October Term 2016

Holding: (1) The defendant's arguments that subsection (1) of the bank fraud statute, which covers schemes to deprive a bank of money in a customer's deposit account, does not apply to him because he intended to cheat only a bank depositor, not a bank, are unpersuasive; and (2) with regard to the parties' dispute over whether the district court improperly instructed the jury that a scheme to defraud a bank must be one to deceive the bank or deprive it of something of value, instead of one to deceive and deprive, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is left to determine whether that question was properly presented and if so, whether the instruction given is lawful, and, if not, whether any error was harmless.

Holding: The issue-preclusion component of the double jeopardy clause, which bars a second contest of an issue of fact or law raised and necessarily resolved by a prior judgment, does not bar the government from retrying defendants after a jury has returned irreconcilably inconsistent verdicts of conviction and acquittal and the convictions are later vacated for legal error unrelated to the inconsistency.

Holding: (1) The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit exceeded the limited scope of analysis for a certificate of appealability, which, by statute, follows a two-step process: an initial determination whether a claim is reasonably debatable, and, if so, an appeal in the normal course; and (2) petitioner Duane Buck has demonstrated ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington; and (3) the district court's denial of Buck's motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) was an abuse of discretion.

Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit properly applied the court's decision in Dirks v. Securities and Exchange Commission to affirm Bassam Salman's conviction because, under Dirks, the jury could infer that Salman's tipper personally benefited from making a gift of confidential information to a trading relative.

Holding: (1) Elijah Manuel may challenge his pretrial detention on Fourth Amendment grounds; and (2) on remand, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit should determine the accrual date of Manuel's Fourth Amendment claim, unless it finds that the city of Joliet has previously waived its timeliness argument.

Holding: A defendant wishing to appeal an order imposing restitution in a deferred restitution case must file a notice of appeal from that order; if he fails to do so and the government objects, he may not challenge the restitution order on appeal.

Holding: In the case of a multicomponent product, the relevant article of manufacture for arriving at a damages award under Section 289 of the Patent Act need not be the end product sold to the consumer but may be only a component of that product.

Holding: When a juror makes a clear statement indicating that he or she relied on racial stereotypes or animus to convict a criminal defendant, the Sixth Amendment requires that the no-impeachment rule give way in order to permit the trial court to consider the evidence of the juror's statement and any resulting denial of the jury trial guarantee.

Holding: A feature incorporated into the design of a useful article is eligible for copyright protection under the Copyright Act of 1976 only if the feature (1) can be perceived as a two- or three-dimensional work of art separate from the useful article, and (2) would qualify as a protectable pictorial, graphic or sculptural work -- either on its own or fixed in some other tangible medium of expression -- if it were imagined separately from the useful article into which it is incorporated; that test is satisfied here.

Holding: (1) Exhaustion of the administrative procedures established by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is unnecessary when the gravamen of the plaintiff's suit is something other than the denial of the IDEA's core guarantee of a "free appropriate public education"; and (2) the case is remanded to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit for a proper analysis of whether the gravamen of E.F.'s complaint -- which alleges only disability-based discrimination, without making any reference to the adequacy of the special-education services E.F.'s school provided -- charges, and seeks relief for, the denial of a FAPE.

Holding: Laches cannot be invoked as a defense against a claim for damages brought within the six-year limitations period of Section 286 of the Patent Act.

Holding: A seal violation does not mandate dismissal of a relator's complaint under the False Claims Act.

Holding: A case falls within the scope of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act’s expropriation exception only if the property in which a party claims to hold rights was indeed "property taken in violation of international law"; simply making a nonfrivolous argument to that effect is not sufficient; a court should resolve any factual disputes about a foreign sovereign's immunity defense as near to the outset of the case as is reasonably possible.

Holding: (1) Subsection (b)(1) of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, which prevents a person who has been nominated to fill a vacant office requiring presidential appointment and Senate confirmation from performing the duties of that office in an acting capacity, applies to anyone performing acting service under the FVRA and is not limited to first assistants performing acting service under Subsection (a)(1); and (2) Subsection (b)(1) prohibited Lafe Solomon from continuing his service as acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board once the president nominated him to fill the position permanently.

