Archive for the ‘Fourth Amendment’ Category

The Impact of Carpenter v. United States in the Lower Courts and the Emerging Carpenter Test – Lawfare

The Supreme Courts 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States was widely considered to be a sea change in Fourth Amendment law. Carpenter held that individuals can retain Fourth Amendment rights in information they disclose to a third party, at least in some situations. Specifically, cell phone users retained Fourth Amendment rights in their cell phone location data, even though that data was disclosed to their cell phone companies.

This is a potentially revolutionary holding in the internet era, when virtually every form of sensitive digital information is exposed to a third-party service provider at some point. Carpenter raises the possibility that the Fourth Amendment may effectively protect sensitive digital data. But Carpenter is a notoriously vague opinion, and scholars have reached conflicting conclusions about its meaning and impact. What does Carpenter mean, and what will it mean in the future?

In a recent article forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, I attempt to shed some light on Carpenter and its jurisprudential impact. I coded and analyzed all 857 federal and state judgments applying Carpenter through March 31, 2021. In doing so, I was able to identify the factors that drive modern Fourth Amendment search decisions and describe a nascent Carpenter test now emerging in the lower courts. I also examined overall compliance with Carpenter, finding that courts have largely embraced it, with almost no overt criticism and relatively little indirect noncompliance. And I encountered a shockingly high rate of cases resolved based on the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, which permits the government to use unconstitutionally obtained evidence to convict defendants if such evidence was collected in reliance on prior law. These findings can help resolve some of the mysteries of Carpenter, illuminating both the present state of the law and the paths along which it will likely continue to develop.

The Carpenter Factors

Prior to Carpenter, information that an individual disclosed to a third party was not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Carpenter imposed at least some limits on this third-party doctrine going forward. But it did not set out a clear test for when third-party data is covered by the Fourth Amendment.

It did, however, describe several factors that were relevant to its decision in the cell phone tracking context. The court discussed the revealing nature of cell phone data, which could provide an intimate window into an individuals life and activities. It addressed the large quantity of location data available to the government, encompassing numerous data points per day for potentially long periods of time. It referred to the large number of people who would be affected by unrestrained cell phone surveillance. It described how cell phone data was automatically disclosed to a cell service provider and how cell phones were largely inescapable in modern life, meaning that the disclosure of cellular location data to third parties was essentially involuntary. And it detailed the low cost of cell phone surveillance, which made detailed location surveillance easy and cheap compared to traditional investigative methods.

Any or all of these factors might play a pivotal role in future cases. But, in Carpenter, the court gave no concrete test to guide future decisions; it merely discussed several principles that appeared important in the context of cell phone location tracking. The decision left it for future courts to determine how these principles should apply to novel Fourth Amendment questions. And so, several years after Carpenter was decided, I conducted the examination of lower court decisions described above.

In the dataset, 217 decisions reached a determinative, yes-or-no ruling on a Fourth Amendment search question. A majority (129) of these decisions discussed at least one of the Carpenter factors in reaching a judgment. For example, in United States v. Trice, the Sixth Circuit applied the factor that considers the amount of data captured, and found that it disfavored the defendant. Police officers had installed a hidden camera near a suspects apartment door and recorded four short clips of footage over a six-hour period. The court noted that this technique captured far less data than the detailed, prolonged cell phone tracking at issue in Carpenter. Ultimately, the court ruled that the use of the camera was not a Fourth Amendment search.

Overall, courts cited a variety of factors in cases resolving Carpenter questions, but they rarely discussed all or most of the factors together. Instead, courts often discussed the factors that influenced their reasoning and ignored the other factors, even when those factors might have pointed in the same direction. In determining which factors were most prevalent, my analysis found that the revealing nature of the data, the amount of data collected, and the automatic nature of data disclosure emerged as the most influential factors. The courts addressed the cost of surveillance and the inescapable nature of a technology only occasionally, although those factors were generally influential when they were addressed. Surprisingly, the number of persons affected by a surveillance practice was rarely discussed and had virtually no effect on case outcomes. Indeed, several courts overtly rejected this as a factor.

The revealing nature and amount of the data collected by the government were the most commonly used factors in the cases. Revealing nature was mentioned in 93 decisions, and amount was mentioned in 116 decisions. These factors were also strongly, and statistically significantly, correlated with case outcomes.

