October Term 2020

Holding: Under the unusual circumstances of this case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit should not have ventured into such an uncertain area of state tort law without first using state certification procedures to seek guidance from the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Holding: Because any reasonable correctional officer should have realized that Trent Taylor’s conditions of confinement offended the Eighth Amendment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit erred in granting the officers qualified immunity.

Holding: A decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit granting post-conviction relief to a man on Arizona's death row for his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel violated the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.

Holding: Because it is unclear in this excessive force case whether the Eighth Circuit incorrectly thought the use of a prone restraint is per se constitutional so long as an individual appears to resist officers’ efforts to subdue him, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit’s judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to give the lower court the opportunity in the first instance to employ the careful, context-specific analysis required by this court’s excessive force precedent.

Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit erred in revisiting on federal habeas review the decision of a Tennessee court supported by ample evidence that did not exceed the possibility of fairminded disagreement supporting that court’s conclusion.

Holding: The requirement under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a) that a habeas petitioner be “in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court” is not met if the state judgment is simply a necessary predicate to a federal conviction.

Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit erred in characterizing the Alabama court’s case-specific analysis as a “categorical rule” that any prisoner will always lose an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim if he fails to call and question trial counsel concerning his or her actions and reasoning; the Alabama court did not violate clearly established federal law when it rejected Reeves’ ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim.

Holding: Administrative exhaustion of state remedies is not a prerequisite for a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 takings claim when the government has reached a conclusive position.

Holding: The district court’s judgment – which vacated as unlawful the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s imposition of a nationwide moratorium on evictions of any tenants who live in a county that is experiencing substantial or high levels of COVID-19 transmission and who make certain declarations of financial need – is enforceable and the stay of the judgment is vacated.

Issue(s): Whether an impeachment trial before a legislative body is a “judicial proceeding” under Rule 6(e)(3)(E)(i) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Issue(s): (1) Whether respondents have a cognizable cause of action to obtain review of the acting secretary of defense’s compliance with a proviso in Section 8005 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act that the secretary’s authority to transfer funds internally between DOD appropriations accounts “may not be used unless for higher priority items, based on unforeseen military requirements, than those for which originally appropriated and in no case where the item for which funds are requested has been denied by the Congress”; and (2) whether in 2019 the acting secretary exceeded his statutory authority under Section 8005 by transferring approximately $2.5 billion in response to a request from the Department of Homeland Security for counterdrug assistance under 10 U.S.C. 284, including in the form of construction of fences along the southern border of the United States.

Holding: Certiorari dismissed as improvidently granted.

Issue(s): (1) Whether the Department of Homeland Security policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols is a lawful implementation of the statutory authority conferred by 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(2)(C); (2) whether MPP is consistent with any applicable and enforceable non-refoulement obligations; (3) whether MPP is exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act requirement of notice-and-comment rulemaking; and (4) whether the district court’s universal preliminary injunction is impermissibly overbroad.

Issue(s): Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred in concluding that the secretary of health and human services may not authorize demonstration projects to test requirements that are designed to promote the provision of health-care coverage by means of facilitating the transition of Medicaid beneficiaries to commercial coverage and improving their health.

Issue(s): Whether the approval by the secretary of health and human services of the Arkansas Works Amendment was lawful.