Source: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/terms/ot2014/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 06:53:05+00:00

Document:
Holding: A defendant’s notice of removal of a case from state to federal court need include only a plausible allegation that the amount in controversy exceeds the jurisdictional threshold; it does not need to contain evidentiary submissions.
Holding: An Arkansas prison policy that prevents a Muslim prisoner from growing a half-inch beard in accordance with his religious beliefs violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Holding: Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b), which provides that certain juror testimony about events in the jury room is not admissible “during an inquiry into the validity of a verdict,” precludes a party seeking a new trial from using one juror’s affidavit of what another juror said in deliberations to demonstrate the other juror’s dishonesty during voir dire.
Holding: When a controlling number of the decision makers on a state licensing board are active participants in the occupation the board regulates, the board can invoke state-action immunity only if it is subject to active supervision by the state.
Holding: When reviewing a district court’s resolution of subsidiary factual matters made in the course of its construction of a patent claim, the Federal Circuit must apply a “clear error,” not a de novo, standard of review.
Holding: A prisoner who sought federal habeas relief based on three theories of ineffective assistance of counsel and prevailed in the district court on two of them is not required to file a cross-appeal or seek a certificate of appealability on the third theory to rely on it as part of his defense against the state’s appeal.
Holding: For purposes of Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933, which allows a purchaser of securities to sue an issuer of a registration statement if the registration statement either “contain[s] an untrue statement of a material fact” or “omit[s] to state a material fact . . . necessary to make the statements therein not misleading,” a statement of opinion does not constitute an “untrue statement of fact” simply because the stated opinion ultimately proves incorrect. And if a registration statement omits material facts about the issuer’s inquiry into, or knowledge concerning, a statement of opinion, and if those facts conflict with what a reasonable investor, reading the statement fairly and in context, would take from the statement itself, then Section 11’s omissions clause creates liability.
Holding: A borrower exercising his right to rescind under the Truth in Lending Act need only provide written notice to his lender within the three-year period; the statute does not require him to file suit within that period.
Holding: To determine whether retiree health-care benefits survive the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement, courts should apply ordinary contract principles. Those principles do not include the Sixth Circuit’s inference that parties to collective bargaining would intend retiree benefits to vest for life.
Holding: The D.C. Circuit’s Paralyzed Veterans doctrine, which requires agencies to use the notice-and-comment process before it can significantly revise an interpretive rule, is contrary to the clear text of the Administrative Procedure Act’s rulemaking provisions and improperly imposes on agencies an obligation beyond the Act’s maximum procedural requirements.
Holding: So long as the other ordinary elements of issue preclusion are met, when the usages adjudicated by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board are materially the same as those before a district court, issue preclusion should apply.
Holding: A bank robber “forces [a] person to accompany him,” for purposes of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(e), when he forces that person to go somewhere with him, even if the movement occurs entirely within a single building or over a short distance.
Holding: A plaintiff alleging that the denial of an accommodation constituted disparate treatment under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which requires employers to treat “women affected by pregnancy . . . the same for all employment-related purposes . . . as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work,” may make out a prima facie case by showing that she belongs to the protected class, that she sought accommodation, that the employer did not accommodate her, and that the employer did accommodate others similar in their ability or inability to work. The employer may then seek to justify its refusal to accommodate the plaintiff by relying on “legitimate, nondiscriminatory” reasons for denying accommodation.
Holding: The jury, rather than a court, determines whether the use of an older trademark may be tacked to a newer one.
Holding: For purposes of the validity of the “metrics and standards,” formulated together with the Federal Railroad Association, addressing the performance and scheduling of passenger railroad services, including Amtrak’s on-time performance and train delays caused by host railroads, Amtrak is a governmental entity.
Holding: A lawsuit by a trade association of retailers, alleging that a Colorado law requiring retailers that do not collect sales or use taxes to notify any Colorado customer of the state’s tax requirement and to report tax-related information to those customers and the Colorado Department of Revenue violates the federal and state constitutions, is not barred by the Tax Injunction Act.
