’s] ministry.” The plaintiffs in this case sued Advocate and argued that the Advocate retirement plan is subject to ERISA, and therefore Advocate has breached its fiduciary duty by failing to adhere to ERISA’s requirements. The defendants moved for summary judgment because the Advocate plan fell under the ERISA exemption for church plans. The district court denied the motion because it determined that a plan established and maintained by a church-affiliated organization was not a church plan within the meaning of the statutory language. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed, and this case was consolidated with two other ones presenting the same issue before the Supreme Court.


[Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The “church plan” exemption of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) applies to plans that are maintained by a qualifying church-affiliated organization, even if that organization did not originally establish the plan. Justice Elena Kagan delivered the opinion for the 8-0 majority. The Court held that the clear language of the statute stated that a church plan “includes” a plan maintained by a church-affiliated organization in the exemption. The plain meaning of that language was therefore that a plan maintained by a church-affiliated organization qualified for the exemption, regardless of whether that organization established it. This reading gave full effect to the language Congress chose and was supported by legislative history.
In her concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that, while she agreed with the interpretation of the statutory text, the outcome was troubling because it resulted in employees of large healthcare organizations that in nearly all respects function as secular organizations being denied ERISA’s protections. Since so many “church-affiliated” organizations bear little resemblance to the organizations that Congress was originally considering when it enacted the statutory language, Congress might choose to take a different path.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Honeycutt v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
Terry Honeycutt was a salaried employee who worked at Brainerd Army Store, which was owned by his brother, Tony Honeycutt. In 2008, when Terry noticed an increase in the number of “edgy looking” people purchasing Polar Pure, an iodine-based water purification product, he called the local police station to find out if there was anything he should know about it. The police confirmed Terry’s suspicion that Polar Pure was being used to manufacture methamphetamine and that he shouldn’t sell it if he felt uncomfortable. Brainerd Army Store was the only place that sold Polar Pure locally, and the product was kept behind the counter, so only the Honeycutt brothers sold it. Over the course of the next year, the Honeycutt brothers sold increasing amounts of Polar Pure. The Drug Enforcement Administration began investigating the brothers and the store, which culminated in a search warrant in 2010. The search warrant revealed that Polar Pure was the store’s highest grossing item and that it generated $260,000 of profit. After the DEA agents seized the store’s inventory of Polar Pure, the number of area meth labs using the iodine method dropped to “insignificant” levels. A grand jury indicted both brothers. Tony pled guilty, and Terry went to trial, where he was convicted on 11 of the 14 counts with which he was charged. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to concurrent terms of 60 months for each count, but the jury did not order any forfeiture of the proceeds of the sales, because it found that, as a salaried employee, Terry did not reap the proceeds of the conspiracy.
On appeal the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part by holding that the doctrine of joint and several liability applied to co-conspirators for the purpose of forfeiture of the proceeds of drug sales. For the purposes of the forfeiture statute, a defendant may be jointly and severally liable for the proceeds of drug sales obtained by others with whom the defendant participated in the crime. Therefore, in this case, the district court erred in not ordering forfeiture of the proceeds.


[Honeycutt v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The federal forfeiture statute does not require joint and several liability among co-conspirators for any reasonably foreseeable proceeds of conspiracy. Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the 8-0 majority. The Court held that the plain text and structure of the relevant sections of the statute indicated that Congress did not intend for the statute to require joint and several liability. The statute limited forfeiture to property flowing from or used in the crime itself; in other words, forfeiture was limited to tainted property. Joint and several liability, however, would require the forfeiture of untainted property. Similarly, the language the statute used to describe forfeitable property was best interpreted as referring to only property that the defendant individually obtained. This interpretation also conformed with the structure of the broader statute, in which Congress provided for the forfeiture of substitute property, which would not have been necessary if Congress had intended to incorporate joint and several liability. Interpreting the statute as requiring joint and several liability would not only run counter to its language but would also circumvent the statutory scheme that Congress intended to establish.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc. (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
Lexmark International, Inc. (Lexmark) owns many patents for its printer toner cartridges. The customers who buy Lexmark’s cartridges may choose a cartridge subject to a “Return Program,” which is a combination single-use patent and contract license, and those who purchase the Return Program are given a discount on the cartridge in exchange for agreeing to use the cartridge once and then return the empty cartridge to Lexmark. Otherwise, customers may choose a cartridge free of restrictions on its use. Some of Lexmark’s cartridges sold abroad and all of the domestically-sold cartridges at issue were subject to both a discount and the Return Program. Impression Products, Inc. (Impression) acquired the cartridges at issue after a third party physically changed the cartridges to enable re-use in violation of the single-use Return Program. Then, Impression Products acquired the cartridges abroad and resold them in the United States.
Lexmark sued Impression and alleged that Impression infringed on Lexmark’s patents because Impression Products acted without authorization from Lexmark to resell and reuse the cartridges. Impression argued that, under the doctrine of exhaustion, Impression’s resale of the cartridges is non-infringing because Lexmark, in transferring the title by selling the cartridges initially, granted the requisite authority. The district court granted Impression’s motion to dismiss as it related to the domestically sold cartridges and held that the patent-holder’s rights were exhausted when the initial sale was authorized and unrestricted. The motion was denied as it related to the foreign-sold cartridges, however. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part by holding that Lexmark’s sale did not “confer authority” to Impression to resell without infringing on the patent. The appellate court also held that Lexmark’s foreign sales did not confer authority to import, sell, or use the cartridges, and it did not waive Lexmark’s rights to its patent.


[Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc. (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
A patentee’s decision to sell an item exhausts all of its patent rights in that item, even if the e patentee purports to impose post-sale restrictions, and regardless of whether the sale occurs domestically or internationally. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. delivered the opinion for the 7-1 majority. The Court held that the Patent Act had long recognized the common law doctrine of patent exhaustion as a way to limit patentees’ power to exclude others from using their patented products. Under the doctrine, once a patentee sold an item, that item was the property of the buyer, and the buyer could act according to the rights and benefits that come with ownership. Therefore, even when a patentee sold an item with an express restriction on its later use, that restriction could not be enforced under patent law, though it might be enforceable under contract law. Such patent exhaustion was uniform and automatic, regardless of how the patentee attempted to create and enforce an express restriction. The Court also held that an authorized sale outside of the United States triggered the doctrine of exhaustion just as a sale within the United States did because the common law doctrine does not have a territorial limit.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part in which she argued that a foreign sale should not exhaust a U.S. inventor’s patent rights because patent law is territorial. When a patentee had a U.S. patent that it wanted to exercise abroad, the patentee had to apply to each individual country in which it wanted to have an exclusive right to sell the product. Because U.S. patent law protection did not accompany a U.S. patentee’s sales abroad, U.S. patent law consequences should also not follow such foreign sales.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Turner v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
In 1984, the body of Catherine Fuller was discovered in an alley. She had clearly been badly beaten and raped. The police were unable to recover physical evidence that would identify the perpetrators, and the medical examiner was unable to determine how many people were involved. After investigating and conducting over 400 interviews, the police developed a theory that Fuller had been assaulted and killed by a large group of teens who had originally set out to rob her. A total of 13 teens were initially indicted and two of them, Harry Bennett and Calvin Alston, pled guilty and agreed to testify for the government. These two witnesses agreed on the outline of events but differed significantly on some of the details. Turner and several of the other defendants put forth alibi defenses, but some of their alibis conflicted with each other. The jury found Turner and nine of the other defendants guilty, and their convictions were affirmed on direct appeal.
Nearly 25 years later, Turner and several of the other original defendants moved to have their sentences vacated and claimed that they had not received fair trials because the government had withheld exculpatory evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland, which established that it was a violation of due process for the prosecution to suppress evidence favorable to the defense that is material to either guilt or punishment. Additionally, Turner and the other defendants argued that newly discovered evidence, including the recantations of Bennett and Alston, established that they were actually innocent of the crime. The trial court denied the motion, and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals affirmed because Turner and the other former defendants had not shown a reasonable probability that the outcome of their trials would have been different had the government disclosed the evidence in question and that the new evidence established their actual innocence by a preponderance of the evidence. The Supreme Court consolidated this case with another suit by one of the other original defendants.


[Turner v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The precedent of Brady v. Maryland does not require that the convictions in this case be overturned because the withheld evidence in question is not material under the standard established in Brady. Justice Stephen G. Breyer delivered the opinion of the 6-2 majority. The Court held that, under Brady v. Maryland, the government violated a defendant’s due process rights if it withheld evidence that was favorable to the defense and material to guilt or punishment. Evidence was material for the purpose of the Brady analysis when there was a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed, the proceeding would have had a different outcome. The burden was on the defendant to show that the suppression of the evidence in question prejudiced the trial such it undermined confidence in the outcome. In this case, considering the suppressed evidence in the context of the entire record, the Court held that the evidence in question was not sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome and therefore did not meet the standard for materiality under Brady.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion in which she argued that evidence was material under Brady when there was a reasonable probability that, had the undisclosed evidence been disclosed, the case would have resulted in either an acquittal or a hung jury rather than a conviction. Because all that was required was that the evidence convince a few jury members, the undisclosed evidence in this case clearly met the Brady materiality standard. Had the evidence been disclosed, the defendants would have been able to present a more unified defense, and there was a reasonable probability that such a defense would have persuaded one or more jurors that the prosecution had not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined in the dissent.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Lee v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
Jae Lee came to the United States from South Korea with his family in 1982 and has lived in the United States legally ever since, though he did not become a citizen. He eventually moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he got involved in the drug trade. In 2009, after a successful sting operation, Lee was arrested and charged with possession of ecstasy with intent to distribute. The government’s case against Lee was very strong, and on the advice of his attorney, Lee pled guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence. Lee’s attorney had assured him that the guilty plea would not have immigration consequences; however, Lee’s guilty plea constituted a conviction of an aggravated felony, which is a deportable offense under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Lee subsequently appealed his conviction and argued that he had received ineffective assistance of counsel under the standard established in Strickland v. Washington, which provides for a two-pronged test: whether the attorney’s counsel was deficient and whether the deficiency prejudiced the defendant. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld Lee’s conviction and determined that Lee could not satisfy the second prong of the Strickland test because there was not sufficient evidence that the outcome of Lee’s case would have been substantially different had he known about the risk of deportation.


