December 15, 2025 | Volume 33, Issue 4

This Report summarizes opinions issued on November 24 and December 8 (Part I); and cases granted review on December 5 and 15, 2025 (Part I).

Opinions

Clark v. Sweeney, 25-52.

Through a unanimous opinion, the Court summarily reversed the Fourth Circuit’s grant of habeas relief to respondent Jeremiah Sweeney, holding that “[t]he Fourth Circuit transgressed the party-presentation principle by granting [habeas] relief on a claim that Sweeney never asserted and that the State never had the chance to address.” A jury of only 11 individuals found Sweeney guilty of several crimes, including second-degree murder, after both sides agreed to dismiss one juror who personally visited the crime scene during the trial. The parties agreed that dismissal of the juror was preferable to declaring a mistrial. Sweeney later argued in his state application for post-conviction relief that his trial counsel was ineffective under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), for not seeking to voir dire the entire jury to ensure that the dismissed juror had not improperly influenced the remaining jurors prior to his removal. The state courts denied Sweeney relief upon his Strickland claim, and a federal district court denied habeas relief on the same issue.  The Fourth Circuit, in a divided opinion, reversed. The court criticized multiple aspects of the trial, finding fault with not just the actions of Sweeney’s counsel, as his petition asserted, but those of the judge and juror as well. Viewing these “special circumstances” in the aggregate, the court granted relief based upon what it deemed “an extraordinary confluence of events” which worked together to deny Sweeney his right to be confronted with adverse witnesses and his right to a trial by an impartial jury. Through a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded.

The Court highlighted the roles of parties, which “frame the issue for decision,” and courts, which acts as “neutral arbiter of matters the parties present.” United States v. Sineneng-Smith, 590 U.S. 371, 375 (2020) (quotation marks omitted). The Court found that “[t]he Fourth Circuit transgressed the party-presentation principle by granting relief on a claim that Sweeney never asserted and that the State never had the chance to address.” The Court recounted that Sweeney’s sole habeas claim was an assertion that his counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate whether the dismissed juror had a prejudicial effect upon the remaining jurors. The Fourth Circuit’s “radical transformation” of that claim into one encompassing others constituted an abuse of discretion. In remanding, the Court emphasized the singular nature of the task before the Fourth Circuit given the Strickland claim Sweeney had presented, and reminded the circuit court of the doubly-deferential review for such claims under Strickland and AEDPA.

Pitts v. Mississippi, 24-1159.

Through a unanimous per curiam opinion, the Court held that Mississippi courts erred when they allowed a child witness in a child-abuse case to testify behind a screen without a case-specific finding that screening was necessary. Petitioner Jeffrey Pitts was charged with sexually abusing his daughter, A.G.C. At Pitts’s criminal trial, the State of Mississippi moved to place a screen between A.G.C. and Pitts when she testified as a witness. The state supported this request by citing a Mississippi statute that gives child witnesses the right to a “screen that would permit the judge and jury” to see the child but would “obscure the child’s view of the defendant.” Miss. Code Ann. §99–43–101(2)(g). Pitts objected, arguing that screening would violate the Sixth Amendment because the state had not attempted to show that screening was necessary under the circumstances of the case. The trial court rejected that argument and allowed screening. Pitts was convicted, and the Mississippi Supreme Court ultimately affirmed the conviction, concluding that Mississippi’s statute provided sufficient authority to order screening even absent case-specific findings. The U.S. Supreme Court summarily reversed and remanded.

The Court observed that the Sixth Amendment “tolerates screening in child-abuse cases only if a court hears evidence and issues a case-specific finding of the requisite necessity.” The Court cited Coy v. Iowa, 487 U.S. 1012 (1988), for the proposition that a defendant has the right to a “face-to-face meeting” with the witnesses in his case. The Court also drew on Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990), which said that a court may screen a child witness from a defendant where “necessary” to protect the child from “trauma that would be caused by testifying in the physical presence of the defendant”―but only when the court hears evidence and makes a “case-specific finding of necessity.” Rejecting the Mississippi Supreme Court’s attempts to distinguish Coy and Craig, the Court affirmed that “neither state screening statutes, nor the ‘generalized findings’ on which they are premised, are enough to overcome a defendant’s right to face-to-face confrontation.” The Court also rejected the state’s contention that the trial court did make a case-specific finding: although the prosecution represented that A.G.C.’s guardian believed it would be difficult for her to testify when faced with her father, the state disclaimed a need to present evidence on that issue and the trial judge cited a statutory “right” to screening instead of performing an individualized analysis. The Court ended by saying that the denial of a defendant’s right to confrontation is subject to a harmless-error analysis, which can be assessed on remand.