Holding: (1) The city of Miami is an "aggrieved person" authorized to bring suit under the Fair Housing Act; and (2) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit erred in concluding that the city's complaints, charging that the banks engaged in discriminatory conduct that led to a disproportionate number of foreclosures and vacancies in majority-minority neighborhoods, which diminished the city’s property-tax revenue and increased the demand for police, fire, and other municipal services, met the FHA's proximate-cause requirement based solely on the finding that the city's alleged financial injuries were foreseeable results of the banks' misconduct; proximate cause under the FHA requires “some direct relation between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged”; the lower courts should define, in the first instance, the contours of proximate cause under the FHA and decide how that standard applies to the city's claims for lost property-tax revenue and increased municipal expenses.

Holding: (1) The city of Miami is an "aggrieved person" authorized to bring suit under the Fair Housing Act; and (2) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit erred in concluding that the city's complaints, charging that the banks engaged in discriminatory conduct that led to a disproportionate number of foreclosures and vacancies in majority-minority neighborhoods, which diminished the city’s property-tax revenue and increased the demand for police, fire, and other municipal services, met the FHA's proximate-cause requirement based solely on the finding that the city's alleged financial injuries were foreseeable results of the banks' misconduct; proximate cause under the FHA requires “some direct relation between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged”; the lower courts should define, in the first instance, the contours of proximate cause under the FHA and decide how that standard applies to the city's claims for lost property-tax revenue and increased municipal expenses.

Holding: Fannie Mae's sue-and-be-sued clause does not grant federal courts jurisdiction over all cases involving Fannie Mae.

Holding: (1) The gender line Congress drew in Section 1409(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act -- which creates an exception for an unwed U.S.-citizen mother, but not for such a father, to the physical-presence requirement for the transmission of U.S. citizenship to a child born abroad -- is incompatible with the Fifth Amendment's requirement that the government accord to all persons "the equal protection of the laws"; and (2) because the Supreme Court is not equipped to convert Section 1409(c)'s exception into the main rule displacing other relevant provisions of the statute, it falls to Congress to select a uniform prescription that neither favors nor disadvantages any person on the basis of gender.

Holding: The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, including Section 4B1.2(a)'s residual clause, are not subject to vagueness challenges under the due process clause.

Holding: By rejecting the habeas court's application of current medical diagnostic standards and by following the standard under Ex parte Briseno, including the nonclinical Briseno factors, the decision of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals does not comport with the Eighth Amendment and Supreme Court precedents.

Holding: (1) North Carolina's victory in a similar state-court lawsuit does not dictate the disposition of this case or alter the applicable standard of review; (2) the district court did not err in concluding that race furnished the predominant rationale for District 1's redesign and that the state's interest in complying with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 could not justify that consideration of race; and (3) the district court also did not clearly err by finding that race predominated in the redrawing of District 12.

Holding: (1) The district court employed an incorrect legal standard in determining that race did not predominate in 11 of 12 new state legislative districts drawn by the Virginia State Legislature after the 2010 census; and (2) the district court's judgment regarding District 75 -- that the legislature had good reason to believe that a 55 percent target for black voting-age population was necessary to avoid diminishing the ability of black voters to elect their preferred candidates, which at the time would have violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- is consistent with the basic narrow tailoring analysis explained in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama.

Holding: The supply of a single component of a multicomponent invention for manufacture abroad does not give rise to liability under Section 271(f)(1) of the Patent Act, which prohibits the supply from the United States of "all or a substantial portion of the components of a patented invention" for combination abroad.

Holding: (1) The petitioners -- a group of former truck-drivers for Jevic Transportation, the respondent -- have Article III standing; and (2) bankruptcy courts may not approve structured dismissals of Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases that provide for asset distributions which do not follow ordinary priority rules established by the Bankruptcy Code without the consent of affected creditors.

Holding: (1) In a suit brought against a tribal employee in his individual capacity, the employee, not the tribe, is the real party in interest and the tribe's sovereign immunity is not implicated; and (2) an indemnification provision cannot, as a matter of law, extend sovereign immunity to individual employees who would otherwise not be protected.

Holding: The scheme under Colorado's Exoneration Act -- which permits the state to retain conviction-related assessments unless and until the prevailing defendant institutes a discrete civil proceeding and proves her innocence by clear and convincing evidence -- does not comport with the 14th Amendment's guarantee of due process.

