October Term 2023

Holding: A criminal defendant facing a mandatory minimum sentence is eligible for safety-valve relief under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(1) only if the defendant satisfies each of the provision’s three conditions.

Holding: Congress’ statutory authorization allowing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to draw money from the earnings of the Federal Reserve System to carry out the bureau’s duties, 12 U.S.C. §§ 5497(a)(1), (2), satisfies the appropriations clause.

Holding: Because Deborah Laufer voluntarily dismissed her pending suits under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Laufer’s case against Acheson is moot.

Holding: A whistleblower seeking to invoke the protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act must prove that their protected activity was a contributing factor in the employer’s unfavorable personnel action, but need not prove that the employer acted with “retaliatory intent.”

Holding: Choice-of-law provisions in maritime contracts are presumptively enforceable under federal maritime law, with narrow exceptions not applicable in this case.

Holding: Because the district court’s finding that race predominated in the design of South Carolina’s first congressional district was clearly erroneous, the district court’s racial-gerrymandering and vote-dilution holdings cannot stand.

Holding: In civil forfeiture cases involving personal property, the due process clause requires a timely forfeiture hearing but does not require a separate preliminary hearing.

Holding: A public official who prevents someone from commenting on the official’s social-media page engages in state action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 only if the official both (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the state’s behalf on a particular matter, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when speaking in the relevant social-media posts.

Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit’s judgment — that 42 U.S.C. § 1983’s state-action requirement was satisfied because of the “close nexus” between petitioners’ social media pages and their positions as public officials — is vacated, and the case is remanded in light of Lindke v. Freed.

Holding: The Lanham Act’s names clause — which prohibits the registration of a mark that “[c]onsists of or comprises a name ... identifying a particular living individual except by his written consent” — does not violate the First Amendment.

Holding: A consumer may sue a federal agency under 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681n and 1681o for defying the terms of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Holding: When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.

Holding: Servicemembers who, through separate periods of service, accrue educational benefits under both the Montgomery and Post-9/11 GI Bills may use either one, in any order, up to 38 U.S.C. § 3695(a)’s 48-month aggregate-benefits cap.

Holding: For purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act’s 15-year mandatory minimum sentence on certain defendants with three or more previous convictions, a state drug conviction counts as an ACCA predicate if it involved a drug on the federal schedules at the time of that conviction.

Holding: The jury’s verdict that the defendant was not guilty by reason of insanity of malice murder constituted an acquittal for double jeopardy purposes notwithstanding any inconsistency with the jury’s other verdicts.

Holding: The Immigration Judge’s discretionary decision that Situ Kamu Wilkinson failed to satisfy 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(b)(1)(D)’s “exceptional and extremely unusual” hardship standard for determining eligibility for cancellation of removal is a mixed question of law and fact, reviewable under Section 1252(a)(2)(D)’s jurisdiction restoring exception for “questions of law”; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit’s holding that the IJ’s decision was unreviewable under Section 1252(a)(2)(B)(i) was in error.

Issue(s): (1) Whether statutory provisions that empower the Securities and Exchange Commission to initiate and adjudicate administrative enforcement proceedings seeking civil penalties violate the Seventh Amendment; (2) whether statutory provisions that authorize the SEC to choose to enforce the securities laws through an agency adjudication instead of filing a district court action violate the nondelegation doctrine; and (3) whether Congress violated Article II by granting for-cause removal protection to administrative law judges in agencies whose heads enjoy for-cause removal protection.

Issue(s): Whether the Bankruptcy Code authorizes a court to approve, as part of a plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, a release that extinguishes claims held by nondebtors against nondebtor third parties, without the claimants’ consent.

Holding: The Mandatory Repatriation Tax — which attributes the realized and undistributed income of an American-controlled foreign corporation to the entity’s American shareholders, and then taxes the American shareholders on their portions of that income — does not exceed Congress’s constitutional authority.

Holding: An employee challenging a job transfer under Title VII must show that the transfer brought about some harm with respect to an identifiable term or condition of employment, but that harm need not be significant.

Holding: Because each of the aliens in this case received a proper notice for the removal hearings they missed and at which they were ordered removed from the United States, see 8 U.S.C. § 1229(a), they cannot seek rescission of their in absentia removal orders on the basis of defective notice under Section 1229a(b)(5)(C)(ii).

Holding: The government failed to meet its burden to demonstrate that Yonas Fikre’s removal from the government’s No Fly List mooted his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 case because its declaration did not disclose the conduct that landed Fikre on the No Fly List and did not ensure that he would not be placed back on the list for engaging in the same or similar conduct in the future.

Holding: The Fifth Amendment’s takings clause does not distinguish between legislative and administrative land-use permit conditions.

Holding: Prospective parity — i.e., requiring equal fees for otherwise identical Chapter 11 debtors going forward — is the appropriate remedy for the short-lived and small disparity created by the fee statute held unconstitutional in Siegel v. Fitzgerald.

Holding: When an expert conveys an absent lab analyst’s statements in support of the expert’s opinion, and the statements provide that support only if true, then the statements come into evidence for their truth, and thus implicate the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause.

Holding: Pure omissions are not actionable under SEC Rule 10b–5(b), which makes it unlawful to omit material facts in connection with buying or selling securities when that omission renders “statements made” misleading.

