Welcome to the annual preview of U.S. Supreme Court civil rights cases from the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF). Our SCOTUS 2024 Term Preview provides a snapshot of each case’s issues and potential impact on civil rights. We hope this easy-to-digest summary will underscore the importance of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts, to our lives and the future of the nation’s democracy. Since its inception, LDF has served on the front lines of civil rights litigation efforts, including arguing many groundbreaking cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
This case concerns the constitutionality of Louisiana’s new congressional map. In January 2024, Louisiana redrew its congressional map to add a second majority-Black district in response to Robinson v. Landry, successful voting rights litigation brought by LDF and others. See Robinson v. Ardoin, 86 F.4th 574 (5th Cir. 2023); Robinson v. Ardoin, 37 F.4th 208 (5th Cir. 2022); Robinson v. Ardoin, 605 F. Supp. 3d 759 (M.D. La. 2022). On January 31, 2024, twelve “non-African American voters” filed a lawsuit, Callais v. Landry, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana challenging this newly enacted congressional map as a racial gerrymander in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. LDF represents civil rights organizations, including the NAACP Louisiana State Conference and the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, as well as nine individual Black voters who intervened in the case to defend the congressional map.
The District Court’s three-judge panel held a consolidated preliminary injunction hearing and trial in April 2024. On April 30, 2024, it issued a 2-1 decision that Louisiana’s new congressional map violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and it enjoined the use of the map for future elections. LDF and the State of Louisiana filed applications with the U.S. Supreme Court for emergency stays of the District Court’s enjoinment of the map, pending the case’s appeal. The Supreme Court granted the emergency stay application on May 15, 2024, citing Purcell v. Gonzalez because it believed that the map was enjoined too close to the 2024 elections.
This means that Louisiana’s January 2024 map, which includes two majority-Black districts, will be used for this election cycle. As LDF said in its statement, the Supreme Court’s decision to grant the emergency stay “ensures that Black voters’ voices will not be silenced during this year’s critical elections.”
The next step is for the Supreme Court to decide whether it will note probable jurisdiction and agree to hear the merits of the case on appeal. LDF filed its brief on July 30, 2024, asking the Supreme Court to note probable jurisdiction and take up the case. Appellees filed their Motion to Dismiss or Affirm on September 3, 2024. LDF filed its brief opposing the motion to dismiss on September 16, 2024.
In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether states can ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. This will be the Court’s first time deciding which level of scrutiny it applies when analyzing anti-transgender laws.
In 2023, Tennessee enacted Senate Bill 1, which bans the provision of and access to gender-affirming health care, such as hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers, for transgender people under eighteen years of age. The law makes health care providers who violate these restrictions liable to civil lawsuits and risks the suspension of their licenses to practice medicine. Transgender youth, along with their parents and a doctor who treats transgender patients, filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of SB1 and seeking a preliminary injunction against Tennessee’s enforcement of the law, claiming that SB1 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status. The United States intervened in the case under 42 U.S.C. 2000h-2, which authorizes intervention in a private equal-protection suit “if the Attorney General certifies that the case is of general public importance.” The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee granted the Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, holding that the law should be subject to heightened scrutiny and likely violates the Equal Protection Clause. The District Court further held that the law is likely unconstitutional even if it is not subject to heightened scrutiny.
That same year, Kentucky’s legislature enacted a similar ban, over Governor Andy Beshear’s veto. Transgender youth and their parents also challenged this law as violating the Equal Protection Clause and sought a preliminary injunction, which the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky granted.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit heard both cases in a consolidated appeal, L.W. v. Skrmetti. A divided panel reversed the district courts’ rulings, reinstating Tennessee and Kentucky’s health care bans. The Sixth Circuit rejected the Plaintiffs’ Equal Protection claims, holding that the laws were not subject to heightened review because they regulated “sex-transition treatments for all minors, regardless of [their] sex.” L.W. v. Skrmetti, 83 F.4th 460, 480 (6th Cir. 2023). Further, the majority concluded that Plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on the merits of their Equal Protection claim under rational basis review. The United States and the Plaintiffs in both cases appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari and will hear the appeal.
