Will the Supreme Court’s Upcoming Term Cause a Ripple or a Wave?

Each year, the Supreme Court of the United States receives thousands of requests for hearings, and fewer than 100 will make it into the white marble courthouse when the eight current justices emerge from behind the red curtain to the shout of the marshal of the Court, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”

This spectacle – closed to television cameras – begins on Monday, October 1. The October term may not have quite as many contentious, attention-grabbing cases as in previous sessions, but that does not make the outcomes any less important. The justices have a packed term, and the subsequent decisions will affect our daily lives and companies’ daily operations.

Check out this brief summary of cases on the docket, courtesy of SCOTUSblog, to see if your company or clients need to prepare and plan for potential changes and adjustments to maintain regulatory compliance.

 

OCTOBER 1

Weyerhaeuser Company v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service

Issues:

• Whether the Endangered Species Act prohibits designation of private land as unoccupied critical habitat that is neither habitat nor essential to species conservation;
• Whether an agency decision not to exclude an area from critical habitat because of the economic impact of designation is subject to judicial review.

Mount Lemmon Fire District v. Guido

Issue:

• Whether, under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the same 20-employee minimum that applies to private employers also applies to political subdivisions of a state, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 6th, 7th, 8th and 10th Circuits have held, or whether the ADEA applies instead to all state political subdivisions of any size, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held in this case.

 

OCTOBER 2

Gundy v. United States

Issue:

• Whether the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act’s delegation of authority to the attorney general to issue regulations under 42 U.S.C. § 16913 violates the nondelegation doctrine.

Madison v. Alabama

Issues:

• Whether, consistent with the Eighth Amendment, and the Supreme Court’s decisions in Ford v. Wainwright and Panetti v. Quarterman, a state may execute a prisoner whose mental disability leaves him with no memory of his commission of the capital offense;
• Whether evolving standards of decency and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment bar the execution of a prisoner whose competency has been compromised by vascular dementia and multiple strokes causing severe cognitive dysfunction and a degenerative medical condition that prevents him from remembering the crime for which he was convicted or understanding the circumstances of his scheduled execution.

 

OCTOBER 3

Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania

Issues:

• Whether the Supreme Court should reconsider the portion of Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank that requires property owners to exhaust state court remedies to ripen federal takings claims;
• Whether Williamson County’s ripeness doctrine bars review of takings claims that assert that a law causes an unconstitutional taking on its face, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 3rd, 6th, 9th and 10th Circuits hold, or whether facial claims are exempt from Williamson County, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 1st, 4th and 7th Circuits hold.

New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira

Issues:

• Whether a dispute over applicability of the Federal Arbitration Act’s Section 1 exemption is an arbitrability issue that must be resolved in arbitration pursuant to a valid delegation clause;
• Whether the FAA’s Section 1 exemption, which applies on its face only to “contracts of employment,” is inapplicable to independent contractor agreements.

 

OCTOBER 9

Stokeling v. United States

Issue:

• Whether a state robbery offense that includes “as an element” the common law requirement of overcoming “victim resistance” is categorically a “violent felony” under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(i), when the offense has been specifically interpreted by state appellate courts to require only slight force to overcome resistance.

United States v. Stitt and United States v. Sims

Issue:

• Whether burglary of a nonpermanent or mobile structure that is adapted or used for overnight accommodation can qualify as “burglary” under the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii).

 

OCTOBER 10

Nielsen v. Preap

Issue:

• Whether a criminal alien becomes exempt from mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c) if, after the alien is released from criminal custody, the Department of Homeland Security does not take him into immigration custody immediately.

Air and Liquid Systems Corp. v. Devries

Issue:

• Whether products-liability defendants can be held liable under maritime law for injuries caused by products that they did not make, sell or distribute.