Supreme Court of the United States

QUESTION PRESENTED: 

Does it violate the Religion Clauses or Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution to invalidate a generally available and religiously neutral student- aid program simply because the program affords students the choice of attending religious schools?

QUESTION PRESENTED: 

Whether the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the "New York Convention") permits a non-signatory to an arbitration agreement to compel arbitration based on the doctrine of equitable estoppel.

QUESTION PRESENTED: 

Whether the determination of a "serious drug offense" under the Armed Career Criminal Act requires the same categorical approach used in the determination of a "violent felony'' under the Act?

QUESTION PRESENTED:

Federal employees' rights are determined under statutes which require that "all personnel actions effecting employees or applicants for employment ... in executive agencies as defined in Title 5 ... shall be made free from any discrimination ... " See 42 U.S.C.§ 2000e-16(a) (race, color, religion, sex, or national origin) (emphasis added); 29 U.S.C. § 633a(a) (age). This Court, in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, 570 U.S. 338 (2013) and Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 557 U.S. 167 (2009), interpreted the private-sector statutory language "because" in 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3(a), and ''because of' in 29 U.S.C. § 623(a)(1), respectively, as requiring a private-sector plaintiff to prove but-for causation.

The question presented is:

Whether "shall be made free from any discrimination" permits federal-sector personnel actions that are not made free from any discrimination or retaliation, as long as discrimination or retaliation is not the but-for cause of the personnel action, or rather prohibits personnel actions where discrimination and retaliation is a factor. 

A subsidiary question is whether Title VII bans retaliation in federal employment.

QUESTION PRESENTED: 

Whether, under section 35 of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a), willful infringement is a prerequisite for an award of an infringer's profits for a violation of section 43(a), id. § 1125(a).

QUESTION PRESENTED:

Does a public official "defraud" the government of its property by advancing a "public policy reason" for an official decision that is not her subjective "real reason" for making the decision?

QUESTION PRESENTED:

This case presents two independent, substantial legal issues that have divided the courts of appeals regarding when an ERISA plan participant may invoke the remedies Congress explicitly authorized to police fiduciary misconduct and protect federally guaranteed benefits. 

Petitioners are participants in a pension plan managed by respondents. After respondents' fiduciary breaches caused $750 million in losses to the plan, petitioners sued, seeking injunctive relief under 29 U.S.C. 1132(a)(3) and restoration of the plan's losses under 29 U.S.C. 1132(a)(2). The Eighth Circuit affirmed dismissal of both claims because petitioners had not yet suffered any individual financial harm-the plan did not (yet) face a risk of default. 

In so holding, the Eighth Circuit departed from holdings of other circuits under both Sections 1132(a)(3) and 1132(a)(2), and rejected the long-held position of the Department of Labor, which has repeatedly urged the courts of appeals to let these claims proceed.

The questions presented are:

QUESTION PRESENTED:

In serial litigation between two parties, time­ tested principles of claim preclusion and issue preclusion govern when parties may ­and may not­ litigate issues that were, or could have been, litigated in a prior case. This Court has held that, in a subsequent case between the same parties involving different claims from those litigated in the earlier case, the defendant is free to raise defenses that were not litigated in the earlier case, even though they could have been. The Federal Circuit, Eleventh Circuit, and Ninth Circuit have all held the same in recent years. Their reasoning is straightforward: Claim preclusion does not bar such defenses, because the claims in the second case arise from different transactions and occurrences from the first case, and issue preclusion does not bar them either, because they were never actually litigated. The Second Circuit, however, has now held the opposite. Under the Second Circuit's "defense preclusion" rule, defendants are barred from raising such defenses even if the plaintiff’s claims are distinct from those asserted in the prior case and the defenses were never actually litigated.

The question presented is: 

QUESTION PRESENTED: 

QUESTION PRESENTED

Michelle Monasky, a U.S. citizen married to Domenico Taglieri, an Italian citizen, claimed that Taglieri had repeatedly assaulted her before and during her pregnancy. Monasky returned to the United States with their two-month-old daughter, and Taglieri asked an Italian court to terminate Monasky’s parental rights.

The Italian court ruled in Taglieri’s favor ex parte (without an appearance by Monasky). Taglieri then asked a federal court to require that Monasky return the baby to Italy. The court granted Taglieri’s petition, finding that Italy was the baby’s habitual residence. Both the Sixth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Monasky’s motion for a stay pending appeal, so Monasky returned their daughter to Italy. A panel of the Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision, and then the Sixth Circuit agreed to a rehearing en banc.

The International Child Abduction Remedies Act, 22 U.S.C. § 9001 et seq. implements the Hague Convention in the United States, and the law defines wrongful removal as taking a child in violation of custodial rights “under the law of the State in which the child was habitually resident immediately before the removal.” To determine the child’s habitual residence, a court must look “to the place in which the child has become ‘acclimatized,’ or as a back-up inquiry, “shared parental intent.” Because the child, at two months of age, was too young to acclimate to a country, the relevant inquiry is the parents’ shared intent. The district court is in the best position to make such an inquiry, and, finding no clear error in the district court’s finding as to habitual residence, the Sixth Circuit (en banc) affirmed.

QUESTIONS: