Case at a Glance

The IRS's practice in collecting delinquent employment taxes owed by a partnership is to assess the partnership, but not the general partners. After assessing the partnership, the IRS files tax liens and levies against the general partners. The IRS maintains that notice to the partnership is notice to the general partners. The Ninth Circuit held that the general partners are entitled to be individually assessed and notified.

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

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Case at a Glance

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 provides that no state may prohibit "any entity" from providing telecommunications services. Missouri has a statute that prohibits its municipalities from providing commercial telephone services. The municipalities assert that the Telecommunications Act specifically preempts the state statute. Thus, they argue, municipalities should be free to offer commercial telephone services. The Eighth Circuit agreed with the municipalities that the federal law preempts the Missouri statute.

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

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Case at a Glance

In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett that Congress could not abrogate a state's Eleventh Amendment immunity from damage suits under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Although Title I deals with disability discrimination in employment, the parties also argued over Title II, which deals with disability discrimination in the services, programs or activities of public entities. While that Title II question was not addressed in Garrett, it is now squarely presented.

• Previewed by David L. Hudson, Jr., an attorney in Nashville, Tennessee, who writes regularly on First Amendment and employment law topics.

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Case at a Glance

In this case, the Court will determine whether business owners who participate in employee benefit plans covered by ERISA are afforded the protections provided under ERISA. In so deciding, the Court will resolve a longstanding split in the circuits.

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

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Case at a Glance

Under the Clean Air Act, only the federal government and the State of California can create emission standards for the nation's motor vehicles. In this case, the Supreme Court addresses the question of whether a local government entity is preempted from issuing rules requiring operators of transit bus, street sweeper, refuse truck and other fleets to purchase only alternative fuel vehicles or other cleaner-fuel vehicles.

• Previewed by Marisa Martin, the Greater Yellowstone Program Coordinator at the Wyoming Outdoor Council in Lander, Wyoming.

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Case at a Glance

A Native American tribe and a grass-roots environmental organization sued to compel a state agency to obtain an NPDES permit under the Clean Water Act for operation of a pumping station that conveys polluted water from a drainage canal into a water conservation area in Florida's Everglades. The pumping station itself does not add any pollutants to the water. The Supreme Court is asked to determine whether this constitutes an "addition of a pollutant from [a] point source" that requires an NPDES permit.

• Previewed by Pippin C. Brehler, a former environmental engineer who is now clerking for Justice Marilyn Kelly of the Michigan Supreme Court in Lansing, Mich.

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Case at a Glance

In the early 1900s, Congress enacted a variety of statutes that authorized individuals to obtain ownership of public lands but retained for the United States ownership of all valuable minerals in those lands. This case decides whether the United States' reservation of "valuable minerals" includes sand and gravel that had no market value at the time the private party took title to the surface estate but that subsequently became valuable. Although this case involves only one statute under which a relatively insignificant amount of land was settled—the Pittman Underground Water Act—it has the potential to resolve the same issue for millions of acres of split estate lands in the West.

• Previewed by James R. Rasband, a professor of law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah.

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Case at a Glance

Arizona authorizes tax credits for payments made to organizations that award educational scholarships and tuition grants to children attending private schools. When some taxpayers challenged the constitutionality of the credit in a federal district court, that court dismissed the challenge as excluded from federal jurisdiction by the Tax Injunction Act. The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court. Now the Supreme Court is asked to decide whether the Tax Injunction Act requires district courts to dismiss constitutional challenges to such state tax credits.

• Previewed by Ferdinand P. Schoettle, author of State and Local Taxation: The Law and Policy of Multi-Jurisdictional Taxation and a professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Case at a Glance

The issue in this case is whether the Double Jeopardy Clause prevents the federal government from prosecuting a non-member Indian for the same activity to which he pled guilty in tribal court. To resolve that issue, however, the Court must decide how to interpret a federal statute in which Congress "recognized and affirmed" the "inherent power of Indian tribes ... to exercise criminal jurisdiction over all Indians."

• Previewed by Melissa L. Tatum, a professor of law and a co-director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Tulsa College of Law in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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Case at a Glance

In 1996, Felipe Tovar represented himself when he plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of "operating while intoxicated" (OWI). In 2002, that conviction was used to support a felony OWI charge against him. Tovar then claimed that his waiver of counsel in the 1996 case had been involuntary. The Iowa Supreme Court agreed. Now the U.S. Supreme Court must decide whether the trial court should have advised Tovar of the dangers of self representation and the usefulness of a lawyer before accepting his 1996 misdemeanor guilty plea.

• Previewed by Michael Kaye, a professor of law and director of the Washburn Center for Excellence in Advocacy at the Washburn University of Topeka Law School in Topeka, Kansas.

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