The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.
With the rest of the current term’s argument calendar filled, the grants may slow after the frenzy of December and January. On Monday, the Supreme Court added just one case to the merits docket from the relist rolls. Specifically, the court granted review in four-time relist Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, in which energy companies contend that federal law preempts state-law lawsuits claiming that oil and gas companies have knowingly exacerbated climate change. This case will be very closely watched: it represents just one of numerous such suits by state and local governments, now proceeding overwhelmingly in state courts under state law.
There are just three new relists this week.
Department of the Air Force v. Prutehi Guahan pits the Air Force against a Guam environmental group whose name means “protect Guam” in Chamorro. Since 1982, the Air Force has disposed of hazardous munitions by burning them or blowing them up on a restricted-access beach on Guam’s northeast shore. Every three years, it applies to Guam’s territorial Environmental Protection Agency for a permit allowing it to do so under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, which governs the treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste. Prutehi Guahan brought suit to challenge the Air Force’s 2021 renewal application, arguing it failed to comply with procedural requirements. A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed, holding that the Air Force’s permit application constituted “final agency action” and was thus reviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act. The panel majority then concluded that the Air Force had to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 – most notably, by preparing an Environmental Impact Statement before submitting its application. Judge Lawrence VanDyke dissented, stating that the majority opinion created a rule wrongly “finding that a perfunctory action, like routinely submitting a permit application, is enough on its own to qualify as final agency action,” and in doing so “turns the prevailing understanding of final agency action on its head” by potentially subjecting “each and every permit application” to immediate APA review. He wrote that the renewal application merely “initiated a permit process” and determined “no legal rights or obligations” until Guam EPA acted.
The United States now seeks review, warning that the 9th Circuit’s decision will create bureaucratic chaos, with “massive implications” for federal agencies that routinely seek permit renewals. An agency’s permit application, it argues, merely starts a process; the real legal consequences flow only when Guam EPA grants or denies the permit. The government contends that the decision conflicts with “precedents of other circuits holding that agency actions are not final where ‘a separate actor’ (here Guam EPA) ‘must take an additional action’” before legal consequences attach. On the merits, the government invokes the principle that specific statutes (RCRA) govern over general ones (NEPA), citing cases holding that environmental regulators need not conduct NEPA review when issuing RCRA permits.
Prutehi Guahan counters that there’s no genuine circuit split. And they argue that subsequent amendments to the NEPA reinforce the 9th Circuit’s reading. They frame NEPA as complementary, not conflicting, with the RCRA, and downplay broader stakes as “fact-bound” rather than raising pertinent legal issues for the court to hear. In reply, the government contends the NEPA amendments merely reinforced pre-existing principles and change nothing. We should get an indication Monday about how the justices view the dispute.
The next two relists involve an issue that will be quite familiar to regular readers of this feature. The court is once again being asked whether the Second Amendment protects what many courts have described as “the most popular rifle in the country.” Specifically, these petitions challenge Connecticut’s post–Sandy Hook ban on so-called “assault weapons” (including AR-15–style rifles) and magazines holding more than 10 rounds. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit assumed, without deciding, that these rifles and magazines are “bearable arms” covered by the Second Amendment and acknowledged that they are in “common use,” but nevertheless upheld the law as consistent with a historical tradition of regulating “unusually dangerous” weapons. In National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont and Grant v. Higgins, petitioners argue that this flips the court’s Second Amendment precedent protecting firearm ownership on its head: if millions of Americans own a firearm for lawful purposes, they say, that should end the matter. The state counters that these cases are interlocutory (non-final), fact-bound, and poor vehicles for resolving the broader constitutional question.
If, again, this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The court denied review in Friedman v. City of Highland Park, challenging an Illinois law, after six relists in 2015 (prompting Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, to write an opinion dissenting from denial lamenting the “second-class right” treatment of the Second Amendment). In early 2020, it relisted Wilson v. Cook County, challenging the Illinois law, six times. In spring 2024, a group of Illinois “assault weapon” petitions were relisted six times before meeting their end, with Thomas again writing. Snope v. Brown, challenging Maryland’s restrictions on assault-weapons, was relisted 13 times between January and June 2025, prompting another dissent from Thomas, and leading Justice Brett Kavanaugh to write that “this Court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.” And now pending are six-time relists in Viramontes v. Cook County (AR-15s), Gator’s Custom Guns, Inc. v. Washington (high-capacity magazines), and Duncan v. Bonta (high-capacity magazines). The court has repeatedly circled this question without quite pulling the trigger. We’ll find out soon if this time is going to be any different.
New Relists
National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont, 25-421
Issue: Whether a ban on the possession of AR-15-style rifles and firearm magazines with a capacity in excess of 10 rounds violates the Second Amendment.
(Relisted after the Feb. 20 conference.)
Issue: Whether the Second and 14th Amendments guarantee the right to possess semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the AR-15.