Holding: The Eleventh Circuit properly concluded that CSX’s competitors are an appropriate comparison class for its claim under subsection (b)(4) of the Railroad Revitalization and Regulation Reform Act of 1976, which prohibits states from imposing “another tax that discriminates against a rail carrier.” But the Eleventh Circuit erred in refusing to consider whether Alabama could justify its decision to exempt motor carriers from its sales and use taxes through its decision to subject motor carriers to a fuel excise tax.
Holding: When a district court dismisses the only claim in a case that has been consolidated with other actions for pretrial proceedings in multidistrict litigation, the district court’s order is a final and appealable order, even if claims remained in other actions included in the MDL.
Holding: The time limits of the Federal Tort Claims Act, which provides that a tort claim against the United States "shall be forever barred" unless it is presented to the appropriate federal agency for administrative review within two years after the claim accrues and, if it is denied, the claimant files suit in federal court within six months of the denial, are subject to equitable tolling.
Holding: State antitrust law claims are allowed to proceed against gas pipelines for alleged manipulation of market price indices, notwithstanding federal regulation of pipelines under the Natural Gas Act.
Holding: Article III permits bankruptcy judges to adjudicate Stern claims with the parties’ knowing and voluntary consent.
Holding: A non-citizen’s state conviction for concealing unnamed pills in his sock did not trigger removal under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i), which authorizes the deportation of an alien "convicted of a violation of . . . any law or regulation of a state, the United States, or a foreign country related to a controlled substance."
Holding: Medicaid providers do not have a cause of action to challenge a state’s reimbursement rates.
Holding: Disparate-impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act.
Holding: The Ninth Circuit’s decision holding that a U.S. citizen has a protected liberty interest in her marriage that entitled her to review of the denial of a visa to her non-U.S.-citizen spouse, as well its holding that the government deprived her of that liberty interest when it denied the spouse’s visa application without providing a more detailed explanation of its reasons, is vacated.
Holding: Because a fiduciary normally has a continuing duty to monitor investments and remove imprudent ones, a plaintiff may allege that a fiduciary breached a duty of prudence by failing to properly monitor investments and remove imprudent ones. Such a claim is timely as long it is filed within six years of the alleged breach of continuing duty.
Holding: A court-ordered transfer of a felon’s lawfully owned firearms from government custody to a third party is not barred by a federal law that prohibits felons from possessing guns if the court is satisfied that the recipient will not give the felon control over the firearms, so that he could either use them or direct their use.
Holding: Section 330(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code does not permit bankruptcy courts to award fees for defending fee applications to professionals hired under Section 327(a) of the Bankruptcy Code.
Holding: To prevail in a disparate-treatment claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an applicant need show only that his need for an accommodation was a motivating factor in the employer’s decision, not that the employer actually knew of his need.
Holding: Any federal constitutional error that may have occurred by excluding the attorney for a defendant in a capital murder trial from part of the Batson hearing was harmless.
Holding: Los Angeles Municipal Code § 41.49, which requires hotel operators to record and keep specific information about their guests on the premises for a ninety-day period and to make those records available to "any officer of the Los Angeles Police Department for inspection" on demand, is facially unconstitutional because it fails to provide the operators with an opportunity for pre-compliance review.
Holding: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Section 36B's tax credits are available to individuals who purchase health insurance on an exchange created by the federal government.
Holding: Police officers who forcibly entered the room of a woman with a mental disability and shot her are entitled to qualified immunity from a lawsuit seeking redress for the woman’s injuries, because there was no clearly established law requiring them to accommodate her mental illness.
Holding: Because Texas’s specialty license plate designs constitute government speech, it was entitled to reject a proposal for plates featuring a Confederate battle flag.
Holding: A debtor in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceeding may not void a junior mortgage lien under 11 U.S.C. § 506(d) when the debt owed on a senior mortgage lien exceeds the current value of the collateral if the creditor’s claim is both secured by a lien and allowed under Section 502 of the Bankruptcy Code.
