Ketanji Brown Jackson

In Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, Inc., a debtor in an ongoing Chapter 13 bankruptcy case failed to disclose a post-petition personal-injury claim arising from a car accident on his required bankruptcy schedules, then sued the defendant company in federal district court; the defendant sought summary judgment on judicial estoppel grounds based on the nondisclosure. The district court and Fifth Circuit applied circuit precedent holding that such an omission could be deemed inadvertent or mistaken (and thus avoid estoppel) only if the debtor lacked knowledge of the claim’s underlying facts or had no hypothetical motive to conceal it, leading to judgment for the defendant. The Supreme Court vacated and remanded, ruling that courts must instead examine the totality of the circumstances surrounding the omission to assess inadvertence or mistake. The Court reasoned that judicial estoppel is an equitable doctrine that requires flexibility and a case-by-case inquiry rather than the Fifth Circuit’s rigid, near-dispositive two-factor test, which improperly excludes other relevant evidence and almost always finds a motive to conceal.

proceduretorts & liability

The Supreme Court case involved Amarin Pharma, the maker of brand-name Vascepa (icosapent ethyl), suing generic manufacturer Hikma Pharmaceuticals for actively inducing infringement of Amarin’s method-of-use patents covering the drug’s cardiovascular-risk reduction indication. Hikma had obtained FDA approval for a “skinny label” limited to the unpatented severe hypertriglyceridemia indication, carving out the patented use, and Amarin alleged that the combination of Hikma’s label language, website statements, patient leaflet, and press releases encouraged doctors and pharmacists to prescribe the generic for the patented cardiovascular use in violation of 35 U.S.C. §271(b). The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim, but the Federal Circuit reversed. The Supreme Court reversed the Federal Circuit and reinstated the dismissal, holding that Amarin had not plausibly alleged the required “active steps” to encourage infringement. The Court reasoned that inducement liability demands affirmative, purposeful conduct beyond ordinary acts of product distribution, statutory label copying, standard industry terminology such as “AB-rated” or “generic equivalent,” mere omissions, or vague statements that physicians might interpret as encouragement; Hikma’s materials had obvious non-infringing explanations and fell short of the plausibility threshold under Twombly and Iqbal.

business & regulatoryhealthcareprocedure

In this case, four employers who withdrew from an underfunded multiemployer pension plan challenged their withdrawal-liability assessments, which were calculated using a lower discount rate (6.5%) adopted after the statutory measurement date—the last day of the prior plan year. The Supreme Court held that ERISA §§1391 and 1393 do not require actuarial assumptions underlying withdrawal-liability calculations to be selected on or before the measurement date. Section 1391’s “as of” language fixes hard factual data about the plan on that date but does not constrain when actuaries may choose predictive assumptions, which are tools for performing the calculation rather than observable facts. Section 1393 requires only that assumptions be reasonable and reflect the actuary’s best estimate of anticipated experience, without imposing any deadline, and the Court declined to read in a timing limit that Congress omitted from the text.

labor & employment

In Guerrero v. Busby, the case involved an application by the director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to vacate a stay of execution for death-row inmate Edward Lee Busby. The Fifth Circuit had issued the stay on May 8, 2026, in connection with Busby's habeas claims. The Supreme Court granted the application and vacated the stay. Justice Kagan would have denied the application, while Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, dissented on the grounds that experts for both sides had found Busby intellectually disabled, Texas had initially joined efforts to declare him ineligible for execution, and the Fifth Circuit stay was a limited step to permit review of the habeas petition before execution.

criminal law

The case concerned whether federal courts of appeals must review the Board of Immigration Appeals’ determination that a set of facts does or does not amount to “persecution” under the asylum provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act using the deferential substantial-evidence standard. Petitioners, a family from El Salvador, sought asylum after an immigration judge found their credible testimony insufficient to establish past or future persecution; the BIA and First Circuit upheld the denial. The Supreme Court held that 8 U.S.C. §1252(b)(4)(B) requires courts to apply substantial-evidence review to the agency’s persecution determination, including its application of the statute to undisputed facts. The Court reasoned that this standard, which treats administrative findings as conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to disagree, was codified by Congress after INS v. Elias-Zacarias and encompasses the overall mixed question of refugee eligibility, rather than calling for de novo review. It therefore affirmed the judgment below.

