Polar Tankers, Inc. v. City of Valdez, 557 U. S. 1 ___ (2009)
R069; No. 08-310; 6/15/09. Valdez’s personal property tax on the value of large ships that
travel to and from the city violates the Tonnage Clause.
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Nijhawan v. Holder, 557 U. S. 1 ___ (2009)
R070; No. 08-495; 6/15/09. Under immigration provisions stating that an alien “convicted of
an aggravated felony . . . is deportable,” 8 U. S. C. §1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), and defining an
“aggravated felony” to include “an offense that . . . involves fraud or deceit in which the
loss to the . . . victims exceeds $10,000,” §1101(a)(43)(M)(i), the $10,000 threshold refers
to the particular circumstances in which an offender committed the fraud or deceit crime on
a particular occasion rather than to an element of that crime.
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District Attorney's Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U. S. 1 ___ (2009)
R071; No. 08-6; 6/18/09. Assuming Osborne’s claims can be pursued in federal court under
42 U. S. C. §1983, he has no federal due process right to obtain postconviction access to the
evidence Alaska used to convict him in an earlier state trial in order to apply DNA testing.
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Yeager v. United States, 557 U. S. 1 ___ (2009)
R072; No. 08-67; 6/18/09. An apparent inconsistency between a jury’s verdict of acquittal
on some counts and its failure to return a verdict on other counts does not affect the
acquittals’ preclusive force under the Double Jeopardy Clause.
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Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Bailey, 557 U. S. 1 ___ (2009)
R073; No. 08-295; 6/18/09. The terms of the Bankruptcy Court’s 1986 orders in the bankruptcy
of Johns-Manville Corp., an asbestos-industry giant, which enjoined certain lawsuits against
Manville’s insurers, bar subsequent direct actions against those insurers; and the finality of
the 1986 orders generally stands in the way of challenging the injunction’s enforceability.
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Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 557 U. S. 1 ___ (2009)
R074; No. 08-441; 6/18/09. When bringing a disparate-treatment claim under the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, a plaintiff must prove, by a preponderance of the
evidence, that age was the “but-for” cause of the challenged adverse employment action; the
burden of persuasion does not shift to the employer to show that it would have taken the action
regardless of age, even when a plaintiff has produced some evidence that age was one motivating
factor in that decision.
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Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S. 1 ___ (2009)
R075; No. 08-322; 6/22/09. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 permits all political subdivisions,
including appellant utility district, to seek to bail out from the federal preclearance
requirements set forth in §5 of the Act; in light of its statutory holding, the Court need not
resolve whether §5 is constitutional.
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Forest Grove School Dist. v. T. A., 557 U. S. 1 ___ (2009)
R076; No. 08-305; 6/22/09. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act authorizes
reimbursement for private special-education services when a public school fails to provide a
“free appropriate public education,” 20 U. S. C. §1412(a)(1)(A), for a child with disabilities
and the child’s private-school placement is appropriate, regardless of whether the child
“previously received special education or related services under the [public school’s] authority,
” §1412(a)(10)(C)(ii).
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Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, 557 U. S. 1 ___ (2009)
R077; No. 07-984; 6/22/09. The Army Corps of Engineers, not the Environmental Protection
Agency, had authority under the Clean Water Act to issue a permit to petitioner Coeur Alaska,
Inc., to pump mine slurry into an Alaskan lake; the Corps acted in accordance with law in
issuing such a permit to Coeur Alaska.
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