Posted by 
The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.
So at the last conference, the Supreme Court acted on a ton of relists. Most remarkably, in 10-time relist Andrew v. White, the court summarily vacated a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit denying relief to Brenda Andrew, who was sentenced to death in 2004 for the murder of her estranged husband. Andrew argued that the trial court improperly admitted evidence about her sex life and about her failings as a mother and wife, much of which prosecutors later conceded was irrelevant.
The Supreme Court held that contrary the 10th Circuit’s ruling, Andrew’s habeas claim could be considered under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act because when the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals acted in her case, clearly established federal law provided that the erroneous admission of unduly prejudicial evidence could render a criminal trial fundamentally unfair in violation of due process. While the Supreme Court routinely throws out lower-court decisions granting prisoners habeas relief, it’s fairly uncommon for the justices to summarily grant relief to habeas petitioners.
The court also agreed to hear five one-time relists involving a host of issues: whether parents have a First Amendment right to have their children exempted from being taught from LGBTQ-themed storybooks; regarding the standard of review when children with disabilities allege discrimination in education; a technical question related to compensation for combat veterans; procedural questions arising from the application of the federal laws governing post-conviction relief for federal prisoners; and whether, when a litigant has filed a notice of appeal after the time to do so has expired, he has to file a second notice of appeal when the time to appeal is reopened. Lastly, it appears that the seven horse-racing cases implicating the private nondelegation doctrine have been put on hold pending the outcome of a pair of cases implicating that doctrine that the court has scheduled to decide later this term – or perhaps the horse-racing cases are about to be rescheduled.
That brings us to this week’s one new relist: Alabama v. California. It is one of the relatively few examples of the Supreme Court’s authority to hear cases that have not first gone through the lower courts, known as original jurisdiction, including disputes between two or more states. Those disputes usually involve water or territorial rights.
Alabama v. California represents an effort by 19 red states to block lawsuits brought by five blue or purple states against oil and gas companies, alleging that the companies knew that their products contributed to climate change but misled the public about the cause of climate change and the risks of fossil fuels. When California brought the first of these suits in 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom said that it should be big polluters, rather than Californians, who pay for damages from climate change-related events such as “[w]ildfires wiping out entire communities.”
Alabama and the other states have asked the Supreme Court to allow them to file a bill of complaint seeking to halt those suits, arguing that they violate the horizontal separation of powers by seeking to regulate activity beyond the defendant states’ borders. The states also allege that suits involving the interstate effects of pollution are exclusively governed by federal common law and belong in federal court to avoid the risk of inconsistent judgments.
Last October, the court asked the solicitor general to file a friend-of-the-court brief explaining the views of the United States both in this case as well as a pair of related cases concerning climate change suits brought by Honolulu. Although the government has previously taken the position that federal law precludes the application of state law to transboundary pollution claims, the Biden administration argued that the court should deny review in all three cases, saying the court lacked the power to review them. On Jan. 13, the court denied review in the two Honolulu cases without even relisting them.
The court has now relisted Alabama’s case. While the relist undoubtedly means the justices are looking closely at the case, it seems likely that if the court were going to let the suit proceed, the justices would have held the two Honolulu cases, because the outcome in them might have been affected by any judgment in favor of Alabama and the other red states. Thus, it may be that one or more of the justices is writing a separate opinion.
New Relists
Alabama v. California, 22 Orig. 158
Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should enjoin states from seeking to impose liability or obtain equitable relief premised on either emissions by or in other states, or the promotion, use and/or sale of traditional energy products in or to those other states. CVSG: 12/10/2024
(Relisted after the Jan. 17 conference.)
Returning Relists
Turco v. City of Englewood, New Jersey, 23-1189
Issues: (1) Whether the City of Englewood’s speech-free buffer zones, including zones outside an abortion clinic, violate the First Amendment; and (2) whether the court should overrule Hill v. Colorado.
(Relisted after the Nov. 15, Nov. 22, Dec. 6, Dec. 13, Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, Illinois, 24-57
Issue: Whether this Court should overrule Hill v. Colorado.
(Relisted after the Nov. 15, Nov. 22, Dec. 6, Dec. 13, Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Carter v. United States, 23-1281
Issues: (1) Whether Feres v. United States should be limited not to bar tort claims brought by service members alleging medical malpractice who were under no military orders, not engaged in any military mission, and whose military status was retroactively altered from inactive to active duty post medical malpractice; and (2) whether the Feres doctrine conflicts with the plain language of the Federal Tort Claims Act and should thus be clarified, limited, or overruled.
