(2)
EQUAL PROTECTION

Gratz et al. v. Bollinger et al. and Patterson et al.
Docket No. 02-0516

From: The Sixth Circuit

Can Universities Consider the Race of Their Student Applicants When Making Admission Decisions?

Cases at a Glance

The University of Michigan's Law School and undergraduate college give racial preference to applicants from certain favored minority groups. Michigan claims that this practice is consistent with the Court's 1978 ruling in University of California v. Bakke and says the educational benefits derived from a diverse student body serve a compelling governmental interest. Barbara Grutter and Jennifer Gratz, white applicants whose credentials would have warranted admission had they been of a favored race, claim that Michigan's practice is contrary to fundamental guarantees of equality.

• Previewed by Douglas W. Kmiec, Dean and St. Thomas More Professor of Law at The Catholic University of America School of Law in Washington, D.C.

Supreme Court Decisions: Click to read Grutter v. Bollinger decision; Gratz v. Bollinger decision

Case at a Glance

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to pay workers minimum wage and overtime and allows employees to sue employers to collect unpaid wages due in either federal or state court. The federal removal statute permits a defendant to remove a lawsuit filed in state court to federal court, where the federal court would have original jurisdiction, unless Congress expressly provided against such removal. The lower federal courts are divided over whether the FLSA contains such an express provision against removal.

• Previewed by Barbara J. Fick, an associate professor of law at Notre Dame Law School in Notre Dame, Ind.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

The Supreme Court is asked to determine when, if ever, the copier and distributor of a work in the public domain: (1) must tell the public who the creators or original producers of the work were; or (2) may, itself, claim to be the "origin" of the work? The underlying issue is whether Lanham Act "credit" claims are being improperly used in this case to give Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. copyright-like protection for public domain work.

• Previewed by Hugh C. Hansen, a professor of law at Fordham University School of Law in New York City.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

Duyonn Vincent was convicted by a Michigan court of first-degree murder after a jury trial. His conviction was initially reversed, but ultimately upheld on appeal. The federal district court granted his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and that ruling was affirmed by the court of appeals. This case presents both a substantive issue of double jeopardy and a procedural one of whether the federal courts have obeyed the command of habeas corpus law, which requires substantial deference to factual findings by state courts.

• Previewed by Alan Raphael, an associate professor of law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law in Chicago, Ill.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

There are two litigation models for proving a violation of Title VII under the disparate treatment theory: one is the McDonnell-Douglas pretext model and the other is Price Waterhouse mixed-motive model. In this case the Court is being asked to clarify and define the circumstances in which it is appropriate to use the mixed-motive model.

• Previewed by Barbara J. Fick, an associate professor of law at Notre Dame Law School in Notre Dame, Ind.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

The Green Tree Financial appeal raises the cutting-edge problem of whether class action procedure may be used in a state arbitration applying state law when the underlying arbitration agreement made no provision for class action treatment.

• Previewed by Linda S. Mullenix, the Morris and Rita Atlas Chair in Advocacy at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, Texas.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

Section 7 USC § 7254 prohibits "any provision of law" from limiting the authority of California when regulating the composition or labeling of "fluid milk products." California has promulgated new pricing regulations that out-of-state diary farmers claim places them at a competitive disadvantage with in-state farmers. The question for the Supreme Court is whether the federal statute exempts California's new milk pricing regulations from any challenge under the Commerce Clause or the Privilege and Immunities Clause.

• Previewed by Ralph C. Anzivino, a professor of law at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wis.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

In 1999, California enacted the Holocaust Victim Insurance Relief Act, which requires any insurance company doing business in the state to disclose information about policies issued in Europe between 1920 and 1945 by the company or its European affiliates. The Ninth Circuit upheld the statute, and now the Supreme Court will decide whether the statute is an unconstitutional intrusion upon the national government's exclusive power over foreign affairs and foreign commerce, and whether the law violates the Foreign Commerce Clause or Due Process Clause of the federal Constitution.

• Previewed by Brett G. Scharffs, an associate professor of law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

The California Supreme Court believes that the concept of "commercial speech" is broad enough to include public relations statements made by a corporation in response to a world-wide debate over corporate policy, when the statements are "likely to influence consumers in their commercial decisions" In Nike, Inc. v. Kasky, the Court must decide whether this definition, as applied to Nike, violates the First Amendment.

• Previewed by Bernard James, a professor of law at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, Calif.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

In this case the Court will determine whether and to what extent the "treating physician" rule that was developed under the Social Security Act should apply to disability determinations under plans subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

• Previewed by Michael J. Collins, an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Denver, Colo.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

California's electricity woes in 2001 highlighted the increasingly regional nature of electricity markets and the increasing role of multi-state entities in power transmission and wholesale power sales. This case implicates the role of FERC in restructuring the industry toward regional management of the interstate transmission grid. If the Court finds for Louisiana Public Service Commission, individual state utility commissions could prevent utilities from recovering the costs assigned to them under FERC system agreements designed to promote regional electricity competition.

• Previewed by Robert Yates, president of Oliver's Cases, a daily email case-update service based in Chicago, Ill.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

The Supreme Court has been called on to decide whether a jurisdiction covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act can implement a redistricting plan that reduces the number of districts in which minority voters constitute a supermajority if the plan provides minority voters a "fair and equal" opportunity to have their candidates elected, or whether such a plan would be an impermissible retrogression under the Act.

• Previewed by Mark A. Cohen, the editor-in-chief of Minnesota Lawyer in Minneapolis, Minn.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

To survive federal constitutional scrutiny, a state tax differential must be based on some "reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a reasonable basis" for classifying the activities differently. In the case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, the state of Iowa contends that the Iowa courts erred in concluding that the state lacks a reasonable basis for taxing the revenue from slot machines at parimutuel racetracks at a higher rate than it taxes revenue from slot machines on riverboat casinos.

• Previewed by Ferdinand P. Schoettle, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, Minn.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

Last year, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected a constitutional challenge to a policy enabling the eviction of public housing tenants for—knowingly or unknowingly—having illegal drugs in their apartments. Now the Court will hear a case involving the trespass conviction of a person walking down a street adjacent to a housing project from which he had been barred. The state asserts that public housing managers need broad authority to protect residents from would-be trespassers. The respondent argues that the trespass policy is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.

• Previewed by David L. Hudson, an attorney with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision

Case at a Glance

The National Bank Act, 12 U.S.C. §§85, 86, preempts (supplants) state-law usury claims against national banks. This ordinary preemption means that the Act provides the exclusive remedy for such usury claims. This case asks the Court to decide if the preclusive effect of this Act is broad enough to invoke "total preemption" so that a defendant could remove to federal court a usury claim mis-pleaded under state law in state court, or whether preemption only allows dismissal of the preempted state usury claim?

• Previewed by Mary Phelan D'Isa, a professor of law at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich.

Supreme Court Decision: Click to read decision