UNITED STATES v.

WINDSOR, executor of the ESTATE OF SPYER, et al

Argued March 27, 2013
Decided June 26, 2013

FACTS:
Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer shared their lives together as a couple in New York City for over 40 years.
They were married in Canada in 2007. Spyer died in 2009, at which time New York legally recognized
same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. After Spyers death Windsor was required to pay
more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes on her inheritance. If federal law accorded their marriage the
same status as heterosexual marriages recognized by their state, she would have paid no taxes. She
challenged Section 3 of DOMA, which limits federal recognition of marriage only to opposite-sex
marriages.
ISSUE:
Whether or not Section 3 of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is constitutional
RULING:
On June 24, 2013, the Supreme Court held that the United States Government, despite the executive
branchs agreement regarding DOMAs unconstitutionality, retains a significant enough stake in the issue
to support Supreme Courts jurisdiction. Because the judgment in question orders the U.S. Treasury to
refund tax money, the government stands to suffer a real economic injury and therefore maintains
standing in the case. The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) presented substantial arguments for
the constitutionality of DOMA that reflected an actual controversy under Article III, which allowed the
Supreme Court to address the case without needing to decide whether BLAG would have had standing
before a lower court. The Court also held that states have the authority to define marital relationships and
that DOMA goes against legislative and historical precedent by undermining that authority. The result is
that DOMA denies same-sex couples the rights that come from federal recognition of marriage, which are
available to other couples with legal marriages under state law. The Court held that the purpose and
effect of DOMA is to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma on same-sex couples in
violation of the Fifth Amendments guarantee of equal protection.

Riley v. California
Argued: April 29, 2014
Decided: June 25, 2014

FACTS:
On August 2, 2009 around 2:30 p.m., David Riley, an alleged member of the Lincoln Park gang, was
parked in a San Diego neighborhood with his girlfriend and three other men. When a member of a rival
gang, Mr. Webster, drove through the nearby intersection, the three men near Rileys car fired multiple
shots into Mr. Websters car. After Mr. Websters car crashed, the three nearby shooters got into Rileys
car, an Oldsmobile, and drove away. Eyewitnesses to the shooting claimed that Riley could have been
one of the shooters but declined to give a definitive positive identification of Riley as one of the
shooters. Police found Rileys Oldsmobile in a known Lincoln Park gang area the next day almost
completely hidden.
When Riley was pulled over on August 22, 2009 for expired registrations tags in his second car, a Lexus,
San Diego Police Officer Dunnigan also found that Riley was driving with a suspended drivers
license. The San Diego Police Departments policy is to tow and impound a vehicle after stopping a driver
with a suspended license in order to prevent the driver from driving again. Additionally, policy dictates that
the police must perform an inventory search of the vehicle, which in this case led to the discovery of two
handguns that, through ballistic testing, were confirmed as the weapons used in the August 2nd shooting
of Mr. Webster. None of this information was known by Officer Dunnigan at the time of Rileys traffic stop.
Because of the discovery of the guns and other gang paraphernalia during the vehicle search, police
placed Riley under arrest and searched his cell phone without a warrant. Search of the cell phone yielded
information indicating that Riley was a member of the Lincoln Park gang; evidence included pictures, cell
phone contacts, texts messages, and video clips. Included in the photos was a picture of the Oldsmobile
involved in the shooting of Mr. Webster. The Petitioner moved to suppress the cell phone evidence at the
trial level, but the judge permitted this evidence in both the first trial and on retrial. Ultimately, Riley was
convicted on three charges and the California Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment.

ISSUE:
Whether officers can search a suspect's cell phone without a warrant during an arrest

RULING:
Chief Justice Roberts said that comparing modern smartphones to wallets, for the purposes of applying
the SITA rule, was like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the
moon. The US Supreme Court acknowledged that, with respect to the law enforcement interests
justifying the reasonableness of the Searches Incident to a Lawful Arrest (SITA) rule, modern
smartphones could very likely contain significant evidence of criminal activity. However, on the privacy
side of the balancing equation, modern smartphones, implicate privacy concerns far beyond those
implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet or a purse.