[Lee v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
Under Strickland v. Washington, when a defendant claims that his plea was caused by ineffective assistance of counsel, the defendant can demonstrate that he was prejudiced by showing a reasonable probability that, but for his counsel’s errors, he would have gone to trial rather than accepting a plea. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. delivered the opinion for the 6-2 majority. The Court held that the relevant question was not whether the defendant would have been acquitted at trial but whether, had the defendant been properly advised, he would have chosen to exercise his right to a trial. Even if a defendant were highly likely to lose at trial, as was the case here, inadequate assistance of counsel may still prejudice his ability to weigh his options and their potential consequences in deciding whether to take a plea. Because this inquiry was necessarily a fact-specific one that must be conducted on a case-by-case basis, the Court declined to create a sweeping, per se rule. In this case, Lee successfully demonstrated that avoiding deportation was a determinative issue in his decision-making, and therefore he met the standard to demonstrate that he suffered prejudice under the Strickland v. Washington standard for ineffective assistance of counsel.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent in which he argued that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of adequate assistance of counsel did not require counsel to provide accurate advice about the consequences of taking a plea. However, even under Sixth Amendment analysis, the majority opinion erred by applying a standard that did not require the defendant to show that the ineffective assistance of counsel he received prejudiced the outcome of the proceeding. Precedent established that the prejudice inquiry was not limited to the stage of the proceeding at which the defendant received the ineffective assistance; instead, there must be a reasonable probability that the outcome of the whole proceeding would have been different. In this case, there is not sufficient evidence to show a reasonable probability that the result of the criminal proceeding would have been different. Therefore the defendant failed to show prejudice under the Strickland v. Washington standard. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. joined in the dissent.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Food Brands Group LLC (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
TC Heartland LLC (Heartland) is a company organized under Indiana law and headquartered in Indiana. Kraft Food Brands LLC (Kraft) is a company organized under Delaware law and with its principal place of business in Illinois. Heartland sold liquid water-enhancing products that it shipped to Delaware, pursuant to two of its contracts. Kraft sued Heartland in federal district court in Delaware and argued that these products infringed on Kraft’s patents for similar products. Heartland moved to dismiss the claim and argued that the Delaware lacked personal jurisdiction over the lawsuit because Heartland is not registered to do business in Delaware, has no local presence in Delaware, and does not solicit business in Delaware. The district court held that, under U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit precedent, the subsection of the general venue statute that allows a defendant to reside in many jurisdictions for the purpose of establishing jurisdiction applies to the patent venue statute. However, this precedent runs counter the the Supreme Court’s decision in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp., which held that the definition of corporate residence is limited to the jurisdiction of incorporation and that the subsection of the general venue statute does not expand jurisdiction under the patent venue statute. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision and held that Congress’ amendments to the general venue statute post-dated and therefore superseded the Fourco precedent.


[TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Food Brands Group LLC (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The subsection of the general venue statute that allows a corporation to reside in many jurisdictions for the purpose of establishing jurisdiction does not apply to the patent venue statute. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion of the unanimous Court, which held that its interpretation of the patent venue statute in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products Corp. was still controlling precedent. Although the general venue statute has been amended since that time, Congress has not amended the patent venue statute since its interpretation in Fourco, and the amendments to the general venue statute did not explicitly apply to patent venue. Additionally, the history of the patent venue statute indicated that it was not meant to dovetail with other venue statutes.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of the case.


[Howell v. Howell (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Facts]
John Howell, a veteran, and his ex-wife Sandra Howell divorced in 1991. The Arizona Superior Court granted Sandra half of John’s Military Retirement Plan (MRP) funds when the payments were to begin. John retired from the Air Force in 1992 and began receiving his retirement funds soon after. In 2005, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs determined that John suffered from degenerative joint disease in his shoulder, that the cause of the disease was directly related to his service, and that it caused him a net loss of 20% in his earnings. Because of this, he was entitled to tax-exempt military disability payments. To receive the disability payments, John had to waive an equal portion of his MRP benefits, which he did in July of 2004.
In 2013, Sandra sued John and claimed that she was still entitled to a full 50% of the MRP benefits John received, regardless of his waiver of a portion of his benefits due to disability. Both the Arizona Superior Court and the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed in Sandra’s favor. John appealed and cited the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling in Mansell v. Mansell, which held that the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act (USFSPA) preempted state courts from allowing the former spouses of veterans to claim interest in the waived portion of the veteran’s MRP. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court’s decision and stated that, while the Mansell standard was applicable before divorce proceedings were finalized and during the proceedings, courts were split regarding the rules after a divorce had been granted. The Court found that, because the lower court did not grant Sandra an interest in the disability sum itself, but rather an interest in John’s overall assets in an equal sum, then Sandra was free to require payment from John to make up for the losses she would suffer due to his waiver of a portion of the benefits shared between them.


