Supreme Court Roundup 2012
Corrine Yu
Though the Supreme Court’s decisions in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and Arizona v. U.S. generated the most press and attention this term, the Court issued several decisions of importance to the civil and human rights community.
In Hill v. United States and Dorsey v. United States, the Court held that the mandatory minimum provisions of the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) applied to defendants who committed a crack cocaine crime before the Act went into effect but were sentenced after its effective date in 2010. Before the FSA, a person charged with possession of just five grams of crack cocaine—the weight of two sugar packets—received the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence as someone caught with 500 grams—about a pound—of powder cocaine. The FSA reduced the sentencing disparity from a ratio of 100-to-1 to 18-to-1 and eliminated mandatory minimum sentences for simple possession of crack cocaine. In its June 21 decision, the Court noted that applying the former law “to the post-August 3 sentencing of pre-August 3 offenders would create disparities of a kind that Congress enacted the Sentencing Reform Act and the Fair Sentencing Act to prevent.” Justice Breyer wrote the opinion of the Court, joined by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion was joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Thomas and Alito.
In Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, the Court considered whether the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibits a sentencing scheme that requires life in prison without the possibility of parole for juvenile homicide offenders. Over the past 25 years, the Court has repeatedly held that the punishment for youths under age 18 who commit crimes generally must be different, and less severe, than the punishment for adults who committed the same kind of crimes. In these combined cases, the Court in its June 25 decision stopped short of applying a blanket ban on life without parole for a juvenile who commits murder, instead barring such a sentence as mandatory in such cases. Though it left open the possibility that a life without parole sentence could be imposed, the Court stated that it expected such sentences to be uncommon. Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court, joined by Justices Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor. Chief Justice Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito.
In U.S. v. Jones, the Court considered, for the first time, the constitutionality of location-tracking technology, like Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. Antoine Jones had been convicted of drug trafficking based on evidence obtained through a GPS tracker the government had placed on a car registered to Jones’ wife. All nine justices agreed in the January 23 decision that Jones’ conviction should be reversed because the attachment of the GPS tracking device and then the use of that device to monitor the car’s whereabouts for 28 days is a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, but they differed on the rationale. Justice Scalia authored the Court’s opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kennedy, Thomas, and Sotomayor. Justice Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion. Justice Alito filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, but stating that he would have analyzed the case based on whether the long-term monitoring violated Jones’ reasonable expectations of privacy.
Though the Court’s docket is still being developed as we go to press, there are already several civil and human rights cases in the current term that are worth watching. In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, the Court will address whether corporations may be held liable for torts in violation of international law such as torture, extrajudicial executions or genocide under the Alien Tort Statute. At issue in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is whether the Court’s decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, including Grutter v. Bollinger, permit the University of Texas at Austin’s use of race in undergraduate admissions decisions. And the question before the Court in Vance v. Ball State University, is whether the “supervisor” liability rule established by Faragher v. City of Boca Raton and Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth applies to harassment by those whom the employer vests with authority to direct and oversee their victim’s daily work, or is limited to those harassers who have the power to “hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or discipline” their victim. And the Court is taking up a challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County, AL vs. Holder, a mere three years after it last heard a Section 5 case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, and declined to rule on its constitutionality; a case on The National Voter Registration Act (Arizona v. ITCA); as well as two marriage equality cases, U.S. v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry.
Corrine Yu is a senior counsel and managing policy director for The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund.
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