Whether a persons data had been automatically disclosed to a third party, or instead had been disclosed through a voluntary act, was a less common but still influential factor in the cases, appearing in 61 decisions and correlating significantly with case outcomes. This factor generally led courts to deny Fourth Amendment protectionsit was found to disfavor defendants in 82.6 percent of cases in which it appeared.

Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, relying on concepts like automatic disclosure is often problematic. The disclosure of data to services like Uber, Google Maps, dating apps, smart home devices, websites and countless other providers is in theory voluntary and avoidable, but such disclosures are in practice an important part of peoples lives. Moreover, optional technologies such as dating apps, smart home devices and DNA analysis services often capture especially intimate personal information. And voluntariness approaches can create substantial inequalities in Fourth Amendment law. Technologies that are avoidable for most people are often unavoidable for others, including the disabled, the poor and other disadvantaged populations. For all of these reasons, courts should be cautious in definitively adopting automatic disclosure of data as a factor in a mandatory Carpenter test.

By contrast, the cost of surveillance is a potentially useful factor that courts should consider adopting in more cases. Conceptually, cost dovetails with amount. When the government is able to capture large amounts of data at a low cost, the potential for large-scale surveillance raises serious concerns about individual liberty and government power. By assessing the general cost of a surveillance practice, courts may be able to address concerns about large-scale surveillance programs via a relatively simple and administrable analysis.

Lower Court Compliance With Carpenter

Across more than 800 cases, courts have largely embraced Carpenter and its analysis. They have engaged in almost no overt criticism of the decision and its unique approach. And they have demonstrated relatively little indirect noncompliance. The law is still developing, but Carpenter appears to be workable in the lower courts.

Since June 2018, very few cases addressing the third-party doctrine have failed to cite Carpenter, suggesting that recognition of the case is widespread. There is circumstantial evidence of some courts engaging in indirect noncompliance with Carpenter. Indirect noncompliance refers to courts intentionally misinterpreting controlling precedent in order to reach a preferred outcome. In the dataset of 217 determinative search decisions, 29 decisions (13.4 percent) applied a strong version of the third-party doctrine that was arguably in tension with the Carpenter opinion, which imposed a meaningful limit on that doctrine. These opinions might represent a small pocket of resistance toward Carpenter, albeit a subtle, indirect resistance.

But judicial inertia toward a prior status quo is a common phenomenon, following a major legal change, and its occurrence here should not be too surprising. And, as theories of indirect noncompliance would predict, indirect noncompliance with Carpenter appears to be decreasing over time. The proportion of determinative cases that invoke a strong third-party doctrine has fallen in recent years, as judges become more familiar with Carpenter. In any event, the vast majority of cases show no explicit or even implicit resistance toward Carpenters reformation of the third-party doctrine.

The Enormous Impact of the Good Faith Exception

One of the most surprising findings of my analysis was the remarkable impact of the good faith exception on post-Carpenter case outcomes. The good faith exception provides that evidence obtained in good faith reliance on a statute, warrant or other authority will not be excluded, even if the authority was incorrect and the search for evidence was unconstitutional. The idea is that police officers relying on existing legal authority are acting in good faith and therefore cannot be deterred effectively by the exclusion of evidence. There were 399 decisions in the dataset that applied Carpenter substantively in a Fourth Amendment search case, and 144 of these were resolved based on the good faith exception without addressing the search issue, a rate of 36.1 percent. The vast majority of these good faith cases involved government officials obtaining historical cell phone location data without a warrant, the practice declared unconstitutional in Carpenter. In other words, a surprisingly large percentage of post-Carpenter cases involve unconstitutional government searches for which the persons affected have no meaningful remedy.

To be sure, the proportion of cases resolved via the good faith exception will decrease over time, as fewer cases are tried involving pre-Carpenter searches of cell phone data. But roughly 30 percent of cases were still being resolved on good faith grounds in 2020 and 2021, years after Carpenter was decided. Ultimately, it is likely that hundreds of criminal defendants will be convicted on the basis of searches that Carpenter deemed unconstitutional.

The remarkably high proportion of cases resolved via the good faith exception following a major Supreme Court decision should spur a reexamination of the exception. Current law may incentivize the police to aggressively apply new surveillance practices in order to secure convictions, even when those practices are likely unconstitutional. These incentives are examined in more detail in my article. They often involve police reliance on an old, general-purpose statute that is used to justify new and invasive forms of surveillance. Lower courts have applied the good faith exception broadly to justify novel surveillance practices, even when those practices have never been addressed by an existing statute or case. My studys findings should raise alarms about the potential for the good faith exception to incentivize widespread unconstitutional surveillance on the basis of flimsy reliance claims.

