Source: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/terms/ot2015/?sort=mname
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 19:07:44+00:00

Document:
Holding: For purposes of diversity jurisdiction, citizenship of an unincorporated entity depends on the citizenship of all of its members. Because, under Maryland law, a real estate investment trust is held and managed for the benefit of its shareholders, Americold’s members include its shareholders.
Holding: When a prisoner files more than one case or appeal in the federal courts in forma pauperis, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(2), calls for simultaneous, rather than sequential, recoupment of multiple monthly installment payments.
Holding: 1) An unaccepted settlement offer or offer of judgment does not moot a plaintiff's case, so the district court retains jurisdiction to adjudicate the plaintiff’s complaint. 2) A federal contractor is not entitled to immunity from suit for its violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act when it violated both federal law and the government's explicit instructions.
Holding: Maryland's regulatory program to encourage development of new in-state energy generation is preempted by the Federal Power Act, which vests in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive jurisdiction over interstate wholesale electricity rates.
Holding: The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act creates an agency procedure called “inter partes review” that allows a third party to ask the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine the claims in an already-issued patent and to cancel any claim that the agency finds to be unpatentable in light of prior art; the act also provides that the PTO’s decision whether to institute an inter partes review is “final and unappealable.” This provision bars a court from considering whether the PTO was correct in instituting an inter partes review when it did so on grounds not specifically mentioned in a third party’s review request. Moreover, the PTO has authority to issue a regulation stating that the agency, in inter partes review, shall construe a patent claim according to its broadest reasonable construction in light of the specification of the patent in which it appears.
Holding: Because the California Court of Appeal’s interpretation of a service agreement that included a binding arbitration provision with a class arbitration waiver – which specified that the entire arbitration provision was unenforceable if the “law of your state” made class-arbitration waivers unenforceable, but also declared that the arbitration clause was governed by the Federal Arbitration Act – is pre-empted by the Federal Arbitration Act, that court must enforce the arbitration agreement.
Issue(s): Whether Indian tribal courts have jurisdiction to adjudicate civil tort claims against nonmembers, including as a means of regulating the conduct of nonmembers who enter into consensual relationships with a tribe or its members. CVSG: 5/12/2015.
Issue(s): Whether the Seventh Circuit violated 28 U.S.C. § 2254 and a long line of this Court's decisions by awarding habeas relief in the absence of clearly established precedent from this Court.
Holding: The race-conscious admissions program in use by the University of Texas at Austin when Abigail Fisher applied to the school in 2008 is lawful under the Equal Protection Clause.
Holding: (1) The Court is equally divided on the question whether Nevada v. Hall should be overruled and thus affirms the Nevada courts' exercise of jurisdiction over California's state agency; and (2) the Constitution does not permit Nevada to apply a rule of Nevada law that awards damages against California that are greater than it could award Nevada in similar circumstances.
Issue(s): (1) Whether Abood v. Detroit Board of Education should be overruled and public-sector “agency shop” arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment; and (2) whether it violates 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.
Issue(s): (1) Whether “primarily and unconditionally liable” spousal guarantors are unambiguously excluded from being Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) “applicants” because they are not integrally part of “any aspect of a credit transaction”; and (2) whether the Federal Reserve Board has authority under the ECOA to include by regulation spousal guarantors as “applicants” to further the purposes of eliminating discrimination against married women.
Holding: Florida's capital-sentencing scheme, in which a jury renders an “advisory sentence” but a judge must independently weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors before entering a sentence of life or death, violates the Sixth Amendment in light of the Court's decision in Ring v. Arizona, which deemed unconstitutional an Arizona capital sentencing scheme that permitted a judge rather than the jury to find the facts necessary to sentence a defendant to death.
Holding: Under federal law, a court has discretion to “allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee” in a civil rights lawsuit filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Because the Supreme Court has interpreted this to allow a prevailing defendant to recover fees only if “the plaintiff’s action was frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation,” the Idaho Supreme Court erred when it concluded that it was not bound by this interpretation and awarded fees under federal law to a prevailing defendant without first making this determination.
Holding: Because the Supreme Court of California's summary denial of Antonio Hinojosa's petition for federal habeas relief was on the merits, the Ninth Circuit should have reviewed Hinojosa's ex post facto claim through deferential, rather than de novo, review as mandated by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.
