Wisconsin Appellate Law Appellate Developments Affecting Wisconsin Business

Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Elmbrook School District v. Doe: The Court Takes No Action on the Cert Petition

Posted in Federal Decisions; Seventh Circuit; Supreme Court

To update our earlier post on this case:  The Court took no action on Elmbrook School District’s cert petition in its April 15, 2013 order.  The case has been relisted for the April 19, 2013 conference.  You can access the Court’s docket for the case here.  If the Court  decides the petition this time, it will issue its decision on an Orders List released on the following Monday around 8:30 a.m. Central Time.

Elmbrook School District v. Doe: Will the U.S. Supreme Court Rule on the Constitutionality of Holding Public High School Graduations in Elmbrook Church?

Posted in Federal Decisions; Seventh Circuit; Supreme Court

During its conference this Friday, April 12, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to consider Elmbrook School District’s petition for a writ of certiorari seeking reversal of a decision issued last summer by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Doe v. Elmbrook School District, 687 F.3d 840 (7th Cir. 2012).Continue reading this entry

Malpractice Cases Against Patent Lawyers Stay in State Court, as Supreme Court Continues to Refine Reach of Grable

Posted in Federal Decisions; Supreme Court

In the course of deciding that malpractice cases against patent lawyers belong in state courts (when there is no diversity of citizenship), the United States Supreme Court has issued an important ruling on the scope of “federal question” jurisdiction over claims arising under state law. Gunn v. Minton, No. 11-1118 (Feb. 20, 2013).

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Del Marcelle: The Standard for Assessing Class-of-One Equal-Protection Claims Remains Unresolved in the Seventh Circuit

Posted in Federal Decisions; Seventh Circuit; Supreme Court

With the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari on November 26, 2012, in Del Marcelle v. Brown County Corp., No. 12-367, the Seventh Circuit’s inability to resolve the standard by which class-of-one equal-protection claims should be assessed will likely persist for some time. The Seventh Circuit had heard the case en banc to resolve the conflicted case law, hoping to determine whether a class-of-one claim requires pleading malicious or wrongful motivation and to agree on an improved standard, but the en banc court failed in its quest, affirming by an evenly divided court. 680 F.3d 887 (7th Cir. 2012).

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United States v. Jones: Government’s Placing of GPS Tracking Device on Car is a Fourth Amendment Search

Posted in Federal Decisions; Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court today held that the government’s placement of a GPS tracking device on a car while it was parked in a public parking lot was a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. The decision, written by Justice Scalia, makes clear that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against government trespass survives the “reasonable expectation of privacy” analysis of Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 351 (1967). Earlier cases by the Seventh Circuit, United States v. Garcia, 474 F.3d 994 (7th Cir. 2007), and the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in Wisconsin v. Sveum, 2009 WI App 81, aff’d on other grounds, 2010 WI 92, had held that GPS placements were not Fourth Amendment searches.