Doe v. Dynamic Physical Therapy, LLC, 25-180.

In a unanimous per curiam opinion, the Court summarily reversed a Louisiana Court of Appeal opinion holding that the plaintiff’s federal claims were barred by a Louisiana statute that immunizes healthcare providers from civil liability during public health emergencies. The Supreme Court recognized that it is a “State’s prerogative” to define the scope of liability under state law, but explained that the states “ha[ve] no power to confer immunity from federal causes of action.” The Court acknowledged that the claims could nonetheless fail on other federal grounds and remanded for further proceedings.

Cases Granted Review

Trump v. Barbara, 25-365.

The Court will answer whether President Trump’s Executive Order denying birthright citizenship to persons born in the United States to noncitizen parents violates the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or 8 U.S.C. §1401(a). The Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Section 1401(a) provides the same using similar language. On the first day of his second term in office, President Trump issued an executive order (the Order) that withheld automatic birthright citizenship to those individuals born to parents who were either unlawfully in the country or only granted temporary legal status. The Order maintained that such children were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Various entities quickly contested the Order in federal courts throughout the country.

Respondents in this case, both born and unborn (at the time) children along with their parents, filed suit under pseudonyms (“Barbara,” et al.) on behalf of a putative nationwide class in the District Court of New Hampshire, arguing that the Order violated both the Citizenship Clause and §1401(a). The district court provisionally certified the group as a class and, relying upon United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), and a plain language reading of the Fourteenth Amendment and §1401, entered a class-wide preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of the Order. President Trump appealed the decision to the Supreme Court concurrently with the Ninth Circuit’s decision upholding a similar preliminary injunction in a suit brought by several states. Washington v. Trump, 145 F.4th 1013 (9th Cir. 2025).

In his petition, President Trump urges a narrow reading of the Citizenship Clause, suggesting it was adopted strictly to grant citizenship to newly freed slaves and their children, in essence, “those born of parents with primary allegiance to the United States.” Breaking the Clause into two parts, the President argues that two criteria must be met for automatic citizenship to attach: (1) the individual must be born on U.S. soil, and (2) the individual must bear primary allegiance to the United States (i.e., not any other foreign power). Extending the Fourteenth Amendment’s language to the children of temporary visitors or illegal aliens, he claims, contravenes the plain text, its original congressional understanding, and history, and decisions of the Court from the time surrounding its adoption that linked one’s domicile with their political jurisdiction. Carrying the domicile language of those cases forward, President Trump distinguishes Wong Kim Ark by arguing that it “suggests that U.S. citizenship does not extend to the children of aliens” who are not ‘permitted by the United States to reside here.’” Any “overreading” of Wong Kim Ark, the President says, fails to account for “the emphasis [it places] on domicile and permanent residence” and “relies on dicta-within-dicta.” Executive practices contemporaneous with the decision, he claims, reinforce the President’s proposed reading. Any interpretation equating “jurisdiction” with “regulatory jurisdiction” “would render the Clause incoherent.” The President adds that, given that §1401(a) bears the same meaning as the Citizenship Clause, the same arguments defeat the district court’s reasoning as to respondents’ statutory claim.

Respondents contend that President Trump’s defense of the Order “fails to grapple with th[e] statutory problem” in §1401, which “presents an independent basis to affirm the district court.” The statutory meaning surrounding its enactment, which did not come until the twentieth century, conflicts with the limited understanding President Trump imparts to the Fourteenth Amendment in the nineteenth century.  Apart from this, respondents claim that the same constitutional question presented here was squarely addressed in Wong Kim Ark. Further, they say, the President’s approach to the issue cannot “be squared with the text and history of the Clause.”

Pitchford v. Cain, 24-7351.

