In its conference of May 11, 2017, the court will consider petitions involving issues such as whether the Second Amendment entitles ordinary, law-abiding citizens to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense in some manner, including concealed carry when open carry is forbidden by state law; whether the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant to acquire cell-site location information used to track and reconstruct the location and movements of cell-phone users over extended periods of time; and whether statistical racial disparities in the use of voting mechanisms or procedures are relevant to a vote denial claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission 16-111 Issue: Whether applying Colorado’s public accommodations law to compel the petitioner to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment.

Dot Foods, Inc. v. Department of Revenue for the State of Washington 16-308 Issue: Whether, or under what circumstances, imposing additional tax beyond the year preceding the legislative session in which the law was enacted violates due process.

Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas v. Robert R. McCormick Foundation 16-317 Issues: (1) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit correctly held – contrary to several other courts of appeals – that the presumption against federal pre-emption of state law does not apply in the bankruptcy context; (2) whether the 2nd Circuit correctly held – following the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 3rd, 6th, and 8th Circuits, but contrary to the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 7th and 11th Circuits – that a fraudulent transfer is exempt from avoidance under 11 U.S.C. § 546(e) when a financial institution acts as a mere conduit for fraudulently transferred property, or whether instead the safe harbor applies only when the financial institution has its own beneficial interest in the transferred property; and (3) whether the 2nd Circuit correctly held – contrary to the Supreme Court’s decisions holding that it is for Congress, and not the courts, to balance the multiple purposes of the Bankruptcy Code, and that courts must therefore rely first and foremost on the text of the code – that 11 U.S.C. § 546(e) is properly construed to extend far beyond its text and impliedly pre-empt fraudulent-transfer actions brought by private parties (as opposed to the “trustee” expressly mentioned in the statute).

Carpenter v. United States 16-402 Issue: Whether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cell-phone records revealing the location and movements of a cell-phone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth Amendment.

Sonoco Products Co. v. Michigan Department of Treasury 16-687 Issues: (1) Whether the Multistate Tax Compact has the status of a contract that binds its signatory states and requires them to allow taxpayers to elect to use the compact’s equally weighted apportionment formula until the state prospectively withdraws from the compact; (2) whether Michigan’s retroactive repeal of, and withdrawal from, the compact violated the contracts clause; (3) whether Michigan’s retroactive repeal of, and withdrawal from, the compact violated the due process clause; and (4) whether Michigan’s retroactive repeal of, and withdrawal from, the compact violated the commerce clause.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP v. Michigan Department of Treasury 16-688 Issues: (1) Whether a state statute that retroactively imposes over $1 billion in increased tax liability on out-of-state businesses for the benefit of in-state businesses violates the dormant commerce clause; (2) whether a state tax law that has a 6 1/2-year period of retroactivity and targets out-of-state businesses for increased tax liability of over $1 billion violates the due process clause; and (3) whether a state’s retroactive repeal of a central provision of the decades-old Multistate Tax Compact violates the contracts clause by imposing over $1 billion in retroactive tax liability on out-of-state taxpayers.

Gillette Commercial Operations North America and Subsidiaries v. Michigan Department of Treasury 16-697 Issues: (1) Whether the Multistate Tax Compact has the status of a contract that binds its signatory states; and (2) whether a state law that imposes retroactive tax liability for a period of almost seven years, in a manner that upsets settled expectations and reasonable reliance interests, violates the due process clause.

International Business Machines Corp. v. Michigan Department of Treasury 16-698 Issues: (1) Whether a state, without violating the constitutional bar against the impairment of contracts, can retroactively withdraw from the Multistate Tax Compact so as to divest taxpayers of benefits under that compact for a period of 6 1/2 years before that withdrawal; and (2) whether, consistent with due process, a state can, by statute, change its tax laws retroactively for a period of more than six years, when the change was not promptly instituted and when the change was designed to increase state tax revenues by overriding a Michigan Supreme Court decision determining taxpayer obligations under prior law.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Michigan Department of Treasury 16-699 Issues: (1) Whether the Multistate Tax Compact has the status of a contract that binds its signatory states; and (2) whether a state law that imposes retroactive tax liability for a period of almost seven years, in a manner that upsets settled expectations and reasonable reliance interests, violates the due process clause.

DIRECTV Group Holdings, LLC v. Michigan Department of Treasury 16-736 Issues: (1) Whether the Multistate Tax Compact has the status of a contract that binds its signatory states; and (2) whether a state law that imposes retroactive tax liability for a period of almost seven years, in a manner that upsets settled expectations and reasonable reliance interests, violates the due process clause.

North Carolina v. North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP 16-833 Issues: (1) Whether a federal court has the authority to re-impose, under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the same “anti-retrogression” preclearance standard invalidated as to Section 5 by Shelby County v. Holder; (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit erred in holding that, although the challenged reforms did not adversely affect minority voting, the North Carolina legislature nonetheless intended to deny African Americans the right to vote; and (3) whether statistical racial disparities in the use of voting mechanisms or procedures are relevant to a vote denial claim under Section 2.

Peruta v. California 16-894 Issue: Whether the Second Amendment entitles ordinary, law-abiding citizens to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense in some manner, including concealed carry when open carry is forbidden by state law.

Graham v. United States 16-6308 Issues: (1) Whether the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant to acquire cell-site location information used to track and reconstruct the location and movements of cell-phone users over extended periods of time; and (2) whether 18 U.S.C. § 2703, which contains both a provision that requires the government to seek a warrant in order to obtain stored location information from cellular-service providers, as well as a provision allowing law enforcement to obtain this data on less than probable cause, supports application of the good-faith exception to law enforcement’s acquisition of over seven months of cell-site location information without a warrant.

Jordan v. United States 16-6694 Issues: (1) Whether the trial court’s order granting a request by the accused’s codefendant to prohibit the accused from testifying about details that were exculpatory to the accused but prejudicial to his codefendant constituted an impermissible limitation on the accused’s right to testify in his own behalf as set forth in Rock v. Arkansas; and (2) whether the Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant to acquire cell-site location information used to track and reconstruct the location and movements of cell-phone users over extended periods of time.

Caira v. United States 16-6761 Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should resolve a split of authority among the courts by rejecting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit’s reasoning in United States v. Caira, which holds that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy in information held by a third party.

Rios v. United States 16-7314 Issues: (1) Whether law-enforcement officers must secure a warrant to obtain real-time cellular-phone location data; (2) whether courts must instruct juries on the required unanimity regarding the specific categories of acts in Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act conspiracy cases, and likewise whether the court’s conclusions in Richardson v. United States apply in RICO cases; and (3) whether courts should deliver uniform jury instructions on reasonable doubt and preserve the standard of proof necessary to sustain a criminal conviction.

Recommended Citation: Kate Howard, Petitions to watch | Conference of May 11, SCOTUSblog (May. 10, 2017, 9:26 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2017/05/petitions-watch-conference-may-11/