U.S. SUPREME COURT DOCKET CHART 2015 TERM October 18 October 24. Amicus cases = yellow highlight Petitions scheduled for conference green highlight

Transcription

1 U.S. SUPREME COURT DOCKET CHART 2015 TERM October 18 October 24 Amicus cases = yellow highlight Petitions scheduled for conference green highlight CASE/DOCKET NO./LOWER COURT MOST RECENT PETITIONS FOR CERT. FILED FILED COMMENTS

2 DECISIONS HOLDING OF OPINION

3 NO./LOWER COURT CASES DISMISSED COMMENTS

4 ARGUED GRANTED ARGUED

5 REVIEW GRANTED GRANTED OF ORAL ARGUMENT Heffernan v. City of Patterson, , 777 F.3d 147 (3d Cir.) Friedrichs v. Cal. Teachers Ass'n, , unpublished (9th Cir.) Harris v. Ariz. Indep. Redistricting Comm'n, , 2014 BL (D.Ariz.) Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, , 758 F.3d 633 (5th Cir.) Green v. Donahoe, , 760 F.3d 1135 (10th Cir.) Employment & Labor: Does the First Amendment bar the government from demoting a public employee based on a supervisor's perception that the employee supports a political candidate Employment & Labor: (1) Should Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Educ., 431 U.S. 209 (1977) be overruled and public-sector agency shop arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment; (2) Does it violate the First Amendment to require that public employees affirmatively object to subsidizing nonchargeable speech by public-sector unions, rather than requiring that employees affirmatively consent to subsidizing such speech Equity & Discrimination: (1) Does the desire to gain partisan advantage for one political party justify intentionally creating over-populated legislative districts that result in tens of thousands of individual voters being denied equal protection because their individual votes are devalued, violating the one-person, one-vote principle; (2) Does the desire to obtain favorable preclearance review by the Justice Department permit the creation of legislative districts that deviate from the one-person, one-vote principle; And, even if creating unequal districts to obtain preclearance approval was once justified, is this still a legitimate justification after Shelby Cnty. v. Holder, 2013 BL , 81 U.S.L.W (U.S. June 25, 2013) (82 U.S.L.W. 15); (3) Was the Arizona redistricting commission correct to disregard the majority-minority rule and rely on race and political party affiliation to create Hispanic influence districts Equity & Discrimination: Can the Fifth Circuit's re-endorsement of the University of Texas at Austin's use of racial preferences in undergraduate admissions decisions be sustained under this court's decisions interpreting the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, including Fisher v. Univ. of Texas at Austin Employment & Labor: Under federal employment discrimination law, does the filing period for a constructive discharge claim begin to run when an employee resigns, as five circuits have held, or at the time of an employer's last allegedly discriminatory act giving rise to the resignation, as three other circuits have held 10/1/15 TBA 6/30/15 TBA 6/30/15 12/8/15 6/29/15 12/9/15 Note: Justice Kagan recused herself from the case. Legal Clips summary of Fifth Circuit panel decision on remand from U.S. Supreme Court available at /24/fifth-circuit-panel-upholdsuniversity-of-texas-raceconscious-admissions-policy/ 4/27/15 11/30/15

6 REVIEW DENIED DENIED COMMENT Love v. Memphis-Shelby Cty. Airport Auth., , unpublished (6th Cir.) Oller v. Roussel, , Fed. Appx., 2015 WL (5th Cir.) Employment & Labor: (1) Did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit err in concluding and affirming the district court's decision to deny the plaintiff's motion to compel discovery, contrary to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for Disclosures and Discovery (Title V), namely, that the defendant should not be required to present relevant employee IT usage records and documents to the charging party that would establish discrimination and disparity treatment by a preponderance of the evidence of comparative employees; (2) Does Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 require a plaintiff to explicitly or implicitly communicate race to the defendant or another covered entity when complaining that its activity constituted unlawful discrimination, disparate treatment and retaliation under Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act or the EPA Employment & Labor: Does an academic exception apply to the holding to Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), to protect First Amendment values in teaching and academic writing, as held by the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth and Ninth Circuits 10/19/15 10/19/15

7 Petrella v. Brownback, , 787 F.3d 1242 (10th Cir.) Long v. Libertywood Nursing Ctr., , unpublished (4th Cir.) Doe v. Bd. of Cty. Comm'rs of Payne County, Okla., , 2015 BL (10th Cir.) Baker v. City of Iowa City, , 867 N.W.2d 44 (Iowa) Grove v. S.C. Dep't of Health and Envtl. Control, , unpublished (S.C. App.) PENDING PETITIONS FOR CERTORARI Finance: Can a state, consistent with the First Amendment and the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment, adopt an education spending cap limiting the total amount of money that local public school districts may spend on education, in order to prevent parents and citizens from voluntarily increasing local funding to improve their children's access to knowledge Employment & Labor: By affirming the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendants, did the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (a) violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq.; (b) fail to uphold its duty to conduct fair review; (c) violate petitioner's 14th Amendment right of equal protection under the law and (d) implicitly condone the district court judge's abuse of discretion Employment & Labor: Does the Americans with Disabilities Act require a plaintiff to prove that her disability was the sole cause of the challenged conduct (as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has held repeatedly), or does the act permit claims when disability discrimination is accompanied by other factors (as every other court of appeals has held) Employment & Labor: (1) Does a married couple, who hires one or two persons as resident manager(s) of a house in which the husband and wife periodically reside, have a federal constitutional right to freely associate with whom they choose to employ without unlawful municipal regulation; (2) Does the due process clause of the 14th Amendment protect individual property and liberty rights from unconstitutional municipal action that infringes on state constitutional rights and express statutory exemptions; (3) Are federal equal protection rights violated when a municipal ordinance distinguishes between similarly situated persons and affects fundamental rights such as freedom of association, due process and speech; (4) Is a municipality liable under 42 U.S.C for enacting, implementing and enforcing an unconstitutional ordinance; (5) When a municipality prosecutes a party under a facially unconstitutional and invalid ordinance that impairs that party's freedom of speech, association, equal protection and due process rights, is the party entitled to recover damages under Section 1983 Employment & Labor: (1) Does a state official's conduct that forecloses a plaintiff's future employment opportunities, but doesn't take the form of an adverse employment decision or an adverse licensure decision, implicate a protected liberty interest under the due process clause; (2) Is, and to what extent is, public disclosure of stigmatizing remarks required to give rise to a liberty interest claim under the due process clause and 42 U.S.C FILED 9/28/15 8/18/15 9/25/15 9/9/15 9/16/15 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

