Petitions We’re Watching
You can see all paid petitions we’re following below, organized by petitions relisted for the next conference, those scheduled for initial consideration at the next conference, other featured petitions, and finally, petitions in which the court has called for the views of the solicitor general.
View this list sorted by case name.
Petitions Relisted for the Next Conference
| Docket | Case Page | Issue(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 23-167 | Hamm v. Smith | (1) Whether Hall v. Florida and Moore v. Texas mandate that courts deem the standard of “significantly subaverage intellectual functioning” for determining intellectual disability in Atkins v. Virginia satisfied when an offender’s lowest IQ score, decreased by one standard error of measurement, is 70 or below; and (2) whether the court should overrule Hall and Moore, or at least clarify that they permit courts to consider multiple IQ scores and the probability that an offender’s IQ does not fall at the bottom of the lowest IQ score’s error range. |
| 23-668 | King v. Emmons | (1) Whether the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision was based on “an unreasonable determination” of the facts under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2); and (2) whether the Georgia Supreme Court “unreasonably applied” this court’s decision in Batson v. Kentucky under Section 2254(d)(1). |
| 23-819 | Allstates Refractory Contractors, LLC v. Su | Whether Congress’s delegation of authority to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to write “reasonably necessary or appropriate” workplace-safety standards violates Article I of the U.S. Constitution. |
| 23-877 | Harrel v. Raoul | (1) Whether the Constitution allows the government to prohibit law-abiding, responsible citizens from protecting themselves, their families, and their homes with semiautomatic firearms that are in common use for lawful purposes; (2) whether the Constitution allows the government to prohibit law-abiding, responsible citizens from protecting themselves, their families, and their homes with ammunition magazines that are in common use for lawful purposes; and (3) whether enforcement of Illinois’s semiautomatic firearm and ammunition magazine bans should be enjoined. |
| 23-878 | Herrera v. Raoul | (1) Whether semiautomatic rifles and standard handgun and rifle magazines do not count as “Arms” within the ordinary meaning of the Second Amendment’s plain text; and (2) whether there is a broad historical tradition of states banning protected arms and standard magazines from law-abiding citizens’ homes. |
| 23-879 | Barnett v. Raoul | Whether Illinois’s sweeping ban on common and long-lawful arms violates the Second Amendment. |
| 23-880 | National Association for Gun Rights v. City of Naperville, Illinois | (1) Whether the state of Illinois’s ban of certain handguns is constitutional in light of the holding in District of Columbia v. Heller that handgun bans are categorically unconstitutional; (2) whether the “in common use” test announced in Heller is hopelessly circular and therefore unworkable; and (3) whether the government can ban the sale, purchase, and possession of certain semi-automatic firearms and firearm magazines that are possessed by millions of law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes when there is no analogous Founding-era regulation. |
| 23-944 | Langley v. Kelly | (1) Whether the state of Illinois’s absolute ban of certain commonly owned semi-automatic handguns is constitutional in light of the holding in District of Columbia v. Heller that handgun bans are categorially unconstitutional; (2) whether the state of Illinois’s absolute ban of all commonly owned semi-automatic handgun magazines over 15 rounds is constitutional in light of the holding in Heller that handgun bans are categorially unconstitutional; and (3) whether the government can ban the sale, purchase, possession, and carriage of certain commonly owned semi-automatic rifles, pistols, shotguns, and standard-capacity firearm magazines, tens of millions of which are possessed by law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes, when there is no analogous historical ban as required by Heller and New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen. |
| 23-1010 | Gun Owners of America v. Raoul | Whether Illinois’s categorical ban on millions of the most commonly owned firearms and ammunition magazines in the nation, including the AR-15 rifle, violates the Second Amendment. |
Petitions We’re Watching for the Next Conference
| Docket | Case Page | Issue(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 23-910 | Antonyuk v. James | (1) Whether the proper historical time period for ascertaining the Second Amendment’s original meaning is 1791, rather than 1868; and (2) whether New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act permissibly requires “the people” to convince government officials of their “good moral character” before exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms in public. |
| 23-831 | Caswell v. Colorado | (1) Whether a prior misdemeanor conviction that elevates a subsequent offense from a misdemeanor to a felony is an element of the subsequent offense that must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt under Apprendi v. New Jersey; and (2) whether this court should overrule Almendarez-Torres v. United States as inconsistent with the Sixth Amendment as understood in Apprendi and its progeny. |