Holding: Owners of property north of U. S. Interstate Highway 10 adversely affected by the flood evacuation barrier constructed by Texas should be permitted on remand to pursue their takings clause claims through the cause of action available under Texas law.

Issue(s): Whether the court should overrule Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.

Issue(s): Whether the court should overrule Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.

Holding: Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the states, responsible for enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against federal officeholders and candidates, the Colorado Supreme Court erred in ordering former President Donald Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot.

Issue(s): Whether a plaintiff’s Administrative Procedure Act claim “first accrues” under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a) when an agency issues a rule — regardless of whether that rule injures the plaintiff on that date — or when the rule first causes a plaintiff to “suffer[] legal wrong” or be “adversely affected or aggrieved.”

Holding: A transportation worker need not work in the transportation industry to be exempt from coverage under Section 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act.

Issue(s): (1) Whether the court should stay the Environmental Protection Agency’s federal emission reductions rule, the Good Neighbor Plan; and (2) whether the emissions controls imposed by the rule are reasonable regardless of the number of states subject to the rule.

Holding: The Copyright Act entitles a copyright owner to obtain monetary relief for any timely infringement claim, no matter when the infringement occurred.

Issue(s): (1) Whether the laws’ content-moderation restrictions comply with the First Amendment; and (2) whether the laws’ individualized-explanation requirements comply with the First Amendment.

Issue(s): Whether the First Amendment prohibits viewpoint-, content-, or speaker-based laws restricting select websites from engaging in editorial choices about whether, and how, to publish and disseminate speech — or otherwise burdening those editorial choices through onerous operational and disclosure requirements.

Holding: A district court’s failure to comply with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.2(b)(2)(B)’s requirement to enter a preliminary order imposing criminal forfeiture before sentencing does not bar a judge from ordering forfeiture at sentencing subject to harmless-error principles on appellate review.

Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit failed to analyze whether New York’s interest-on-escrow law is preempted as applied to national banks in a manner consistent with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 and Barnett Bank of Marion Cty., N. A. v. Nelson.

Holding: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a rule that classifies a bump stock as a “machinegun” under 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b).

Holding: Where parties have agreed to two contracts — one sending arbitrability disputes to arbitration, and the other either explicitly or implicitly sending arbitrability disputes to the courts — a court must decide which contract governs.

Holding: Respondents — two states and five individual social media users who sued executive branch officials and agencies, alleging that the government pressured the platforms to censor their speech in violation of the First Amendment — lack Article III standing to seek an injunction.

Holding: The NRA plausibly alleged that former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services Maria Vullo violated the First Amendment by coercing regulated entities to terminate their business relationships with the NRA in order to punish or suppress the NRA’s gun-promotion advocacy.

Holding: Expert testimony that “most people” in a group have a particular mental state is not an opinion about “the defendant” and thus does not violate Federal Rule of Evidence 704(b).

Holding: An insurer with financial responsibility for bankruptcy claims is a “party in interest” under 11 U.S.C. § 1109(b) that “may raise and may appear and be heard on any issue” in a Chapter 11 case.

Holding: In requiring petitioner Sylvia Gonzalez to provide specific comparator evidence to support her retaliatory arrest claim, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit did not properly apply the principles of Nieves v. Barlett.

Holding: The motion to enter a proposed consent decree that would dispose of the United States’ claims in the Rio Grande Compact without its consent is denied.

Holding: The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act requires the Indian Health Service to pay the contract support costs that a tribe incurs when it collects and spends program income — i.e., revenue from third-party payers like Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers — to further the functions, services, activities, and programs transferred to it from IHS in a self-determination contract.

Holding: Title 5 U.S.C. § 7703(b)(1)’s 60-day filing deadline for a federal employee to petition the Federal Circuit to review a final decision of the Merit Systems Protection Board is not jurisdictional.

Holding: Plaintiffs lack Article III standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory actions regarding mifepristone.

Holding: The Fifth and Sixth Amendments require a unanimous jury to make the determination beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant’s past offenses were committed on separate occasions for purposes of the Armed Career Criminal Act.

Holding: A corporation’s contractual obligation to redeem shares is not necessarily a liability that reduces a corporation’s value for purposes of the federal estate tax.

Holding: Federal law proscribes bribes to state and local officials but does not make it a crime for those officials to accept gratuities for their past acts.

Holding: Pursuant to the Fourth Amendment and traditional common-law practice, the presence of probable cause for one charge in a criminal proceeding does not categorically defeat a Fourth Amendment malicious-prosecution claim relating to another, baseless charge.

Issue(s): Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred in construing 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence.

Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit’s grant of habeas relief on Danny Lee Jones’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim was based on an erroneous interpretation and application of Strickland v. Washington.

Issue(s): Whether the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.

Holding: When a district court finds that a lawsuit involves an arbitrable dispute and a party has requested a stay of the court proceeding pending arbitration, Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act compels the court to issue a stay, and the court lacks discretion to dismiss the suit.

Holding: A U. S. citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country.

Holding: When considering the National Labor Relations Board’s request for a preliminary injunction under Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act, district courts must apply the traditional four factors articulated in Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.

Issue(s): Whether the Supreme Court should stay the order by the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho enjoining the enforcement of Idaho’s Defense of Life Act, which prohibits abortions unless necessary to save the life of the mother, on the ground that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act preempts it.

Issue(s): Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.