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My articles detailed examination of post-Carpenter Fourth Amendment law yields other insights as well. It breaks down the cases by jurisdiction and examines changes in outcomes over time, while addressing the potential impact of selection effects. It examines differences in federal and state decisions, drawing lessons for federalism theory and debates regarding the capacity of state courts to address federal constitutional questions. It also analyzes the effects of political affiliation and exposure to judicial elections on case outcomes. And it suggests alternative approaches that can help to clarify and improve Fourth Amendment jurisprudence going forward. Indeed, the study opens the door to a variety of new proposals about the future course of Fourth Amendment law, grounded in a deeper knowledge of courts current practices.

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The Impact of Carpenter v. United States in the Lower Courts and the Emerging Carpenter Test - Lawfare

Too Many Eyes on the Road – The Regulatory Review

Existing federal privacy laws may not cover data collected from autonomous vehicles.

Equipped with an arsenal of cameras and sensors, autonomous vehicles record the world around them everywhere they go. They keep records of their own operational data, such as GPS location, speed, steering maneuvers, and braking actions. They watch the occupants of the vehicle, tracking which seats are filled, and sometimes they even record video images of the person in the drivers seat.

All of this recording creates more than five terabytes of data per hour of autonomous driving time. It also raises concerns about who has access to this data. Federal agencies and privacy advocates agree that it is important for companies developing autonomous vehicles to ensure that sensitive information is secure and to communicate clearly about which private parties have access to this information.

Existing federal legislation, however, is not likely to apply to data stored by autonomous vehicles. One statute that could apply is the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which describes rules for law enforcement to follow when obtaining contents of wired communications. The ECPA requires a warrant for the interception of communication in transit over the internet, or for unopened messages stored on personal computers. The ECPA only applies, however, to information obtained from electronic communications services or remote computing services. As defined by the ECPA, those terms would not cover autonomous vehicles.

A separate law called the Federal Communications Act (FCA) faces a similar issue. Title II of the FCA subjects all common carriers of telecommunications services to regulation by the Federal Communications Commission and requires common carriers to protect sensitive information for their customers. In 2015, internet service providers were considered common carriers under the Act, so the FCA might have applied to autonomous vehicles that offered wi-fi connections. Under current Federal Communications Commission policy, however, internet service providers do not qualify as common carriers, so Title II of the FCA does not apply.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution also governs privacy protection when it comes to law enforcements use of data stored on autonomous vehicles or held by automobile manufacturers. The Fourth Amendment protects civilians against excessive intrusions into their privacy by prohibiting the government from performing unreasonable searches and seizures of personal property. Although no court has yet heard a case involving autonomous vehicle data privacy, the U.S. Supreme Court has defined Fourth Amendment privacy rights for several types of personal data that autonomous vehicles will likely carry.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a series of cases that law enforcement must obtain a warrant before obtaining Global Positioning System (GPS) or cell tower triangulation information that enables accurate location monitoring. These rulings may indicate that any autonomous vehicle data that would enable law enforcement agencies to determine the accurate location of a person would also require a warrant.

The Supreme Court of Georgia has held that a warrant is required before speed history information logged in a vehicles event data recorder (EDR) can be examined by police after a car crash. This ruling may indicate that the kind of information an autonomous vehicle records as it plans its movements would also require a warrant before it could be examined by law enforcement officials.

The most significant new type of data generated by an autonomous vehicle is the record of the environment that the vehicle sees using its 360-degree visible light camera footage, forward-facing LiDAR, and infrared sensors. This situation is analogous to dash cams and CCTV security cameras attached to homes and businesses.

Although warrants or subpoenas are required to force private citizens to turn over camera recordings to law enforcement, many private security companies willingly share information with law enforcement. Plus, private companies that manage surveillance cameras have established partnerships with police departments to help them find cameras and facilitate waiver of Fourth Amendment rights from consumers who own the cameras. Given this trend, it seems likely that a company that operates a fleet of autonomous vehicles would also partner with law enforcement.

