SCOTUS Monday Orders and Opinion

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its Monday orders list this morning with the results from last week’s conference. The high court sent one law enforcement civil case back to the court of appeals and took up one criminal case on sentencing guidelines.

The court also summarily reversed a D.C. Circuit opinion in a Fourth Amendment case regarding the suspiciousness of people fleeing at the sight of police.

Smith v. Scott, No. 24-1099, is an excessive force suit against police that has been relisted on the court’s conference list an unusual 17 times. In the end, the court decided to send the case back for reconsideration in light of last month’s qualified immunity case, Zorn v. Linton.

The court took up for full briefing and argument the case of Beaird v. United States, No. 25-5343. The underlying issues involve gun control, specifically 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). The court passed on those issues, though, and it limited the briefing to an administrative law issue. Do federal courts still have to defer to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s commentary on its own Sentencing Guidelines? The court said yes, unanimously, 33 years ago in Stinson v. United States, 508 U. S. 36 (1993), but the court has gotten far less deferential to agencies in the interim.

Next term’s docket on actual criminal law and procedure issues is still looking very thin.

The court issued a summary reversal in a per curiam* opinion in District of Columbia v. R.W. This is a juvenile car theft case. The question was whether R.W.’s companions’ flight at the sign of police and R.W.’s own attempt to leave in the car without even closing the now-open back door amounted to reasonable suspicion in combination with other factors. Of course it did. For the suspiciousness of otherwise unprompted flight at the sight of police, the court cited Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U. S. 366, 373 (2003), a CJLF win. There is no recorded dissent.

* That is, an opinion issued by the court as a whole with no justice listed as the author.