Articles Posted in Court Decisions

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On Wednesday August 4, 2020 Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco struck down California’s ban on same sex marriage in a 136 page opinioon, ruling that voter approved Proposition 8 violates the constitutional right of equal protection. Proposition 8 defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

This high profile case, Kristin Perry et. al. v. Arnold Schwarzenegger Case3:09-cv-02292-VRW, is being watched closely by both supporters and opponents of same sex marriage, as many believe it will make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court where it could result in a landmark decision.

Below are links to a discussion of this decision in the August 15 New York Times and to the decision as decided on Wednesday.

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To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
June 21-25, 2010.

U.S. Supreme Court, June 21, 2010 Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, No. 08–1498 In a constitutional challenge to 18 U.S.C. section 2339B(a)(1), which prohibited knowingly providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, the Ninth Circuit’s affirmance of partial judgment for plaintiffs is reversed in part where the material support statute was constitutional as applied to the particular forms of support that plaintiffs sought to provide to foreign terrorist organizations. .

U.S. Supreme Court, June 24, 2010 Skilling v. US, No. 08–1394 The Fifth Circuit’s affirmance of defendant Jeffrey Skilling’s honest-services fraud conviction is affirmed in part where pretrial publicity and community prejudice did not prevent Skilling from obtaining a fair trial, and he did not establish that a presumption of juror prejudice arose or that actual bias infected the jury that tried him. However, the judgment is vacated in part where 18 U.S.C. section 1346, which proscribes fraudulent deprivations of “the intangible right of honest services,” was properly confined to cover only bribery and kickback schemes, and Skilling’s alleged misconduct entailed no bribe or kickback. .

U.S. Supreme Court, June 24, 2010 Black v. US, No. 08–876 The Seventh Circuit’s affirmance of defendants’ honest-services mail fraud convictions is vacated where: 1) per the ruling today in Skilling v. US, the honest-services component of the federal mail-fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. section 1346, criminalizes only schemes to defraud that involved bribes or kickbacks, and that holding renders the honest-services instructions given in this case incorrect; and 2) by properly objecting to the honest-services jury instructions at trial, defendants secured their right to challenge those instructions on appeal, and they did not forfeit that right by declining to acquiesce in the government-proposed special-verdict forms. Read more…
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To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
June 21-25, 2010.

U.S. Supreme Court, June 21, 2010 Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, No. 08–1498 In a constitutional challenge to 18 U.S.C. section 2339B(a)(1), which prohibited knowingly providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, the Ninth Circuit’s affirmance of partial judgment for plaintiffs is reversed in part where the material support statute was constitutional as applied to the particular forms of support that plaintiffs sought to provide to foreign terrorist organizations. Read more…

U.S. Supreme Court, June 24, 2010 Doe v. Reed, No. 09–559 In a First Amendment challenge to the Washington Public Records Act based on its provision permitting the disclosure of referendum petition signers’ names and addresses, the Ninth Circuit’s reversal of the district court’s preliminary injunction in favor of plaintiffs is affirmed where disclosure of referendum petitions does not as a general matter violate the First Amendment.

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, June 21, 2010 Rodriguez-Garcia v. Miranda-Marin, No. 08-2319 In a municipal employee’s suit claiming that she was transferred to another position in retaliation for testimony she gave before the Puerto Rico Government Ethics Office in violation of her rights under the First Amendment and Puerto Rico law, judgment of the district court is affirmed where: 1) the evidence presented at trial is sufficient to support a jury finding that plaintiff suffered an adverse employment action sufficient to support her section 1983 claim; 2) defendants would not have taken the same adverse employment action in the absence of her protected conduct; 3) the mayor was personally liable for retaliation under section 1983; 4) the municipality is liable under section 1983; 5) the court did not abuse its discretion in affirming the damages award in the amount of $350,000; and 6) the court’s determination that plaintiff waived her Puerto Rico Law 115 claim was not an abuse of discretion.
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Supreme Court Case Summaries: Professor Rory Little’s Perspective
A Service from the ABA Criminal Justice Section, http://www.abanet.org/crimjust

These summaries are written by Professor Rory K. Little (littler@uchastings.edu), U.C. Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, who has long presented “Annual Review of the Supreme Court’s Term” program at the ABA’s Annual Meetings. They represent his personal, unofficial views of the Justices’ opinions. The original opinions should be consulted for their authoritative content.

The CJS hopes these summaries will be helpful to members, because they are different from the average news or blog account, in at least three ways: first, a detailed account of the rationale of ALL the opinions issued in a case, including nuances found in separate concurring and dissenting opinions; second, an account of the decision that is essentially “neutral” — that is, not really a “perspective” in the sense of the author’s personal opinions, but rather a straightforward account that can be relied upon by lawyers of all stripes; and then third, a bit of “inside baseball” analysis of some of the twists or nuances that are not apparent in the opinion.