immigration

In Villarreal v. Texas, the case concerned whether a trial judge’s order barring a defendant from discussing his ongoing testimony with counsel during a 24-hour overnight recess in his murder trial violated the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. David Villarreal testified, was instructed not to have his testimony “managed” by his lawyers during the break (while remaining free to confer on other topics such as strategy or sentencing), resumed testifying the next day, and was convicted; the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the order. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that a narrowly tailored restriction prohibiting only discussion of testimony for its own sake during such a recess is constitutional. The Court reasoned that, under Geders v. United States and Perry v. Leeke, a defendant has a right to consult counsel on nontestimony matters but assumes the burdens of a witness and has no protected right to shape or rehearse his testimony midstream, allowing trial courts to balance truth-seeking with the right to counsel through content-based limits rather than a total ban on overnight consultation.

criminal lawprocedure

The case concerned an indigent prisoner, Danny Howell, serving a 70-year sentence, who filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court and sought leave to proceed in forma pauperis without paying the required filing fee. The Court denied the motion to proceed in forma pauperis, dismissed the petition, and imposed a prospective filing bar preventing Howell from submitting any future in forma pauperis petitions in noncriminal matters unless he pays the docketing fee and complies with formatting rules. This decision rested on Rule 39.8, which allows denial of in forma pauperis status for frivolous or malicious filings, and followed the precedent of Martin v. District of Columbia Court of Appeals, under which the Court bars litigants who have repeatedly abused its process. Justice Jackson dissented, arguing that such categorical bars should not apply to incarcerated individuals because they may later have meritorious claims involving liberty or prison conditions that cannot be anticipated.

procedure

The case concerned whether a single act violating both 18 U.S.C. §924(c)(1)(A)(i)—which criminalizes using or possessing a firearm during a federal crime of violence or drug trafficking—and §924(j)—which imposes heightened penalties, including possible capital punishment, when such a violation causes death—could result in two separate convictions or only one. The Supreme Court held that only one conviction is permitted, reversing the Second Circuit’s contrary ruling. The Court reasoned that the two provisions define the same offense under the Blockburger test, triggering a presumption that Congress does not intend multiple punishments for the same conduct unless it has clearly expressed otherwise. Although Congress used explicit “in addition to” language elsewhere in §924 to authorize cumulative convictions or sentences, it included no such language linking subsections (c)(1) and (j), indicating it did not overcome the presumption. The decision therefore limits punishment to a single conviction for one fatal act.

gunscriminal law

The case concerned whether a single act violating both 18 U.S.C. §924(c)(1)(A)(i), which prohibits using or possessing a firearm during a federal crime of violence or drug trafficking offense, and §924(j), which imposes heightened penalties including possible death when such a violation causes death, could result in two separate convictions or only one. The Second Circuit had upheld two convictions, finding that the provisions authorized cumulative punishments despite qualifying as the same offense under the Blockburger test. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that Congress did not clearly authorize multiple convictions for the same act. The Court reasoned that the provisions define the same offense under Blockburger, that the statute lacks the explicit “in addition to” language Congress used elsewhere to permit multiple punishments, and that the presumption against multiple convictions for the same offense therefore controls, limiting the outcome to a single conviction.

criminal lawguns

The case concerned a challenge to an Executive Branch policy requiring U.S. passports to list an individual’s biological sex at birth rather than their gender identity. A federal district court issued a preliminary injunction blocking the policy, and the First Circuit refused to stay it, prompting the Government to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court. The Court granted the stay, allowing the policy to take effect pending appeal. It reasoned that recording biological sex at birth on passports is comparable to recording other historical facts such as country of birth and does not constitute unequal treatment, that plaintiffs had not shown the policy reflected animus, and that the Government would face irreparable harm from being barred from enforcing an Executive Branch directive involving official documents with foreign-affairs implications.