The Court limited the grant to the following question: “Whether, under the standards set forth in AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. §2254(d), the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably determined that petitioner waived his right to rebut the prosecutor’s asserted race-neutral reasons for exercising peremptory strikes against four black jurors.” A jury convicted petitioner Terry Pitchford of capital murder for his role in robbing a grocery store and murdering its owner. The jury sentenced Pitchford to death. During voir dire, the prosecution used peremptory challenges to strike four of the five potential black jurors. Defense counsel asserted a Batson challenge to those challenges. The trial court found that defense counsel had made a prima facie showing that the prosecutor exercised peremptory challenges on the basis of race. The trial court then asked the prosecution to provide race-neutral reasons for the strikes (step 2 of Batson). The prosecution did, some relating to relatives of the struck jurors, some relating the jurors’ own actions. The trial court accepted the proffered reasons as race neutral. There is dispute about what happened next. According to Pitchford (quoting the federal district court on habeas), “’[t]he trial court then full-stop ended its Batson analysis.’ The record shows no evidence the trial court conducted the final step which ‘involves evaluating ‘the persuasiveness of the justification’ proffered by the prosecutor.’” (Citation omitted.) At the conclusion of jury selection, defense counsel reiterated Pitchford’s Batson challenge, after which the trial court said that counsel had “already made it in the record” and repeated its conclusion that the prosecution’s “reasons were race neutral.”

Pitchford asserted her Batson claim on direct appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court. Rejecting that claim, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that Pitchford’s counsel failed to make an argument to the trial court on Batson’s third step (i.e., a rebuttal to the state’s race-neutral reasons). And, said the court, when “the defendant fails to rebut, the trial judge must base his . . . decision on the reasons given by the State.” As a consequence, the Mississippi Supreme Court refused to entertain Pitchford’s rebuttal arguments advanced for the first time on appeal (such as a comparison of the stricken black panel members to seated white jurors). Pitchford sought federal habeas relief. The federal district court granted habeas relief on the Batson claim, faulting the state trial court for giving Pitchford’s counsel no opportunity “to rebut the State’s explanations and prove purposeful discrimination.” The district court also faulted the Mississippi Supreme Court for failing to perform a comparative-juror analysis. The Fifth Circuit reversed. 126 F.4th 422.

The Fifth Circuit applied AEDPA deference and concluded that the state courts did not err in applying Batson step three. As an initial matter, the Fifth Court found that the state trial court “did not omit Batson’s third step”; a trial court “may make implicit findings” at step 3. Relatedly, the Fifth Circuit disagreed that Pitchford “was seemingly given no chance” to show pretext. The Fifth Circuit then concluded that the Mississippi Supreme Court properly did not consider Pitchford’s step 3 arguments made for the first time on appeal.

As relevant to the now-limited grant of certiorari, Pitchford maintains that “[t]he transcript of the hasty jury selection is irreconcilable with the theory that Mr. Pitchford waived or abandoned his Batson objection.” He argues that “the trial court[] truncated the process after finding the State’s explanations facially race neutral, and considered the matter closed. . . . Defense counsel attempted to re-open the objection, and the court assured her that the objection was preserved[.]” The state counters that Pitchford did make a step 3 argument, noting that Pitchford’s counsel asserted that 1 of the 14 jurors was black “whereas this county is approximately, what, 40 percent?” At that point, the state says, counsel “offered no other argument or evidence that the State’s race-neutral reasons were pretext for discrimination.”

Abouammo v. United States, 25-5146.

At issue is whether, for purposes of a federal criminal prosecution, “venue is proper in a district where no offense conduct took place, so long as the statute’s intent element ‘contemplates’ effects that could occur there.” Petitioner Ahmad Abouammo was a former Twitter employee who allegedly agreed to act as an agent of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In that role, he allegedly accessed Twitter databases and provided confidential information about a Saudi dissident to the Saudi government. He resigned from Twitter in May 2015 and moved from Northern California to Seattle. While investigating his conduct, the FBI sent two agents from the San Francisco office to interview Abouammo at his Seattle home. During the interview, Abouammo claimed he had been paid by a Saudi official for consulting services. When asked for documentation supporting that claim, Abouammo purportedly created a fictitious invoice. He was indicted in the Northern District of California. After a lengthy trial, the jury found him guilty of acting as a foreign agent without notifying the Attorney General, conspiring to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and falsifying a record with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation. As relevant here, the district court rejected Abouammo’s venue-based challenge to the falsification charge. The Ninth Circuit upheld the conviction (though it remanded for resentencing in a separate unpublished opinion). 122 F.4th 1072.