| 23-830 | Bassett v. Arizona | Whether the Eighth Amendment permits a juvenile to be sentenced to life without parole under a system that did not afford the sentencing court discretion to choose any other option. |
| 23-683 | Vincent v. Garland | Whether the Second Amendment allows the federal government to permanently disarm Melynda Vincent, who has one 15-year-old nonviolent felony conviction for trying to pass a bad check. |
| 23-649 | Price v. Montgomery County, Kentucky | (1) Whether absolute immunity is unavailable under 42 U.S.C § 1983 where a prosecutor knowingly destroys exculpatory evidence; and (2) whether absolute immunity is unavailable under Section 1983 where a prosecutor defies a court order that compels specific action, leaving no room for the exercise of discretion. |
| 23-374 | Garland v. Range | Whether 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1), the federal statute that prohibits a person from possessing a firearm if he has been convicted of “a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year," complies with the Second Amendment. |
| 23-348 | Colindres v. Department of State | Whether the doctrine of consular nonreviewability insulates from judicial review a consular decision that lacks both a facially legitimate and bona fide basis; provides no discrete factual predicate; applies an unconstitutionally vague statutory provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act; and transgresses multiple bedrock constitutional limitations, including procedural and substantive due process rights, entitlement to equal protection of the laws, rights to freedom of speech and expressive activity, the fundamental, associational, and marital right to live together as Husband and Wife, and the United States citizen spouse’s fundamental liberty interest in residing in her country of citizenship. |
| 22-1199 | O’Handley v. Weber | (1) Whether the complaint plausibly alleged that state officials acted under color of state law in violation of the First Amendment when a state agency, which exists to police online speech, singled out petitioner’s disfavored political speech for Twitter to punish and Twitter complied; and (2) whether the government speech doctrine empowers state officials to tell Twitter to remove political speech that the state deems false or misleading. |
| 22-868 | Bastias v. Garland | Whether the provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act providing that noncitizens may be removed, and are ineligible for many forms of discretionary relief from removal, if they have been “convicted of ... a crime of child abuse, child neglect, or child abandonment” encompasses a conviction for a state crime of child endangerment that criminalizes a negligent act creating a risk of harm to a child, even if no harm actually ensues. |
| 22-867 | Kerr v. Garland | Whether the provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act providing that noncitizens may be removed, and are ineligible for many forms of discretionary relief from removal, if they have been “convicted of ... a crime of child abuse, child neglect, or child abandonment” encompasses a conviction for a state crime of child endangerment that criminalizes a negligent act creating a risk of harm to a child, even if no harm actually ensues. |
| 22-863 | Diaz-Rodriguez v. Garland | Whether the provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act providing that noncitizens may be removed, and are ineligible for many forms of discretionary relief from removal, if they have been “convicted of ... a crime of child abuse, child neglect, or child abandonment” encompasses a conviction for a state crime of child endangerment that criminalizes a negligent act creating a risk of harm to a child, even if no harm actually ensues. |
| 22-669 | NexPoint Advisors, L.P. v. Highland Capital Management, L.P. | (1) Whether a bankruptcy court may exculpate third-party misconduct that falls short of gross negligence, on the theory that bankruptcy trustees have common-law immunity for such misconduct; and (2) whether a bankruptcy court may exculpate parties from ordinary post-bankruptcy business liabilities. CVSG: 10/19/2023 |
| 22-631 | Highland Capital Management, L.P. v. NexPoint Advisors, L.P. | Whether Section 524(e) of the Bankruptcy Code, as its text suggests, states only the effect of a discharge on third parties’ liability for a debtor’s own debts or instead constrains the power of a court when confirming a plan of reorganization. CVSG: 10/19/2023 |
Featured Petitions
| Docket | Case Page | Issue(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 23-1084 | Hile v. Michigan | (1) Whether Michigan’s constitutional amendment barring direct and indirect public financial support for parochial and other nonpublic schools violates the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause; and (2) whether the failure of a ballot proposal that would have authorized school vouchers and partially repealed the constitutional amendment purges the amendment of its religious animus for purpose of the equal protection clause. |
| 23-1072 | Bahlul v. U.S. | (1) Whether 28 U.S.C. § 455(b)(3) requires recusal when a federal judge is assigned to a case involving the same parties, same facts, and same issues as a case in which they previously appeared as counsel for the government; and (2) whether Section 455(b)(3) provides the exclusive basis for federal judges’ disqualification based upon their previous government service, or whether recusal is still independently warranted under Section 455(a), where a judge’s previous government service gives rise to reasonable questions about their impartiality. |
