Relist Watch
on Feb 23, 2017 at 3:04 pm
John Elwood reviews Tuesday’s relists
Welcome back from the longest break from Supreme Court news that you’ll get all term! From this point on, there will be a fairly steady stream of conferences until June arrives and the Justices begin their rigorous schedule of summer teaching duties. And that means a steady stream of drivel about relists.
This week, we won’t be able to live up to even our usual low standards, between the short work week and the demands of actual paying work. But we will pause briefly to highlight some of the more interesting relists on the docket this week. In addition to three returning relists, this week we have a lucky seven new relists. Reed v. Louisiana, 16-656, is a capital case that presents the all-the-marbles issue that many people have been waiting for: whether imposition of the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment that violates the Eighth and 14th Amendments. Will this be the time the Court finally addresses the constitutionality of the death penalty? Sure – and Chuck Brown will probably hoof in a game-winning field goal too.
Cotonuts v. United States, 16-5046, challenges both our spellcheck software and our ability to resist obvious jokes. The case presents the recurring issue of whether provisions of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act that delegate authority to issue regulations to the attorney general violate the nondelegation doctrine. And Independence Institute v. Federal Election Commission, 16-743, presents an issue very similar to one the court denied cert on last term in Center for Competitive Politics v. Harris, 15-152: whether it is constitutional to require organizations engaged in the genuine discussion of policy issues and unconnected to any campaign for office to disclose their donors.
Tune in next week for a similarly slapdash update – I have an argument coming up.
Thanks to Bryan U. Gividen for compiling the cases in this post.
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Returning Relists
Rippo v. Baker
16-6316
Issue: Whether the trial judge’s failure to recuse himself from the petitioner’s capital trial violated the due process clause.
(relisted after the January 6, January 13, January 19 and February 17 conferences)
Baston v. United States
16-5454
Issue: Whether 18 U.S.C. § 1596(a)(2) – which expressly establishes extraterritorial jurisdiction over sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591 – is a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the foreign commerce clause.
(relisted after the January 13, January 19 and February 17 conferences)
Perez v. Florida
16-6250
Issues: (1) Whether a special jury instruction as to Section 790.162, Florida Statutes, that an accused may be convicted of that offense with the “stated intent” to do bodily harm to any person or damage to the property of any person, amounts to an unconstitutional diminishment of the required criminal mens rea or scienter under the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Elonis v. United States; and (2) whether, under Elonis, Section 790.162, Florida Statutes, contains the necessary criminal element of mens rea or guilty knowledge instead of a mental state of mere negligence.
(relisted after the January 19 and February 17 conferences)
New Relists
Artis v. District of Columbia
16-460
Issue: Whether the tolling provision in 28 U.S.C. § 1367(d) suspends the limitations period for the state-law claim while the claim is pending and for thirty days after the claim is dismissed, or whether the tolling provision does not suspend the limitations period but merely provides 30 days beyond the dismissal for the plaintiff to refile.
(relisted after the February 17 conference)
Salazar-Limon v. City of Houston
16-515
Issue: Whether, when a police officer shoots an unarmed person in the back and the person testifies that he was merely walking away when shot, a court may grant summary judgment to the officer in a suit for excessive force by concluding that it is an “undisputed fact” that the person reached for his waistband just because the officer said he did.
(relisted after the February 17 conference)
Reed v. Louisiana
16-656
Issue: Whether imposition of the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and 14th Amendments.
(relisted after the February 17 conference)
Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago
16-658
Issue: Whether Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(5)(C) can deprive a court of appeals of jurisdiction over an appeal that is statutorily timely, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 4th, 7th and 10th Circuits have concluded, or whether Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(5)(C) is instead a nonjurisdictional claim-processing rule because it is not derived from a statute, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 9th and District of Columbia Circuits have concluded, and therefore subject to equitable considerations such as forfeiture, waiver and the unique-circumstances doctrine.
(relisted after the February 17 conference)
Independence Institute v. Federal Election Commission
16-743
Issue: Whether Congress may require organizations engaged in the genuine discussion of policy issues, unconnected to any campaign for office, to report to the Federal Election Commission, and publicly disclose their donors, pursuant to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.
(relisted after the February 17 conference)
Cotonuts v. United States
16-5046
Issue: Whether the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act’s delegation of authority to the Attorney General to issue regulations under 42 U.S.C. 16913(d) violates the nondelegation doctrine.
(relisted after the February 17 conference)
Wilson v. Sellers
16-6855
Issue: Whether the court’s decision in Harrington v. Richter silently abrogates the presumption set forth in Ylst v. Nunnemaker – that a federal court sitting in habeas proceedings should “look through” a summary state court ruling to review the last reasoned decision – as a slim majority of the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit held in this case, despite the agreement of both parties that the Ylst presumption should continue to apply.
(relisted after the February 17 conference)
