Supreme Court Decision Syllabus (SCOTUS Podcast)

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Bartenwerfer v. Buckley (Bankruptcy) Apr 26, 2023

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In Bartenwerfer v. Buckley, the Supreme Court held that the discharge exceptions under Section 523(a)(2)(a) of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code apply to an individual debtor, regardless of said debtor's culpability in the fraud. Recorded by Jake Leahy.
Bartenwerfer v. Buckley

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Helix Energy v. Hewitt (Overtime pay) Apr 23, 2023

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In Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc., et al. v. Hewitt, the Supreme Court ruled that an employee paid a daily rate does not qualify for an exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime pay requirements, unless they satisfy the conditions set out in Section 541.604(b). Michael Hewitt, a former employee of Helix, sued his employer claiming overtime pay under FLSA, as he worked 84 hours a week while on the vessel, but Helix paid him a daily-rate basis with no overtime compensation. The Court concluded that Hewitt was not paid on a salary basis as defined in Section 602(a), and thus was not an executive exempt from FLSA's overtime pay guarantee.

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Cruz v. Arizona (Post conviction) Apr 23, 2023

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Cruz v. Arizona is a case heard by the US Supreme Court that questioned whether the Arizona Supreme Court's ruling was an adequate ground to preclude review of a federal question. The petitioner, John Montenegro Cruz, was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death, and argued that under Simmons v. South Carolina, he should have been allowed to inform the jury that a life sentence in Arizona would be without parole. Cruz sought to raise the Simmons issue again in a state post-conviction petition under Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g). The Arizona Supreme Court denied relief after concluding that Lynch was not "a significant change in the law". The US Supreme Court held that the Arizona Supreme Court's holding that Lynch was not a significant change in the law is an exceptional case where a state-court judgment rests on such a novel and unforeseeable interpretation of a state-court procedural rule that the decision is not adequate to foreclose review of the federal claim.

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Arellano v. McDonough (Equitable tolling of veteran benefits) Apr 23, 2023

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In Arellano v. McDonough, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Section 5110(b)(1) of the Veterans' Benefits Act is not subject to equitable tolling. The case involves the effective date of an award of disability compensation to a veteran of the United States military. Adolfo Arellano applied to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for disability compensation based on his psychiatric disorders approximately 30 years after his honorable discharge from the Navy. Arellano argued that his award's effective date should be governed by an exception in § 5110(b)(1), which makes the effective date the day following the date of the veteran's discharge or release if application is received within one year of such date. However, the Supreme Court held that equitably tolling the provision would depart from the terms that Congress "specifically provided."

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Reed v Goertz (Post conviction relief) Apr 23, 2023

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Rodney Reed was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in Texas. He filed a motion under Texas's post-conviction DNA testing law, requesting DNA testing on certain evidence, which he believed would help identify the true perpetrator. The state trial court denied Reed's motion, citing an inadequate chain of custody for the evidence he sought to test. Reed then sued in federal court, arguing that Texas's post-conviction DNA testing law violated procedural due process. The Fifth Circuit dismissed Reed's claim as time-barred, but the Supreme Court held that the statute of limitations for a procedural due process claim begins to run when the state litigation ends, in this case when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Reed's motion for rehearing. The Court ultimately reversed the Fifth Circuit's decision and remanded the case for further proceedings.

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Fed Election Coms’n v Ted Cruz (Free Speech/Campaign loan repayment) Aug 16, 2022

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Shinn v Martinez-Ramirez Aug 16, 2022

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Shinn v Martinez-Ramirez (Fed post conviction relief) Aug 16, 2022

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