(Relisted after the Feb. 20 conference.)
Department of the Air Force v. Prutehi Guahan, 25-579
Issues: (1) Whether the federal government’s submission to a state or territorial regulator of an application to renew a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 permit is “final agency action” that is immediately reviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act; and (2) whether the federal government must comply with the general environmental-review procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, before submitting a permit-renewal application under RCRA, which sets forth its own specific procedures to review environmental impacts in the context of hazardous-waste treatment.
(Relisted after the Feb. 20 conference.)
Returning Relists
Issues: (1) Whether, viewing the facts from the officers’ perspective at the time, the officers acted reasonably under the Fourth Amendment by using bodyweight pressure to restrain a potentially armed and actively resisting individual only until handcuffing could be accomplished; and (2) whether the panel erred in denying qualified immunity where no case clearly established that pre-handcuffing bodyweight pressure violates the Fourth Amendment.
(Relisted after the Sept. 29, Oct. 10, Oct. 17, Nov. 7, Nov. 14, Nov. 21, Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Issue: Whether the Second Amendment allows the federal government to permanently disarm Petitioner, who has one seventeen-year-old nonviolent felony conviction for trying to pass a bad check.
(Relisted after the Nov. 21, Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, 25-77
Issue: Whether a public school violates parents’ constitutional rights when, without parental knowledge or consent, the school encourages a student to transition to a new “gender” or participates in that process.
(Relisted after the Nov. 21, Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Thompson v. United States, 25-5434
Issue: Whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)’s lifetime ban on firearm possession for all individuals previously convicted of a felony violates the Second Amendment, either facially or as applied to the Petitioner.
(Relisted after the Nov. 21, Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Issue: Whether the requirement that a verdict be based only on the evidence presented in the courtroom at trial satisfies 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)‘s “clearly established” requirement, and if so, whether a jury’s consideration of and reliance on extrinsic evidence as part of a jury experiment violates this rule.
(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, and Jan. 16 conferences; now being held awaiting the filing of an opposition to Fields’ rehearing petition.)
Issue: Whether Article 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, as authoritatively construed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, violates due process by arbitrarily denying prisoners access to postconviction DNA testing, rendering illusory prisoners’ state-created right to prove their innocence through newly discovered evidence.
(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Gator’s Custom Guns, Inc. v. Washington, 25-153
Issue: Whether ammunition feeding devices with the capacity to hold more than ten rounds are “Arms” presumptively entitled to constitutional protection under the plain text of the Second Amendment.
(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Issue: (1) Whether a ban on the possession of exceedingly common ammunition feeding devices violates the Second Amendment; and (2) whether a law dispossessing citizens, without compensation, of property that they lawfully acquired and long possessed without incident violates the takings clause.
(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Viramontes v. Cook County, 25-238
Issue: Whether the Second and 14th Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.
(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Issue: Whether the 2nd Circuit’s qualified immunity analysis conflicts with the court’s repeated instruction that courts must define rights with specificity and look for close factual analogues in determining whether a Fourth Amendment right is clearly established.
(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Issue: (1) Whether it obviously violates the First Amendment to arrest someone for asking government officials questions and publishing the information they volunteer; and (2) whether qualified immunity is unavailable to public officials who use a state statute in a way that obviously violates the First Amendment, or whether qualified immunity shields those officials.
(Relisted after the Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, and Jan. 23 conferences; record requested and now held awaiting arrival.)
Sittenfeld v. United States, 25-49
Issue: Whether, when the government alleges bribery based solely on lawful campaign contributions, the defendant may be convicted based on evidence that is ambiguous as to whether the public official conditioned any official act on the campaign contributions.
(Relisted after the Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Poore v. United States, 25-227
Issue: Whether the limits on agency deference announced in Kisor v. Wilkie and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo constrain the deference courts may accord the United States Sentencing Commission’s interpretation of its own rules via commentary.
(Relisted after the Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
District of Columbia v. R.W., 25-248
Issue: (1) Whether a court assessing the existence of reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment may exclude a fact known to the officer, or instead must assess all the evidence when weighing the totality of the circumstances; and (2) whether, under the totality-of-the-circumstances test, the officer in this case had reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop.
(Relisted after the Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Stroble v. Oklahoma Tax Commission, 25-382
Issue: Whether Oklahoma may tax the income of a Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen who lives and works within the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation that McGirt v. Oklahoma held remains Indian country.
(Relisted after the Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga, 25-430
Issue: Whether dismissal of a claim after assertion of the state-secrets privilege requires a district court to adjudicate the merits of the claim using the privileged information where the privileged information is relevant to a defense.
(Relisted after the Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
Johnson v. High Desert State Prison, 25-457
Issue: Whether 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(1) requires each incarcerated plaintiff filing in forma pauperis to pay the full amount of a filing fee whether or not he is filing a joint civil action with other plaintiffs.
(Relisted after the Jan. 16, Jan. 23, and Feb. 20 conferences.)