LDF and the law firm Weil, Gotshal, and Manges submitted an amicus brief in U.S. v. Skrmetti supporting the United States and the private Plaintiffs (the transgender youth, their parents, and the medical provider). The brief argues that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming health care is grounded in discrimination and bias against transgender people, citing the fact that Tennessee enacted the ban amid a nationwide climate of growing hostility toward transgender people. Further, the brief contends that Tennessee’s law violates the Equal Protection Clause because it targets transgender people for unequal treatment and reflect animus against them. Courts have consistently held that the Equal Protection Clause prohibits laws rooted in bias and prejudice against disfavored groups, and in allowing these bans to stand, the Sixth Circuit failed to apply this precedent.
It is critical that the Supreme Court recognize that these laws were motivated by a desire to target transgender adolescents for disfavored treatment, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. These bans inflict immediate and real injuries on youth by depriving them of necessary medical care.
This case concerns whether plaintiffs who win a preliminary injunction, which is a temporary court order that blocks the civil defendant from continuing allegedly harmful actions while the case continues to be litigated, can be considered a “prevailing party” in order to win attorney’s fees in certain federal civil rights cases when there is no final judgment in the case. The Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976, codified as 42 U.S. § 1988(b) (“Section 1988”), enables courts to award the prevailing parties reasonable attorney’s fees in certain federal civil rights actions. Congress passed Section 1988 because “it found that the private market for legal services failed to provide many victims of civil rights violations with effective access to the judicial process,” and legislators believed that the availability of attorney’s fees would enable civil rights plaintiffs to vindicate their rights through legal representation. City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 576 (1986).
In this case, a group of people whose driver’s licenses had been automatically suspended for nonpayment of court fees sued the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles in 2018 to challenge Section 46.2-395 of the Virginia Code, which required courts to suspend the driver’s licenses of people with criminal convictions if they failed to pay court-ordered debts like fines, forfeitures, restitution, or other penalties. They argued that the law violated their rights under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment because it automatically suspended people’s driver’s licenses without any notice or opportunity to be heard. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia entered a preliminary injunction in favor of the Plaintiffs, which barred the Commissioner from enforcing the law against the Plaintiffs without notice and a determination of their ability to pay the court fines, reversed the suspensions of their licenses, and prevented Virginia from charging a fee to reinstate their licenses. As the Commissioner was seeking a stay of the injunction, the Virginia General Assembly adopted a budget amendment providing temporary relief to those who had their licenses suspended under the law. Later, the Virginia state legislature permanently repealed the law.
Following the law’s repeal, the parties stipulated that the action was moot. The District Court retained jurisdiction to consider the Plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees. It denied their fee petition, applying the precedent of Smyth ex rel. Smyth v. Rivero, 282 F.3d 268, 277 (4th Cir. 2002), which held that a preliminary injunction victory in a case that was later mooted could never make plaintiffs a “prevailing party.” The Plaintiffs appealed, and a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s decision, also applying Smyth. Then, the Fourth Circuit, rehearing the issue en banc, reversed and overturned Smyth, holding that it was an outlier as “[e]very other circuit to consider the issue has held that a preliminary injunction may confer prevailing party status in appropriate circumstances.” Stinnie v. Holcomb, 77 F.4th 200, 203 (4th Cir. 2023). The Fourth Circuit held that the Plaintiffs were prevailing parties and remanded the case to the District Court to determine the amount of their attorney’s fees. The Commissioner then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted certiorari to decide the issue of whether plaintiffs who win a preliminary injunction in a case with no final judgment can be “prevailing parties.”
LDF joined the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s amicus brief in favor of the Plaintiffs, arguing that a fair reading of Section 1988’s text and legislative history compels a construction that enables plaintiffs to be prevailing parties based on a preliminary injunction. The brief further argues that allowing prevailing party status based on preliminary relief, such as a preliminary injunction, minimizes the chance that parties will moot cases to avoid attorney’s fees. This case is significant because the availability of attorney’s fees encourages the continued enforcement of civil rights by ensuring that there will be counsel to take these important cases.
In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court will again determine the legality of Richard Glossip’s death sentence. Glossip is seeking to set aside his conviction and death sentence, arguing that his case is so infected with prosecutorial misconduct and errors that it is unconstitutional for Oklahoma to execute him. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond agrees with Glossip and joined his request to set aside his conviction, writing in support of Glossip’s petition for review that “justice would not be served by moving forward with a capital sentence that the State can no longer defend because of prosecutorial misconduct and cumulative error.”