civil rightsfederal powerprocedure

The case concerned the Secretary of Homeland Security’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan nationals and to vacate a prior extension of that status, which lower courts had blocked as unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act. After the district court entered final judgment setting aside the Secretary’s actions and the Ninth Circuit affirmed a related preliminary order, the government sought a stay from the Supreme Court. The Court granted the stay as to the Venezuela-related portions of the judgment, pending appeal in the Ninth Circuit and any certiorari proceedings. It reasoned that although the case had advanced from a preliminary to a final posture, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms remained essentially unchanged from those presented when the Court had previously stayed the preliminary order in May. The stay applies until the appeal and any further review conclude, with Justices Sotomayor and Kagan noting they would deny the application and Justice Jackson dissenting.

immigrationfederal powerprocedure

The case concerned whether defendants convicted of multiple 18 U.S.C. §924(c) firearm offenses, whose original sentences had been vacated on appeal, were entitled to the First Step Act’s reduced five-year mandatory minimums (instead of the prior 25-year “stacked” terms) when resentenced after the Act’s 2018 enactment. The Supreme Court held that they were, reversing the Fifth Circuit. It reasoned that Section 403(b)’s text—applying the new penalties when “a sentence . . . has not been imposed”—uses the present-perfect tense to refer to a sentence that remains extant and valid at the time of resentencing; a vacated sentence does not qualify as one that “has been imposed,” so the Act’s more lenient rules govern any post-enactment resentencing proceeding.

criminal lawguns

In Hewitt v. United States, the Supreme Court addressed whether the First Step Act of 2018, which reduced mandatory minimum sentences for certain firearm offenses under 18 U.S.C. §924(c) from stacked 25-year terms to 5-year terms, applies at resentencing when a defendant’s original pre-Act sentence was vacated after the Act’s enactment. The petitioners had been convicted and sentenced before 2018 to extremely long terms that included the harsher stacked penalties; some convictions were later vacated following the Court’s decision in United States v. Davis, leading to post-Act resentencings. The Fifth Circuit held that the Act’s relief was unavailable because sentences “had been imposed” before the Act’s effective date, but the Supreme Court reversed. Justice Jackson’s opinion for the Court reasoned that Section 403(b)’s use of the present-perfect tense—“a sentence has not been imposed”—refers only to sentences that remain extant and legally effective at the time of resentencing, so a vacated sentence does not disqualify a defendant from the Act’s more lenient penalties.

criminal lawguns

In Rivers v. Guerrero, a Texas prisoner filed a second federal habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 after the district court had denied his first petition on the merits, but while that denial was still on appeal; the new petition raised a claim based on newly discovered evidence from his trial counsel’s file. The district court treated the second filing as “second or successive” under AEDPA § 2244(b) and transferred it to the Fifth Circuit for pre-authorization, a ruling the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The Supreme Court held that a second-in-time § 2254 petition qualifies as “second or successive” once the district court has entered final judgment on the first petition, regardless of whether an appeal remains pending. The Court reasoned that the statutory phrase is a term of art keyed to finality of judgment rather than appeal status, consistent with its earlier decision in Banister v. Davis, and that allowing such filings to bypass § 2244(b)’s limits would undermine AEDPA’s restrictions on successive petitions. It therefore affirmed the Fifth Circuit’s judgment.

criminal lawprocedure

In Rivers v. Guerrero, the Supreme Court addressed whether a second-in-time federal habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. §2254 qualifies as a “second or successive application” subject to the strict limits of §2244(b) when it is filed after the district court has denied the first petition but while an appeal is still pending. Petitioner Danny Rivers, convicted in Texas of continuous sexual abuse of a child, filed his initial §2254 petition in 2017; after its denial and during his appeal, he filed a second petition based on newly discovered evidence from his trial counsel’s file. The Court held that a second-in-time filing counts as successive once the district court has entered final judgment on the first petition, regardless of the appeal’s status. It reasoned that §2244(b)’s restrictions are triggered by the existence of a final judgment, consistent with the term-of-art meaning established in cases like Banister v. Davis, and rejected arguments that pending appeals or potential amendments under Rule 15 would allow circumvention of the statute’s gatekeeping requirements. The Fifth Circuit’s affirmance of the transfer order was therefore upheld.

