| Case name | Opinion | Decided | Summary |
|---|
| Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna | 20-1539 | 2021-10-18 | Officer Rivas-Villegas is entitled to qualified immunity in this excessive force action brought under 42 U.S.C. §1983; the Ninth Circuit’s holding that Circuit precedent “put him on notice that his conduct constituted excessive force” is reversed. |
| City of Tahlequah v. Bond | 20-1668 | 2021-10-18 | Officers Girdner and Vick are entitled to qualified immunity in this excessive force action action brought under 42 U.S.C. §1983; the Tenth Circuit’s contrary holding is not based on a single precedent finding a Fourth Amendment violation under similar circumstances. |
| Mississippi v. Tennessee | 143, Orig. | 2021-11-22 | The waters of the Middle Claiborne Aquifer are subject to the judicial remedy of equitable apportionment; Mississippi’s complaint is dismissed without leave to amend. |
| Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson | 21-463 | 2021-12-10 | A pre-enforcement challenge under the Federal Constitution to Texas Senate Bill 8—the Texas Heartbeat Act—may proceed past the motion to dismiss stage against certain of the named defendants but not others; the order of the District Court is affirmed in part and reversed in part, and the case is remanded. |
| United States v. Texas | 21-588 | 2021-12-10 | The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted and the application to vacate stay presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied. |
| Babcock v. Kijakazi | 20-480 | 2022-1-13 | Civil-service pension payments based on employment as a dual-status military technician are not payments based on “service as a member of a uniformed service” under 42 U.S.C. §415(a)(7)(A)(III). |
| Biden v. Missouri | 21A240 | 2022-1-13 | The Court grants the applications to stay the two injunctions barring the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ regulation requiring facilities that participate in Medicare and Medicaid to ensure that their employees are vaccinated against COVID-19. |
| National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration | 21A244 | 2022-1-13 | The Court grants the applications to stay the Occupational Safety & Health Administration’s challenged rule mandating that employers with at least 100 employees require covered workers to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. |
| Hemphill v. New York | 20-637 | 2022-1-20 | The trial court’s admission—over Hemphill’s objection—of the plea allocution transcript of an unavailable witness violated Hemphill’s Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him. |
| Hughes v. Northwestern University | 19-1401 | 2022-1-24 | Determining whether plan participants state plausible claims against plan fiduciaries for violations of ERISA’s duty of prudence requires a context-specific inquiry of the fiduciaries’ continuing duty to monitor investments and to remove imprudent ones as articulated in Tibble v. Edison Int’l , 575 U.S. 523; the Seventh Circuit erred in relying on the participants’ ultimate choice over their investments to excuse allegedly imprudent decisions by respondents. |
| Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, LP | 20-915 | 2022-2-24 | Lack of either factual or legal knowledge can excuse an inaccuracy in a copyright registration under 17 U.S.C. §411(b)(1)(A)’s safe harbor. |
| United States v. Zubaydah | 20-827 | 2022-3-3 | The Ninth Circuit’s judgment that the District Court erred in dismissing Zubaydah’s discovery request on the basis of the state secrets privilege is reversed, and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss Zubaydah’s current discovery application. |
| Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center, P. S. C. | 20-601 | 2022-3-3 | The Court of Appeals erred in denying the Kentucky attorney general’s motion to intervene on the Commonwealth’s behalf in litigation concerning Kentucky House Bill 454. |
| United States v. Tsarnaev | 20-443 | 2022-3-4 | The judgment of the Court of Appeals vacating Tsarnaev's capital sentences is reversed. |
| FBI v. Fazaga | 20-828 | 2022-3-4 | Section 1806(f) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978—providing a procedure under which a trial-level court or other authority may consider the legality of electronic surveillance conducted under FISA and order specified forms of relief—does not displace the state secrets privilege. |
| Wooden v. United States | 20-5279 | 2022-3-7 | Wooden’s ten burglary offenses arising from a single criminal episode did not occur on different “occasions” and thus count as only one prior conviction under the Armed Career Criminal Act. |
| Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Commission | 21A471 | 2022-3-23 | In adopting the Wisconsin Governor’s proposed redistricting plan, which increases the number of majority-Black Assembly districts, the Wisconsin Supreme Court committed legal error by failing to properly apply strict scrutiny to determine whether the State’s race-based sorting of voters is narrowly tailored to comply with the Voting Rights Act. See Cooper v. Harris , 581 U.S. ___. |
| Ramirez v. Collier | 21-5592 | 2022-3-24 | Petitioner Ramirez is likely to succeed on his claims under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 because Texas’s restrictions on religious touch and audible prayer in the execution chamber burden religious exercise and are not the least restrictive means of furthering the State’s compelling interests. |
| Houston Community College System v. Wilson | 20-804 | 2022-3-24 | Respondent Wilson does not possess an actionable First Amendment claim arising from his purely verbal censure by the Board of Trustees of the Houston Community College System. |
| Badgerow v. Walters | 20-1143 | 2022-3-31 | Federal jurisdiction in a petition to compel arbitration under Section 4 of the Federal Arbitration Act is determined by “looking through” the petition to the jurisdictional basis of the “underlying substantive controversy,” Vaden v. Discover Bank , 556 U.S. 49, 62, but that approach does not apply to petitions to confirm or vacate arbitral awards under Sections 9 and 10 of the FAA. |
| Thompson v. Clark | 20-659 | 2022-4-4 | Petitioner Thompson’s showing that his criminal prosecution ended without a conviction satisfies the requirement to demonstrate a favorable termination of a criminal prosecution in a Fourth Amendment claim under 42 U.S.C. §1983 for malicious prosecution; an affirmative indication of innocence is not needed. |
| City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising of Austin, LLC | 20-1029 | 2022-4-21 | The distinction between on-premises signs and off-premises signs in the City of Austin’s sign code is facially content neutral under the First Amendment. |
| Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation | 20-1566 | 2022-4-21 | In a suit raising non-federal claims against a foreign state or instrumentality under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, a court should determine the substantive law by using the same choice-of-law rule applicable in a similar suit against a private party. |
| Brown v. Davenport | 20-826 | 2022-4-21 | When a state court has ruled on the merits of a state prisoner’s claim, a federal court cannot grant habeas relief without applying both the test this Court outlined in Brecht v. Abrahamson , 507 U.S. 619, and the one Congress prescribed in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996; the Sixth Circuit erred in granting habeas relief to Mr. Davenport based solely on its assessment that he could satisfy the Brecht standard. |
| United States v. Vaello Madero | 20-303 | 2022-4-21 | The Constitution does not require Congress to make Supplemental Security Income benefits available to residents of Puerto Rico. |
| Boechler v. Commissioner | 20-1472 | 2022-4-21 | The 30-day time limit to file a petition for review of a collection due process determination, 26 U.S.C. §6330(d)(1), is a nonjurisdictional deadline subject to equitable tolling. |
| Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller | 20-1472 | 2022-4-28 | Emotional distress damages are not recoverable in a private action to enforce either the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Affordable Care Act. |
| LeDure v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. | 20-807 | 2022-4-28 | Judgment affirmed by an equally divided Court. |
| Shurtleff v. Boston | 20-1800 | 2022-5-2 | Because Boston’s flag-raising program did not constitute government speech, Boston’s refusal to let petitioners fly their flag violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. |
| FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate | 20-979 | 2022-5-16 | Section 304 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002—which limits the amount of post-election contributions that may be used to repay a candidate who lends money to his own campaign—unconstitutionally burdens core political speech. |
| Patel v. Garland | 20-979 | 2022-5-16 | Federal courts lack jurisdiction to review facts found as part of any judgment relating to the granting of discretionary-relief in immigration proceedings enumerated under 8 U.S.C. §1252(a)(2)(B)(i). |
| Shinn v. Ramirez | 20-1009 | 2022-5-23 | Under 28 U.S.C. §2254(e)(2), a federal habeas court may not conduct an evidentiary hearing or otherwise consider evidence beyond the state-court record based on the ineffective assistance of state postconviction counsel. |
| Morgan v. Sundance, Inc. | 21-328 | 2022-5-23 | Federal courts may not adopt an arbitration-specific rule conditioning a waiver of the right to arbitrate on a showing of prejudice. |
| Gallardo v. Marstiller | 20-1263 | 2022-6-6 | The Medicaid Act permits a State to seek reimbursement from settlement payments allocated for future medical care. |
| Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon | 21-309 | 2022-6-6 | Airplane cargo loaders and ramp supervisors who, like petitioner Saxon, frequently load and unload airplane cargo belong to a “class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act’s coverage. |
| Siegel v. Fitzgerald | 21-441 | 2022-6-6 | Congress’ enactment of a significant fee increase that exempted debtors in two States violated the uniformity requirement of the Bankruptcy Clause. |
| Egbert v. Boule | 21-147 | 2022-06-08 | The authority of a court to imply a cause of action under Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents , 403 U.S. 388, does not extend to either Boule’s Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim or his First Amendment retaliation claim. |
| Kemp v. United States | 21-5726 | 2022-6-13 | The term “mistake” in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(1) includes a judge’s errors of law; because Kemp’s motion alleged such an error, it was cognizable under Rule 60(b)(1) and untimely under Rule 60(c)’s 1-year limitations period. |
| Garland v. Gonzalez | 20-322 | 2022-6-13 | Title 8 U.S.C. §1252(f)(1)—which generally strips lower courts of “jurisdiction or authority” to “enjoin or restrain the operation of” certain provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act—deprived the District Courts of jurisdiction in these cases to entertain respondents’ requests for class-wide injunctive relief. |
| Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez | 19-896 | 2022-6-13 | Title 8 U.S.C. §1231(a)(6) does not require the Government to provide noncitizens detained for six months with bond hearings in which the Government bears the burden of proving, by clear and convincing evidence, that a noncitizen poses a flight risk or a danger to the community. |
| Denezpi v. United States | 20-7622 | 2022-6-13 | The Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar successive prosecutions of distinct offenses arising from a single act, even if a single sovereign prosecutes them. |
| ZF Automotive U. S., Inc. v. Luxshare, Ltd. | 21-401 | 2022-6-13 | Although 28 U.S.C. §1782(a) permits a district court to order discovery “for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal,” only a governmental or intergovernmental adjudicative body may qualify as such a tribunal, and the arbitration panels in these cases are not such adjudicative bodies. |
| Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana | 20-1573 | 2022-6-15 | The Federal Arbitration Act preempts a rule of California law that invalidates contractual waivers of the right to assert representative claims under “PAGA”—California’s Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004—insofar as that rule precludes division of PAGA actions into individual and non-individual claims through an agreement to arbitrate. |
| Golan v. Saada | 20-1034 | 2022-6-15 | A court is not categorically required to examine all possible ameliorative measures before denying a Hague Convention petition for return of a child to a foreign country once the court has found that return would expose the child to a grave risk of harm. |
| Ysleta del Sur Pueblo v. Texas | 20-493 | 2022-6-15 | The federal legislation at issue—the Ysleta del Sur and Alabama and Coushatta Indian Tribes of Texas Restoration Act, 101 Stat. 666—bans as a matter of federal law on tribal lands only those gaming activities also banned in Texas. |
| American Hospital Association v. Becerra | 20-1114 | 2022-6-15 | The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 does not preclude judicial review of the reimbursement rates set by the Department of Health and Human Services for certain outpatient prescription drugs that hospitals provide to Medicare patients; in this case, because HHS did not conduct a survey of hospitals’ acquisition costs in 2018 and 2019, its decision to vary reimbursement rates only for 340B hospitals in those years was unlawful. |
| George v. McDonough | 21-234 | 2022-6-15 | The invalidation of a Department of Veterans Affairs regulation after a veteran’s benefits decision becomes final cannot support a claim for collateral relief permitting revision of that decision based on “clear and unmistakable error” under 38 U.S.C. §§5109A and 7111. |
| Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco | 20-1775 | 2022-6-15 | The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted. |
| Carson v. Makin | 20-1088 | 2022-06-21 | Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement for otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments to parents who live in school districts that do not operate a secondary school of their own violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. |