[Howell v. Howell (2017) — Roberts Court (2016-2017) — Conclusion]
The Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act preempts a state court’s order for a veteran to pay a former spouse that spouse’s full portion of the veteran’s military retirement pay despite the veteran’s post-divorce waiver of the retirement pay in order to receive service-related disability benefits. Justice Stephen G. Breyer delivered the opinion for the 8-0 majority. The Court held that its decision in Mansell v. Mansell controlled and prevented state courts from treating the waived portion of military retirement pay as a divisible community asset for the purpose of divorce proceedings. Although the waiver in this case occurred after the divorce proceedings, the temporal difference does not alter the fact that the state court only had the power to award the former spouse an interest in the military retirement pay that was subject to later reduction; the state court could not eliminate this potential contingency.
In his opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that examining the purposes and objectives of Congress’ decision to preempt state law with federal law is an illegitimate basis to determine that a federal law preempts states’ laws. Regardless, such analysis was unnecessary to reach the decision in this case.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the discussion or decision of this case.


[Weaver v. Massachusetts (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
On August 10, 2003, Germaine Rucker was shot and killed. Kentel Myrone Weaver later admitted to shooting Rucker after the police questioned him. During jury selection for Weaver’s trial, the court officer closed the court to Weaver’s family and other members of the public due to overcrowding. Weaver was subsequently convicted of murder in the first degree. In 2011, Weaver filed a motion for a new trial and claimed that he was denied effective assistance of counsel because his counsel failed to object to the closure of the courtroom in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial.The trial court denied Weaver’s motion. On direct appeal, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts affirmed Weaver’s conviction. The court held that Weaver had not shown that he suffered prejudice from his counsel’s failure to object to the court closure. Although a Sixth Amendment violation typically constitutes a “structural error,” which is automatically presumed to be prejudicial, the court held that, when the structural error resulted from alleged ineffective assistance of counsel, the defendant must show that he suffered prejudice.


[Weaver v. Massachusetts (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
In the context of the violation of a right to a public trial during jury selection, when the structural error was first raised via an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, the defendant must demonstrate that he suffered prejudice in order to secure a new trial. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy delivered the opinion of the 7-2 majority. The Court held that structural errors were so fundamental that they were errors in the trial process itself and therefore were not susceptible to harmless error analysis. An error may still be structural despite not resulting in fundamental unfairness each time it occurred. The right to a public trial was one such error. Generally, a structural error that the defendant objected to at trial and raised a direct appeal automatically allowed for a new trial. However, when the defendant did not preserve the issue but only raised it later within the context of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, the defendant must meet the higher standard of the ineffective assistance claim and show that he suffered prejudice. When a structural error claim was raised at trial or on direct appeal, the systemic costs of remedying the error were relatively low. When the error was raised through an ineffective assistance of counsel claim during post-conviction proceedings, however, the costs were much higher, which justified placing this burden on the defendant. In this case, the defendant was unable to meet his burden to show that the violation of his right to a public trial was prejudicial to the outcome of his case, so he was not entitled to a new trial.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in which he argued that it is not clear from precedent that the Sixth Amendment right to a public trial extended to the jury selection phase. Additionally, a defendant cannot establish that he suffered prejudice sufficient to support a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel by showing that his counsel’s errors rendered the trial fundamentally unfair. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined in the concurring opinion. In his separate opinion concurring in the judgment, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. wrote that this case called for a straightforward application of the ineffective assistance of counsel test. To prevail on such a claim, the defendant must show that counsel’s performance was defective and that defect resulted in prejudice to the outcome of the trial. Because the defendant in this case could not meet that burden, he was not entitled to relief. Justice Gorsuch joined in the opinion concurring in the judgment.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote a dissent in which he argued that a defendant who successfully demonstrated that his attorney’s deficient performance resulted in a structural error should not have to meet the additional requirement of showing that the error was prejudicial. Precedent had established that structural errors were categorically exempt from harmless error analysis. In this case, however, the majority opinion subjected the public-trial violation to precisely the examination that the Court had previously established was inappropriate and impossible for structural errors. Justice Elena Kagan joined in the dissent.


[National Association of Manufacturers v. Department of Defense (2018) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
The Clean Water Act (CWA) provides for judicial review in instances where the Environmental Protection Agency’s action results in the issuance or denial of any permit or places restrictions on waste emissions or other activities related to the waters.On August 28, 2015, a final rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that defined the scope of “the waters of the United States” under the CWA came into effect. Numerous states and other organizations challenged the validity of the agencies’ rule and contended both that it did not conform with the CWA and was improperly adopted in violation of the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act. Following consolidation of the claims before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the National Association of Manufacturers intervened to join the plaintiffs and moved to dismiss. The plaintiffs argued that the CWA does not provide the federal circuit courts with jurisdiction over the agencies’ rule and that review is properly held in the district courts instead. The appellate court held that it had jurisdiction because, although the rule only defined the scope of U.S. waters, by defining its boundaries, the rule functionally placed restrictions on activity related to the waters. Therefore, the rule affected permitting requirements and thus had the practical effect of granting or denying permits.


