October 2, 2025
Today, the Court didn't publish any new orders on its "Orders of the Court" or "Opinions Relating to Orders" pages. But I was able to find something that probably should have been published as a "miscellaneous order" today but, for some unknown reason, was not. Specifically, in the stay application 25A376 (Samantha Estefania Franc Castro v. Jose Leonardo Brito Guevara), Alito (the circuit justice to whom the application was submitted, because it originated from the Fifth Circuit) granted an administrative stay (by himself, without referring it to the full court) of the Fifth Circuit's mandate. I can't find much media discussion of this aside from this Law360 article. However, looking at the application itself sheds significant light on why the applications thought it was so urgent.
The first sentence of the introduction reads: "This application concerns whether, pending a forthcoming petition for certiorari, a seven-year-old girl residing in Dallas, Texas with her mother should be sent back to Venezuela, a country she has not entered since she was three years old and where neither of her parents currently live." (Emphasis in original.) Basically, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit reversed a district court's decision and decided that this seven-year-old girl should be sent back to Venezuela. In doing so, the panel applied de novo review to the district court's conclusions about whether a child is "well settled" under the Hague Convention, which contradicts the decisions of multiple other circuits applying the much more deferential clear-error standard of review to conclusions about this subject. The Fifth Circuit was going to issue its mandate forcing the girl to be sent to Venezuela on October 3, and the application was submitted just two days before that date. Fortunately, Alito issued the requested administrative stay just in time, on October 2. He also asked that the respondent file a reply to the stay application, giving them until October 16 to do so.
New petitions
A whopping 17 represented petitions were docketed today. They are listed below, with the capital cases highlighted in red.
The last one listed, Crawford v. Mississippi, is different from the other 16 petitions on the list because not only is it a capital case, but it is an especially urgent one because the petitioner's execution date has already been set (you can tell it's urgent because the docket doesn't give a due date for a response).
The petitioner, Charles Crawford, is set to be executed on October 15. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1994 for kidnapping, raping, and murdering a 20-year-old woman named Kristy Ray in 1993, per the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. At the Supreme Court, Crawford is represented by former Obama administration Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who is arguing that:
a) Crawford received constitutionally ineffective assistance at the trial when he was convicted of murder because his trial lawyer conceded to the jury that Crawford was guilty despite Crawford repeatedly and vehemently objecting to and disagreeing with this admission,
b) this admission did not just violate Crawford's Sixth Amendment rights under McCoy v. Louisiana, 584 U.S. 414 (2018), but also that
c) McCoy applies retroactively under Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989), because McCoy didn't count as a "new rule" of the sort deemed to not generally apply retroactively under Teague, and
d) this violation was structural error, so the state can't validly argue that the violation of Crawford's constitutional rights was harmless, and instead his conviction must be reversed, at least if Crawford's lawyers are to be believed. The structural error argument is based on the holding in McCoy in which a lawyer admitting to guilt over a client's objection was held to be structural error (meaning it requires reversal regardless of harmlessness).
Despite a colorable legal argument and top-notch appellate representation, however, Crawford will almost certainly be denied a stay of execution or the accompanying writ of certiorari for his conviction and death sentence. By my count, the Court has denied 41 applications for stays of execution by death row inmates this year alone, and hasn't granted a single one.
The closest they seem to have come is Jessie Hoffman. In 24A893, the stay application, the three liberals plus Gorsuch would have granted the stay, but of course that's only four justices, and you would need at least five to grant a stay. I'm not exactly sure why they didn't deny the certiorari petition (24-6778) at the time--almost always these last-minute applications from death row inmates are accompanied by expedited cert petitions that are denied together with the applications. (Instead, they dismissed the petition as moot a month after Hoffman was executed.)
Calls for a response
The Court requested a response in multiple petitions today:
- 25-151 (and consolidated case 24-1192), Kim H. Peterson v. Krista Freitag. The question presented here is "Whether a federal court overseeing an equity receivership has equitable authority to dispose of claims that belong to a third-party against nonreceivership entities without the claimants’ consent." The petition's "question presented" page explicitly points to Trump v. CASA and Harrington v. Purdue Pharma as analogous cases where the Court has limited the ability of lower courts to order relief that affects objecting parties or non-parties.
- 25-173, Elizabeth Flynt v. Rob Bonta. The question presented here is "Whether a state law that discriminates against firms engaged in interstate commerce by forcing firms to choose between being part of the enacting state’s intrastate market, or the interstate markets of the other states, but not both violates the dormant Commerce Clause?"
- 25-297, Jacob P. Zorn v. Shela M. Linton. This case originated from a Fourth Amendment excessive force claim brought by Linton, who sued Zorn in federal district court in 2018. The underlying events occurred in 2015, when, per Casemine, "Sergeant Jacob P. Zorn used a “rear wristlock” pain-compliance hold to disengage Ms. Linton’s linked arms and then to compel her to stand, inflicting permanent wrist and shoulder injuries." She also alleged that Zorn had singled her out for excessive force because she is black. The district court dismissed the suit in 2022 after concluding that Zorn was entitled to qualified immunity because there was no "clearly established" rule that what he did to Linton was unconstitutional. But when Linton appealed, a divided Second Circuit panel sided with her and reversed the district court's dismissal. The Second Circuit's decision in this case is reported at 135 F.4th 19 (2025).
- The cert petition casts doubt on the validity of the Second Circuit's conclusion that Zorn's actions violated "clearly established" law: according to the petition, the Second Circuit held that Zorn's "conduct was governed by Amnesty America v. Town of West Hartford, 361 F.3d 113 (2d Cir. 2004), where the court allowed an excessive force claim to proceed based on allegations that municipal police officers did things like kneeling on protesters’ backs, stepping on their heads, pulling their hair, and slamming them face-first onto the ground and against walls."
- 25-303, Cook County, Illinois v. John Nawara. The question presented is: "Does the Americans with Disabilities Act allow an employer to be held liable for discrimination on the basis of disability where the employee has no physical or mental impairment and is not regarded as having such an impairment?" The decision Cook County, Illinois (home of Chicago and almost half of Illinois's population) wants the Supreme Court to overturn came from the Seventh Circuit, which is the federal appeals court covering Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. As Bloomberg summarized when that court issued its decision earlier this year, the Seventh Circuit held "that a former Illinois corrections officer could recoup back pay in an Americans with Disabilities Act case accusing his employer of requiring an unlawful fitness-for-duty test. The worker, John Nawara, never claimed he was disabled or that his employer perceived him as having a disability—a typical requirement for ADA discrimination claims." Bloomberg also quoted some attorneys who were concerned about the impact of this decision. For example, according to Amy Epstein Gluck, a partner at management-side firm Pierson Ferdinand LLP, “The ruling may encourage more employees to challenge unlawful medical examinations and inquiries, knowing that they can seek back pay even without proving disability discrimination. This could lead not only to an increase in ADA-related litigation, but to confusion for employers as to when and how to accommodate qualified individuals with a disability.” Of course, this Court will probably side with the more powerful and wealthy employer class here.
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