The justices return from their annual summer vacation to find the court at the center of everyone’s attention. Their upcoming docket offers the usual array of interesting legal questions across several subjects:

Criminal Law

  • Van Buren v. United States (11th)—whether a person who is authorized to access information on a computer for certain purposes violates Section 1030(a)(2) of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act if he accesses the same information for an improper purpose.
  • Edwards v. Vannoy (5th)—whether the Supreme Court’s April 2020 decision in Ramos v. Louisiana (right to unanimous jury verdict) applies retroactively to cases on federal collateral review.
  • Torres v. Madrid (10th)—whether an unsuccessful attempt to detain a suspect by use of physical force is a “seizure” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, or whether physical force must be successful in detaining a suspect to constitute a “seizure.”
  • Borden v. United States (6th)—whether the “use of force” clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act encompasses crimes with a mens rea of mere recklessness.
  • Jones v. Mississippi (Miss.)—whether the Eighth Amendment requires the sentencing authority to make a finding that a juvenile is permanently incorrigible before imposing a sentence of life without parole.

Constitutional Law

  • Texas v. California & California v. Texas (5th)—whether the individual mandate to purchase minimum essential coverage is severable from the remainder of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; whether the district court properly declared the ACA invalid in its entirety and unenforceable anywhere; whether the individual and state plaintiffs in this case have established Article III standing to challenge the ACA’s minimum-coverage provision; and whether the minimum-coverage provision is severable from the rest of the ACA.
  • Collins v. Mnuchin (5th)—whether the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s structure violates the separation of powers; and whether the courts must set aside a final agency action that FHFA took when it was unconstitutionally structured and strike down the statutory provisions that make FHFA independent.
  • Department of Justice v. House Committee on the Judiciary (D.C. Cir.)—whether an impeachment trial before a legislative body is a “judicial proceeding” under Rule 6(e)(3)(E)(i) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
  • Carney v. Adams (3d Cir.)—whether the First Amendment invalidates a longstanding state constitutional provision that limits judges affiliated with any one political party to no more than a “bare majority” on the state’s three highest courts, with the other seats reserved for judges affiliated with the “other major political party.”
  • Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (3d Cir.)—whether the government violates the First Amendment by conditioning a religious agency’s ability to participate in the foster care system on taking actions and making statements that directly contradict the agency’s religious beliefs re: same-sex marriage, and whether Employment Division v. Smith should be revisited.
  • Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski (11th)—whether a government’s post-filing change of an unconstitutional policy moots nominal-damages claims that vindicate the government’s past, completed violation of a plaintiff’s constitutional right.

Statutory Interpretation

  • Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
    • Republic of Hungary v. Simon (D.C. Cir.)—whether a district court may abstain from exercising jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act for reasons of international comity, in a matter in which former Hungarian nationals have sued the nation of Hungary to recover the value of property lost in Hungary during World War II but the plaintiffs made no attempt to exhaust local Hungarian remedies.
    • Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp (D.C. Cir.)—whether the “expropriation exception” of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which abrogates foreign sovereign immunity when “rights in property taken in violation of international law are in issue,” provides jurisdiction over claims that a foreign sovereign has violated international human-rights law when taking property from its own national within its own borders, even though such claims do not implicate the established international law governing states’ responsibility for takings of property.
  • Nestle USA v. Doe I (9th) & Cargill v. Doe I (9th Cir.)—whether the presumption against extraterritorial application of the Alien Tort Statute is displaced by allegations that a U.S. company generally conducted oversight of its foreign operations at its headquarters and made operational and financial decisions there, even though the conduct alleged to violate international law occurred in—and the plaintiffs suffered their injuries in—a foreign country; and whether a domestic corporation is subject to liability in a private action under the Alien Tort Statute.
  • Tanzin v. Tanvir (2d Cir.)—whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 permits suits seeking money damages against individual federal employees.
  • AMG Capital Management v. Federal Trade Commission (9th)—whether Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act, by authorizing “injunction[s],” also authorizes the Federal Trade Commission to demand monetary relief such as restitution—and, if so, the scope of the limits or requirements for such relief.
  • Facebook v. Duguid (9th)—whether the definition of an “automatic telephone dialing system” in the Telephone and Consumer Protection Act of 1991 encompasses any device that can “store” and “automatically dial” telephone numbers, even if the device does not “use a random or sequential number generator.”

Miscellaneous

  • [Jurisdiction/Civil Procedure] Ford Motor v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court (Mont.) and Ford Motor Co. v. Bandemer (Minn.)—whether the “arise out of or relate to” requirement of the 14th Amendment’s due process clause is satisfied when none of the defendant’s forum contacts caused the plaintiff’s claims, such that the plaintiff’s claims would be the same even if the defendant had no forum contacts.
  • [Intellectual Property] Google v. Oracle America (Fed. Cir.)—whether copyright protection extends to a software interface; and whether, as the trial jury found, the petitioner’s use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes fair use.
  • [Preemption/ERISA] Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (8th)—whether an Arkansas statute regulating pharmacy benefit managers’ drug-reimbursement rates is pre-empted by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.
  • [Bankruptcy] City of Chicago, Illinois v. Fulton (7th)—whether an entity that is passively retaining possession of property in which a bankruptcy estate has an interest has an affirmative obligation under the Bankruptcy Code’s automatic stay provision to return that property to the debtor or trustee immediately upon the filing of the bankruptcy petition.

The court will announce additional cases that it intends to consider in the coming months. Combined with the hot-button issues already on the docket, and the potential personnel changes at the court, this promises to be another exciting term for court-watchers.