Court issues December calendar

The Supreme Court issued its calendar for the December sitting today. The justices are scheduled to kick off the sitting, which begins on Monday, December 2, with the oral argument in the challenge to New York City’s ban on transporting guns outside the city’s limits. But it’s not clear that the oral argument will actually take place: On October 1, the justices will consider whether to dismiss the case because the city has amended its regulations (and the state has also changed its gun licensing laws). Between December 2 and December 11, the justices will hear oral arguments in a total of 15 cases over 12 hours, addressing a wide variety of issues.

Here is the full list of cases scheduled for the December sitting, along with a brief description of the issue involved in each case:

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York (Monday, Dec. 2): Whether the city’s ban on taking a handgun outside city limits violates the Second Amendment.

Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org (Monday, Dec. 2): Whether works that lack the force of law, such as annotations to a state’s code, can be copyrighted.

Rodriguez v. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (Tuesday, Dec. 3): How courts should determine ownership of a tax refund paid to an affiliated group.

Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian (Tuesday, Dec. 3): Whether pollution clean-up costs beyond the remediation ordered by the federal Environmental Protection Agency are pre-empted by federal law.

Intel Corp. Investment Policy Committee v. Sulyma (Wednesday, Dec. 4): How to apply the statute of limitation for some cases alleging violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

Banister v. Davis (Wednesday, Dec. 4): Whether and when a motion to alter or amend a judgment should be treated as a second or successive petition for habeas corpus.

Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr and Ovalles v. Barr (Monday, Dec. 9): Whether courts can review a request for equitable tolling of the deadline to file a motion to reopen as a matter of law.

Thryv v. Click-To-Call Technologies (Monday, Dec. 9): Whether federal patent law allows an appeal of a decision to institute a procedure to challenge the validity of a patent after a finding that the one-year time bar does not apply.

Maine Community Health Options v. United States, Land of Lincoln Mutual Health Insurance v. United States and Moda Health Plan v. United States (Tuesday, Dec. 10): Whether Congress can avoid a promise to pay health insurers for losses that they have already suffered by enacting appropriations riders that restrict the sources of funds available to pay the government’s obligations.

Holguin-Hernandez v. United States (Tuesday, Dec. 10): Whether a criminal defendant must formally challenge the length of a sentence when it is announced to be able to appeal it.

Monaskey v. Taglieri (Wednesday, Dec. 11): How an appeals court should review a district court’s determination of “habitual residence” under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, and how to establish habitual residence in the case of an infant.

McKinney v. Arizona (Wednesday, Dec. 11): Whether current law must apply when weighing mitigating and aggravating evidence to determine whether a death sentence is warranted.

[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the respondents in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org. However, I am not affiliated with the firm.]

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.