Regarding venue, the Ninth Circuit acknowledged that 18 U.S.C. §1519, the records-falsification statute, lacks an express venue provision. So the court analyzed venue by looking at the “nature of the crime alleged”―i.e., the “essential conduct elements” of the offense―and the location of the criminal act. The court reasoned that the §1519 offense “expressly contemplates the effect of influencing the action of another”:  here, the persons involved in the federal investigation. Thus, the court read the statute as “permitting venue in the location where the effects of the criminal wrongdoing can be felt.” The court found that while Abouammo created the false document in Seattle, his conduct was directed toward FBI agents working from the San Francisco office, so the offense “continued” until the falsified document was received by those agents. In that way, the court said, the offense was “continued or completed in the Northern District.”

In his petition, Abouammo argues that the Ninth Circuit decision violated Article III and the Sixth Amendment, which “mandate that crimes be prosecuted where they were committed.” He maintains that the circuit court erred in its venue analysis by looking to the potential effects of his conduct and not the location of the conduct itself. Abouammo cites United States v. Rodriguez-Moreno, 526 U.S. 275 (1999), for the proposition that venue turns on which of the elements of the crime “are essential conduct elements.” A §1519 offense contains three elements:  “(1) knowingly (2) falsify[ing] a document (3) with the intent to impede a federal investigation.” In Abouammo’s view, only the second element of falsifying the document involves conduct, and his conduct encompassed by that element occurred solely in Seattle. Even assuming the knowledge and intent elements are relevant to the analysis, Abouammo says, venue was still improper because obstructive intent exists “solely in the mind” of the offender, so it can only be formed “where the offender was physically present.” He contends that the Ninth Circuit erred by “focusing on the location of the intent’s object, rather than where the intent itself was formed.”

The United States responds by arguing that the Ninth Circuit decision is consistent with Rodriguez-Moreno and that where a statute “expressly contemplates the effect of influencing a specified action, venue is proper where that effect would occur.” The government explains that §1519 contemplates an “express connection between the actus reus and its contemplated effect” because it requires proof that a defendant acted with the intent to “impede, obstruct, or influence” an investigation. Here, the government says, venue in the Northern District of California was proper because Abouammo attempted to obstruct an investigation he knew was taking place there.

Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties, 25-83.

The Court will resolve “[w]hether a federal court that initially exercises jurisdiction and stays a case pending arbitration maintains jurisdiction over a post-arbitration Section 9 or 10 application where jurisdiction would otherwise be lacking.” The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) allows parties to an arbitration agreement to seek assistance from federal courts. Federal courts may compel arbitration, 9 U.S.C. §4, and may stay proceedings in the federal suit until the parties have arbitrated “in accordance with the terms of the agreement,” 9 U.S.C. §3. Under Sections 9 and 10, federal courts may confirm and vacate final arbitration awards. But the FAA does not itself create federal jurisdiction. In Badgerow v. Walters, 596 U.S. 1 (2022), the Court held that federal courts may exercise jurisdiction over standalone Section 9 and 10 applications only when an “independent jurisdictional basis” exists on the face of the application.

Petitioner Adrian Jules filed suit in federal court regarding his termination from the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles and raised state and federal causes of action. Respondents moved to compel arbitration and stay the lawsuit. The district court found that Jules had entered into a valid and binding arbitration agreement, concluded that he could not proceed in federal court until the claims were resolved through arbitration, and stayed the proceedings. The parties went to arbitration, and the arbitrator found that Jules failed to prove his claims. The arbitrator also sanctioned Jules and his counsel for their conduct during arbitration. Respondents returned to district court and filed an application to confirm the final award, which the district court granted. The Second Circuit affirmed. 2025 WL 1201914.

Addressing jurisdiction, the Second Circuit recognized that respondents’ motion to confirm the award did not reveal a basis for federal jurisdiction. The court nonetheless held that a federal court may “look though” the petition to the nature of the underlying controversy and can exercise jurisdiction when the underlying lawsuit includes a federal question. The court reached that conclusion by applying pre-Badgerow circuit precedent, reasoning that Badgerow did not overrule that precedent because there the case reached federal court after arbitration had occurred. The Second Circuit said that because the present action began as a federal-question suit, the district court retained jurisdiction following its stay to confirm the arbitration award.