criminal lawprocedure

The case concerned whether the Social Security Administration could grant members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to agency records containing sensitive personal data, pursuant to an executive order directing modernization of federal operations. A district court had issued a preliminary injunction restricting such access, and the en banc Fourth Circuit had denied the government’s request to stay that injunction. The Supreme Court granted the government’s application for a stay. Applying the four-factor test from Nken v. Holder, the Court concluded that the government had made a sufficient showing on the merits and other factors to permit SSA to provide the requested access to DOGE team members while litigation continues in the lower courts. The stay remains in effect pending appeal and any further Supreme Court review.

federal powerprocedure

In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, a heterosexual woman employed by the Ohio agency since 2004 alleged that she was denied a promotion and later demoted in favor of gay candidates because of her sexual orientation, in violation of Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination. The district court and Sixth Circuit granted summary judgment to the agency, holding that Ames failed to establish a prima facie case under the McDonnell Douglas framework because, as a member of a majority group, she had not shown “background circumstances” indicating that the employer was the unusual one that discriminates against the majority. The Supreme Court unanimously vacated that ruling, holding that the “background circumstances” requirement is incompatible with Title VII. The statute’s text prohibits intentional discrimination against “any individual” on the basis of protected characteristics without distinguishing between majority- and minority-group plaintiffs, and the Court’s precedents confirm that the standard for proving disparate treatment does not vary by group status. The case was remanded for further proceedings without the heightened evidentiary rule.

civil rightslabor & employment

In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman employed by the Ohio agency since 2004, sued under Title VII after being denied a management promotion and later demoted, with the positions going to a lesbian woman and a gay man; she alleged discrimination based on her sexual orientation. The district court and Sixth Circuit granted summary judgment to the agency, applying the McDonnell Douglas framework and requiring Ames, as a member of a majority group, to show additional “background circumstances” indicating the employer was unusually likely to discriminate against the majority. The Supreme Court unanimously vacated that ruling, holding that the “background circumstances” requirement has no basis in Title VII’s text, which bars discrimination against “any individual” without distinguishing between majority- and minority-group plaintiffs, and conflicts with precedents stating that the evidentiary standard for disparate-treatment claims does not vary by group status. The case was remanded for further proceedings without the heightened prima facie burden.

civil rightslabor & employmentprocedure

Chanel Nicholson sued two Houston nightclubs under 42 U.S.C. §1981, alleging that managers repeatedly barred her from performing because she is Black, including specific incidents in November 2017 and August 2021. The Fifth Circuit ruled that her claims were time-barred under the four-year statute of limitations, treating the later denials as merely the continuing effects of earlier discriminatory practices rather than new, independently actionable events. The Supreme Court denied her petition for certiorari, leaving the Fifth Circuit’s judgment in place. Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, dissented, contending that National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. Morgan requires each discrete discriminatory act to start its own limitations clock, so claims based on the 2017 and 2021 incidents fell within the statutory period.

civil rightsprocedure

The case concerned the Department of Homeland Security's termination of the CHNV parole program, which had granted temporary lawful status and work authorization to nearly 500,000 Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals. After the district court blocked the mass termination on the ground that federal law requires individualized, case-by-case parole decisions rather than a single categorical action, the government sought a stay from the Supreme Court. The Court granted the stay, halting the district court's order pending appeal in the First Circuit and any subsequent certiorari proceedings. Its decision rested on the conclusion that the government had satisfied the traditional stay factors, including a sufficient showing of irreparable harm and that the balance of equities and public interest favored allowing the termination to proceed during litigation. Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, dissented, arguing that the government's harm showing was inadequate and that the equities weighed against permitting the immediate disruption of parolees' lives.

immigration