| 23-1068 | PacifiCorp v. Environmental Protection Agency | Whether the Environmental Protection Agency’s disapproval of a state implementation plan may only be challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit under 42 U.S.C. § 7607(b)(1) if the agency packages that disapproval with disapprovals of other states’ plans and purports to use a consistent method in evaluating the state-specific determinations in those plans. |
| 23-1067 | Oklahoma v. Environmental Protection Agency | Whether a final action by the Environmental Protection Agency taken pursuant to its Clean Air Act authority with respect to a single state or region may be challenged only in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit because the agency published the action in the same Federal Register notice as actions affecting other states or regions and claimed to use a consistent analysis for all states. |
| 23-1050 | Sanchez v. U.S. | Whether a timely filed 21 U.S.C. § 853(n) petition may be amended to cure a pleading deficiency after the 30-day filing period has run, or whether Section 853(n)(2)’s 30-day deadline for filing a petition precludes any amendment after the filing deadline has expired. |
| 23-1007 | Cunningham v. Cornell University | Whether a plaintiff can state a claim by alleging that a plan fiduciary engaged in a transaction constituting a furnishing of goods, services, or facilities between the plan and a party in interest, as proscribed by 29 U.S.C. § 1106(a)(1)(C), or whether a plaintiff must plead and prove additional elements and facts not contained in the provision’s text. |
| 23-1004 | Mendoza v. Lumpkin | (1) Whether a federal claim is “adjudicated on the merits” in state court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) so long as the state court resolves the claim on substantive grounds, even if the petitioner did not have a full and fair opportunity to litigate the claim; and (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit erred in denying habeas relief on petitioner’s claim that his trial lawyers provided ineffective assistance by presenting a psychologist at the capital-sentencing phase who testified that petitioner lacked a moral compass, was a danger in and out of prison, and that the traditional mitigation factors were not present. |
| 23-976 | Henning v. Snowden | Whether the court of appeals erred in allowing a remedy under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in this case, where the claim arises from an arrest made outside the home, in a place open to the public, pursuant to a warrant. |
| 23-942 | Campbell v. Kares | (1) Whether Michigan’s statute allowing a prisoner to request DNA testing calls for a “judicial reexamination” of the defendant’s conviction under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2) to statutorily toll the habeas limitations period, or is more akin to a discovery request; and (2) whether Stephen Kares “properly file[d]” his DNA motion under state law, where he did not even attempt to satisfy the minimal pleading requirements set forth in Michigan’s post-conviction DNA testing statute. |
| 23-926 | No on E, San Franciscans Opposing the Affordable Housing Production Act v. Chiu | (1) Whether requiring political advertisers to name their donors’ donors within their advertisements advances any important or compelling state interest; and (2) whether San Francisco’s secondary donor speech mandate violates the First Amendment freedoms of speech and association. |
| 23-828 | Moylan v. Guerrero | Whether the Supreme Court of Guam’s advisory opinion that a Guam abortion law passed in 1990 had been impliedly repealed constitutes a permissible exercise of the “judicial authority” that Congress has vested in that court under 48 U.S.C. §1424(a)(1). |
Calls for the Views of the Solicitor General
| Docket | Case Page | Issue(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 23-969 | Walen v. Burgum | (1) Whether the district court erred by applying the incorrect legal standard when deciding that the North Dakota legislature had good reasons and a strong basis to believe two majority-Native-American subdistricts were required by the Voting Rights Act; (2) whether the district court erred by improperly weighing the evidence and granting inferences in favor of the moving party at summary judgment instead of setting the case for trial; and (3) whether the district court erred when it found that the legislature’s attempted compliance with Section 2 of the VRA can justify racial sorting of voters into districts. |
| 23-952 | Shell PLC v. City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii | (1) Whether claims seeking damages for the effects of interstate and international emissions on the global climate are beyond the limits of state law and thus preempted under the federal Constitution; and (2) whether the Clean Air Act preempts state-law claims predicated on damaging interstate emissions. |
| 23-947 | Sunoco LP v. City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii | Whether federal law precludes state-law claims seeking redress for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate. |
| 23-914 | Zilka v. City of Philadelphia Tax Review Board | Whether the commerce clause requires states to consider a taxpayer’s burden in light of the state tax scheme as a whole when crediting a taxpayer’s out-of-state tax liability, or permits states to credit out-of-state state and local tax liabilities as discrete tax burdens. |
