Court grants certiorari in five cases, consolidating three

By Andrew Hamm
on Oct 11, 2016 at 2:57 pm

This afternoon the court granted review in the following cases.

Hernández v. Mesa:

1. Whether a formalist or functionalist analysis governs the extraterritorial application of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unjustified deadly force, as applied to a cross-border shooting of an unarmed Mexican citizen in an enclosed area controlled by the United States;
2. Whether qualified immunity may be granted or denied based on facts – such as the victim’s legal status – unknown to the officer at the time of the incident; and
3. Whether the claim in this case may be asserted under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents.

Ziglar v. Turkmen, consolidated with Ashcroft v. Turkmen and Hasty v. Turkmen:

1. Whether the court of appeals, in finding that respondents’ Fifth Amendment claims did not arise in a “new context” for purposes of implying a remedy under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, erred by defining “context” at too high a level of generality where Respondents challenge the actions taken in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001 regarding the detention of persons illegally in the United States whom the FBI had arrested in connection with its investigation of the September 11 attacks, thereby implicating concerns regarding national security, immigration, and the separation of powers;
2. Whether the court of appeals, in denying qualified immunity to petitioner Ziglar erred: (A) by failing to focus on the specific context of the case to determine whether the violative nature of Ziglar’s specific conduct was at the time clearly established, instead defining the “established law” at the high level of generality that this Court has warned against; and (B) by finding that even though the applicability of 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) to the actions of federal officials like petitioner Ziglar was not clearly established at the time in question, Respondents nevertheless could maintain a § 1985(3) claim against him so long as his conduct violated some other clearly established law; and
3. Whether the court of appeals erred in finding that respondents’ Fourth Amended Complaint met the pleading requirements of Ashcroft v. Iqbal , and related cases, because that complaint relied on allegations of hypothetical possibilities, conclusional assumptions, and unsupported insinuations of discriminatory intent that, at best, are merely consistent with petitioner Ziglar’s liability, but fall short of stating plausible claims.

Midland Funding v. Johnson:

1. Whether the filing of an accurate proof of claim for an unextinguished time-barred debt in a bankruptcy proceeding violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act; and
2. Whether the Bankruptcy Code, which governs the filing of proofs of claim in bankruptcy, precludes the application of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to the filing of an accurate proof of claim for an unextinguished time-barred debt.