Source: https://www.scotusblog.com/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 20:03:22+00:00

Document:
The Supreme Court will release orders from the April 18 conference on Monday at 9:30 a.m.; John Elwood’s Relist Watch compiles the petitions that were relisted for this conference.
On its face, Department of Commerce v. New York asks whether the government may add a question about citizenship status to the 2020 decennial census. But as Professor Justin Levitt explains in a forthcoming essay, if the government wins, the citizenship data could influence the allocation of representation in the state legislatures, raising a whole new set of constitutional questions left unresolved by the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Evenwel v. Abbott.
This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, the constitutionality of invalidating a student-aid program because it affords students the choice of attending religious schools, whether the Fourth Amendment requires a caseworker who suspects abuse to obtain a warrant to strip-search a child, and the compatibility of the “physical realm” test with the Patent Act and Supreme Court precedent.
Issues: (1) Whether the Fourth Amendment requires a caseworker who suspects abuse to obtain a warrant to strip-search a child—an issue that has produced an acknowledged 4-2 circuit split, and is nearly identical to the issue the Supreme Court granted certiorari on but did not resolve in Camreta v. Greene; (2) whether, even if a warrant is not required in this context, clearly established federal law prohibits conducting warrantless strip searches of children at school when there are no “specific suspicions” of danger or wrongdoing justifying the “categorically extreme intrusiveness of a search down to the body”; and (3) whether the Supreme Court should reconsider its qualified-immunity jurisprudence to accord with historical common-law practice and to eliminate the widespread confusion plaguing current qualified-immunity doctrine.
Issue: Whether it violates the religion clauses or the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution to invalidate a generally available and religiously neutral student-aid program simply because the program affords students the choice of attending religious schools.
InvestPic, LLC v. SAP America Inc.
Issue: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s “physical realm” test contravenes the Patent Act and the Supreme Court’s precedent by categorically excluding otherwise patentable processes from patent eligibility.
The Supreme Court issued revisions to its rules today. The changes largely mirror the amendments proposed late last year, with one notable exception: Although the justices reduced the word limits for opening briefs on the merits, they left the existing word limits for reply briefs in place.
Changes to two rules – Rules 14.1 and 15.2 – require the parties to a case before the Supreme Court to identify any lower-court cases that are directly related to the Supreme Court proceedings. This change, a comment to the rules explains, “will assist in evaluating whether a Justice’s involvement in a case before the Court might require recusal.” The new requirement comes just a little over a year after Justice Anthony Kennedy – who has since retired – had to recuse himself from a tribal-fishing-rights case when he belatedly realized that he had participated in the case before joining the Supreme Court in 1988, as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. With Kennedy sitting out the case, the court deadlocked 4-4, leaving the lower court’s decision in place.
I normally try to have Relist Watch written up by Wednesday after the court issues its order list. Here it is late Thursday and I’m just getting it out. It’s not just that I’m lazy, though I am. It’s that I’ve been mulling over the five new relists, and what I think their prospects are for Supreme Court review. In fact, I’ve been mulling these cases so deeply that you could call today’s installment the “Muller Report.” I like the ring of it.
I’ve also spent the extra time coming up with especially funny jokes, dank memes and hilarious GIFs. In fact, they are so good that there’s a danger that if people could just read everything, unrestrained mirth would disrupt the workplace. So I’ve taken the precautionary measure of temporarily obscuring the jokes that pose the greatest risk of disruption until some future national holiday when they can be safely read. I know some of you will be frustrated to read this entire document just to find that all the best bits are blacked out. But the redactions were compelled by the need to prevent harm to ongoing matters.
McDonough v. Smith, argued Wednesday, saw justices and attorneys repeating metaphors about heads spinning and constitutional rights swimming. The justices seemed inclined to rule for the petitioner (supported by the United States) that his claim was timely and that the limitations period on a civil action should not begin until favorable termination of criminal proceedings. But the likely scope of the ruling remains uncertain.
Respondent Youel Smith prosecuted petitioner Edward McDonough, a former election official, for fraud arising from a primary election; the prosecution was initiated and continued on allegedly fabricated evidence, fabricated affidavits, false testimony and faulty DNA analysis. McDonough was indicted and tried twice, the first trial ending in a mistrial and the second ending in an acquittal. Less than three years after the acquittal, McDonough filed an action in federal district court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging malicious prosecution and fabrication of evidence before the grand jury and at the two trials, in violation of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and 14th Amendments. The lower courts dismissed the fabrication-of-evidence claim as untimely, because the three-year statute of limitations began to run when McDonough became aware of the use of fabricated evidence, which occurred well before his acquittal and thus more than three years before he filed the federal civil action. The issue before the Supreme Court is whether the limitations period instead began to run only when the state criminal proceedings terminated in McDonough’s favor with his acquittal, making his Section 1983 action timely.

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