Strict privacy laws in states where many autonomous vehicle development companies are located may help to raise the standard for the whole industry. For instance, more than 50 companies are developing and testing autonomous vehicles in California, which has a state privacy law. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) requires companies to notify consumers about sensitive personal information collection and use, data monetization, and sale to third parties.

The CCPA also requires companies to allow consumers to delete and opt out of the sale of sensitive personal information. GPS data and personal identification information that is recorded by an autonomous vehicle is protected under the CCPA, but data logged by a vehicle that are not sensitive and personal may still not be covered by the act.

Although the Fourth Amendment and California law may provide a patchwork of protection for some types of autonomous vehicle data, there are no federal laws or regulations to impose basic protections of general data security and privacy. Because autonomous vehicles are products sold to consumers, the Federal Trade Commission could bring enforcement actions against automakers for deceptive practices, but this strategy would require waiting for deceptive practices to occur.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration includes data security and privacy as part of its goals for eventual autonomous vehicle regulation, but the agency has not yet proposed a rule materializing that goal. Such regulation could require autonomous vehicle manufacturers to incorporate industry guidance standards for privacy and data security, anonymize stored or aggregated data, or incorporate notice and consent for the use or sale of data.

State legislatures could pass laws that clarify ownership of autonomous vehicle data similar to proposed federal legislation known as the Driver Privacy Act. If Congress passed the Driver Privacy Act, information collected by EDRs would belong to the owner or renter of a vehicle. If state and federal governments were to clarify privacy requirements for autonomous vehicles, consumers would be better protected, and autonomous vehicle developers would face less regulatory uncertainty as they create new products.

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Too Many Eyes on the Road - The Regulatory Review

Cops Arrested Her for Exercising Her First Amendment Rights. They Got Qualified Immunitybut the Appeals Court Wasn’t Having It. – Reason

Whether you can exercise your First Amendment rights freely depends, in some cases, on where you live and what judges happen to hear your plea, should you try to seek accountability for government reprisal against your constitutional liberties.

One such case is that of Priscilla Villarreal, a journalist in Laredo, Texas, who in 2017 was arrested after publishing two stories that ruffled feathers in the community: one surrounding a U.S. Border Patrol agent who committed suicide, the other which confirmed the identity of a family who had died in a fatal car crash.

Villarreal was no stranger to breaking stories with sensitive details on her Facebook page, which currently boasts over 190,000 followers. Nor was she cozy with local law enforcement, having cultivated a reputation as a citizen journalist whofocuses on police misconduct and the justice system in videos she posts online infused with colorful commentary.She once live-streamed a video of an officer choking someone during a traffic stop, for example, and she drew the ire of a district attorney after publicly rebuking him for dropping an arrest warrant for someone accused of animal abuse.

But Villarreal found herself in a jail cell after breaking those two relatively benign stories concerning deaths in the community, charged with two third-degree felony counts of "misuse of official information" under Texas Penal Code 39.06(c). That she asked for and obtained the information in typical journalistic fashionfrom the Laredo Police Department (LPD) itselfdidn't matter to the cops, who zeroed in on Villarreal as the first person they would ever seek to prosecute under that Texas statute.

The charges were eventually dismissed as baseless and the law ruled unconstitutionally vague. But those officers were given qualified immunity for violating her First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and 14th Amendment rights when they arrested and detained her, thus preventing her from holding them accountable in civil court. The legal doctrine of qualified immunity protects public officials from facing civil suits if the precise way they went about violating your rights was not "clearly established" by the courts at the time.

Yet in a testament to the subjectivity of the decisions surrounding what should be objective liberties, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit Monday rejected the lower court's reasoning, removing qualified immunity from the cops on the bulk of Villarreal's claims and permitting her to state her case before a jury.

"This is not just an obvious constitutional infringementit's hard to imagine a more textbook violation of the First Amendment," wrote Judge James C. Ho. "If the freedom of speech secured by the First Amendment includes the right to curse at a public official, then it surely includes the right to politely ask that official a few questions as well." Villarreal asked those questions of LPD Officer Barbara Goodman, who of her own free will provided the journalist with the information she requested.

The 5th Circuit likewise sided with Villarreal on her wrongful arrest claim, as well as her allegation that the cops violated the Equal Protection Clause to selectively enforce the law against her.

