Supreme Podcast

Whether the Indian Child Welfare Act requires an adoptive couple to relinquish their parental rights to a child that is less than 1% Cherokee in favor of the biological father who had previously relinquished his parental rights.

Who constitutes a supervisor for the purposes of workplace harassment vicarious liability?

On this episode we discuss the following cases: GRANT OF REVIEW - @3:30 Mount Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, Inc. - Are disparate impact claims cognizable under the Fair Housing Act? OPINION - @9:35 American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant - The FAA does not permit courts to invalidate a contractual waiver of class arbitration on the ground that the plaintiff’s cost of individually arbitrating a federal statutory claim exceeds the potential recovery. (5-3) (SCALIA, J.) OPINION - @20:15 Agency for International Development (AID) v. Alliance for Open Society International, Inc. - The Policy Requirement violates the First Amendment by compelling as a condition of federal funding the affirmation of a belief that by its nature cannot be confined within the scope of the Government program. (6-2) (ROBERTS, C.J.)

May a defendant's silence during non-custodial police interrogation be used against him at a subsequent trial?

May Arizona additionally require evidence-of-citizenship when processing federal voter registration forms?

Are human genes patentable?

The Court this week issued three opinions and granted review to two new cases. We discuss the following cases: OPINION - @2:05 Maryland v. King - Taking and analyzing a DNA cheek swab of a suspect arrested for a serious offense is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. (5-4) (Kennedy, J.) GRANT OF CERTIORARI - @13:42 United States v. Apel - Whether 18 U.S.C. 1382, which prohibits a person from reentering a military installation after a commanding officer has ordered him not to reenter, may be enforced on a portion of a military installation that is subject to a public roadway easement.

On this week's show we discuss the following cases: GRANT OF CERTIORARI - @1:29 Town of Greece v. Galloway Whether opening Town Board meetings with a prayer from a private citizen violates the Establishment Clause. GRANT OF CERTIORARI - @6:24 Fernandez v. California Whether petitioner’s objection to police entry into his shared apartment proscribed a subsequent warrantless search based on his co-tenant’s consent given after petitioner had been removed from the premises for domestic violence and then lawfully arrested for a prior robbery, where there was no showing that the arrest was a pretext for the search. OPINION- @14:52 City of Arlington, Texas v. FCC Whether an agency’s interpretation of a statutory ambiguity that concerns the scope of its regulatory authority (that is, its jurisdiction) is entitled to deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.

On this week's show we discuss the following cases: OPINION - @1:11 Bowman v. Monsanto Co. Does patent exhaustion permit a farmer to reproduce patented seeds through planting and harvesting without the patent holder’s permission? OPINION - @36:29 Bullock v. BankChampaign, N.A. What does the term “defalcation” in the Bankruptcy Code mean and does it require a scienter requirement? GRANT OF CERTIORARI - @45:15 Burnside v. Walters Whether the Sixth Circuit erred in holding that the in forma pauperis statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2), prohibits indigent plaintiffs from amending their complaints.

We review four cases heard in oral arguments this week. Are human genes patentable? Should a federal law that favors American Indian tribes and parents be applied to take a adoptive child from a non-Indian family to return her to a father that washed his hands of her years before? Does the Congress have the power to require a former member of the military to register as a sex offender years after he served his sentence and after leaving the military? Is a person's silence in response to police questioning prior to arrest and the giving of Miranda rights admissible as evidence against him in a subsequent trial when the defendant does not testify? ORAL ARGUMENT - @3:38 Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. - Are human genes patentable? The Respondent discovered and isolated two gene mutations that it found to be correlated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer and sought to patent the gene mutations and the processes used to isolated and identify them. ORAL ARGUMENT - @24:05 Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl - Whether an unwed biological father and American Indian who has not complied with state law rules to attain legal status as a parent may sue under the Indian Child Welfare Act to block an adoption agreed to by the birth mother to a non-Indian parent. ORAL ARGUMENT - @40:19 United States v. Kebodeaux - Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that Congress lacks the Article I authority to provide for criminal penalties under 18 U.S.C. 2250(a)(2)(A), as applied to a person who was convicted of a sex offense under federal law and completed his criminal sentence before SORNA was enacted. ORAL ARGUMENT - @52:26 Salinas v. Texas - Whether or under what circumstances the Fifth Amendment’s Self-Incrimination Clause protects a defendant’s refusal to answer law enforcement questioning before he has been arrested or read his Miranda rights.

Listen to the full oral arguments in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case heard by the Court today. This week Supreme Podcast reports live from the Supreme Court.

Listen to the full oral arguments in the California same sex marriage case heard by the Court today. This week Supreme Podcast reports live from the Supreme Court.

On this week's show we discuss the following cases: GRANT OF REVIEW - 2:05 McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission Are aggregate limits on individual political contributions under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended, constitutional, as the Supreme Court previously held in Buckley v. Valeo? OPINION - 9:55 Florida v. Harris - Does an alert by a trained narcotics detection dog provide police with probable cause to search a vehicle? OPINION - 15:58 Bailey v. United States - May police detain individuals seen leaving a property about to be searched, as a lawful detention incident to a search, after the individuals have left the immediate vicinity of the property? GRANT OF CERTIORARI - 20:17 Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp. - What constitutes “changing clothes” within the meaning of section 203(o) of the Fair Labor Standards Act? OPINION - 25:18 Evans v. Michigan - Does the Double Jeopardy Clause attach when a trial judge erroneously grants a midtrial directed verdict based on a misunderstanding of law? OPINION - 29:34 Chafin v. Chafin - Does the taking of a child to a foreign country pursuant to a Convention return order render an appeal of that order moot? OPINION - 34:45 Chaidez v. United States - Does Padilla v. Kentucky, which held that criminal defendants receive ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment when their attorneys fail to advise them that pleading guilty to an offense will subject them to deportation, apply retroactively? OPINION - 36:09 Gunn v. Minton - Where the success of a malpractice claim against a lawyer relies upon a question of federal patent law, does 28 U.S.C. §1338(a), giving federal courts exclusive jurisdiction over patent claims, deprive state courts of subject matter jurisdiction over the malpractice claim? ORAL ARGUMENT - 38:54 Bowman v. Monsanto Co. - Do farmers infringe patents held in genetically modified seeds when they plant those seeds without authorization from the patent holder?

On this special episode, we discuss the constitutional implications and history of Affirmative Action. Click HERE for case documents.

On this week’s show we discuss the following three cases: Bond v. United States (12–158) - Does the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 229, reach ordinary poisoning cases, which prior to the Act were handled by state and local authorities? Metrish v. Lancaster (12-547) - Whether the Michigan Supreme Court’s recognition that a state statute abolished the long-maligned diminished-capacity defense was an “unexpected and indefensible” change in a common-law doctrine of criminal law under this Court’s retroactivity jurisprudence. Stanford Ponzi Scheme Cases - Whether the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 (“SLUSA”), 15 U.S.C. §§ 77p(b), 78bb(f)(1), prohibits private class actions based on state law only where the alleged purchase or sale of a covered security is “more than tangentially related” to the “heart, crux or gravamen” of the alleged fraud. The case documents are HERE (SupremeCourtReview.com)