Opinions from 2021

Justia Opinion Summary: In 1996, Reeves and some friends went “looking for some robberies ” but their car broke down. Johnson offered to tow their vehicle. After they arrived, Reeves shot Johnson and directed the others to get his money. Reeves ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Charitable organizations soliciting funds in California generally must register with the Attorney General and renew their registrations annually by filing copies of their IRS Form 990, on which tax-exempt organizations provide ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Arizona voters may cast their ballots on election day in person at a traditional precinct or a “voting center” in their county of residence, may cast an “early ballot” by mail, or may vote in person at an early voting ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Under the Natural Gas Act, to build an interstate pipeline, a natural gas company must obtain from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) a certificate of "public convenience and necessity,” 15 U.S.C. 717f(e). ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Truckai invented NovaSure to treat abnormal uterine bleeding using a moisture-permeable applicator head to destroy targeted cells. Truckai filed a patent application and assigned the application and future continuation applications, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reinstated the prior removal orders of aliens who were removed from the U.S. and reentered without authorization. Each alien sought to prevent DHS's execution of those orders based ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Plaintiffs owned a tenancy-in-common interest in a multi-unit San Francisco residential building. Until 2013, San Francisco accepted only 200 applications annually for conversion of such arrangements into condominium ownership. ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Officers arrested Gilbert for trespassing, took him to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, and placed him in a holding cell. An officer saw Gilbert tie a piece of clothing around the cell bars and put it around ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The renewable fuel program (RFP) requires most domestic refineries to blend renewable fuels into the transportation fuels they produce, 42 U.S.C. 7545(o)(1)(J), (o)(1)(L), (o)(2)(A)(i), To lessen the impact of those mandates ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Title V of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act allocates $8 billion to “Tribal governments” to compensate for unbudgeted expenditures made in response to COVID–19, 42 U.S.C. 801(a)(2)(B). ...

Justia Opinion Summary: When a business opted into its Name Screen Alert service, TransUnion would conduct its ordinary credit check of the consumer and would also use third-party software to compare the consumer’s name against the Treasury Department’s ...

Justia Opinion Summary: B.L. failed to make her school’s varsity cheerleading squad. While visiting a store over the weekend, B.L. posted two images on Snapchat, a social media smartphone application that allows users to share temporary images ...

Justia Opinion Summary: A California regulation mandates that agricultural employers allow union organizers onto their property for up to three hours per day, 120 days per year. Union organizers sought access to property owned by two California ...

Justia Opinion Summary: When the housing bubble burst in 2008, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) suffered significant losses. The Housing and Economic Recovery Act ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Lange drove by a California highway patrol officer, playing loud music and honking his horn. The officer followed Lange and soon turned on his overhead lights to signal Lange to pull over. Rather than stopping, Lange drove ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) limits how schools may compensate college-level “amateur” student-athletes. Current and former student-athletes brought suit under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Plaintiffs filed a securities-fraud class action alleging that Goldman violated securities laws prohibiting material misrepresentations and omissions in connection with the sale of securities, 15 U.S.C. 78j(b); 17 CFR 240.10b–5, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Administrative Patent Judges (APJs) conduct adversarial proceedings for challenging the validity of an existing patent before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), 35 U.S.C. 6(a), (c). The Secretary of Commerce appoints ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Philadelphia contracts with private agencies, which certify prospective foster families under state criteria. Based on its religious beliefs, Catholic Social Services (CSS) will not certify unmarried couples or same-sex married ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act required most Americans to obtain minimum essential health insurance coverage and imposed a monetary penalty upon most individuals who failed to do so; 2017 amendments effectively ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Six individuals from Mali alleged that they were trafficked into Ivory Coast as child slaves to produce cocoa; they sued U.S.-based companies, Nestlé and Cargill, citing the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which provides federal ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In its 2019 “Rehaif” decision, the Supreme Court clarified that for 18 U.S.C. 922(g) firearms-possession offenses, the prosecution must prove both that the defendant knew he possessed a firearm and that he knew he was ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The 1986 mandatory-minimum penalties for possession with intent to distribute cocaine were based on drug quantity: a five-year mandatory minimum was triggered by either five grams of crack cocaine or 500 grams of powder cocaine; ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Borden pleaded guilty as a felon-in-possession. The prosecution sought an enhanced sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), which mandates a 15-year minimum sentence for persons found guilty of illegally possessing ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Sanchez, a citizen of El Salvador, entered the U.S. unlawfully in 1997 and obtained Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 2001. TPS allows foreign nationals from countries designated by the government as having unusually bad ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Former Georgia police sergeant Van Buren used his credentials on a patrol-car computer to access a law enforcement database to retrieve license plate information in exchange for money. His conduct violated a department policy ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Crow Police Officer Saylor approached a truck parked on U.S. Highway 212, a public right-of-way within the Crow Reservation in Montana. Saylor observed that the driver, Cooley, appeared to be non-native and had watery, bloodshot ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Alcaraz-Enriquez and Dai each appeared before an immigration judge (IJ), requesting that he not be returned to his country of origin. For Alcaraz-Enriquez, the IJ had to determine whether Alcaraz-Enriquez had committed a ...