Noting that smartphones differ in both a quantitative and qualitative sense from other objects that may be
kept on an arrestees person, the USSC stated that the sum of an individuals entire life could be
reconstructed from the digital data stored on such a phone. The heightened privacy concerns implicated
by smartphone searches thus demanded a different 4th amendment balance than the one justifying the
established SITA rule. The new rule, said the USSC, is that before searches of the databases of
smartphones taken from arrestees could take place, police must have:
a. probable cause to believe that the phone will contain evidence of criminal offending; and
b. turn that into an application for a search warrant granted by a detached and neutral magistrate.
In response to the argument that this would cause an increased burden on law enforcement when dealing
with arrestees, Chief Justice Roberts replied simply: Privacy comes at a cost.

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Argued: March 25, 2014

Decided: June 30, 2014

FACTS:
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. was a consolidation of two cases, originally called Sebelius v. Hobby
Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Sebelius; the case names were
changed to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Burwell,
respectively, following the confirmation of Sylvia Burwell as secretary of health and human services in
June 2014. The former case arose in 2012 when David and Barbara Green, their children, and the forprofit corporations they ownedHobby Lobby, Inc. (an arts-and-crafts retailer) and Mardel Christian &
Education Stores, Inc. (a chain of Christian bookstores)filed suit in U.S. district court, naming Kathleen
Sebelius, then secretary of health and human services, and others as defendants. The individual plaintiffs
(the Greens) alleged that the imminent enforcement of a regulation issued by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010;
PPACA) would infringe their rights under the RFRA, which prohibited the government from substantially
burden[ing] a persons exercise of religion unless application of the burdenis in furtherance of a
compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering thatinterest. The
Greens also contended that the regulation would violate the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment
(Congress shall make no lawprohibiting the free exercise [of religion]).

Eventually known as the contraceptive mandate, the regulation required companies with 50 or more
employees to provide insurance coverage of the 20 contraceptive methods then approved by the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA). Despite scientific consensus to the contrary, the Greens believed that four
of those methodstwo types of morning after pills and two types of intrauterine devices (IUDs)were
abortifacients (abortion inducers). On that basis they also believed that providing coverage of those
methods in their employees health insurance plans would be tantamount to facilitating abortion and
therefore inconsistent with the tenets of their Christian faith. They argued that, because HHS imposed
considerable penalties (regulatory taxes of $100 per day per affected employee) on companies whose
health insurance plans failed to provide basic essential coverage, including contraceptive coverage, the
contraceptive mandate constituted a substantial burden on their exercise of religiona violation of both
the RFRA and the free-exercise clause.

The district court denied the Greens motion for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the
mandate, as did a two-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. After Supreme Court
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, acting in her capacity as Circuit Justice for the Tenth Circuit, denied emergency
injunctive relief, the Tenth Circuit granted the Greens motion for an expedited en banc hearing (before all
judges of the court). In its ruling, the appeals court found that for-profit corporations can be persons
exercising religion for purposes of the [RFRA] and that Free Exercise rights may extend to some forprofit organizations. The Tenth Circuit also held that the contraceptive-coverage requirement constitutes
a substantial burden on Hobby Lobby and Mardels exercise of religion; that the corporations were likely
to suffer irreparable harm unless the requirement were enjoined; and that, even assuming that the

governments interest in providing women with free access to the contraceptives in question was
compelling, the government had failed to show that the contraceptive mandate was the least-restrictive
means of furthering that interest. It accordingly reversed the district courts judgment and remanded the
case for further consideration of the plaintiffs motion for a preliminary injunction.

