Opinions from 2024

Justia Opinion Summary: Amina Bouarfa, a U.S. citizen, filed a visa petition with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for her noncitizen spouse, Ala’a Hamayel. Initially, USCIS approved the petition. However, two years later, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In 2021, Florida and Texas enacted statutes regulating large social-media companies and other internet platforms. The laws curtailed the platforms' ability to engage in content moderation and required them to provide reasons ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves former President Donald Trump, who was indicted on four counts for conduct that occurred during his presidency following the November 2020 election. The indictment alleged that Trump conspired to overturn ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves Corner Post, a merchant that accepts debit cards as a form of payment. Debit card transactions require merchants to pay an "interchange fee" to the bank that issued the card. The fee amount is set by the ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Supreme Court of the United States reviewed two cases involving challenges to a rule promulgated by the National Marine Fisheries Service under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The rule required certain fishing vessels to carry ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case revolves around the interpretation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, specifically 18 U.S.C. §1512(c)(2), which imposes criminal liability on anyone who corruptly obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, and its laws restricting public camping. The city's laws prohibit activities such as camping on public property or parking overnight in the city’s parks. Violations can ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Idaho enacted a law that prohibits abortions with a narrow exception to prevent the death of the woman. The federal government sued Idaho, arguing that the state could not enforce its abortion ban in certain situations governed ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Between 1999 and 2019, Purdue Pharma, owned and controlled by the Sackler family, was at the center of the opioid crisis in the United States. After earning billions from the sale of OxyContin, Purdue faced thousands of lawsuits. ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Clean Air Act envisions a collaborative effort between states and the federal government to regulate air quality. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets standards for common air pollutants, states must submit ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and investment adviser George Jarkesy, Jr., and his firm, Patriot28, LLC. The SEC initiated an enforcement action for civil penalties against Jarkesy and Patriot28 ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves two states and five individual social media users who sued several federal officials and agencies, alleging that the government pressured social media platforms to censor their speech in violation of the ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, who was convicted of accepting an illegal gratuity in violation of 18 U.S.C. §666(a)(1)(B). In 2013, while Snyder was mayor, Portage awarded two contracts ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In December 2019, Zackey Rahimi, the respondent, had a violent altercation with his girlfriend, C. M., who is also the mother of his child. Rahimi grabbed C. M., dragged her back to his car, and shoved her in, causing her ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves Sandra Muñoz, an American citizen, and her husband Luis Asencio-Cordero, a citizen of El Salvador. The couple sought to obtain an immigrant visa for Asencio-Cordero to live in the United States. After several ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves a dispute over the allocation of water from the Rio Grande River among the states of Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. The Rio Grande Compact, an interstate agreement, governs the equitable distribution of ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause, which guarantees a criminal defendant the right to confront the witnesses against him. The defendant, Jason Smith, was charged with various drug offenses after ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Paul Erlinger pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, a violation of 18 U.S.C. §922(g). At sentencing, the judge found Erlinger eligible for an enhanced sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves Charles and Kathleen Moore, who invested in an American-controlled foreign corporation, KisanKraft. From 2006 to 2017, KisanKraft generated substantial income but did not distribute it to its American shareholders. ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Sylvia Gonzalez, a city council member in Castle Hills, Texas, was involved in a campaign to remove the city manager, Ryan Rapelye. She gathered signatures for a petition, which was introduced at a city council meeting. After ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Delilah Diaz was stopped at a U.S.-Mexico border port of entry, where border patrol officers discovered over 54 pounds of methamphetamine hidden in the car she was driving. Diaz was charged with importing methamphetamine, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: This case involves a dispute between Jascha Chiaverini, a jewelry store owner, and police officers from Napoleon, Ohio. The officers charged Chiaverini with three crimes: receiving stolen property, dealing in precious metals ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case revolves around the legality of bump stocks, accessories that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire at a rate similar to machine guns. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) had long held that ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves three aliens, Moris Esmelis Campos-Chaves, Varinder Singh, and Raul Daniel Mendez-Colín, who were ordered removed in absentia after failing to appear at their respective removal hearings. The Government ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves the Office of the United States Trustee and a group of Chapter 11 debtors, John Q. Hammons Fall 2006, LLC, et al. The issue at hand is the remedy for a constitutional violation identified in a previous case, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Several Starbucks employees in Memphis, Tennessee, announced plans to unionize and invited a local news crew to their store after hours to promote their efforts. Starbucks fired multiple employees involved in the media event ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Steve Elster sought to register the trademark "Trump too small" for use on shirts and hats, drawing from a 2016 Presidential primary debate exchange. The Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) refused registration based on the ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In 2000, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of mifepristone tablets, marketed under the brand name Mifeprex, for terminating pregnancies up to seven weeks. The FDA imposed additional restrictions on the ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDA), which allows an Indian tribe to enter into a "self-determination contract" with the Indian Health Service (IHS) to administer healthcare ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case revolves around the valuation of shares for estate tax purposes following the death of a shareholder. Michael and Thomas Connelly were the sole shareholders of Crown C Supply, a building supply corporation. They ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves Truck Insurance Exchange (Truck), the primary insurer for companies that manufactured and sold products containing asbestos. Two of these companies, Kaiser Gypsum Co. and Hanson Permanente Cement (Debtors), ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves Danny Lee Jones, who was convicted of three murders committed with the intent to steal a gun collection. Jones brutally killed a man, his 7-year-old daughter, and his grandmother. After being found guilty, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS). The NRA alleged that Vullo violated their First Amendment rights by ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case revolves around a dispute between Alex Cantero, Saul Hymes, Ilana Harwayne-Gidansky, and others (the plaintiffs) and Bank of America. The plaintiffs had obtained home mortgage loans from Bank of America, which required ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves a dispute between Coinbase, Inc., a cryptocurrency exchange platform, and its users. The users had agreed to two contracts with Coinbase. The first contract, the User Agreement, contained an arbitration ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Supreme Court of the United States was tasked with interpreting the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) in relation to state drug convictions that occurred before recent amendments to the federal drug schedules. The ACCA ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Supreme Court of the United States reviewed a case involving the redrawing of congressional districts in South Carolina following the 2020 Census. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a voter ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and its funding mechanism. The CFPB, unlike most federal agencies, has a standing source of funding outside the ordinary annual appropriations process. Congress ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case revolves around Stuart Harrow, a Department of Defense employee who was furloughed for six days. Harrow challenged this decision before the Merit Systems Protection Board. After a five-year delay, the Board ruled ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves the interpretation of Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which outlines procedures for enforcing arbitration agreements in federal court. The petitioners, current and former delivery drivers ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves two petitioners, Halima Culley and Lena Sutton, who loaned their cars to others who were subsequently arrested for drug-related offenses. The cars were seized under Alabama's civil forfeiture law, which ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case revolves around a dispute between Sherman Nealy and Warner Chappell Music, Inc. Nealy, who co-founded Music Specialist, Inc. in 1983, alleged that he held the copyrights to the company's songs and that Warner Chappell's ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Sergeant Jatonya Clayborn Muldrow, a police officer in the St. Louis Police Department, alleged that she was transferred from her position in the Intelligence Division to a uniformed job in another department because of her ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case revolves around Louis McIntosh, who was indicted on multiple counts of Hobbs Act robbery and firearm offenses. The indictment demanded that McIntosh forfeit all property derived from proceeds traceable to the commission ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Richard DeVillier and over 120 other property owners in Texas alleged that the State of Texas had taken their property for stormwater storage without just compensation, in violation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves a dispute over the interpretation of the Montgomery GI Bill and the Post-9/11 GI Bill, both of which provide educational benefits to veterans. The petitioner, James Rudisill, served in the U.S. Army for ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Neal Bissonnette and Tyler Wojnarowski, distributors for Flowers Foods, Inc., a major producer and marketer of baked goods, sued the company for alleged violations of state and federal wage laws. Flowers Foods moved to compel ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case revolves around Macquarie Infrastructure Corporation and its subsidiary's business of storing liquid commodities, including No. 6 fuel oil. In 2016, the United Nations' International Maritime Organization adopted ...

