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The Petitions of the Week column highlights some of the cert petitions recently filed in the Supreme Court. A list of all petitions we’re watching is available here.
The Fourth Amendment generally requires police to get a warrant before searching someone’s belongings. When making an arrest, however, officers don’t need a warrant to search the person being arrested or any belongings that they may have within arm’s length, to prevent them from reaching inside for weapons or destroying evidence of a crime. This week, we highlight petitions asking the court to consider, among other things, whether police can search a backpack without a warrant when the bag’s owner is already in handcuffs and the backpack is out of reach.
The petition comes to the court at the urging of the court of appeals, which asks the justices in a joint statement to clarify whether such warrantless searches violate the Fourth Amendment.
Gilbert Perez was parked beside a fast-food restaurant in Lawrence, Mass., when he was spotted by a state trooper on patrol. The officer noticed his Maine license plate and watched him walk off the property wearing a backpack. Suspicious of Perez, the officer asked other state troopers in the area to watch out for a man matching Perez’s description.
Another state trooper soon saw Perez getting out of a taxi on a nearby street and walk back toward the restaurant parking lot. When the second officer approached the taxi, he saw a pile of cash on the floor at a passenger’s feet. He then radioed the first officer that he suspected Perez had bought drugs from the passenger.
Back in the restaurant parking lot, the first officer approached Perez and yelled, “State police!” Perez ran off. After a brief chase, Perez tripped and fell, allowing the troopers to catch up.
Two officers detained Perez. While one placed him in handcuffs and pinned him to the ground, the other removed his backpack, placed it on the hood of the squad car (where Perez could not have reached it), and searched it. Inside, the officer found cocaine and fentanyl.
The government charged Perez with purchasing illegal drugs. Before the case went to trial, Perez asked the judge to exclude the evidence from the search of his backpack, arguing that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment by going through it without a warrant once it was out of his reach.
When the judge ruled that the evidence could come in, Perez pleaded guilty but reserved the right to appeal his conviction based on the denial of his motion to suppress the evidence from the search of his backpack.
By a 2-1 vote, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld the trial judge’s denial of his motion to suppress. The full court of appeals denied Perez’s request for a rehearing.
In doing so, the 1st Circuit refused to disturb its own 50-year-old decision holding that police did not violate the Fourth Amendment when they searched, without a warrant, a briefcase that had been in the hands of a suspected bank robber when they arrested him. That ruling had interpreted a 1973 decision by the Supreme Court permitting police to search a cigarette packet in someone’s pocket during an arrest without a warrant, even without fear of weapons or destruction of evidence.
Noting that other federal courts of appeals and state supreme courts have reached different conclusions on this question, however, every judge on the 1st Circuit also also joined a statement asking the justices to weigh in and clarify whether the warrantless search of a bag should be allowed at any time during an arrest under the Fourth Amendment.
In Perez v. United States, Perez urges the justices to take up the 1st Circuit’s invitation. He argues that the lower courts are so bitterly divided on this question that some state and federal courts with overlapping jurisdiction answer it differently, leaving a person’s constitutional rights up to the mercy of the government’s choice over which court to try them in.
And the question itself is important, Perez continues. Not only do searches of bags dictate the outcome of countless police investigations, he maintains, but determined police can arrest just about anyone — and thus, in some places, at least, rummage through their bag without a warrant.
A list of this week’s featured petitions is below:
Chiles v. Salazar
24-539
Issue: Whether a law that censors certain conversations between counselors and their clients based on the viewpoints expressed regulates conduct or violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment.
Grant v. Zorn
24-549
Issues: (1) Whether the False Claims Act’s statutory civil penalty must be limited to a single-digit multiplier of the actual damages under the Eighth Amendment, in a non-intervened qui tam action; and (2) whether the Act’s prohibition on presenting “false or fraudulent” claims to the government for payment provides two distinct manners of establishing liability, such that a finding of fraudulent claim submissions obviates a finding of falsity.
Villarreal v. Texas
24-557
Issue: Whether a trial court abridges a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel by prohibiting the defendant and his counsel from discussing the defendant’s testimony during an overnight recess.
Young v. United States
24-571
Issues: (1) Whether, under Honeycutt v. United States, a defendant can be ordered to forfeit property that was intended for and ultimately acquired by her co-conspirator, merely because the property temporarily passed through the defendant’s possession on its way to her co-conspirator; and (2) whether a defendant who is convicted under the Anti-Kickback Statute can be ordered to forfeit proceeds obtained from private health insurers, when such proceeds are not obtained in violation of the statute.
Nutramax Laboratories, Inc. v. Lytle
24-576
Issue: Whether, when a plaintiff seeking to certify a class relies on an expert to establish that classwide issues predominate, the expert testimony must satisfy the requirements for admissibility.
Perez v. United States
24-577
Issue: Whether the Fourth Amendment prohibits the warrantless search of a backpack, piece of luggage, or other bag carried by an individual at the time of his arrest once police have secured the bag and eliminated any possibility of reaching a weapon or evidence inside it.
Scandinavian Airlines System v. Hardy
24-587
Issue: Whether the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment authorizes a federal court to exercise specific personal jurisdiction over a foreign corporation in a personal injury action arising from an alleged incident and conduct that occurred wholly outside the United States.
Seale v. United States
24-594
Issue: Whether the certificate of appealability requirement in 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c) bars a court of appeals from exercising jurisdiction over a person’s appeal from a district court’s refusal to conduct a full resentencing after one of their convictions was vacated on constitutional grounds.
The Doe Run Resources Corp. v. Reid
24-601
Issues: (1) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit erred in denying dismissal based on international comity, when allowing a U.S. court to dictate Peruvian environmental standards is a grave affront to Peruvian sovereignty, and allowing such a claim would threaten to open the doors of U.S. courts to foreign tort claims lacking any meaningful nexus to the United States; and (2) whether the 8th Circuit erred in holding that the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement’s language (found in many similar trade agreements) affirmatively requires U.S. courts to adjudicate foreign environmental tort claims.
F.W. Webb Company v. Su
24-626
Issue: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit’s judicially created “relational analysis” test can be used to decide the administrative exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act‘s overtime rules, in contravention of the secretary of labor’s regulations on the exemption.
BNP Paribas SA v. Kashef
24-628
Issue: Whether the courts of appeals have discretion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f) to grant interlocutory review solely because a district court’s class-certification order is manifestly erroneous.
Hamso v. M.H.
24-631
Issues: (1) Whether a policy declining coverage for sex-reassignment surgeries violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment; and (2) whether clearly established law as of July 2022 held that a policy declining coverage for sex-reassignment surgeries violates the equal protection clause.
Cool v. Jackson
24-695
Issue: Whether this court has clearly required state courts to reopen the mitigation evidence in every death-penalty remand, even if the error did not affect the defendant’s opportunity to submit mitigation evidence.
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