Legal Cases

The Supreme Court held that the Ninth Circuit's broad interpretation of the probate exception, which excluded federal jurisdiction over matters related to the validity of a decedent's estate planning instruments, was unwarranted and not supported by Congressional intent or prior Supreme Court decisions.

Both the expenditure limits and the contribution limits imposed by Vermont's campaign finance statute are unconstitutional under the First Amendment, as they violate established precedent and fail to meet the requirement of careful tailoring, imposing disproportionately severe burdens on First Amendment interests.

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to foreign-flag cruise ships operating in United States waters, provided there is a clear congressional intent to impose such requirements, particularly concerning the removal of physical barriers.

A state postconviction petition rejected by the state court as untimely is not considered "properly filed" under the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's tolling provision, and therefore does not toll the one-year statute of limitations for filing a federal habeas corpus petition.

A federal court has the discretion to dismiss a state prisoner's habeas corpus petition as untimely, even if the state has conceded its timeliness, when the state has made an evident miscalculation of the elapsed time under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's one-year limitation period.

A state Medicaid agency cannot impose a lien on a tort settlement that exceeds the amount of medical costs paid by Medicaid, as such a lien contravenes federal law and is therefore unenforceable.

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine is limited to cases where state-court losers seek to challenge state court judgments in federal court, and it does not extend to other situations that would override preclusion law or allow federal courts to dismiss cases in deference to state court actions.

Congress did not waive the United States' sovereign immunity for suits brought by third-party beneficiaries under the Reclamation Reform Act of 1982, and therefore, individuals who are not parties to a government contract cannot sue the United States for breach of that contract.

A criminal defendant's federal constitutional rights are violated if an evidence rule prevents the introduction of proof of third-party guilt when the prosecution has presented strong forensic evidence supporting a guilty verdict.

A suspicionless search of a parolee conducted under California law does not violate the Fourth Amendment, as the conditions of parole significantly diminish the parolee's reasonable expectation of privacy.

The "substantially advances" formula established in Agins v. City of Tiburon is not an appropriate test for determining whether government regulation effects a taking under the Fifth Amendment.

The Supreme Court held that the government's use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another for the purpose of economic development qualifies as a "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. This decision allows for a broader interpretation of public use to include economic benefits to the community.

The Supreme Court held that the Clean Water Act's jurisdiction over "waters of the United States" is limited to relatively permanent, standing, or continuously flowing bodies of water, as well as wetlands that have a continuous surface connection to such waters, thereby rejecting the broader interpretation that included intermittent and ephemeral water bodies.

The use of the term "boy" by an employer in reference to African-American employees can be considered evidence of discriminatory animus, and the standard for determining whether an employer's stated nondiscriminatory reasons for hiring decisions are pretextual should not require modifiers or qualifications to be probative of bias.

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not bar federal jurisdiction over cases brought by state-court losers challenging state-court judgments rendered before the federal proceedings commenced.

Operating a dam to produce hydroelectricity may result in a discharge into navigable waters, thus requiring state certification under §401 of the Clean Water Act to ensure compliance with water protection laws.

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act does not provide an exception for the attachment of property owned by a foreign state itself based on engagement in commercial activity; such an exception applies only to the property of an "agency or instrumentality" of a foreign state.

The generic advertising funded by the Beef Promotion and Research Act constitutes government speech and is therefore exempt from First Amendment scrutiny.

The use of handcuffs to detain an individual during the execution of a search warrant is consistent with the Fourth Amendment, provided that the detention is reasonable under the circumstances, and questioning about immigration status during such detention does not constitute a separate Fourth Amendment violation.

The Kansas capital sentencing statute, which mandates the imposition of the death penalty when aggravating circumstances are not outweighed by mitigating circumstances, does not violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.