Justia Opinion Summary: George Sheetz sought to build a small, prefabricated home on his residential parcel of land in El Dorado County, California. However, to obtain a permit, he was required to pay a substantial fee to mitigate local traffic ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The case involves Yonas Fikre, a U.S. citizen and Sudanese emigree, who brought a lawsuit alleging that the government unlawfully placed him on the No Fly List. Fikre claimed that the government violated his rights to procedural ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Supreme Court of the United States considered whether an Immigration Judge's (IJ) determination of "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship" for the cancellation of removal of a noncitizen was reviewable by an appellate ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In a case involving a city manager's personal social media account, a citizen sued the city manager under 42 U.S.C. §1983, alleging that his First Amendment rights were violated when the manager deleted his comments and ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Two members of the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees used their public Facebook pages to post content related to their positions, while also communicating with their constituents there. The Facebook pages indicated ...

Justia Opinion Summary: The Supreme Court of the United States decided in the case of Mark Pulsifer, who was convicted for distributing methamphetamine and sought to minimize his sentence using the "safety valve" provision of federal sentencing ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In this case, a group of Colorado voters contended that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits former President Donald J. Trump from holding the Presidential office again. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed, ordering ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In 2012, Damian McElrath, a young man diagnosed with multiple serious mental health disorders, killed his mother. Georgia charged McElrath with three crimes: malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault. At trial, ...

Justia Opinion Summary: In a maritime insurance dispute between Great Lakes Insurance, a German company, and Raiders Retreat Realty, a Pennsylvania company, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that choice-of-law provisions in maritime contracts ...

Justia Opinion Summary: A consumer, Reginald Kirtz, secured a loan from the Rural Housing Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Although Kirtz repaid his loan by mid-2018, the USDA continued to tell credit report company TransUnion ...

Justia Opinion Summary: Trevor Murray worked as a research strategist at UBS, a securities firm. His job involved reporting on commercial mortgage-backed securities markets to current and future customers. Under SEC regulations, Murray was required ...