Justia Opinion Summary: A class of Texas municipalities was awarded a multi-million dollar judgment against online travel companies over the calculation of hotel occupancy taxes. To prevent execution on that judgment pending appeal, the companies ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Ordot Dump was constructed on Guam by the Navy in the 1940s. Both the federal government and Guam allegedly deposited waste at Ordot. A 2004 consent decree between the EPA and Guam resolved litigation concerning Clean ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Palomar-Santiago, a Mexican national living in the U.S, was convicted in California state court of felony DUI in 1988. Lower courts then understood that conviction to be an “aggravated felony” subjecting a noncitizen ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Baltimore sued energy companies in Maryland state court, alleging that they concealed the environmental impacts of the fossil fuels they promoted. The companies removed the case to federal court invoking, among other grounds, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: During an argument with his wife, Caniglia placed a handgun on a table and asked his wife to “shoot [him] and get it over with.” His wife left and spent the night at a hotel. The next morning, unable to reach her husband ...

Justia Opinion Summary: IRS Notice 2016–66 requires taxpayers and “material advisors” to report information about "micro-captive" insurance agreements. The consequences for non-compliance include civil tax penalties and criminal prosecution. ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In 2007, a Louisiana jury found Edwards guilty of armed robbery, rape, and kidnapping. Louisiana law then permitted non-unanimous jury verdicts if at least 10 of the 12 jurors found the defendant guilty; 11 of 12 Edwards ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Nonpermanent resident aliens ordered removed from the U.S. may obtain discretionary relief if, among other things, they can establish their continuous presence in the country for at least 10 years, 8 U.S.C. 1229b(b)(1). The ...

Justia Opinion Summary: An Alaska jury convicted Wright of 13 counts of sexual abuse of a minor. Wright finished serving his sentence and moved to Tennessee. Once there, he failed to register as a sex offender as required by the Sex Offender Registration ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Petitioners, whose applications for disability benefits were denied by the Social Security Administration (SSA) unsuccessfully challenged their adverse determinations before an SSA administrative law judge (ALJ). The SSA ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The FTC filed a complaint against Tucker alleging deceptive payday lending practices in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act Section 5(a). The district court entered a permanent injunction to prevent Tucker from ...

Justia Opinion Summary: A Mississippi jury convicted Jones of murder for killing his grandfather when Jones was 15 years old. Under Mississippi law, murder carried a mandatory sentence of life without parole. That sentence was affirmed on appeal. ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Oracle owns a copyright in Java SE, a computer platform. Google acquired Android and sought to build a new software platform for mobile devices. To allow millions of programmers familiar with Java to work with its new platform, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ownership rules limit the number of radio stations, television stations, and newspapers that a single entity may own in a given market. Section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) restricts communications made with an “automatic telephone dialing system,” defined as equipment with the capacity both “to store or produce telephone numbers to ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In March 1985, Hines, carrying a concealed hunting knife, checked into a motel. The manager had put Jenkins in charge of the motel, providing her with a bag of money. Another visitor, Jones, later found Jenkins’ body in ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Ford, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Michigan, markets, sells, and services its products across the U.S. and overseas and encourages a resale market for its vehicles. Montana and Minnesota courts exercised ...

Justia Opinion Summary: New Mexico State Police officers arrived at an apartment complex to execute an arrest warrant and approached Torres, then standing near a car, and attempted to speak with her as she got into the driver’s seat. Believing ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Uzuegbunam, a Georgia Gwinnett College student, talked with interested students and handed out religious literature on campus until a campus police officer informed him that campus policy prohibited distributing religious ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule in 2011 regarding cooling water intake structures. Because aquatic wildlife can become trapped in intake structures, the Endangered Species Act required the EPA to ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In removal proceedings for entering and remaining in the country unlawfully, Pereida sought to establish his eligibility for cancellation of removal under 8 U.S.C. 1229a(c)(4), 1229b(b)(1). Eligibility requires certain nonpermanent ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) allows a plaintiff to bring certain state-law tort claims against the United States for torts committed by federal employees acting within the scope of their employment if the plaintiff ...

Justia Opinion Summary: German Jewish art dealers owned a collection of medieval relics. Their heirs allege that the Nazi government unlawfully coerced the consortium into selling the collection to Prussia for a third of its value. The relics are ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In 1992, Salinas began seeking disability benefits under the Railroad Retirement Act (RRA) based on serious injuries he suffered during his 15-year railroad career. He was granted benefits after his fourth application in ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The debtors each filed a bankruptcy petition and requested that the city return his vehicle, which had been impounded for failure to pay fines. The filing of a bankruptcy petition automatically “creates an estate,” 11 ...