Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co.

Docket: 21-1168

Opinion Date: June 27, 2023

Judge: Neil M. Gorsuch

Areas of Law: Business Law, Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law

Mallory worked as a Norfolk mechanic for 20 years in Ohio and Virginia. After leaving the company, Mallory moved to Pennsylvania, then returned to Virginia. He attributed his cancer diagnosis to his work and sued Norfolk under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, in Pennsylvania state court. Norfolk, incorporated and headquartered in Virginia, challenged the court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction. Mallory noted that Norfolk manages over 2,000 miles of track, operates 11 rail yards, runs locomotive repair shops in Pennsylvania, and has registered to do business in Pennsylvania in light of its "regular, systematic, extensive” operations there. Pennsylvania requires out-of-state companies that register to do business to agree to appear in its courts on “any cause of action” against them. 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. 5301(a)(2)(i), (b). The Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the Pennsylvania law violated the Due Process Clause.

The Supreme Court vacated. Pennsylvania law is explicit that qualification as a foreign corporation shall permit state courts to exercise general personal jurisdiction over a registered foreign corporation. Norfolk has complied with this law since 1998 when it registered to do business in Pennsylvania. Norfolk's “Certificate of Authority” from the Commonwealth conferred both the benefits and burdens shared by domestic corporations, including amenability to suit in state court on any claim. For more than two decades, Norfolk has agreed to be found in Pennsylvania and answer any suit there. Suits premised on these grounds do not deny a defendant due process of law. Regardless of whether any other statutory scheme and set of facts would establish consent to suit, this state law and these facts fall within Supreme Court precedent.

Counterman v. Colorado

Docket: 22-138

Opinion Date: June 27, 2023

Judge: Elena Kagan

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Communications Law, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

From 2014-2016, Counterman sent hundreds of Facebook messages to C.W., a local musician. Each time C.W. tried to block him, Counterman created a new Facebook account and resumed contacting C.W. Several of his messages envisaged violent harm. C.W. stopped walking alone, declined social engagements, canceled performances, and eventually contacted the authorities. Counterman was charged under a Colorado statute making it unlawful to repeatedly make any form of communication with another person in a manner that would cause a reasonable person to suffer serious emotional distress, that does cause that person to suffer serious emotional distress. Colorado courts rejected Counterman’s First Amendment argument.

The Supreme Court vacated. In true-threat cases, the prosecution must prove that the defendant had some subjective understanding of his statements’ threatening nature.

The First Amendment permits restrictions upon the content of speech in a few areas, including true threats--serious expressions conveying that a speaker means to commit an act of unlawful violence. The existence of a threat depends on what the statement conveys to the person receiving it but the First Amendment may demand a subjective mental-state requirement shielding some true threats because bans on speech have the potential to deter speech outside their boundaries. In this context, a recklessness standard, a showing that a person consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that his conduct will cause harm to another, is the appropriate mental state. Requiring purpose or knowledge would make it harder for states to counter true threats, with diminished returns for protected expression.

Moore v. Harper

Docket: 21-1271

Opinion Date: June 27, 2023

Judge: John G. Roberts, Jr.

Areas of Law: Constitutional Law, Election Law, Government & Administrative Law

The U.S. Constitution's Election Clause requires the legislature of each state to prescribe rules governing federal elections. Following the 2020 decennial census, North Carolina’s General Assembly drafted a new federal congressional map. The map was challenged under the North Carolina Constitution as impermissible partisan gerrymandering. The North Carolina Supreme Court acknowledged that gerrymandering claims are outside the reach of federal courts but held that such questions were not beyond the reach of North Carolina courts. The court enjoined the use of the maps but subsequently addressed a remedial map adopted by the trial court, repudiated its holding that gerrymandering claims are justiciable under the state constitution, and dismissed the suits without reinstating the 2021 maps.

The Supreme Court first held that it had jurisdiction to review the Elections Clause holding. The court’s decision to withdraw its second decision and overrule the first did not moot the case; it did not amend the judgment concerning the 2021 maps nor alter the first decision’s analysis of the federal issue.

The Elections Clause does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections. In prescribing such rules, they remain subject to state judicial review and to state constitutional constraints. When legislatures make laws, they are bound by the documents that give them life. When a state legislature carries out its federal constitutional power to prescribe rules regulating federal elections, it acts both as a lawmaking body created and bound by its state constitution and as the entity assigned particular authority by the U.S. Constitution. Both constitutions restrain that exercise of power. Federal courts must not abandon their duty to exercise judicial review. The Court declined to decide whether the North Carolina Supreme Court strayed beyond the limits derived from the Elections Clause.