Holding: When a federal court exercises its inherent authority to sanction bad-faith conduct by ordering a litigant to pay the other side's legal fees, the award is limited to the fees the innocent party incurred solely because of the misconduct.

Holding: (1) The Supreme Court's review is limited to whether New York General Business Law Section 518 is unconstitutional as applied to the particular pricing scheme that, before this court, petitioners, five New York businesses and their owners, have argued they seek to employ: a single-sticker regime, in which merchants post a cash price and an additional credit card surcharge; (2) Section 518 prohibits the pricing regime petitioners wish to employ; (3) In regulating the communication of prices rather than prices themselves, Section 518 regulates speech. On remand the court of appeals should determine whether Section 518 survives First Amendment scrutiny as a speech regulation; and (4) Section 518 is not vague as applied to petitioners.

Holding: To meet its substantive obligation under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a school must offer an "individualized education program" reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child's circumstances.

Holding: The filing of a proof of claim that is obviously time barred is not a false, deceptive, misleading, unfair or unconscionable debt-collection practice within the meaning of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

Holding: (1) The limited reach of the Bivens action informs the decision whether an implied damages remedy should be recognized in this case; (2) considering the relevant special factors in this case, a Bivens-type remedy should not be extended to the "detention policy claims" -- the allegations that the executive officials and wardens violated the detainees' due process and equal protection rights by holding them in restrictive conditions of confinement, and the allegation that the wardens violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by subjecting the detainees to frequent strip searches -- challenging the confinement conditions imposed on the detainees pursuant to the formal policy adopted by the executive officials in the wake of the September 11 attacks; (3) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit erred in allowing the prisoner-abuse claim against Warden Dennis Hasty to go forward without conducting the required special-factors analysis; and (4) the executive officials and wardens are entitled to qualified immunity with respect to respondents' claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3).

Holding: (1) The limited reach of the Bivens action informs the decision whether an implied damages remedy should be recognized in this case; (2) considering the relevant special factors in this case, a Bivens-type remedy should not be extended to the "detention policy claims" -- the allegations that the executive officials and wardens violated the detainees' due process and equal protection rights by holding them in restrictive conditions of confinement, and the allegation that the wardens violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by subjecting the detainees to frequent strip searches -- challenging the confinement conditions imposed on the detainees pursuant to the formal policy adopted by the executive officials in the wake of the September 11 attacks; (3) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit erred in allowing the prisoner-abuse claim against Warden Dennis Hasty to go forward without conducting the required special-factors analysis; and (4) the executive officials and wardens are entitled to qualified immunity with respect to respondents' claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3).

Holding: (1) The limited reach of the Bivens action informs the decision whether an implied damages remedy should be recognized in this case; (2) considering the relevant special factors in this case, a Bivens-type remedy should not be extended to the "detention policy claims" -- the allegations that the executive officials and wardens violated the detainees' due process and equal protection rights by holding them in restrictive conditions of confinement, and the allegation that the wardens violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by subjecting the detainees to frequent strip searches -- challenging the confinement conditions imposed on the detainees pursuant to the formal policy adopted by the executive officials in the wake of the September 11 attacks; (3) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit erred in allowing the prisoner-abuse claim against Warden Dennis Hasty to go forward without conducting the required special-factors analysis; and (4) the executive officials and wardens are entitled to qualified immunity with respect to respondents' claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3).

Holding: The disparagement clause of the Lanham Act violates the First Amendment's free speech clause.

Holding: A district court's decision whether to enforce or quash a subpoena issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission should be reviewed for abuse of discretion, not de novo.

Holding: (1) A Bivens remedy is not available when there are "special factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress," and the court recently clarified in Ziglar v. Abbasi what constitutes a special factor counselling hesitation; the court of appeals should consider how the reasoning and analysis in Ziglar bear on the question whether the parents of a victim shot by a U.S. Border Patrol agent may recover damages for his death; (2) It would be imprudent for the Supreme Court to decide Jesus Hernandez’s Fourth Amendment claim when, in light of the intervening guidance provided in Abbasi, doing so may be unnecessary to resolve this particular case; and (3) with respect to Hernandez’s Fifth Amendment claim, because it is undisputed that the victim's nationality and the extent of his ties to the United States were unknown to the agent at the time of the shooting, the en banc court of appeals erred in granting qualified immunity based on those facts.

