Petitions of the week

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether the First Amendment and strict scrutiny apply to subject-matter restrictions on ballot initiatives, whether officers can presume that a person is armed and presently dangerous simply because the person possesses any amount of marijuana, and whether theIndividuals with Disabilities Education Actrequires administrative exhaustion when a plaintiff brings a non-IDEA claim seeking relief that is not available under the IDEA.

Thepetitions of the weekare below the jump:

Kelsay v. Ernst
19-682
Issue: Whether police officers are entitled to qualified immunity as a matter of laweven if they use substantial force against nonthreatening suspected misdemeanants who are not fleeing, resisting arrest or posing a safety risk to anyoneso long as no prior case involves a virtually identical fact pattern.

North Carolina v. Courtney
19-766
Issue: Whether the mistrial exception to the double jeopardy bar applies when, after a mistrial, the government voluntarily dismisses a criminal charge.

Vugo Inc. v. City of New York, New York
19-792
Issue: Whether strict scrutiny review applies in a challenge to government restrictions on commercial speech that do not apply to noncommercial speech.

McCoy v. United States
19-814
Issue: Whether officers can presume that a person is armed and presently dangerous simply because the person possesses any amount of marijuana, however small.

Valero Energy Corp. v. Environmental Protection Agency
19-835
Issues: (1) Whether the requirement that the Environmental Protection Agency shall make a calendar year determination of the appropriate point of obligation requires the EPA to consider in each annual rule whether the point of renewable fuel obligation applicable to refineries, blenders, and importers remains appropriate; and (2) whether the EPA can evade the annual duty by partitioning the point of obligation into a one-time collateral proceeding that ignores key evidence, relies primarily on the agencys own convenience and claims more deference from a reviewing court than an annual rule would receive.

OTO, L.L.C. v. Kho
19-875
Issue: Whether the Federal Arbitration Act preempts a state from invalidating an arbitration agreement as substantively unconscionable on the ground that it provides procedural protections akin to civil litigation, rather than to the streamlined administrative proceeding that would be available under state law in the absence of the agreement.

TAMKO Building Products Inc. v. Williams
19-959
Issue: Whether the Federal Arbitration Act permits state courts to craft state principles of agency law that uniquely disfavor arbitration (in the guise of uniquely protecting jury-trial rights) and use those principles to refuse to enforce arbitration agreements.

Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski
19-968
Issue: Whether a governments post-filing change of an unconstitutional policy moots nominal-damages claims that vindicate the governments past, completed violation of a plaintiffs constitutional right.

McMillen v. New Caney Independent School District
19-972
Issue: Whether theIndividuals with Disabilities Education Actrequires administrative exhaustion when a plaintiff brings a non-IDEA claim seeking relief that is not available under the IDEA.

Schmitt v. LaRose
19-974
Issue: Whether the First Amendment and strict scrutiny apply to subject-matter restrictions on ballot initiatives.