8 Russo v. N.Y.C. Dep't of Educ., , 25 N.Y.3d 946 (N.Y.) Whitaker v. Nash Rocky Mount Bd. of Educ., , unpublished (4th Cir.) Ala. Gas Corp. v. Gas Fitters Local Union No. 548, , 599 Fed. Appx. 382 (11th Cir.) PENDING PETITIONS FOR CERTORARI Employment & Labor: (1) Should New York Education Law 3020-a be invalidated by the court due to its built-in deficiency of engendering arbitrary and capricious decision making on the part of the hearing officer; (2) Was the petitioner's constitutional right to teach in the New York City public school system unjustly denied because of his being terminated under governing law, New York Education Law 3020-a, which violated his due process right to a fair and just decision because of its arbitrary and capricious decision making, which is built in, and vagueness regarding penalties; (3) Should the court apply strict scrutiny to New York Education Law 3020-a due to the fact that it unfairly denied the petitioner his fundamental due process, constitutional right to teach in New York City, as well as targets the suspect classification of tenured teachers, such as the petitioner was; (4) Was the petitioner's due process right to a year of remediation through the Peer Intervention Program violated by the Board of Education and the United Federation of Teachers through neglect and silence; (5) Did the petitioner's firing shock the conscience such that he should be reinstated; (6) Because of the dearth of targeted remediation in lesson planning given to the petitioner by any entity, for the entire three years of the case, should the petitioner's termination be rescinded and a lesser penalty faced because New York Education Law 3020-a requires and values, by implication, targeted remediation; (7) Are the guilty charges of neglect of duty and conduct unbecoming a teacher unfairly fabricated and therefore trumped up from the incompetency and inefficient guilty charge because the basis of all three guilty charges is the same source namely the 14 unsatisfactory-rated observation reports of the petitioner's teaching Equity & Discrimination: Was the petitioner, an African American, denied due process by the conservative white federal judge who denied him proper discovery and has a history of discrimination against blacks Employment & Labor: (1) Does an arbitration award reinstating an employee violate public policy only if the employee's offending conduct is inextricable from his or her job duties, as the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Tenth and Eleventh circuits have held, or does, as the First, Second, Sixth, Eighth and Ninth circuits have held, an arbitration award reinstating an employee violate public policy if the employee's offending conduct is particularly egregious; (2) Is there a sufficiently well-defined and dominant public policy, in light of the Occupational Safety and Health Act's general duty clause requiring an employer to maintain a safe workplace and eliminate recognized hazards from the workplace, to permit a court to overturn a labor arbitration award reinstating an employee who has threatened to commit such an instance of workplace violence but has not yet done so FILED ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 7/8/15 Scheduled for Conference 10/30/15 5/10/15 8/31/15

9 Paske v. Fitzgerald, , 785 F.3d 977 (5th Cir.) Schott v. Wenk, 15-54, 783 F.3d 585 (6th Cir.) RST Van Expedited, Inc. v. EEOC, , 774 F.3d 1169 (8th Cir.) PENDING PETITIONS FOR CERTORARI Employment & Labor: 1) Does the rule in USPS Bd. of Governors v. Aikens, 460 U.S. 711 (1983), apply to the evaluation of a discrimination claim at summary judgment; (2) Is a plaintiff claiming discrimination required to prove, as an element of a prima facie case, that he or she was treated less favorably than a nearly identical similarly situated individual who is not a member of the protected class, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit requirement which courts have characterized as stringent, strict and demanding Legal System: (1) Does the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which subjects mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect to liability under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C. 1983, for reporting suspected abuse or neglect when the alleged abuser engages in a constitutionally protected activity even when (a) there is a reasonable basis to suspect abuse and (b) the report is not materially false impermissibly chill child abuse reporting across the nation; (2) Can a First Amendment retaliation claim be maintained under Section 1983 against a statutorily mandated reporter of known or suspected child abuse when there is evidence in the record that would support a reasonable basis to suspect abuse and the report is not materially false; (3) Is a statutorily mandated reporter of known or suspected child abuse entitled to qualified immunity from liability under Section 1983 when there is evidence in the record to support a reasonable basis to suspect abuse and the report is not materially false Employment & Labor: Can a dismissal of a Title VII case, based on the EEOC's total failure to satisfy its pre-suit investigation, reasonable cause and conciliation obligations, form the basis of an attorneys fee award to the defendant under 42 U.S.C. 2000e- 5(k) FILED 8/3/15 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 7/10/15 NSBA s amicus brief is available at files/reports/nsba%20brief-15-54_%20schott_wenk.pdf 5/19/ the National School Boards Association. All Rights Reserved.