U.S. Supreme Court: Major Cases in the 2010-11 Term

Monday, October 4, 2010

Issue: DNA Evidence

Case: Skinnerv. Switzer, 09-9000

Current Status: Arguments scheduled for October 13, 2010

Question Presented:

May a convicted prisoner seeking access to biological evidence for DNA testing assert that claim in a civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, or is such a claim cognizable only in a petition for writ of habeas corpus?

Below excerpted from the UT Law Magazine:

Hank Skinner was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 for murdering his girlfriend Twila Busby and her two adult sons in their home in the Panhandle town of Pampa on New Year’s Eve 1993.

Skinner has sought access to certain evidence from the crime scene for the purpose of performing forensic DNA testing that he says could clear him. Only a few hairs have been previously DNA tested, and the results of those tests were inconclusive.

After failing to obtain such access though repeated formal and informal requests, as well as two separate state court proceedings under Texas’ post-conviction DNA testing statute, Skinner filed suit against Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer in November 2009. Skinner invoked 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the refusal to grant him access to the evidence under Texas’ DNA testing statute was so arbitrary as to deny due process of law. The district court dismissed Skinner’s lawsuit, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed, both relying on a 2002 decision in which the Fifth Circuit had determined that such an action could proceed only as a habeas corpus petition, not as a civil rights lawsuit.

That legal conclusion, shared by the Fourth Circuit, is at odds with the view of six other federal Courts of Appeals, and that conflict was the basis of the petition for writ of certiorari that Skinner filed with the Supreme Court in February as Skinner v. Switzer, No. 09-9000.

Issue: Privacy & Background Checks

Case: NASA v. Nelson, 09-530

Current Status: Arguments scheduled for October 5, 2010

Question Presented:

Whether the government violates a federal contract employee’s constitutional right to informational privacy by (1) asking in the course of a background investigation whether the employee has received counseling or treatment for illegal drug use that has occurred within the past year and/or (2) asking the employee’s designated references for any adverse information that may have a bearing on the employee’s suitability for employment at a federal facility — when the employee’s and reference’s responses are used only for employment purposes, and the information obtained is protected under the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a.

Below excerpted from: www.onthedocket.org

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether background checks of federal contractors at a NASA lab violate privacy rights or serve an imperative national security interest.

The case concerns 2004 Bush administration antiterrorism initiative that extended background checks required for many government jobs to contract employees, including scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a research facility operated by the California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA.

Twenty-eight lab employees, who do not have security clearances and are not involved in classified or military activities, filed suit over what they considered to be overly intrusive background checks.

A three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the background checks halted while the case continued. A divided court declined an en banc review.

In dissent, Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote that the court’s decision was “likely to impair national security” by forbidding the government “from doing what any sensible private employer would do.”

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski urged the high court to take the case.

On March 8, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to grant review.

Issue: Illegal Aliens

Case: Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. v. Whiting, 09-115

Current Status: Arguments scheduled for December 8, 2010

Question(s) Presented:

1. Whether an Arizona statute that imposes sanctions on employers who hire unauthorized aliens is invalid under a federal statute that expressly “preempt[s] any State or local law imposing civil or criminal sanctions (other than through licensing and similar laws) upon those who employ, or recruit or refer for a fee for employment, unauthorized aliens.” 8 U.S.C. § 1324a(h)(2).

2. Whether the Arizona statute, which requires all employers to participate in a federal electronic employment verification system, is preempted by a federal law that specifically makes that system voluntary. 8 U.S.C. § 1324a note.

3. Whether the Arizona statute is impliedly preempted because it undermines the “comprehensive scheme” that Congress created to regulate the employment of aliens. Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, 535 U.S. 137, 147 (2002).

Below excerpted from: www.lawmemo.com

Arizona’s Legal Arizona Workers Act allows the superior courts of Arizona to suspend or revoke the business licenses of employers who knowingly or intentionally hire unauthorized aliens. The appropriate county attorney is charged with bringing an action against the employer in superior court. The Act uses IRCA’s definition of “unauthorized alien,” and requires that the court use the federal government’s determination of the employee’s lawful status. The Act makes participation in E-Verify mandatory for all employers, although it provides no penalty for violation of the requirement. The Act mandates a graduated series of sanctions for violations. 

The 9th Circuit held that the Arizona Act is neither expressly nor impliedly preempted by federal law, and does not violate due process.

  Issue: Free Speech / Funeral Protests

 Case: Snyder v. Phelps, 09-751

 Current Status: Arguments scheduled for October 6, 2010

 Question(s) Presented:

 To what degree is constitutional protection given to remarks that a private person made about another private person, occurring outside the site of a private event.  The family of the dead soldier had won a verdict before a jury, but that was overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court, finding that the signs displayed at the funeral in western Maryland and later comments on an anti-gay website were protected speech.   The petition for review seeks the Court’s protection for families attending a funeral from “unwanted” remarks or displays by protesters.

Below excerpted from: www.scotusblog.com/2010/03/court-to-rule-on-funeral-pickets/

In March four years ago, Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder was killed while serving in Iraq.  His family arranged for a private funeral, with Christian burial, at St. John’s Catholic Church in Westminster, Md.  When word of the planned funeral appeared in the newspapers, the Rev. Fred W. Phelps, Sr., pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., who has gained notoriety in recent years by staging protests at military funerals, decided to stage a demonstration at the Maryland funeral.  In response to such protests, some 40 states have passed laws to regulate funeral demonstrations.

The Rev. Phelps’ church preaches a strongly anti-gay message, contending that God hates America because it tolerates homosexuality, particularly in the military services.  The church also spreads its views through an online site, http://www.godhatesfags.com.   When the Snyder funeral occurred, the Rev. Phelps, two of his daughters and four grandchildren staged a protest nearby.  They carried signs with such messages as “God Hates the USA,” “America is doomed,” “Pope in hell,” “Semper fi fags,” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.”  The demonstration violated no local laws, and was kept at police orders a distance from the church.   After the funeral, the Rev. Phelps continued his protest over the Snyder funeral on his church’s website, accusing the Snyder family of having taught their son irreligious beliefs.

The soldier’s father, Albert Snyder, sued the Rev. Phelps, his daughters and the Westboro Church under Maryland state law, and won a $5 million verdict based on three claims: intrusion into a secluded event, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy.  (The verdict included $2.9 million for compensatory damages and $2.1 million for punitive damages; the punitive award had been reduced from $8 million by the trial judge.) The Fourth Circuit Court overturned the verdict, concluding that the protesters’ speech was protected by the First Amendment because it was only a form of hyperbole, not an assertion of actual facts about the soldier or his family.  While finding that the Phelps’ remarks were “utterly distasteful,” the Circuit Court said they involved matters of public concern, including the issue of homosexuality in the military and the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens.

In Albert Snyder’s appeal, his lawyers argued that the Supreme Court’s protection of speech about public issues, especially the Justices’ 1988 decision in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, does not apply “to private individuals versus private individuals.”  If it does apply, the petition said, “the victimized private individual is left without recourse.”  The Circuit Court decision, it added, encourages private individuals to use hyperbolic language to gain constitutional protection “even if that language is targeted at another private individual at a private, religious funeral.”

Even if the Hustler decision does apply to the kind of remarks at issue, the petition asserted, the case also raises the issue of whether those who attend a funeral are like a “captive audience” and thus need protection against intruders who were not invited.