Holding: When the state has put a capital defendant’s future dangerousness at issue and acknowledged that the only possible sentence besides death is life imprisonment without parole, the defendant has a right to inform the jury of that fact, and the Arizona Supreme Court erred in holding to the contrary.
Holding: The Armed Career Criminal Act imposes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum sentence on a defendant convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm who also has three prior state or federal convictions “for a violent felony,” including “burglary, arson, or extortion.” Because the elements of Iowa’s burglary law – which applies to “any building, structure, [or] land, water, or air vehicle” – is broader than those of generic “burglary” – which requires unlawful entry into a “building or other structure” – prior convictions under the Iowa burglary law cannot give rise to a sentence enhancement under the ACCA.
Holding: The federal bribery statute, 18 U.S.C. § 201, makes it a crime for a public official to “receive or accept anything of value” in exchange for being “influenced in the performance of any official act.” An "official act" is a decision or action on a "question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy"; that question or matter must involve a formal exercise of governmental power, and must also be something specific and focused that is "pending" or "may by law be brought" before a public official. To qualify as an "official act," the public official must make a decision to take an action on that question or matter, or agree to do so. Setting up a meeting, talking to another official, or organizing an event -- without more -- does not fit that definition of "official act." Because jury instructions in the case of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell were erroneous, and those errors are not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, McDonnell's convictions are vacated.
Holding: Equitable tolling is not available to preserve contract claims that were not timely presented to a federal contracting officer because there were no extraordinary circumstances beyond the tribe’s control: the tribe had unilateral authority to present its claims in a timely manner, and its claimed obstacles – a mistaken reliance on a putative class action and a belief that presentment was futile – were not outside the tribe’s control.
Holding: 1) When a jury instruction adds an element to the charged crime and the government fails to object, a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence should be assessed against the elements of the charged crime, rather than the elements set forth in the erroneous jury instruction; and (2) a defendant cannot successfully raise a statute-of-limitations bar for the first time on appeal.
Holding: A California woman’s lawsuit against the Austrian national railroad for injuries that she suffered while attempting to board a train in Austria does not fall within the “commercial activity” exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and is therefore barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Although the plaintiff purchased a Eurail pass in the United States, her lawsuit is not “based upon a commercial activity carried on in the United States by a foreign state” because the conduct constituting the gravamen of her suit occurred in Austria.
Holding: A violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1962 of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act may be based on a pattern of racketeering that includes predicate offenses committed abroad, provided that each of those offenses violates a predicate statute that is itself extraterritorial. However, a private RICO plaintiff must allege and prove a domestic injury.
Holding: Louisiana's postconviction court erred in denying Michael Wearry's request for post-conviction relief, because the prosecution's failure to disclose material evidence supporting Wearry's innocence violated his due process rights.
Holding: The Court’s 2015 ruling in Johnson v. United States, holding that the imposition of an increased sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act's residual clause violates due process, announced a new substantive rule that has retroactive effect in cases on collateral review.
Holding: The Kentucky Supreme Court was not unreasonable in its application of federal law when it concluded that the trial court’s exclusion of a juror from a criminal trial, based on its conclusion that he could not give sufficient assurance of neutrality or impartiality in considering whether the death penalty should be imposed, did not violate the Sixth Amendment. The contrary determination of the court of appeals that excusing the juror in this case violated the Sixth Amendment contravenes controlling precedents of the Supreme Court.
Holding: Two provisions in a Texas law – requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and requiring abortion clinics in the state to have facilities comparable to an ambulatory surgical center – place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking an abortion, constitute an undue burden on abortion access, and therefore violate the Constitution.
Holding: The appellants, members of Congress, who intervened to help defend Virginia’s 2013 congressional redistricting plan, lack standing to pursue an appeal of the district court’s holding that the plan was unconstitutional.
Holding: Given the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which provides that federal habeas relief is available to a state prisoner only if the state court’s decision was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law,” and requires that a state court’s decision that a habeas claim lacks merit precludes federal habeas relief so long as “fairminded jurists could disagree on the correctness of the state court’s decision,” both Etherton’s appellate counsel and the state habeas court were to be afforded the benefit of the doubt, which the Sixth Circuit failed to give them.

References: § 1915
 § 2254
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 § 1983
 § 201
 § 1962
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