Much about the decision is noteworthy. Ho, for one, is by no means known for his opposition to qualified immunity; the judge previously said that police officers must retain the protections in order "to stop mass shootings." So it's significant that Ho emphasized that the 5th Circuit need not find a nearly indistinguishable precedent in order to show that the constitutional right at issue was "clearly established"which is often the defining element of a qualified immunity case, and the reason why the doctrine has greenlit so much egregious government misconduct, like stealing, assault, and property damage.

To support his position, Ho cited the Supreme Court's 2020 decision in Taylor v. Riojas, which dealt with a group of prison guards who originally received qualified immunity after forcing a naked inmate into two deplorable cells swarming with human feces and raw sewage. The Supreme Court overturned that grant of qualified immunity and rejected the notion that the victim could not sue simply because he couldn't pinpoint a ruling that matched his experience almost identically.

That's not necessary here either, said Ho: The constitutional violation is just that absurdly apparent.

"Crucially, the decision also says that officers can't hide behind obviously unconstitutional statutes," says Jaba Tsitsuashvili, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that filed an amicus brief in support of Villarreal. "In other words'we were just enforcing the law' is not a categorical defense against a civil lawsuit for violating" a constitutional right.

Perhaps ironically, the 5th Circuit's decision Monday coincided with the Supreme Court declining to hear Frasier v. Evans, a case in which a group of Denver police officers received qualified immunity after conducting a warrantless search of a man's tablet in an attempt to delete a video he took of the officers beating a suspect during an arrest for an alleged drug deal.

Put more bluntly, the way you exercise your First Amendment rights may or may not be protected based solely on where you live and which federal circuit court you are subject to. The 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th Circuits have all confirmed what might be obvious to most: that the government cannot exact revenge on you for filming police on duty, a lever used to hold them to account. In some places, however, they can indeed retaliate and evade accountability for that, toojust as Villarreal almost missed her opportunity to do so, had the 5th Circuit not overturned the lower court's decision.

"It creates this territorially arbitrary vindication of rights, where if you're in one state you may be able to vindicate a constitutional right," says Tsitsuashvili, "but if you happen to be in a neighboring state that sits in a different judicial circuit, you won't have any recourse for essentially the exact same behavior."

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Cops Arrested Her for Exercising Her First Amendment Rights. They Got Qualified Immunitybut the Appeals Court Wasn't Having It. - Reason

Ex-Minneapolis cop convicted of stealing drugs during searches – Bring Me The News

A former Minneapolis police officer has been convicted of stealing drugs he seized during searchesand traffic stops.

Ty Jindra, 29, was found guilty in federal court of three counts of acquiring a controlled substance by deception and two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Tuesday.

Ty Jindra failed to uphold his oath as a peace officer, he failed the community he was sworn to serve, and he failed his fellow officers, Acting United States Attorney W. Anders Folk said in a statement.

From September 2017-October 2019, while he was an officer with Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), Jindra obtained methamphetamine, oxycodone, fentanyl, tramadol and other drugs by conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures, and then didn't report, log or put the drugs into evidence, the release said.

Jindra, on some occasions, would search a person, vehicle or home so he could secretively recover drugs without his partner seeing him, the release said. And at times, he conducted searches that were beyond what was warranted in an attempt to recover drugs.

According to the Star Tribune, in one instance he stole Tramadol, a synthetic opioid, during a traffic stop for his own use and did not mention he discovered the drugs when he filed his report. In another instance, he separated some oxycodone pills for himself during a traffic stop, hiding the pills in a latex glove. He then submitted a false report claiming all the pills were in evidence.

He was also convicted of illegally searching vehicles during traffic stops in violation of the Fourth Amendment that prohibits unreasonable searches.

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The U.S. Attorney's Office says Jindra faces a maximum sentence of up to four years in prison for each of the three counts of acquiring a controlled substance and a maximum of one year in prison for each of the two civil rights counts.

A sentencing date hasn't yet been scheduled.

Jindra was hired by the Minneapolis Police Department in 2013 and was fired in July 2020 after he violated department policies related to searches and seizures, charges said.

He was charged with an 11-count indictment in November 2020. His trial lasted nine days, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.He was found not guilty on six other counts he faced.

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Ex-Minneapolis cop convicted of stealing drugs during searches - Bring Me The News

Defendants’ Native American status and more abortion petitions – SCOTUSblog

Petitions of the week ByAndrew Hamm on Oct 30, 2021 at 3:07 pm

This week we highlight cert petitions that ask the Supreme Court to consider, among other things, whether federal prosecutors or defendants have the burden of proving their status as a Native American or not for purposes of criminal jurisdiction, and three conditional cross-petitions over Texas abortion ban.