U.S.. Supreme Court Summaries – Criminal Cases June 24, 2010
Mail/Wire Fraud and “Honest Services” – Three cases:

Skilling v. United States, http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1394.pdf

Black v. United States, http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-876.pdf

Weyhrauch v. United Sates, http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-876.pdf

On June 24, the Court issued its long-awaited opinions in the trio of “honest services” mail and wire fraud cases. The Court (6-3) upheld the “honest services” statute, but limited it to schemes of “bribery and kickbacks.” Interestingly, in the lead case of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, the Court’s major effort was spent not on mail fraud, but on the pretrial-publicity juror bias claims that Skilling presented, and the Skilling opinion will stand more as a major decision in that constitutional area than on the statutory definition (which is changeable by Congress) of mail fraud. Each holding (due process and mail fraud) was a 6-3 vote, but different Justices were the dissenters on each. And, perhaps significantly or perhaps not, this is the first decision in which the two women on the Court disagreed in written opinions, Justice Ginsburg writing the majority and Justice Sotomayor dissenting on the due process-fair trial ruling.

The various Skilling opinions consume 114 pages. The Court also eclipses what probably was not a record of three days ago (the six-page syllabus in Humanitarian Law Prroject) with a nine-page syllabus here. Yes, there are a lot of pages here, but nine pages for an allegedly accessible “summary” of the opinion is, for the Court, pretty silly.

In Black, the Court applied its Skilling mail fraud ruling to hold that Conrad Black’s jury instructions were erroneous, and remanded for a harmless-error analysis (as it did in Skilling). The Court also reversed the Seventh Circuit’s ruling that Black had forfeited his jury instruction challenge by opposing the government’s more-precise special verdict form, and provides an important discourse on courts of appeal imposing sanctions that the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure don’t specify, without notice.

Finally, in one sentence the Court simply vacated the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in Weyhrauch and remanded for further proceedings in light of Skilling.

Summaries of the various Justices’ opinions follow.
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To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
June 14 – 18, 2010.

U.S. Supreme Court, June 14, 2010 Dolan v. US, No. 09–367 In a prosecution for assault resulting in serious bodily injury, the Tenth Circuit’s affirmance of the district court’s untimely restitution order is affirmed where a sentencing court that misses the 90-day deadline nonetheless retains the power to order restitution, at least where, as here, that court made clear prior to the deadline’s expiration that it would order restitution, leaving open (for more than 90 days) only the amount.

U.S. Supreme Court, June 14, 2010 Holland v. Fla., No. 09–5327 In a capital habeas matter, the Eleventh Circuit’s affirmance of the denial of petitioner’s habeas petition is reversed and remanded where: 1) 28 U.S.C. section 2244(d), the AEDPA statute of limitations, is subject to equitable tolling in appropriate cases, and the per se standard employed by the Eleventh Circuit was too rigid; and 2) the district court incorrectly rested its ruling not on a lack of extraordinary circumstances (which may well be present), but on a lack of diligence. .

U.S. Supreme Court, June 14, 2010 Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, No. 09–60 The Fifth Circuit’s denial of petitioner’s petition for review of the BIA’s order holding that petitioner was not eligible for cancellation of removal is reversed where second or subsequent simple possession offenses are not aggravated felonies under 8 U.S.C. section 1101(a)(43) when, as in this case, the state conviction was not based on the fact of a prior conviction Continue reading

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To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
June 14 – 18, 2010.

U.S. Supreme Court, June 17, 2010 Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Fla. Dept. of Env. Protection, Inc., No. 08–1151 In an action challenging the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s approval of permits to restore a portion of beach eroded by several hurricanes, the Florida Supreme Court’s holding that the approval of the permits did not unconstitutionally deprive plaintiffs of littoral rights without just compensation is affirmed where there could be no taking unless petitioner could show that, before the Florida Supreme Court’s decision, littoral property owners had rights to future accretions and to contact with the water superior to the State’s right to fill in its submerged land.

U.S. Supreme Court, June 17, 2010 City of Ontario v. Quon, No. 08–1332 In an action by police officers against the city employing them, claiming that defendants violated their Fourth Amendment rights and the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) by obtaining and reviewing the transcript of plaintiff-officer’s pager messages, the Ninth Circuit’s reversal of summary judgment for defendants is reversed where, because the city’s search of plaintiff’s text messages was reasonable, defendants did not violate plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights.

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, June 17, 2010 Cortes-Reyes v. Salas-Quintana, No. 08-2210 In a political discrimination suit brought by thirty-six former Ranger cadets of the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, claiming they were terminated due to their political affiliation with the New Progressive Party, district court’s judgment is affirmed in part and vacated in part where: 1) jury’s finding of a due process violation and a related award of compensatory damages is vacated as the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on the due process claim; and 2) jury’s finding of a First Amendment violation and the award of nominal and punitive damages are affirmed Continue reading

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Holder (Attorney General) v. Humanitarian Law Project et. al. 08-1498

A Service from the ABA Criminal Justice Section, http://www.abanet.org/crimjust

This summary has been created by Professor Rory K. Little (littler@uchastings.edu), U.C. Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, who has long presented “Annual Review of the Supreme Court’s Term” program at the ABA’s Annual Meetings. It represents his personal, unofficial views of the Justices’ opinions. The original opinions should be consulted for their authoritative content.

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