Jules argues in the petition that the Second Circuit’s theory of jurisdiction, which he calls the “jurisdictional anchor” theory, is wrong and cannot be squared with the text of the FAA. Jules contends that the rule announced in Badgerow, which requires an independent jurisdictional basis to exist on the face of the application, applies to all Section 9 and 10 applications. He points out that Sections 9 and 10 do not mention a district court’s subject matter jurisdiction, and nothing in the FAA suggests that “freestanding” applications under those sections should be analyzed differently than applications brought in a previously filed federal suit. Jules also says that where an arbitration definitively resolves all of the plaintiff’s claims, there is “simply no more federal case,” and the subsequent dispute about whether the award is enforceable is “another controversy” requiring a separate basis for federal jurisdiction.

T.M. v. Univ. of Maryland Medical Systems Corp, 25-197.

This case presents the question “[w]hether the Rooker-Feldman doctrine”―which bars a party from filing suit in a lower federal court asserting injuries derived from a final state-court judgment―“can be triggered by a state-court decision that remains subject to further review in state court.” See Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923); District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983). Petitioner T.M., a minor who suffered from episodes of psychosis upon ingesting gluten, was committed to a medical facility after one such episode. The facility sought to forcibly medicate T.M. with antipsychotic drug injections. Seeking to avoid such a measure, T.M. filed several lawsuits in federal and state courts, including a state habeas action. During that litigation, T.M. and the facility reached a release agreement which the judge in the habeas proceeding entered as a consent order. Ten days later, T.M. filed suit in Maryland’s federal district court claiming she entered the consent decree under duress and that its terms were “unconstitutional, unenforceable, and void ab initio.” The district court dismissed the complaint on the basis that T.M.’s claims were barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and the court thus lacked subject matter jurisdiction over them. A unanimous Fourth Circuit panel affirmed. 139 F.4th 344.

Relying upon the Supreme Court’s clarification of the doctrine in Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280 (2005), the Fourth Circuit “conclude[d] th[e] case is too much like Rooker to justify a different result.” According to the court, T.M., who had lost in the state court and allegedly suffered injuries from that state-court judgment prior to filing her federal suit, was improperly inviting the lower federal court to review and reject that judgment. That T.M.’s state-court judgment was a consent order, as opposed to one coming after an adversarial proceeding, had no bearing on the analysis. Nor did it matter that a Maryland circuit court later ruled that T.M. should never have been committed in the first place, as that decision was not the one T.M. had attacked in federal court. Of particular importance, the Fourth Circuit found the doctrine applicable even where further review of the state-court judgment in question is still available.

T.M. argues that decision was incorrect. Pointing to the doctrine’s inception as a negative implication of 28 U.S.C. §1257, which provides the Supreme Court with its appellate jurisdiction over federal questions arising in the state courts, she argues that Rooker-Feldman applies only to state-court judgments that have already become final and cannot be subjected to any further review in the state-court system. The Exxon decision supports her, she says, as it identified three scenarios where “state proceedings have ended”: (1) where the highest state court has rendered a decision and nothing is left to be resolved; (2) where neither party seeks to litigate the matter any further; and (3) when state proceedings have resolved all federal questions in the matter. Because her claim remains subject to appeal in higher Maryland state courts, neither the doctrine nor §1257 should operate to bar her from federal court.

Respondents counter that T.M.’s consent order is likely not subject to further state-court review. That is especially true considering her move to stay the state-court proceedings and stymy the appellate process; such moves there should not work to her benefit on the functional finality aspect of her claim. According to respondents, T.M. misunderstands Rooker-Feldman as being derived from a negative implication of §1257; the doctrine merely recognizes 28 U.S.C. §1331 as granting original jurisdiction and not authorizing federal district courts to assume the role designated for the Supreme Court as having appellate jurisdiction over state courts. Respondents maintain that the jurisdictional grant to the Supreme Court within §1257 “to review state-court judgments only if the state appellate process has been exhausted makes it all the more implausible that Congress intended that federal district courts could jump in midstream to review unexhausted state-court judgments.” Any other approach, they say, would grant federal district courts more jurisdictional authority than the Supreme Court.

NAAG Center for Supreme Court Advocacy Staff

• Dan Schweitzer, Director and Chief Counsel
• Joshua Lockett, Supreme Court Fellow
• Martha Ehlenbach, Supreme Court Fellow

The views and opinions of authors expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily state or reflect those of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG). This newsletter does not provide any legal advice and is not a substitute for the procurement of such services from a legal professional. NAAG does not endorse or recommend any commercial products, processes, or services. Any use and/or copies of the publication in whole or part must include the customary bibliographic citation. NAAG retains copyright and all other intellectual property rights in the material presented in the publications.