(Relisted after the Dec. 6, Dec. 13, Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Apache Stronghold v. United States, 24-291
Issue: Whether the government “substantially burdens” religious exercise under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or must satisfy heightened scrutiny under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, when it singles out a sacred site for complete physical destruction, ending specific religious rituals forever.
(Relisted after the Dec. 6, Dec. 13, Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Rimlawi v. United States, 24-23
Issues: (1) Whether the court of appeals erred in applying the guilt-based approach, rather than the error-based approach, to assess the harmlessness of the confrontation clause error; and (2) whether, under Apprendi v. New Jersey, the facts underlying a restitution award must be proved to, and found by, a jury beyond a reasonable doubt (and, in federal cases, charged in a grand jury indictment).
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Shah v. United States, 24-25
Issue: Whether the Sixth Amendment reserves to juries the determination of any fact underlying a criminal restitution order.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Ocean State Tactical, LLC v. Rhode Island, 24-131
Issues: (1) Whether a retrospective and confiscatory ban on the possession of ammunition-feeding devices that are in common use violates the Second Amendment; and (2) whether a law dispossessing citizens without compensation of property that they lawfully acquired and long possessed without incident violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Pina v. Estate of Jacob Dominguez, 24-152
Issue: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit erred, so as to warrant summary reversal, by refusing qualified immunity without identifying any precedent finding a Fourth Amendment violation based on similar facts and, indeed, overriding its own cases holding an officer would not violate the Constitution under the circumstances the jury found.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Snope v. Brown, 24-203
Issue: Whether the Constitution permits Maryland to ban semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the most popular rifle in America.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Woodward v. California, 24-227
Issue: Whether the Supreme Court of California’s narrow test for an “acquittal,” limited only to circumstances where the record clearly shows that the judge correctly applied the substantial-evidence standard, conflicts with this court’s precedent under the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Laboratory Corp of America Holdings v. Davis, 24-304
Issue: Whether a federal court may certify a class action when some of its members lack any Article III injury.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Franklin v. New York, 24-330
Issues: (1) Whether the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause applies to out-of-court statements admitted as evidence against criminal defendants if, and only if, the statements were created for the primary purpose of serving as trial testimony; and (2) whether a post-arrest report prepared about a criminal defendant by an agent of the state for use in a criminal proceeding can be admitted as evidence against the defendant at trial, without providing a right to cross-examine the report’s author.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Speech First, Inc. v. Whitten, 24-361
Issue: Whether university bias-response teams — official entities that solicit anonymous reports of bias, track them, investigate them, ask to meet with the perpetrators, and threaten to refer students for formal discipline — objectively chill students’ speech under the First Amendment.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Martin v. United States, 24-362
Issue: (1) Whether the Constitution’s supremacy clause bars claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act — a federal statute enacted by Congress — when the negligent or wrongful acts of federal employees “have some nexus with furthering federal policy and can reasonably be characterized as complying with the full range of federal law;” and (2) whether the act’s discretionary-function exception bars claims for torts arising from wrong-house raids and similar negligent or wrongful acts by federal employees.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan 17 conferences.)
Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, 24-394
Issues: (1) Whether the academic and pedagogical choices of a privately owned and run school constitute state action simply because it contracts with the state to offer a free educational option for interested students; and (2) whether a state violates the First Amendment’s free exercise clause by excluding privately run religious schools from the state’s charter-school program solely because the schools are religious, or instead a state can justify such an exclusion by invoking anti-establishment interests that go further than the First Amendment’s establishment clause requires.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, 24-396
Issues: (1) Whether the academic and pedagogical choices of a privately owned and run school constitute state action simply because it contracts with the state to offer a free educational option for interested students; and (2) whether a state violates the First Amendment’s free exercise clause by excluding privately run religious schools from the state’s charter-school program solely because the schools are religious, or instead a state can justify such an exclusion by invoking anti-establishment interests that go further than the First Amendment’s establishment clause requires.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Davis v. Smith, 24-421
Issue: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit exceeded its powers under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in concluding that “every fairminded jurist would agree” that the Ohio courts violated the Constitution in refusing to bar testimony from a victim of an attempted murder identifying her attacker.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Jimerson v. Lewis, 24-473
Issue: Whether Maryland v. Garrison clearly established that officers violate the Fourth Amendment when they search the wrong house without checking the address or conspicuous features of the house to be searched.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
Jacob v. United States, 24-5032
Issue: Whether the Sixth Amendment reserves to juries the determination of any fact underlying a criminal restitution order.
(Relisted after the Jan. 10 and Jan. 17 conferences.)
The post Red states urge Supreme Court to block suits against big oil appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