Glossip received his capital conviction in 1997 for the murder of Barry Van Treese, the owner of the hotel where Glossip was the manager. The prosecution’s only evidence implicating Glossip in Van Treese’s death was testimony from the hotel’s handyman, Justin Sneed, who told the jury that Glossip paid him $10,000 to kill Van Treese. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Glossip’s execution so that it could consider a challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal-injection protocol. Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 863 (2015).
In 2022, for the first time, Glossip was provided access to a set of records, including a memo demonstrating that the prosecution had coached Sneed to change his testimony. Glossip also discovered undisclosed evidence that Sneed had testified falsely that he had not seen a psychiatrist, when in fact a psychiatrist had treated him for bipolar disorder and prescribed him lithium. Drummond appointed an independent counsel to review the case, who reported that he believed a new trial was necessary because “Glossip was deprived of a fair trial in which the State can have confidence in the process and result.”
In response to this new evidence, Glossip filed an application for post-conviction relief, asking the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) to set aside his conviction. Drummond joined Glossip’s request to the OCCA. Before the OCCA, Oklahoma confessed the error and admitted that its failure to disclose the truth about Sneed’s psychiatric condition—leaving the jury with Sneed’s uncorrected false testimony and then suppressing this information for a quarter-century—rendered “Glossip’s trial unfair and unreliable.” The OCCA nonetheless rejected Glossip’s request. Soon after, Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board rejected his request for clemency, which Drummond also supported. His execution was scheduled for May 18, 2023.
Glossip, again with Drummond’s support, then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put his execution on hold while it considered his appeals. The Court agreed to do so. Later, the Court granted certiorari on Glossip’s appeals, meaning that it agreed to decide whether Oklahoma violated his constitutional rights, under Brady v. Maryland and Napue v. Illinois, by suppressing the evidence about Sneed’s psychiatric care. The Court also directed the parties to address whether the OCCA’s ruling that Glossip was not entitled to relief under Oklahoma’s post-conviction law rested on an adequate and independent state law ground—which, if it did, would mean that the Court cannot review that decision. If the Supreme Court does not grant Glossip relief on his constitutional claims, Oklahoma could execute him—despite the fact that the state’s own attorney general disagrees with the execution.
In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) can regulate “ghost guns,” which is the term for firearms without serial numbers that are put together by parts that can be purchased as a kit or as separate pieces. Once assembled, the ghost guns are fully functional.
In the Gun Control Act of 1968, Congress created requirements for licensing, background checks, recordkeeping, and serialization for people engaged in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in firearms. The act also included regulations on the frames or receivers, which are the primary structural components of firearms. In 2022, the ATF issued a regulation clarifying that “ghost guns,” certain products that can readily be converted into an operational firearm or a functional frame or receiver, fall under the act’s definition of firearms. To challenge the ATF’s regulation, manufacturers and sellers of ghost gun kits and parts sued the United States and argued that the ATF’s application of its rule was inconsistent with the Gun Control Act. The U.S. District Court for Northern District of Texas agreed with the manufacturers and sellers, vacating the rule nationwide in June 2023. The United States asked the Supreme Court to intervene and block the District Court’s injunction. In a 5-4 decision, the Court agreed with the United States and allowed the rule to remain in place while the courts considered the merits of the case.
The case then went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which affirmed the District Court’s decision, writing that the rule is not in line with the Gun Control Act’s text and “exceeds the legislatively imposed limits on agency authority in the name of public policy.” VanDerStok v. Garland, 86 F.4th 179, 182 (5th Cir. 2023). The United States again requested that the Supreme Court allow the ATF to enforce the rule while the case continued, and the Court agreed. In April 2024, the Court agreed to hear the merits of the case.
The Court will now decide whether the Gun Control Act gives the ATF the authority to apply its rule to regulate ghost guns. Last term, the Court heard two cases involving guns: United States v. Rahimi, in which the Court held that a federal law banning people subject to domestic violence protection orders from having a gun did not violate the Second Amendment; and Garland v. Cargill, in which the Court struck down a federal regulation that defined a bump stock as a machine gun.