Holding: The Court declined to overrule its 1964 decision in Brulotte v. Thys Co., holding that a patent holder cannot charge royalties for the use of his invention after its patent term has expired.
Holding: A bankruptcy court’s order denying confirmation of a debtor’s proposed repayment plan is not a final order that the debtor can immediately appeal.
Holding: A debtor who converts to Chapter 7 bankruptcy is entitled to return of any postpetition wages not yet distributed by the Chapter 13 trustee.
Holding: The Fifth Amendment requires the government to pay just compensation when it takes personal property, just as when it takes real property. In this case, any net proceeds the raisin growers receive from the sale of the reserve raisins goes to the amount of compensation they have received for that taking; it does not mean the raisins have not been appropriated for government use. Nor can the government make raisin growers relinquish their property without just compensation as a condition of selling their raisins in interstate commerce.
Holding: To prove an excessive force claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a pretrial detainee must show only that the officers’ use of that force was objectively unreasonable; he does not need to show that the officers were subjectively aware that their use of force was unreasonable.
Holding: A court of appeals has jurisdiction to review the rejection by the Board of Immigration Appeals of a non-citizen’s motion to reopen, even when the Board rejects the motion as untimely or it rejects a motion requesting equitable tolling of the time limit.
Holding: The death-row inmates have failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the use of midazolam, a sedative, as the first drug in Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol violates the Eighth Amendment because it fails to render a person insensate to pain.
Holding: Because the Supreme Court’s caselaw does not clearly establish that a prosecutor’s focus on one theory of liability can render earlier notice of another theory of liability inadequate, the decision of the court of appeals granting habeas relief is reversed.
Holding: The court of appeals erred in entering summary judgment against the petitioners, police officers who filed a lawsuit against the city where they worked, for failure to invoke 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in their complaint. Federal pleading rules do not countenance the dismissal of a complaint for imperfect statement of the legal theory supporting the claim. And in particular, no heightened pleading rule requires plaintiffs seeking damages for violations of constitutional rights to invoke § 1983 expressly in order to state a claim.
Holding: Dismissed after petitioner neither filed a brief on the merits within forty-five days of the order granting review, requested an extension of time, nor responded to correspondence sent to him.
Holding: Even if, at Frost’s robbery trial, the state trial court violated the Constitution when it held that state law prohibited Frost from simultaneously contesting his liability and arguing duress during closing arguments, it was not clearly established that such a mistake constitutes a structural error requiring the automatic reversal of Frost’s conviction.
Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit erred when it concluded that a police officer is not entitled to qualified immunity from a lawsuit under Section 1983 that alleged, among other things, that he entered their property in violation of the Fourth Amendment when he went into their backyard and onto their deck without a warrant. The police officer did not violate clearly established federal law when he went to a sliding glass door that he believed was a customary entryway that was open to visitors.
Holding: The lower court’s decision holding that an attorney provided per se ineffective assistance of counsel under United States v. Cronic when he was briefly absent during testimony concerning other defendants, is reversed, because no Supreme Court decision clearly establishes that the respondent in this case is entitled to relief under Cronic.
Holding: Prison officials have qualified immunity from a lawsuit, filed by the family of an inmate who committed suicide, which alleged that they had failed to adequately supervise the private contractor that provided medical treatment at the prison facility, because at the time of the incident there was no clearly established law requiring the proper implementation of adequate suicide prevention protocols.
Holding: When a death row inmate’s appointed attorneys had missed the filing deadline for his first federal habeas petition and could not be expected to argue that the inmate was entitled to equitable tolling of the statute of limitations, the district court erred in denying (and the court of appeals erred in affirming the denial of) a motion for the appointment of substitute, conflict-free counsel.

References: § 2113
 § 1227
 § 41
 § 506
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 § 1983
 § 1983
 § 1983
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