Holding: The Kentucky Supreme Court's clear-statement rule – under which an agent could deprive her principal of the rights of access to the courts and trial by jury through an arbitration agreement only if expressly provided in the power of attorney – violates the Federal Arbitration Act by singling out arbitration agreements for disfavored treatment.

Holding: In the context of statutory rape offenses that criminalize sexual intercourse based solely on the ages of the participants, the generic federal definition of "sexual abuse of a minor" requires the age of the victim to be less than 16.

Holding: The North Carolina statute, which makes it a felony for a registered sex offender "to access a commercial social networking Web site where the sex offender knows that the site permits minor children to become members or to create or maintain personal Web pages," impermissibly restricts lawful speech in violation of the First Amendment.

Holding: 18 U. S. C. §924(c), which criminalizes using or carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime, or possessing a firearm in furtherance of such an underlying crime, does not prevent a sentencing court from considering a mandatory minimum imposed under that provision when calculating an appropriate sentence for the predicate offense.

Holding: (1) Because contractual subrogation and reimbursement prescriptions plainly "relate to ... payments with respect to benefits," as stated in the Section 8902(m)(1) of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Act of 1959, they override state laws barring subrogation and reimbursement; and (2) the regime Congress enacted is compatible with the supremacy clause.

Holding: A state court may not order a veteran to indemnify a divorced spouse for the loss in the divorced spouse's portion of the veteran's retirement pay caused by the veteran's waiver of retirement pay to receive service-related disability benefits.

Holding: The Court of Appeals of Wisconsin was correct to analyze the lot owners' property as a single unit in assessing the effect of the challenged governmental action.

Holding: (1) Lexmark exhausted its patent rights in toner cartridges sold in the United States through its "Return Program"; and (2) Lexmark cannot sue Impression Products for patent infringement with respect to cartridges Lexmark sold abroad, which Impression Products acquired from purchasers and imported into the United States, because an authorized sale outside the United States, just as one within the United States, exhausts all rights under the Patent Act.

Holding: Federal courts of appeals lack jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. §1291 to review an order denying class certification (or, as in this case, an order striking class allegations) after the named plaintiffs have voluntarily dismissed their claims with prejudice.

Holding: The Fourth Amendment provides no basis for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit's "provocation rule," which makes an officer's otherwise reasonable use of force unreasonable if (1) the officer "intentionally or recklessly provokes a violent confrontation" and (2) "the provocation is an independent Fourth Amendment violation."

Holding: The Hague Service Convention does not prohibit service of process by mail.

Holding: The patent venue statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1400(b), provides that "[a]ny civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business." As applied to domestic corporations, “reside[nce]” in Section 1400(b) refers only to the state of incorporation; the amendments to Section 1391 did not modify the meaning of Section 1400(b) as interpreted in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Products.

Holding: Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, a defined-benefit pension plan maintained by a principal-purpose organization -- one controlled by or associated with a church for the administration or funding of a plan for the church's employees -- qualifies as a "church plan," regardless of who established it.

Holding: Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, a defined-benefit pension plan maintained by a principal-purpose organization -- one controlled by or associated with a church for the administration or funding of a plan for the church's employees -- qualifies as a "church plan," regardless of who established it.

Holding: Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, a defined-benefit pension plan maintained by a principal-purpose organization -- one controlled by or associated with a church for the administration or funding of a plan for the church's employees -- qualifies as a "church plan," regardless of who established it.

Holding: Jae Lee has demonstrated that he was prejudiced by his counsel's erroneous advice that he would not be deported as a result of pleading guilty to an aggravated felony.

Holding: Because forfeiture pursuant to Section 853(a)(1) of the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1984 is limited to property the defendant himself actually acquired as the result of the crime, that provision does not permit forfeiture with regard to Terry Honeycutt, who had no ownership interest in his brother's store and did not personally benefit from the illegal sales.

Holding: The withheld evidence is not material under Brady v. Maryland.

Holding: The withheld evidence is not material under Brady v. Maryland.