Federal law generally provides that tribal courts, not federal or state courts, have jurisdiction to prosecute minor crimes committed by one Indian against the person or property of another Indian on tribal land. In Haggerty v. United States, federal authorities charged Justin Haggerty with committing malicious destruction of tribal property on the Tigua Indian Reservation in Texas. In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, Haggerty maintained that the prosecution had failed in its burden of proof because it never introduced any evidence that he was not Native American. The 5th Circuit rejected Haggertys contention, ruling that the burden was Haggertys to have raised a defense that he is Native American. Arguing that the circuits are split on this question, Haggerty asks the justices for review.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases arising out of Texas ban on nearly all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, Whole Womans Health v. Jackson and United States v. Texas. The cases address the laws private-enforcement structure, which deputizes private individuals to bring lawsuits to enforce the ban, and whether the federal government has the right to sue in federal court to block the laws enforcement. As Amy Howe reported for SCOTUSblog, the justices orders on oral arguments suggest that they will not use these cases to directly weigh in on whether the law violates the constitutional right to abortion. Nonetheless, three conditional cross-petitions in Whole Womans Health ask the justices to address directly the prevailing abortion precedents, Roe v. Wade,Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and 2016s Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt. The cross-petitions are Dickson v. Whole Womans Health, Carlton v. Whole Womans Health, and Clarkston v. Whole Womans Health.

These and otherpetitions of the weekare below:

Shoop v. Twyford21-511Issues: (1) Whether federal courts may use the All Writs Act to order the transportation of state prisoners for reasons not enumerated in28 U.S.C. 2241(c); and (2) whether, before a court grants an order allowing a habeas petitioner to develop new evidence, it must determine whether the evidence could aid the petitioner in proving his entitlement to habeas relief, and whether the evidence may permissibly be considered by a habeas court.

Haggerty v. United States21-516Issues: (1) Whether the interracial nature of a minor offense in Indian Country is an element of18 U.S.C. 1152, rather than an affirmative defense, and thus must be both pled and proved by the prosecution; and (2) whether the government must plead and prove the interracial nature of a minor offense in Indian Country to establish federal subject matter jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. 1152.

Simko v. United States Steel Corporation21-522Issue: Whether, or under what circumstances, a claim that an employer unlawfully retaliated against an employee for filing a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under the remedial structure of Title VII may be addressed in an ensuing civil action, if the employee did not file a second formal administrative charge specifically alleging the retaliation.

Martin v. Castro21-533Issues: (1) Whether, when a law enforcement officer reasonably deploys a police K9 to restrain a fleeing suspect known to have a history of violent crime and believed to be in possession of a deadly weapon and under the influence of an illegal stimulant, the Fourth Amendment is violated when the K9s handler commands the K9 to release the suspect within seconds after the suspect is handcuffed and ceases resisting arrest; (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit erred when it failed to consider the totality of the circumstances in assessing the reasonableness of force used to restrain a suspect with a known history of violent crime who is actively resisting arrest and is believed to be in possession of a deadly weapon and under the influence of an illegal stimulant; and (3) whether the 9th Circuit violatedCity and County of San Francisco v. Sheehanand other binding precedent when it denied a police officer qualified immunity by defining clearly established law at too high a level of generality.

Reagle v. Lewis21-538Issue: Whether, after Roderick Lewiss counsel failed at sentencing to say anything more than that Lewis would speak on his own behalf, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit misapplied28 U.S.C. 2254in holding that the failure to applyUnited States v. Cronic in which the Supreme Court suggested that, thoughStrickland v. Washingtonrequires an ineffective-assistance claimant to prove both deficient performance and prejudice, some circumstances. . . are so likely to prejudice the accused that the cost of litigating their effect in a particular case is unjustified violated clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Dickson v. Whole Womans Health21-582Issues: (1) Whether the Supreme Court should overruleRoe v. WadeandPlanned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey; and (2) whether the Supreme Court should overruleWhole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt, which refused to enforce an explicit severability requirement in a state abortion statute.

Carlton v. Whole Womans Health21-583Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should overruleRoe v. WadeandPlanned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey.

Clarkston v. Whole Womans Health21-587Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should overruleRoe v. WadeandPlanned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey.

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Defendants' Native American status and more abortion petitions - SCOTUSblog