CIVIL PROCEDURE, CIVIL RIGHTS, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, CRIMINAL LAW & PROCEDURE, EVIDENCE
Pearson v. Callahan, No. 07-751
In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action against state law enforcement officers who conducted a warrantless search of plaintiff’s house incident to his arrest for the sale of methamphetamine to an undercover informant (whom plaintiff had voluntarily admitted to the premises), a court of appeals ruling reversing a ruling that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity is reversed where: 1) the procedure the Supreme Court mandated in Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001), should not be regarded as an inflexible requirement; and 2) petitioners were entitled to qualified immunity on the ground that it was not clearly established at the time of the search that their conduct was unconstitutional.
CIVIL PROCEDURE, CIVIL RIGHTS, EDUCATION LAW, GOVERNMENT LAW
Fitzgerald v. Barnstable Sch.Comm’n, No. 07–1125
Title IX does not preclude an action under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 alleging unconstitutional gender discrimination in schools.
CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, GOVERNMENT LAW, LABOR & EMPLOYMENT LAW
Locke v. Karass, No. 07-610
In a case involving circumstances where a local union charges nonmembers a service fee that (among other things) reflects an affiliation fee that the local union pays to its national union organization, a portion of which the national union uses to pay for litigation expenses incurred in large part on behalf of other local units, the Supreme Court rules that the Constitution permits including such an element in the local’s charge to nonmembers as long as: 1) the subject matter of the extra-local litigation is of a kind that would be chargeable if the litigation were local; and 2) the litigation charge is reciprocal in nature.
CRIMINAL LAW & PROCEDURE, EVIDENCE, HABEAS CORPUS
Waddington v. Sarausad, No. 07-772
In a case arising from a fatal drive-by shooting of a group of students standing in front of a Seattle high school, grant of a petition for habeas relief from defendant’s conviction for being an accomplice to second-degree murder, attempted murder, and assault is reversed where: 1) Washington courts reasonably concluded that the trial court’s instruction to the jury regarding accomplice liability was not ambiguous; and 2) even were it ambiguous, the circuit court still erred in finding the instruction so ambiguous as to cause a federal constitutional violation.
CRIMINAL LAW & PROCEDURE, PER CURIAM, SENTENCING
Spears v. US, No. 08–5721
In proceedings arising from the government’s appeal of a sentence for conspiracy to distribute cocaine base and powder cocaine, a circuit court’s ruling reversing a mandatory minimum sentence is reversed where district courts are entitled to reject and vary categorically from the crack-cocaine Sentencing Guidelines based on a policy disagreement with those Guidelines.
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