Supreme Court of the United States, 2020

The Court denied certiorari without addressing the merits of the First Amendment challenge to Wisconsin's mandatory state bar dues. Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, dissented, arguing that Janus's overruling of Abood undermined the foundation of Keller and warranted reconsideration of Keller.

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Kavanaugh, affirmed on Article III grounds the dismissal of defined-benefit pension participants’ ERISA fiduciary-mismanagement suit. Because the participants had received their promised benefits and the litigation would not change their future payments, they lacked a concrete…

Justice Thomas, writing for a unanimous Court, held that the New York Convention does not conflict with domestic equitable estoppel doctrines permitting nonsignatories to enforce arbitration agreements.

Justice Kagan's opinion for the Court held that a timely Rule 59(e) motion to alter or amend a federal habeas judgment is part of the initial habeas proceeding, not a second or successive application subject to AEDPA's gatekeeping requirements.

The Court denied the application for injunctive relief without providing a majority rationale or deciding the merits of the constitutional challenge. Chief Justice Roberts concurred, explaining that California's worship restrictions appeared consistent with the Free Exercise Clause because comparable secular…

Justice Gorsuch, writing for a unanimous participating Court, held that the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act clearly authorize punitive damages for preenactment conduct in qualifying actions brought under the federal cause of action in § 1605A(c).

The supplied text contains only Justice Thomas's dissent from the denial of certiorari, not the Court's order or a merits opinion; it supplies no binding holding. Thomas, with no other Justice identified as joining, would have granted review to resolve a circuit conflict over whether a prisoner who failed to exhaust…

Justice Sotomayor delivered the unanimous opinion holding that Lucky Brand was not precluded from asserting its settlement-agreement release defense in Marcel’s 2011 trademark action merely because Lucky Brand had not fully litigated that defense in the parties’ earlier action.

Justice Thomas concurs with the majority that the Ninth Circuit erred in finding 8 U.S.C. §1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) overbroad, and uses the opinion to critique the First Amendment overbreadth doctrine as lacking textual basis, violating facial‑challenge standards, and conflicting with traditional standing principles.

Justice Ginsburg, writing for a unanimous Court, held that the Ninth Circuit abused its discretion by radically departing from the principle of party presentation. Rather than deciding Sineneng-Smith’s statutory and as-applied constitutional arguments, the appellate panel recruited amici to develop a facial…

The Court held that Georgia’s official statutory annotations are not copyrightable because their statutory author, the Code Revision Commission, acts as an arm of the legislature and produces them in the discharge of legislative duties.

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, held that Georgia’s official statutory annotations are not copyrightable under the government edicts doctrine.

The Court held that the case is not moot despite the City’s amendment of its firearm transport rule, vacated the appellate judgment and remanded for further proceedings on the merits, including possible damages.

Justice Alito dissents, arguing that the Court should not infer a private right of action under §1342 of the Affordable Care Act and that the newly articulated “money‑mandating” test lacks a sound doctrinal foundation.

The Court held that annotations in Georgia's official annotated code are not eligible for copyright protection under the government edicts doctrine. The doctrine applies because the annotations were authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its official legislative duties, regardless of whether the…

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Kavanaugh, held that an offense triggering the criminal stop-time rule need not be an offense on which removal was based. A lawful permanent resident may be rendered inadmissible through conviction of a qualifying offense even without seeking admission or being subject to removal on…

The Court affirmed the Eleventh Circuit, holding that an offense listed in §1182(a)(2) can trigger the stop-time rule even if it was not, and could not have been, a ground for the noncitizen’s removal.

The Court held that willfulness is not an absolute prerequisite to recovering a defendant’s profits for trademark infringement under 15 U.S.C. §1125(a), although the defendant’s mental state remains a highly important consideration.

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch, held that willfulness is not an absolute prerequisite to an award of a defendant's profits for trademark infringement under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a).

The Court denied certiorari without addressing whether the Fair Credit Reporting Act's general civil enforcement provisions waive federal sovereign immunity. Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Kavanaugh, dissented from the denial, arguing that the entrenched circuit split and the question's substantial implications for…

The supplied text contains separate opinions but omits Justice Gorsuch's opinion of the Court and its judgment line; no holding, disposition, or precedent treatment is extracted from the separate writings.

The Court reversed Ramos’s conviction and held that the Sixth Amendment, applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, requires a unanimous jury verdict to convict a defendant of a serious offense.

Justice Ginsburg's opinion held that 35 U.S.C. § 314(d) bars appellate review of the PTO's application of § 315(b)'s one-year deadline for instituting inter partes review because that determination is closely tied to institution.

The Court denied certiorari without deciding whether the EEOC may continue investigating after issuing a right-to-sue notice and the charging party initiates litigation. Justice Thomas, dissenting without any recorded joinder, would have granted review to resolve a circuit split concerning that authority.

The Court, per curiam, granted a partial stay of the District Court’s preliminary injunction insofar as it required Wisconsin to count absentee ballots postmarked after April 7, 2020.

The Court denied certiorari without deciding the merits; Justice Kavanaugh did not participate. Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Thomas, issued a statement respecting the denial, explaining that the inability of the full Court to hear the case made it a poor vehicle for review.

Justice Alito's opinion holds that the ADEA's federal-sector provision prohibits age discrimination that taints the making of a personnel action, even when age does not determine the ultimate outcome. Age must be a but-for cause of differential treatment, but need not be a but-for cause of the personnel action itself.

The Court held that an officer who learns that a vehicle’s registered owner has a revoked driver’s license may reasonably infer that the owner is driving and initiate an investigative traffic stop, absent information negating that inference.

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Alito, held that the ADEA’s federal-sector provision prohibits age discrimination in making personnel decisions even when age is not a but-for cause of the ultimate employment outcome.

Justice Sotomayor dissents, arguing that the majority’s rule allowing vehicle stops solely because the registered owner’s license is revoked departs from established reasonable‑suspicion doctrine, improperly shifts the burden of proof to the defendant, and relies on impermissibly generalized statistical evidence.

Justice Thomas dissents, arguing that the majority’s adoption of an “any consideration” causation standard for the federal‑sector provision of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act is erroneous.

The Court affirmed the Fourth Circuit, holding that the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act did not validly abrogate state sovereign immunity. Florida Prepaid foreclosed reliance on Article I’s Intellectual Property Clause, and the Act failed Section 5’s congruence-and-proportionality requirement because its sweeping…

Justice Kagan’s majority opinion held that due process does not require Kansas to acquit a defendant whose mental illness prevented him from recognizing his criminal act as morally wrong.

Justice Breyer delivered the Court's opinion holding that “questions of law” reviewable under 8 U. S. C. § 1252(a)(2)(D) include the application of a legal standard to undisputed or established facts, including application of the due-diligence standard for equitable tolling.

In a unanimous per curiam opinion, the Court held that unpreserved factual arguments are not categorically excluded from plain-error review under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b). Neither the rule's text nor the Court's precedents support the Fifth Circuit's practice of refusing to review such arguments.

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch, held that a plaintiff suing under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 must initially plead and ultimately prove that race was a but-for cause of the loss of a legally protected right. A motivating-factor standard does not apply, even at the pleading stage.

The Court held that federal immigration law neither expressly nor impliedly preempts Kansas prosecutions for using another person's Social Security number on tax-withholding forms, even when the same number also appears on an I-9 employment-verification form.

The supplied text contains only Justice Gorsuch’s statement, not an opinion or disposition line of the Court, and therefore supplies no binding merits holding. Gorsuch agreed that the interlocutory petition did not warrant review because the preliminary ruling could be corrected before final judgment and other courts…