Petitions to watch | Conference of May 18

Issue: Whether applying Colorado’s public accommodations law to compel the petitioner to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment.

Issue: Whether, or under what circumstances, imposing additional tax beyond the year preceding the legislative session in which the law was enacted violates due process.

Issue: Whether 35 U.S.C. § 318(a), which provides that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in an inter partes review “shall issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of any patent claim challenged by the petitioner,” requires that Board to issue a final written decision as to every claim challenged by the petitioner, or whether it allows that Board to issue a final written decision with respect to the patentability of only some of the patent claims challenged by the petitioner, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held.

Issue: Whether a state court reasonably applies Chambers v. Mississippi when it requires a defendant to meet traditional tests of reliability under rules of evidence for using hearsay as substantive evidence.

Issue: Whether the petitioners are entitled to relief from the longstanding federal statute prohibiting felons from possessing firearms, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), based on their as-applied Second Amendment claim that their criminal offenses and other particular circumstances do not warrant a firearms disqualification.

Issue: Whether, as used in 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20)(B), the term “punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or less” means “capable of being punished by a term of imprisonment of two years or less,” or “subject to a term of imprisonment of two years or less.”

Issue: Whether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cell-phone records revealing the location and movements of a cell-phone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth Amendment.

Issues: (1) Whether the Multistate Tax Compact has the status of a contract that binds its signatory states and requires them to allow taxpayers to elect to use the compact’s equally weighted apportionment formula until the state prospectively withdraws from the compact; (2) whether Michigan’s retroactive repeal of, and withdrawal from, the compact violated the contracts clause; (3) whether Michigan’s retroactive repeal of, and withdrawal from, the compact violated the due process clause; and (4) whether Michigan’s retroactive repeal of, and withdrawal from, the compact violated the commerce clause.

Issues: (1) Whether a state statute that retroactively imposes over $1 billion in increased tax liability on out-of-state businesses for the benefit of in-state businesses violates the dormant commerce clause; (2) whether a state tax law that has a 6 1/2-year period of retroactivity and targets out-of-state businesses for increased tax liability of over $1 billion violates the due process clause; and (3) whether a state’s retroactive repeal of a central provision of the decades-old Multistate Tax Compact violates the contracts clause by imposing over $1 billion in retroactive tax liability on out-of-state taxpayers.

Issues: (1) Whether the Multistate Tax Compact has the status of a contract that binds its signatory states; and (2) whether a state law that imposes retroactive tax liability for a period of almost seven years, in a manner that upsets settled expectations and reasonable reliance interests, violates the due process clause.

Issues: (1) Whether a state, without violating the constitutional bar against the impairment of contracts, can retroactively withdraw from the Multistate Tax Compact so as to divest taxpayers of benefits under that compact for a period of 6 1/2 years before that withdrawal; and (2) whether, consistent with due process, a state can, by statute, change its tax laws retroactively for a period of more than six years, when the change was not promptly instituted and when the change was designed to increase state tax revenues by overriding a Michigan Supreme Court decision determining taxpayer obligations under prior law.

Issues: (1) Whether the Multistate Tax Compact has the status of a contract that binds its signatory states; and (2) whether a state law that imposes retroactive tax liability for a period of almost seven years, in a manner that upsets settled expectations and reasonable reliance interests, violates the due process clause.

Issues: (1) Whether the Multistate Tax Compact has the status of a contract that binds its signatory states; and (2) whether a state law that imposes retroactive tax liability for a period of almost seven years, in a manner that upsets settled expectations and reasonable reliance interests, violates the due process clause.

Issue: Whether the Second Amendment entitles ordinary, law-abiding citizens to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense in some manner, including concealed carry when open carry is forbidden by state law.

Issues: (1) Whether the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant to acquire cell-site location information used to track and reconstruct the location and movements of cell-phone users over extended periods of time; and (2) whether 18 U.S.C. § 2703, which contains both a provision that requires the government to seek a warrant in order to obtain stored location information from cellular-service providers, as well as a provision allowing law enforcement to obtain this data on less than probable cause, supports application of the good-faith exception to law enforcement’s acquisition of over seven months of cell-site location information without a warrant.

Issues: (1) Whether the trial court’s order granting a request by the accused’s codefendant to prohibit the accused from testifying about details that were exculpatory to the accused but prejudicial to his codefendant constituted an impermissible limitation on the accused’s right to testify in his own behalf as set forth in Rock v. Arkansas; and (2) whether the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant to acquire cell-site location information used to track and reconstruct the location and movements of cell-phone users over extended periods of time.

Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should resolve a split of authority among the courts by rejecting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit’s reasoning in United States v. Caira, which holds that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in information held by a third party.

Issues: (1) Whether law-enforcement officers must secure a warrant to obtain real-time cellular-phone location data; (2) whether courts must instruct juries on the required unanimity regarding the specific categories of acts in Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act conspiracy cases, and likewise whether the court’s conclusions in Richardson v. United States apply in RICO cases; and (3) whether courts should deliver uniform jury instructions on reasonable doubt and preserve the standard of proof necessary to sustain a criminal conviction.