The Supreme Court of the United States announced decisions in six cases today:

Walker v. Texas Div., Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., No. 14-144: The State of Texas offers both ordinary and specialty license plates. People who want the state to issue a particular specialty plate may propose a design, which includes a slogan and/or graphic, subject to approval by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Board (“Board”). Here, the Board rejected the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ (“SCV”) proposal for a license plate with a Confederate battle flag. SCV brought suit in federal court, arguing that the Board’s rejection violated the Free Speech Clause. The District Court rejected that argument, but the Fifth Circuit reversed. The Court today reversed, holding that the specialty license plates convey government speech, and as such, SCV cannot force Texas to include a Confederate battle flag on its specialty plates.

The Court's decision is available here.

Reed v. Town of Gilbert, No. 13-502: The town of Gilbert, Arizona has a sign code that generally prohibits outdoor signs from being displayed without a permit, but imposes no placement or time restrictions on “Ideological Signs,” allows “Political Signs” during an election season, and allows “Temporary Directional Signs” directing the public to a church or other “qualifying event” to be placed in limited numbers, for limited periods of time, without a permit. Petitioners are the Good News Community Church (“Church”) and its pastor, Clyde Reed, who posted signs directing people to church services held at various temporary locations, but were cited for not following all the requirements for “Temporary Directional Signs.” Petitioners filed suit, claiming that the sign code abridged their freedom of speech. The District Court denied their motion for preliminary injunction, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed, ruling that the sign categories were content neutral and satisfied intermediate scrutiny. Today, the Court reversed, holding that the sign code’s imposition of more stringent restrictions on the “Temporary Directional Signs” than on signs conveying other messages were content-based regulations of speech that cannot survive strict scrutiny.

The Court's decision is available here.

Brumfield v. Cain, No. 13-1433: Petitioner Kevan Brumfield was sentenced to death by a Louisiana state court before the Supreme Court’s holding in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), which held that execution of the intellectually disabled was unconstitutional. The Louisiana Supreme Court then implemented a process whereby an evidentiary hearing is required when a defendant, through objective factors, raised a reasonable ground to believe that he has an intellectual disability. Brumfield then amended his state post-conviction petition to raise an Atkins claim, and sought an evidentiary hearing based upon evidence of his IQ of 75, fourth-grade reading level, learning disability, special education classes, and medication and treatment at psychiatric hospitals as a child. The state court dismissed his petition without a hearing or funding to secure expert evidence, and Brumfield sought federal habeas relief. The District Court found the state court’s actions to be both an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law and an unreasonable determination of the facts under standard set forth by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), 28 U.S.C. §§2254(d)(1), (2), and found that Brumfield was intellectually disabled. The Fifth Circuit, however, reversed. Today, the Court vacated and remanded, holding that the state court’s decision was “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding,” §2254(d)(2), and that Brumfield was thus entitled to have his Atkins claim considered on the merits in federal court.

The Court's decision is available here.

Ohio v. Clark, No. 13-1352: Respondent Darius Clark was caring for his girlfriend’s three-year-old son L.P. and 18-month-old daughter A.T. when teachers discovered red marks on the three-year-old. L.P. identified Clark as the abuser to his teachers. During Clark’s trial on child abuse counts, L.P. did not testify, but the State introduced L.P.’s statements as evidence of Clark’s guilt. The trial court denied Clark’s argument that this violated the Confrontation Clause, but the state appellate court reversed, and the Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed. The Court today reversed, holding that because neither the child nor his teachers had the primary purpose of assisting Clark’s prosecution, the child’s statements do not implicate the Confrontation Clause and therefore were admissible at trial.

The Court's decision is available here.

Davis v. Ayala, No. 13-1428: At respondent Hector Ayala’s murder trial, he argued that the prosecution’s preemptory challenges were race-based under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). The judge found the prosecution had valid, race-neutral reasons for the strikes after the prosecution disclosed the basis for its strikes to the judge outside the presence of the defense. On appeal, the California Supreme Court held that it was error for the trial court to exclude Ayala’s attorney from the Batson hearing, but held the error was harmless. In Ayala’s federal habeas proceedings, the Ninth Circuit granted Ayala habeas relief, holding that the ex parte proceeding violated Ayala’s constitutional rights and that the error was not harmless. The Court today reversed, holding that the exclusion of Ayala’s attorney from part of the Batson hearing was harmless error where there was no basis for finding that Ayala suffered actual prejudice, and the California Supreme Court’s decision represented a reasonable application of controlling precedent.

The Court's decision is available here.

McFadden v. United States, No. 14-378: The Controlled Substance Act (“CSA”), 21 U.S.C. §841(a)(1), makes it unlawful to manufacture, distribute, or possess with intent to distribute controlled substances. The Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act of 1986 (“Analogue Act”), in turn, identifies substances substantially similar to those listed as controlled substances, and instructs courts to treat these analogues as controlled substances if they are intended for human consumption. Here, petitioner Stephen McFadden was charged under the Analogue Act with distributing “bath salts.” McFadden argued for a jury instruction that would have required the jury to find that he knew that the substances he distributed had chemical structures and effects similar to those of controlled substances. The District Court, however, instructed the jury that it only had to find that McFadden knowingly and intentionally distributed a substance with substantially similar effects as a controlled substance and that he intended it for human consumption. McFadden appealed his conviction, but the Fourth Circuit affirmed. The Court today vacated and remanded, holding that when the substance is an analogue, the knowledge that the defendant was dealing with a controlled substance is met if either (1) the defendant knew that the substance was controlled under the CSA or the Analogue Act, even if he did not know its identity; or (2) the defendant knew the specific features of the substance that make it a controlled substance analogue.

The Court's decision is available here.