FALL 2024 CASES AND DATES

The ACLU sued the State of Virginia challenging a law that automatically suspended the driver’s license of anyone who failed to pay court fines and fees. The district court granted the ACLU’s motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that the law likely violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As the lawsuit proceeded to trial, Virginia repealed the law. The court then dismissed the case as moot. In this case, the Supreme Court will decide whether a party who wins a preliminary injunction but whose case is made moot by the voluntary actions of the defendant is entitled to attorney’s fees as the “prevailing party” under the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Award Act of 1976.

This case is about an agency’s duty to consider downstream effects under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Uinta Basin sits at the corner of northeastern Utah and northwestern Colorado. The Basin has no rail service, and limited transportation options have prevented large-scale extraction of the area’s mineral resources. But in 2021, a federal agency approved a rail line connecting the Basin with the national rail network. The new railroad’s primary purpose is to carry waxy crude oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The approving agency did not consider the effect of increased refining on these communities, many of which are already disproportionately overburdened by pollution from refining. The agency also did not consider the effects of increased GHG emissions on climate change. Environmental organizations sued, arguing the agency is a legal cause of these effects and therefore needs to consider them as part of its environmental review under NEPA. The Supreme Court will now decide when an agency must consider foreseeable downstream environmental effects as part of NEPA review.

Gender dysphoria is distress that results from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex that person was assigned at birth. Tennessee Senate Bill 1 (“SB1”) bans certain medical procedures – namely, hormones and puberty blockers – to treat gender dysphoria in minors. In other words, under SB1, minors experiencing gender dysphoria may not take puberty blockers and hormones to treat their gender dysphoria; minors may otherwise take puberty blockers and hormones to treat other medical conditions. Plaintiffs, transgender minors, their parents, and a doctor who treats minors with gender dysphoria, allege that SB1 violates their substantive due process and equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The United States intervened in the case, and the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether SB1 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 2022, the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms promulgated a new rule to address the rise of so-called “ghost guns,” untraceable firearms assembled from kits and incomplete parts. Under the 1968 Gun Control Act, firearm frames and receivers are serialized when manufactured and tracked when sold. “Ghost guns” circumvent this oversight by allowing individuals to build functioning firearms from incomplete, unserialized parts that were never subject to ATF regulation or tracking. To close this loophole, the ATF’s new rule expanded the definition of “frame” or “receiver” from the Gun Control Act to include partially complete, disassembled, and nonfunctional parts and parts kits. Almost immediately, private individuals and parts manufacturers challenged the rule as exceeding the ATF’s statutory authority. The Federal District Court for the Northern District of Texas agreed, granted summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, and vacated the final rule. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision. Now the Supreme Court will weigh in on this issue, which will determine the effective scope of the Gun Control Act and the ATF’s ability to effectively regulate a rapidly changing industry.