[National Association of Manufacturers v. Department of Defense (2018) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
The Court reversed and remanded, holding because that the Waters of the United States Rule (WOTUS Rule or Rule) does not fall within the scope of Section 1369(b)(1) of the CWA, challenges to the rule must be filed in federal district courts rather than appellate courts.
Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Sotomayor explained that there are generally two avenues for challenging final EPA actions: (1) in federal district court under the Administrative Procedures Act, or (2) in federal appellate court if the challenged action falls under one of seven specifically enumerated categories. Here, the Court rejected the government's arguments that the WOTUS Rule falls under two of the categories of EPA actions that are exclusively reviewable at the appellate level in the first instance.
The Court held that the first category, under §1369(b)(1)(E), which pertains to agency actions “approving or promulgating any effluent limitation or other limitation under section 1311, 1312, 1316, or 1345” does not apply because the WOTUS Rule is not an effluent limitation. It is also not an "other limitation," which the statutory structure suggested must be similar to an effluent limitation. Further, the Rule was not promulgated under § 1311 because that section does not provide authority to define statutory terms appearing elsewhere in the CWA.
The second category, which pertains to actions falling under § 1369(b)(1)(F), encompasses and grants exclusive and original jurisdiction to courts of appeal to review EPA actions “issuing or denying any permit under section 1342.” The WOTUS Rule does not issue or deny individual permit applications, and the Court therefore rejected the argument that the Rule was exclusively reviewable in appellate court under § 1369(b)(1)(F).
Finally, the Court rejected a number of policy arguments the government offered in support of its position. Though acknowledging the persuasiveness of arguments in favor of judicial efficiency and national uniformity with regard to broad regulations, among others, the Court held that these contentions did not outweigh the importance of following the statutory text.


[Sandoz Inc. v. Amgen Inc. (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 established a process for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to license “biosimilar” products: products that are “highly similar” to already-approved biological products. Under the Act, biosimilar product applicants must provide notice to the seller of the original product at least 180 days prior to the first commercial marketing of the biosimilar product. The Act also requires the biosimilar seller to provide the original seller with the details of its application within 20 days of receiving notice of FDA review.
In May 2014, Sandoz Inc. filed an application for FDA approval of its product Zarxio, which was highly similar to Amgen Inc.’s product Neupogen (both products are bone marrow stimulants). On July 7, 2014, the FDA notified Sandoz that its application was under review, and the next day, Sandoz notified Amgen of the application. Later that month, Sandoz informed Amgen that it would not disclose the details of its application as required by the Act. On March 6, 2015, the FDA approved Sandoz’s application; Sandoz then notified Amgen of the FDA’s approval.
In October 2014, Amgen sued Sandoz and claimed that Sandoz violated the Act because it failed to disclose the details of its application and did not give proper notice of commercial marketing before the FDA’s approval of its biosimilar product. The district court held that failure to disclose application details under the Act does not authorize the original seller to receive damages from the biosimilar product seller or prevent the sale of the biosimilar product. The court also held that an applicant may give notice of commercial marketing before FDA approval. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated the district court’s ruling and held that effective notice may only be given after the FDA has approved the application. Therefore, Sandoz’s notice was effective in March 2015 rather than July 2014, and Sandoz could not sell its biosimilar product until 180 days after the March 2015 notice. The court also held that, because the Act only permits remedies based on patent infringement claims, Sandoz’s failure to disclose the details of its application did not violate the Act. Both parties filed petitions for writs of certiorari which were granted and consolidated.


[Sandoz Inc. v. Amgen Inc. (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
The Court held that the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 allows for commercial notice of a “biosimilar product” to be effective if given prior to approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but that the Act’s notice requirement is not enforceable with an injunction. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion for the unanimous Court, which held that the only relief that the Act provided for the applicant’s failure to turn over application and manufacturing information was the filing of a declaratory judgment action. The relevant section of the Act explicitly stated that declaratory relief was available, and therefore no other relief, whether damages or injunctive, was available. The larger context of the statute, which only provided for injunctive relief in the specific instance of a breach of confidentiality, supported this interpretation. Although federal law did not allow for injunctive relief, on remand, the lower court should consider whether injunctive relief may be available under the relevant state law. The Court also held that the plain text of the Act places the notice requirement in relation to the first commercial marketing, not the FDA’s approval. Therefore, the Act allows for effective notice to be given prior to approval by the FDA.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote a concurring opinion in which he argued that Congress granted the FDA the authority to interpret the Act, and if it concluded that a different interpretation was correct, it could properly deviate from the majority’s holding.


[Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates, Inc. (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
Land developer Steve Sherman sued the Town of Chester (Chester) and alleged a regulatory taking of his property because Chester prevented him from developing his land by requiring unfair and repetitive procedures. While that case was pending, a real estate company, Laroe Estates, Inc. (Laroe), sought to intervene in the case and claimed that it currently owned the property in question based on an initial 2003 agreement and a subsequent one in 2013. In 2013, TD Bank, which held a superior mortgage on the property, initiated foreclosure proceedings. Laroe and Sherman then entered into a new sales agreement that took the foreclosure proceedings into account, but TD Bank took possession of the property. The district court denied Laroe’s motion to intervene because Laroe was not the owner of an interest in the property at the time of the alleged taking and therefore lacked independent standing in the takings claim. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that, under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, Laroe was not required to show it independently had standing to intervene. The appellate court reasoned that the Second Circuit case United States Postal Service v. Brennan, which held that there is no need to impose a standing requirement on an intervenor if there is an established valid case or controversy, applied in this case.


[Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates, Inc. (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
An intervenor to a lawsuit must meet the requirements of Article III standing if the intervenor wishes to pursue relief that was not already requested by the plaintiff. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. delivered the opinion for the unanimous Court, which held that Article III required that plaintiffs establish standing on each of their claims. When there are multiple plaintiffs, at least one of plaintiffs must have standing for the relief requested in the complaint. The Court held that the same principle applied to intervenors. Therefore, if an intervenor sought a different type of relief than what the current plaintiff was seeking, it must establish Article III standing for that relief. In this case, it was unclear whether the intervenor sought the same relief as the original plaintiff. That issue must be resolved by the lower court in order to determine whether Laroe Estates, Inc. must establish Article III standing.


[Kokesh v. SEC (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Charles Kokesh for violating federal securities law by misappropriating funds from four business development companies. The district court found in favor of the SEC and ordered that Kokesh pay $34.9 million for “the ill-gotten gains causally connected” to Kokesh’s violations. On appeal, Kokesh argued that this “disgorgement” order is barred by the five-year statute of limitations on this type of claim because the SEC brought its action more than five years after the claims accrued. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s ruling. The appellate court held that the five-year statute of limitations did not apply to this case because the ordered payment was remedial rather than punitive in nature. The goal of disgorgement is not to punish a wrongdoer for illegal activity, but rather to return to the rightful owner whatever profits the wrongdoer gained in the course of the illegal activity. Therefore, a disgorgement payment may be ordered so long as the amount “reasonably approximates the ill-gotten gains causally connected to the Defendant’s violations.”


[Kokesh v. SEC (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disgorgement functions as a penalty, and therefore is subject to the five-year statute of limitations. Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered the opinion for the unanimous Court. The Court held that, although disgorgement was originally supposed to be a form of restitution, since the 1970s courts have ordered disgorgement in the SEC context to deprive defendants of their profits and as a form of deterrence to protect the investing public. In 1990, Congress authorized the SEC to seek monetary civil penalties; though that statute did not address disgorgement, courts continued to order that remedy. Subsequently, the Court determined that the five-year statute of limitations applied when the SEC sought statutory monetary penalties. Because disgorgement is a remedy for wrongs to the public instead of only to an individual plaintiff, it is meant to be deterrent rather than compensatory and therefore functions as a penalty to which the five-year statute of limitations should apply.


[Maslenjak v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
In April 1998, Divna Maslenjak, an ethnic Serb from modern-day Bosnia, met with a U.S. immigration official to seek refugee status for her and her family at the close of the Bosnian civil war. Through a translator, Maslenjak told the immigration official that the family feared persecution in their home region of Bosnia based on their Serbian ethnicity. Maslenjak also told the immigration official that the family feared reprisal because her husband had evaded conscription into the Bosnian Serb militia during the war. Maslenjak and her family were granted refugee status in 1999 and immigrated to the United States in September 2000. Maslenjak was naturalized as a U.S. citizen on August 3, 2007. During the naturalization process, Maslenjak denied ever having given false or misleading information to a U.S. official in order to gain entry to the United states or to avoid removal.
On October 7, 2007 Maslenjak’s husband, Ratko, was convicted on two counts of making false statements on a government document for his failure to disclose that he had in fact served as an officer in a Serbian military unit. To avoid deportation, Ratko applied for asylum. Testifying on his behalf at the asylum hearing, Maslenjak admitted that Ratko had served in the Serbian militia and that she had lied to the immigration officer during the refugee application interview in 1998. Maslenjak was subsequently charged with two counts of naturalization fraud for denying having ever given false or misleading information to a U.S. official. At trial, the jury was instructed that, in order to find Maslenjak guilty of fraudulently obtaining her naturalization, it need not find that her false statements were material to the decision to approve her naturalization, merely that she made them knowing their falsehood. Maslenjak was convicted on both counts, sentenced to two years probation, and stripped of her citizenship. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed her conviction and held that proof of a material false statement was not a required element of naturalization fraud.


[Maslenjak v. United States (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
In order for a naturalized American citizen to be stripped of her citizenship, the government has to prove that she obtained her citizenship illegally; if the underlying illegality is a false statement to government officials, the government must prove that the false statement influenced the citizenship process. Justice Elena Kagan delivered the opinion for the 9-0 majority. The Court held that that the plain text of the naturalization fraud statute required a causal connection between the illegal action and obtaining citizenship. The broader statutory context also supported this interpretation because it relied on the same causal connection between the requirements for naturalization and obtaining citizenship. In the case of a false statement to government officials, the required causal connection was present when the false statement sufficiently altered the citizenship process such that it influenced the award of citizenship. The standard to determine when a false statement “sufficiently altered” the process was an objective one. The government had to prove that the misrepresentation would have prompted reasonable officials to investigate further, and at that point, the question was whether the investigation would likely have turned up any disqualifying information. The government need not definitively prove that it would have, and the defendant may show that she would have qualified despite the misrepresentation. This test balanced the government’s and defendant’s interests while also taking the realities of case-specific investigations into account. Because the jury instructions used in this case did not reflect this test, they were incorrect.
In his opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, Justice Gorsuch wrote that it was sufficient to determine there needed to be a causal link between the illegal act and the awarding of citizenship. Because the jury was not instructed on this causal link, the jury instructions were incorrect. The majority opinion should not have gone further to announce new tests about what the government must show to prove that a misrepresentation affected the award of citizenship. Justice Clarence Thomas joined in the opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment in which he argued that that the relevant text required only that a false statement meet the same materiality standard that applied in other contexts--that the false statement had a “natural tendency to influence” the outcome, not whether it actually influenced the outcome. There was no indication that Congress intended a different standard to apply.


[Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (2018) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
Epic Systems Corporation (Epic) is a Wisconsin-based healthcare data management software company. Epic has an arbitration agreement that requires its employees to resolve any employment-based disputes with Epic through individual arbitration and to waive their right to participate in or receive benefit from any class, collective, or representative proceedings. In February 2015, former Epic employee Jacob Lewis sued Epic in federal court individually and on behalf of similarly-situated employees and claimed that they had been denied overtime wages in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Epic moved to dismiss the complaint and cited the waiver clause of its arbitration agreement. The district court denied Epic’s motion and held that the waiver was unenforceable because it violated the right of employees to engage in “concerted activities” under Section Seven of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the lower court’s decision and added that the waiver was also unenforceable under the savings clause of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). That clause provides that arbitration agreements are to be enforced unless there legal or equitable grounds that would render a contract unenforceable. Finding the waiver of collective proceedings illegal under the NLRA, the appellate court held that the arbitration agreement was unenforceable under the FAA. This case was consolidated with Ernst & Young v. Morris and National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., both cases that dealt with the relationship between the FAA and the NLRA.


[Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (2018) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
The Court held that neither the Arbitration Act's saving clause nor the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) supersede Congress's instructions in the Federal Arbitration Act that arbitration agreements providing for individualized proceedings must be enforced. Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the opinion for a 5-4 majority. The majority found that the Federal Arbitration Act "instructed federal courts to enforce arbitration agreements according to their terms" and that the NLRA "does not mention class or collection action procedures" and thus cannot be read to displace the Arbitration Act.
Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion to add that "the employees also cannot prevail under the plain meaning of the Federal Arbitration Act."
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed a dissenting opinion in which Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan joined. The dissent noted the extreme imbalance between employer and employee and Congress's attempt to remedy that imbalance in passing the NLRA and its forerunner, the Norris-LaGuardia Act. In this context, the dissent found that the Federal Arbitration Act should not shrink the NLRA's "protective sphere."


[McWilliams v. Dunn (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
On December 30, 1984, James McWilliams raped and robbed Patricia Reynolds, who died in surgery later that night. McWilliams was arrested, tried, and convicted of murder during robbery in the first degree and murder during rape in the first degree. At the sentencing phase, defense counsel requested that the court order neuropsychological testing for McWilliams. The court did so and ordered that the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) conduct the testing. The DOC doctor who conducted the testing recommended further testing from a doctor who was not affiliated with the DOC. The second doctor’s report was made available to both parties but did not arrive at the court until the day before the sentencing hearing, and the court did not allow a continuance for defense counsel to review the report with the assistance of an expert. At the sentencing hearing, the court concluded that there were aggravating factors but no mitigating factors and sentenced McWilliams to death by electrocution. The conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal in Alabama state courts.
In 2004, McWilliams filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. The district court denied the petition without addressing all of the specific claims, one of which included a claim that he was denied his due process rights under the Supreme Court’s decision in Ake v. Oklahoma because the court did not provide him with an independent psychiatric expert. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit vacated the lower court’s decision and remanded the case for the district court to address the specific claims in the petition. The district court again denied the petition, and the appellate court affirmed the lower court’s decision by holding that McWilliams’ due process rights were not violated because he was provided with a competent psychiatric expert, which met the requirement of Ake, and any harm that he might have suffered was not prejudicial to the outcome of the sentencing hearing.


[McWilliams v. Dunn (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ake v. Oklahoma clearly established that a state must provide an indigent defendant with access to an expert witness who is sufficiently available to the defense and independent of the prosecution to effectively conduct an examination and assist in the preparation of a defense. Justice Stephen G. Breyer delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority. The Court held that, after certain threshold matters--such as the defendant’s indigence and whether his mental condition was relevant and in question--are met, then Ake v. Oklahoma clearly requires that the defendant be provided with access to a competent mental health expert who can effectively assist in the “evaluation, preparation, and presentation” of a defense. In this case, a single evaluation available to both parties and the assistance of an outside volunteer expert who suggested that the defense consult other experts as well did not relieve the state of its responsibility under Ake. The Court declined to address the question of whether Ake required that the state provide an indigent defendant with an expert retained specifically for the defense, as this case could be resolved on narrower grounds.
Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. wrote a dissent in which he argued that Ake did not clearly establish that an indigent defendant is entitled to a separate defense expert who is a member of the defense team. Although some language in Ake suggests that an indigent defendant is entitled to a separate defense expert, other language makes it clear that an indigent defendant is only entitled to an expert who can perform specific tasks for the defense team. There is no reason that a neutral expert cannot be sufficient. As further evidence that the rule from Ake is ambiguous, lower courts have diverged in their interpretation of the rule. Therefore, there can be reasonable dispute as to whether access to a neutral expert satisfies the state’s requirement under Ake. Justice Alito also argued that the majority opinion essentially ignored the question for which it granted certiorari and did not provide a basis for its failure to accept the lower court’s harmless error analysis. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Justice Clarence Thomas, and Justice Neil Gorsuch joined in the dissent.


[BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
In March 2011, Robert Nelson was employed by BNSF Railway Co. (BNSF) and sued the company for damages under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) based on knee injuries sustained during the course of his employment. BNSF moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. The lower court granted the motion and Nelson appealed. Brent Tyrrell also worked for BNSF and was allegedly exposed to carcinogens that caused him to develop ultimately fatal kidney cancer. In May 2014, Kelli Tyrell, the administrator of Brent’s estate, sued BNSF on Brent’s behalf under FELA for damages based on the injuries Brent sustained during the course of his employment. BNSF filed a motion to dismiss Tyrrell’s claim for lack of personal jurisdiction. The lower court denied the motion, and BNSF appealed. Both cases were filed in Montana state court because Supreme Court precedent for FELA decisions allows state courts jurisdiction to hear FELA cases solely due to the railroad doing business in the forum state. However, the injuries did not occur in Montana, and BNSF is incorporated in Delaware with its principal place of business in Texas.
The Supreme Court of Montana consolidated both cases to decide whether Montana courts have personal jurisdiction over BNSF under FELA and whether Montana courts have personal jurisdiction over BNSF under Montana law. BNSF argued that, under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman, the state courts cannot exercise general jurisdiction. However, the Montana Supreme Court rejected that argument and held that, because BNSF does business in Montana, under FELA, Montana courts have personal jurisdiction. Montana’s Supreme Court also held that the state has general personal jurisdiction over BNSF under Montana law because BNSF “maintains substantial, continuous, and systematic” contacts with Montana.


[BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
The Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) does not address the issue of whether state courts may exercise personal jurisdiction over railroads, and the Supreme Court’s precedent in Daimler AG v. Baumann controls a state court’s exercise of general jurisdiction. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the opinion for the 8-1 majority. The Court held that the relevant language in FELA addresses venue and subject-matter jurisdiction, not personal jurisdiction. The statute lacked the language that Congress typically uses to provide for personal jurisdiction, and there is no indication in the legislative history that suggested that Congress meant to do otherwise. Therefore, the exercise of personal jurisdiction in this case must meet the requirements of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction jurisprudence. Because neither plaintiff in these cases was injured in Montana or in work related to Montana, the exercise of personal jurisdiction here would violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, so only the exercise of general jurisdiction would be permissible. Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Daimler AG v. Baumann, BNSF Railway Co. did not have sufficiently substantial contact with Montana to be “at home” in Montana for the purpose of general jurisdiction.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part in which she argued that the decision in Daimler AG v. Baumann was a significant departure from the Supreme Court’s previous jurisdiction precedent. Because the “at home” language from Daimler replaced the more nuanced “continuous contacts” analysis from previous precedent, Daimler made it harder to subject multinational and multistate corporations to general jurisdiction and was wrongfully dispositive in cases like this one.


[Davila v. Davis (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Facts]
In February 2009, Erick Daniel Davila was found guilty of capital murder for the killings of Annette Stevenson and her granddaughter, Queshawn Stevenson. The jury sentenced Davila to death. After the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction on direct appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court denied his petition for a writ of certiorari, Davila pursued habeas relief in the state courts, which was denied at the trial and appellate levels. Davila then sought federal habeas relief and claimed, among other things, that he received ineffective assistance of trial, appellate, and state habeas counsel. Because Davila did not raise the ineffective assistance of appellate counsel claim in the state habeas proceedings, the federal district court held that the claim was procedurally defaulted and denied habeas relief. Davila appealed and argued that Supreme Court precedent that ineffective state habeas counsel can overcome the procedural default of an ineffective assistance of trial claim should also apply to the procedural default of claims of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of relief.


[Davila v. Davis (2017) — Roberts Court (2017-2018) — Conclusion]
Ineffective assistance of appellate counsel does not overcome the procedural default of ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority. The Court held that, as a general rule, a federal court may not review claims that were procedurally defaulted in state court because they were decided on adequate and independent state procedural rule. A state prisoner may only overcome this bar by showing that there was cause to excuse his failure to comply and actual prejudice from the underlying constitutional violation. While there was an exception for when a state required defendants to raise an ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim in a state post-conviction proceeding and the defendant failed to do so because of ineffective assistance of counsel, this exception was a narrow one. The Court had previously held that this exception applied only when the state prohibited defendants from bringing such claims on direct appeal. The exception was chiefly concerned with ensuring review of a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, because of the crucial role that the criminal trial played in the justice system. Because this case dealt with appellate counsel, it did not raise the same serious concerns, and therefore the exception should not apply. Additionally, while the exception did not create systemic costs, the proposed rule in this case would do so without actually adding protections for defendants.
In his dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote that the reasons underlying the exception for procedurally defaulted ineffective assistance of trial counsel claims applied to procedurally defaulted ineffective assistance of appellate counsel claims. The exception reflected the understanding that a defendant could not raise a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel until his first opportunity to do so outside of the trial. Similarly, a defendant could not raise a claim of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel until the first opportunity to do so outside of that appellate proceeding. Because the same underlying due process concerns regarding effective assistance of counsel applied at the appellate level and there was no indication that expanding the exception in this way would lead to an increase in systemic costs, the procedural default exception should apply to claims of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Elena Kagan joined in the dissent.