Jenner & Block Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic—Significant Achievements for 2023-24
The Jenner & Block Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic represented clients in several significant cases in the US Supreme Court this academic year. The Clinic’s students did important work on each of these cases—from researching legal issues, to assessing potential arguments, to developing case strategy, to drafting and editing briefs.
US Supreme Court Merits Cases
Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fikre, Case No. 22-1178
The Clinic, working alongside Jenner & Block attorneys and lawyers from the CAIR Legal Defense Fund, helped secure a legal victory before the US Supreme Court for an American citizen who alleged that he had been unconstitutionally put on the No Fly List and stranded overseas for four years.
In a 9-0 opinion, the Court ruled that Yonas Fikre’s civil rights action against the US government could go forward despite his subsequent removal from the No Fly List and the government’s promise it would not put him on the list “based on the currently available information.”
In rejecting the government’s claim that taking Mr. Fikre off the No Fly List made the action moot, the Court agreed with the argument of the clinic and other lawyers representing Mr. Fikre that the vague assurance did not end the potential threat to his civil liberties.
“[I]t is the defendant’s ‘burden to establish’ that it cannot reasonably be expected to resume its challenged conduct—whether the suit happens to be new or long lingering, and whether the challenged conduct might recur immediately or later at some more propitious moment,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote. “Nothing the government offers here satisfies that formidable standard.”
The clinic became involved in the case at the Supreme Court merits stage, after the Court granted certiorari in the case.
Williams, et al., v. Washington, Case No. 23-191
The question presented in Williams, et al., v. Washington, which currently is pending before the Supreme Court, is whether exhaustion of state administrative remedies is required to bring claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in state court. The Clinic, together with attorneys from Jenner and Block and Legal Services Alabama, are co-counsel for Petitioners in the case.
As Petitioners explained in their opening merits brief, “Petitioners are unemployment compensation benefits claimants in Alabama who have experienced extreme delays and other irregularities in the processing of their claims.” Pet. Br. at 6. As Petitioners further explained in their opening merits brief:
Over four decades ago, this Court established in Patsy v. Board of Regents that “exhaustion of state administrative remedies should not be required as a prerequisite to bringing an action pursuant to [42 U.S.C.] § 1983.” 457 U.S. 496, 516 (1982). In the decision below, the Supreme Court of Alabama defied Patsy and dismissed petitioners’ 1983 claims for failure to exhaust state administrative remedies …
The decision below defies the Court’s clear precedent. It cannot be squared with Patsy, which authoritatively interpreted § 1983 to foreclose the application of state administrative exhaustion requirements.
Pet. Br. at 2.
The clinic became involved in the case at the Supreme Court merits stage, after the Court granted certiorari in the case.
US Supreme Court Certiorari-Stage Cases
King v. Eammons, Case No. 23-668
The Clinic was co-counsel for Warren King in his petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court. As the petition for certiorari in the case explained:
A Georgia jury convicted and sentenced to death Warren King, a black man, for murdering a white woman during a robbery attempt when he was 18 years old. Abundant evidence demonstrated that the prosecutor discriminated against Black and female jurors in selecting King’s jury. The prosecutor struck 87.5% of the black jurors in the pool, while striking only 8.8% of white jurors, all women. When the defense challenged his strikes, the prosecutor embarked on not one, but two rants, in which he “angr[ily]” told the court that it was “improper for this Court to tell me that I cannot decide” who to strike, and that Batson was unnecessary because often “it was a physical impossibility if you wanted to strike every black off a jury.” Pet. App. 46-48a.
On appeal, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed without mentioning the prosecutor’s rants or his grossly disproportionate strike rate, and notwithstanding the prosecutor’s inconsistent, flimsy, and factually inaccurate rationales for many of his strikes. On habeas review, a divided Eleventh Circuit panel ultimately held that although the record was “troubling,” the state court had not acted unreasonably.
Pet. at i.
The questions presented in the case were whether the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2), and whether it unreasonably applied Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).
Justice Jackson wrote a ten-page dissent from the Court’s denial of certiorari in the case, joined by Justice Sotomayor. The dissent stated that the Court should have granted the petition for certiorari and summarily reversed the decision of the lower court. The dissent concluded by stating:
Here, the Georgia Supreme Court ignored highly salient facts about the prosecutor’s admittedly discriminatory strike behavior and antipathy toward the legal standards that address such conduct. Instead, the state court made a narrow assessment of the prosecutor’s strikes that lacked important context. Therefore, the state court’s denial of King’s Batson claim was “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” § 2254(d)(2). Accordingly, I would summarily reverse the Court of Appeals’ erroneous application of deference in upholding the state court’s decision and remand for reconsideration of King’s Batson claim “without the deference AEDPA otherwise requires.” Panetti, 551 U.S. at 953.
The clinic’s students worked on research and drafting projects in these and other cases, alongside lawyers from the teams.
The students’ work on these cases was in collaboration with and supervised by Clinic faculty members David Strauss and Sarah Konsky, both from the Law School, and Matt Hellman, from Jenner & Block.