The respondents then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case in
combination with a similar appeal, Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Sebelius, involving the
Mennonite owners of a woodworking company. In that case the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had
held that for-profit, secular corporations cannot engage in religious exercise for the purposes of the
RFRA or the free-exercise clause. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on March 25, 2014.
ISSUE:
Whether contraceptive mandate violated the statutory rights under the RFRA of both the individual
plaintiffs and the for-profit corporations they owned
RULING:
In an opinion for a 54 majority written by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., the Supreme Court held that the
contraceptive mandate violated the statutory rights under the RFRA of both the individual plaintiffs and the
for-profit corporations they owned. The court first argued that for-profit corporations could be persons
within the meaning of the RFRA, because the Dictionary Act (1871)which provided definitions of
common terms for purposes of statutory interpretationstated that the word person may apply to
corporations (among other entities) as well as individuals, and there was nothing in the text of the RFRA
to indicate that Congress had intended the word to have any narrower meaning. Furthermore, various
Supreme Court decisions since 1993 had taken for granted that religious nonprofit corporations and other
institutions (such as churches) could be persons under the RFRA and the free-exercise clause, and HHS
itself had conceded in a brief for the present case that the RFRA could apply to nonprofit corporations as
persons. If person as used in the RFRA applied to individuals and nonprofit corporations, the court
reasoned, it must also apply to for-profit corporations, because no known understanding of the term
person includes some but not all corporations.

Given that for-profit corporations are persons under the RFRA, the court continued, it remained to
determine whether the contraceptive mandate constituted a substantial burden on the religious exercise
of the three corporations and their owners and whether the government had demonstrated that the
mandate was the least-restrictive means at its disposal to advance its interest (the court assumed without
argument that the governments interest was compelling). The court held that the mandate did amount
to a substantial burden, because the corporations and their owners believed that providing insurance
coverage of the four methods was inconsistent with their religious faith and because the penalty they
would face for failure to provide the coverage was severe. In reaching that conclusion, the court was
careful to point out that it was not entitled to determine whether the plaintiffs religious beliefs were
mistaken or insubstantial. Instead, the court insisted (citing the Supreme Courts earlier decision in
Thomas v. Review Board of the Indiana Employment Security Division [1981]), our narrow functionin
this context is to determine whether the line drawn by the plaintiffsbetween what was consistent with
their religion and what was notreflects an honest convictionand there is no dispute that it does.

Finally, the court held that the government had failed to establish that the contraceptive mandate was the
least-restrictive means available to advance its interest, because there were conceivableand indeed
already existingalternatives that, unlike the mandate, would not substantially burden the plaintiffs
religious exercise. For example, the government couldassume the cost of providing the four
contraceptives at issue to any women who are unable to obtain them under their health-insurance policies
due to their employers religious objections.

Or, if the government deemed it undesirable to create an entirely new federal program to pay for the
contraceptives, it could instead implement the accommodation that it had already made available to
nonprofit corporations and other institutions that objected to the contraceptive mandate on religious
grounds. In those cases, HHS required that the religious organization self-certify that it opposed certain
methods of contraception, whereupon the insurer would be obliged to pay the full cost of the
contraceptive services. That accommodation, the court asserted,does not impinge on the plaintiffs
religious belief that providing insurance coverage for the contraceptives at issue here violates their
religion, and it serves HHSs stated interests equally well.

The court thus concluded that the contraceptive mandate was unlawful under the RFRA. (Having struck
down the mandate on statutory grounds, the court deemed it unnecessary to consider whether the
mandate was also unconstitutional under the free-exercise clause.)

The court took care to caution that its decision concerned only the lawfulness of the contraceptive
mandate and should not be understood to imply that any insurance-coverage mandate (e.g., for
transfusions or immunizations) must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employers religious beliefs.
The court also denied that its decision might enable an employer to cloak racial discrimination in hiring as
a religious practice, becausethe Government has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity
to participate in the workforce without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are
precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal.

Alitos opinion was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and by Justices Anthony Kennedy,
Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Kennedy also filed a concurring opinion in which he reiterated the
courts view that its decision applied only to the contraceptive mandate and that the accommodation
devised by HHS for religious nonprofits does not impinge on the plaintiffs religious beliefs.