Holding: (1) A litigant seeking to intervene as of right under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a)(2) must meet the requirements of Article III standing if the intervenor wishes to pursue relief not requested by a plaintiff; and (2) the court of appeals is to address on remand the question whether Laroe Estates seeks different relief than Steven Sherman: If Laroe wants only a money judgment of its own running directly against the town of Chester, then it seeks damages different from those sought by Sherman and must establish its own Article III standing in order to intervene.

Holding: The proper review forum when the Merit Systems Protection Board dismisses a mixed case -- a complaint by an employee of a serious adverse employment action attributable, in whole or in part, to bias based on race, gender, age or disability -- on jurisdictional grounds is district court.

Holding: The public pension fund's untimely filing of its individual complaint under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933 more than three years after the relevant securities offering is ground for dismissal under Section 13 of the act.

Holding: Because disgorgement sought by the Securities and Exchange Commission operates as a penalty under 28 U.S.C. § 2462, in that it is imposed by the courts as a consequence for violating public laws and for punitive purposes, any claim for disgorgement in an SEC enforcement action must be commenced within five years of the date the claim accrued.

Holding: A company may collect debts that it purchased for its own account without triggering the statutory definition of a "debt collector" under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

Holding: (1) In the context of a public-trial violation during jury selection, when the error is neither preserved nor raised on direct review but is raised later via an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, the defendant must demonstrate prejudice to secure a new trial; (2) Because Kentel Weaver has not shown a reasonable probability of a different outcome but for counsel's failure to object or that counsel's shortcomings led to a fundamentally unfair trial, he is not entitled to a new trial.

Holding: The Missouri Department of Natural Resources' express policy of denying grants to any applicant owned or controlled by a church, sect or other religious entity violated the rights of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc., under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment by denying the church an otherwise available public benefit on account of its religious status.

Holding: The ineffective assistance of postconviction counsel does not provide cause to excuse the procedural default of ineffective-assistance-of-appellate-counsel claims.

Holding: The Alabama courts' determination that James McWilliams received all the assistance to which Ake v. Oklahoma entitled him -- when certain threshold criteria are met, access to a state-provided mental health expert who is sufficiently available to the defense and independent from the prosecution to effectively "conduct an appropriate examination and assist in evaluation, preparation, and presentation of the defense" -- was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law; and (2) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit should determine on remand whether the Alabama courts' error had the "substantial and injurious effect or influence" required to warrant a grant of habeas relief under Davis v. Ayala, specifically considering whether access to the type of meaningful assistance in evaluating, preparing, and presenting the defense that Ake requires could have made a difference.

Holding: California courts lack specific jurisdiction to entertain the claims in this case brought by plaintiffs who are not California residents, because there is an insufficient connection between the forum and the specific claims at issue.

Holding: (1) Section 56 of the Federal Employers' Liability Act -- which provides that "an action may be brought in a district court of the United States," in, among other places, the district "in which the defendant shall be doing business at the time of commencing such action" -- does not address personal jurisdiction over railroads; and (2) the Montana courts' exercise of general personal jurisdiction under Montana law does not comport with the 14th Amendment's due process clause.

Holding: (1) The text of 18 U.S.C. § 1425(a) -- which prohibits "procur[ing], contrary to law, the naturalization of any person" -- makes clear that, to secure a conviction, the federal government must establish that the defendant's illegal act played a role in her acquisition of citizenship; (2) when the underlying illegality alleged in a Section 1425(a) prosecution is a false statement to government officials, a jury must decide whether the false statement so altered the naturalization process as to have influenced an award of citizenship; and (3) measured against this analysis, the jury instructions in this case were in error, and the government's assertion that any instructional error was harmless is left for resolution on remand.

Holding: Section 262(l)(2)(A) of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 is not enforceable by injunction under federal law, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on remand should determine whether a state-law injunction is available; an applicant may provide notice of commercial marketing under Section 262(l)(8)(A) prior to obtaining licensure.

Holding: Section 262(l)(2)(A) of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 is not enforceable by injunction under federal law, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on remand should determine whether a state-law injunction is available; an applicant may provide notice of commercial marketing under Section 262(l)(8)(A) prior to obtaining licensure.