2000 term per curiam opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down nine per curiam opinions during its 2000 term, which began October 2, 2000 and concluded September 30, 2001.^[1]

Because per curiam decisions are issued from the Court as an institution, these opinions all lack the attribution of authorship or joining votes to specific justices. All justices on the Court at the time the decision was handed down are assumed to have participated and concurred unless otherwise noted.

Court membership

Chief Justice: William Rehnquist

Associate Justices: John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer

Sinkfield v. Kelley

531 U.S. 28
Decided November 27, 2000..
Middle District of Alabama vacated and remanded.

The Court held that the appellees lacked standing under Hays because they neither alleged nor produced any evidence that any of them was assigned to his or her district as a direct result of having personally been subjected to a racial classification

Alabama voters residing in majority-white districts adjacent to majority-minority districts. All of the districts were created under a state redistricting plan whose purpose was maximizing the number of majority-minority districts. Appellants are a group of African-American voters, whose initial state lawsuit resulted in the adoption of the plan at issue, and state officials. Appellees brought suit in Federal District Court challenging their own districts as the products of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board

531 U.S. 70
Argued December 1, 2000.
Decided December 4, 2000.
Supreme Court of Florida vacated and remanded.

Bush v. Gore

Full caption:	George W. Bush and Richard Cheney v. Albert Gore, Jr., et al.
Citations:	531 U.S. 98; 121 S. Ct. 525; 148 L. Ed. 2d 388; 2000 U.S. LEXIS 8430; 69 U.S.L.W. 4029; 2000 Cal. Daily Op. Service 9879; 2000 Colo. J. C.A.R. 6606; 14 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 26
Prior history:	Judgment for defendant, Fla. Cir. Ct.; matter certified to Florida Supreme Court, Fla. Ct. App.; aff'd in part, rev'd in part, sub nom. Palm Beach County Canvassing Bd. v. Harris, 772 So. 2d 1273 (2000); cert. granted, stay granted, 531 U.S. 1036 (2000)
Laws applied:	U.S. Const. art. II; U.S. Const. amend. XIV; 3 U.S.C. § 5
Full text of the opinion:	Wikisource Findlaw  · Justia

531 U.S. 98
Argued December 11, 2000.
Decided December 12, 2000.
Florida Supreme Court reversed and remanded.

Rehnquist filed a concurrence, joined by Scalia and Thomas. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer each filed dissents.

Fiore v. White

531 U.S. 225
Decided January 9, 2001.
Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded.

Ohio v. Reiner

532 U.S. 17
Decided March 19, 2001.
Supreme Court of Ohio reversed and remanded.

The Court's opinion reiterated that the protection of the Fifth Amendment is for the innocent as well as the wrongdoer from Grunewald v. United States.

In Grunewald, we recognized that truthful responses of an innocent witness, as well as those of a wrongdoer, may provide the government with incriminating evidence from the speaker's own mouth.

Clark County School Dist. v. Breeden

532 U.S. 268
Decided April 23, 2001.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed.

Holding: Plaintiff's complaint about a report of a sex-related comment was not protected. No reasonable person could have believed that this particular single incident would violate Title VII standard.

Major League Baseball Players Assn. v. Garvey

532 U.S. 504
Decided May 14, 2001.
Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded.

Ginsburg filed a concurrence. Stevens filed a dissent

The Court held that the lower court erred when it directed the judgment in favor of Garvey and overruled the arbitrator.

Major League Baseball Players Association (Association) filed grievances against the Major League Baseball Clubs (Clubs), claiming the Clubs had colluded in the market for free-agent services, in violation of the industry’s collective-bargaining agreement

Judicial review of a labor-arbitration decision pursuant to such an agreement is very limited. Courts are not authorized to review the arbitrator's decision on the merits despite allegations tha [sic] the decision rests on factual errors or misinterprets the parties' agreement.... It is only when the arbitrator strays from interpretation and application of the agreement and effectively 'dispenses his own brand of industrial justice' that his decision may be unenforceable

Arkansas v. Sullivan

532 U.S. 769
Decided May 29, 2001.
Supreme Court of Arkansas reversed and remanded.

Ginsburg filed a concurrence.

Notes

References