| Shoop v. Twyford | 21-511 | 2022-6-21 | A transportation order that allows a prisoner to search for new evidence—in this case an order compelling the State to transport Mr. Twyford to a medical facility for neurological testing—is not “necessary or appropriate in aid of” a federal court’s adjudication of a habeas corpus action when the prisoner has not shown that the desired evidence would be admissible in connection with a particular claim for relief. |
| United States v. Washington | 21-404 | 2022-6-21 | Washington’s workers’ compensation law is unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause because it facially discriminates against the Federal Government and does not fall within the scope of the federal waiver of immunity contained in 40 U.S.C. §3172. |
| United States v. Taylor | 20-1459 | 2022-6-21 | Attempted Hobbs Act robbery does not qualify as a “crime of violence” under 18 U.S.C. §924(c)(3)(A) because no element of the offense requires proof that the defendant used, attempted to use, or threatened to use force. |
| Marietta Memorial Hospital Employee Health Benefit Plan v. DaVita Inc. | 20-1641 | 2022-6-21 | The Medicare Secondary Payer statute does not authorize disparate-impact liability, and the Marietta Plan’s coverage terms for outpatient dialysis do not violate 42 U.S.C. §1395y(b)(1)(C) because those terms apply uniformly to all covered individuals. |
| New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen | 20-843 | 2022-06-23 | New York’s proper-cause requirement for obtaining an unrestricted license to carry a concealed firearm violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. |
| Vega v. Tekoh | 21-499 | 2022-6-23 | A violation of the prophylactic rules described in Miranda v. Arizona , 384 U.S. 436, does not provide a basis for a claim under 42 U.S.C. §1983. |
| Nance v. Ward | 21-439 | 2022-6-23 | Title 42 U.S.C. §1983 is the procedural vehicle appropriate for a prisoner’s method-of-execution claim even if an order granting the relief requested would necessitate a change in state law. |
| Berger v. North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP | 21-248 | 2022-6-23 | The speaker of the North Carolina State House of Representatives and the president pro tempore of the North Carolina State Senate are entitled to intervene in this litigation challenging North Carolina’s voter-ID law. |
| Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization | 19-1392 | 2022-06-24 | The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. 113, and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey , 505 U.S. 833, are overruled; the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives. |
| Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation | 20-1312 | 2022-6-24 | For purposes of calculating the Medicare fraction—one of two fractions the Medicare program uses to adjust the rates paid to hospitals that serve a higher-than-usual percentage of low-income patients—those individuals “entitled to [Medicare Part A] benefits” are all those qualifying for the program, regardless of whether they receive Medicare payments for part or all of a hospital stay. |
| Ruan v. United States | 20-1410 | 2022-6-27 | For the crime of prescribing controlled substances outside the usual course of professional practice in violation of 21 U.S.C. §841, the mens rea “knowingly or intentionally” applies to the statute’s “except as authorized” clause. |
| Concepcion v. United States | 20-1650 | 2022-6-27 | Section 404(b) of the First Step Act of 2018, 132 Stat. 5222, allows district courts to consider intervening changes of law or fact in exercising their discretion to reduce a sentence. |
| Kennedy v. Bremerton School District | 21-418 | 2022-06-27 | The government, while following the Establishment Clause, may not suppress an individual from engaging in personal religious observance, as doing so would violate the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment. |
| Torres v. Texas Department of Public Safety | 20-603 | 2022-6-29 | By ratifying the Constitution, the States agreed their sovereignty would yield to the national power to raise and support the Armed Forces; Congress may exercise this power to authorize private damages suits against nonconsenting States, as in the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994. |
| Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta | 21-429 | 2022-6-29 | The Federal Government and the State have concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country. |
| West Virginia v. EPA | 20-1530 | 2022-06-30 | Congress did not grant the Environmental Protection Agency in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan. |
| Biden v. Texas | 21-954 | 2022-06-30 | The Government’s rescission of Migrant Protection Protocols did not violate section 1225 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the then-Secretary of Homeland Security’s October 29 Memoranda constituted valid final agency action. |
