State Court Oral Arguments to Watch for in January

Each month, State Court Report previews upcoming oral arguments in prominent or interesting state court cases.

In January, state supreme courts will take up a wide range of issues, including a ban on large-capacity magazines, power struggles between a governor and legislature over “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ people, constitutional limitations on life-without-parole sentences, and more.

Challenge to Jersey City’s Municipal Wards — January 6

Jersey City United Against the New Ward Map v. Jersey City Ward Commission, New Jersey Supreme Court

The New Jersey Supreme Court will weigh in on controversial new boundaries for the municipal election districts — known as “wards”— in the state’s second largest city, redrawn after the 2020 census revealed a significant population disparity between the most and least populous wards. Eighteen Jersey City organizations and the city councilman for an especially affected district sued the commission behind the redrawing. They allege that the new ward map carves up longstanding neighborhoods (including one of the state’s oldest Black communities), ignores natural geographic boundaries, and even splits buildings. The plaintiffs also claim that the changes to the councilman’s ward, including removal of many of his supporters, was retaliation “for his campaign advocacy around affordable housing, gentrification and displacement.”

At issue before the state high court is whether these allegations amount to valid claims under New Jersey’s equal protection clause, civil rights law, and a statute requiring municipal wards to be “compact.” An intermediate appellate court rejected the plaintiffs’ arguments that equal protection and “compactness” — a term not defined in the law or previous published decisions — require maintaining “communities of interest” and historic neighborhoods.

Watch the arguments here.

Does New York’s Ethics Watchdog Violate Separation of Powers? — January 7

Cuomo v. New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, New York Court of Appeals

New York’s high court will consider the constitutionality of the state’s government ethics commission. That commission was created with the support of Gov. Kathy Hochul to replace the prior watchdog, which was set up during former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration and criticized as “ineffectual.”

Cuomo sued the commission after it investigated him for allegedly violating ethics rules by using his staff to help write a book, for which he received $5.1 million. (He denies the allegations.) Cuomo claims its structure violates state separation of powers laws because it has “quintessentially executive powers” — namely the ability to enforce ethics laws through civil penalties and discipline — but legislators and unelected law school deans have the power to appoint a majority of members. The governor’s lack of control over the members’ appointment, as well as oversight and removal, usurps her constitutional duty to “take care” that those laws are “faithfully executed,” Cuomo argues. Lower courts agreed.

Watch the arguments here.

Texans Fight Regulation of “Extraterritorial Jurisdiction” — January 15

Elliott v. City of College Station, Texas Supreme Court

The Texas Supreme Court will determine if courts can resolve whether the state constitution’s clause preserving a “republican form of government” protects citizens from being subject to city regulations when they cannot vote in city elections. The plaintiffs in the case, who live near College Station, Texas — in what’s known as an “extraterritorial jurisdiction” encompassing areas just outside a city’s boundaries — want to place portable signs on their property and to build a driveway. They cannot vote in College Station elections but are subject to city ordinances that restrict both actions, a contradiction they say violates the principles of democratic representation embedded in the “republican form of government” clause.

College Station argues that claims under this clause are nonjusticiable political questions — questions the court does not have the power to decide — in part because there are no manageable standards courts can use to enforce the clause. Finding in favor of the plaintiffs’ arguments, the city asserts, would also undo authority the Texas legislature gave cities a century ago to regulate extraterritorial areas. Arguing in favor of judicial review, the plaintiffs maintain that claims under Texas’s Bill of Rights by definition cannot be political questions, as the “entire purpose” of these clauses is to insulate certain rights from the political process and place them under the judiciary’s protection.

Watch the arguments here.

Washington High Court Considers an Ammunition Ban — January 14

Washington v. Gator’s Custom Guns, Washington Supreme Court

The Washington high court will address whether the state’s ban on selling or possessing large capacity magazines violates the state constitution’s protection of the right to bear arms and the federal Second Amendment. A trial court found the ban did violate the state constitution, largely basing its decision on recent U.S. Supreme Court Second Amendment precedent as a “floor” for the analogous state constitutional right. The Washington Supreme Court stayed that decision while the appeal is pending.

In a July order reaffirming the stay, the Washington Supreme Court noted the lower court decision rested on the 2022 Supreme Court case New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which found unconstitutional a New York statute that required applicants for certain concealed handgun permits to show a “special need” for self-defense. But the lower court, the state high court said, did not have the benefit of 2024’s United States v. Rahimi decision, which found that a person subject to a domestic-violence restraining order could be prohibited, at least temporarily, from possessing a firearm. On appeal, the state of Washington is arguing large-capacity magazines are military-style accessories and should not qualify under state law as “arms” commonly used for self-defense. Further, they say, the state constitution’s right to bear arms is subject to reasonable regulation.

Watch the argument here.

Wisconsin Governor and Legislature at Odds over “Conversion Therapy” — January 16

Evers v. Marklein, Wisconsin Supreme Court

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide whether a legislative committee’s vetoes of an agency rule that would ban the practice of “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ patients violates the separation of powers principles in the Wisconsin Constitution. In 2020, an executive-branch board that sets ethics standards for mental health professionals announced it would categorize therapy techniques seeking to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity as unethical and subject to sanction. But the Republican-controlled rules committee of the state legislature effectively blocked the rule change for three-and-a-half years until the latest suspension of the rule expired in April 2024.

The governor is challenging the committee’s vetoes. At issue is whether laws permitting this type of veto unconstitutionally intrude on executive agencies’ power to execute the law through rulemaking, or whether rulemaking is instead a shared power in which an agency’s role is subordinate to the legislature’s. In July, the Wisconsin high court sided with the governor in an earlier installment of the case. The court ruled that a legislative budget committee could not block a land conservation agency’s decisions about how to spend money already appropriated to the agency by the legislature, as those vetoes violated the executive branch’s “core power” to carry out the law.

Listen to the arguments here.

Mandatory Life Without Parole Under Scrutiny in Michigan — January 22

People v. Czarnecki, People v. Taylor, People v. Poole, People v. Langston, Michigan Supreme Court

The Michigan Supreme Court will hear a series of matters raising whether mandating a life sentence, without the possibility of parole, violates the state constitution’s ban on “cruel or unusual” punishment.

Three cases address the application of criminal laws that automatically impose such sentences to defendants who were late adolescents when offenses occurred. The defendants in these cases have asked the Michigan high court to extend its 2022 ruling in People v. Parks that mandatorily sentencing to life-without-parole defendants who were 18 at the time of their charged crimes is cruel punishment under the Michigan Constitution. In Czarnecki, the question is whether to extend Parks’s holding to defendants who were 19 at commission of the crime. In Taylor, the question is whether instead to extend that cutoff to age 20. As support, the defendants and amicus groups point to evolving scientific research that brain development at 19 or 20 is “indistinguishable” from that at 18. Similar arguments have prevailed in other states, including Washington and Massachusetts, with significant personal and legal impacts, as State Court Report has covered. In the third case, Poole, the issue is not the offenders’ age but whether defendants who had already exhausted their direct appeals when Parks was decided may still seek resentencing.

A fourth case, Langston, considers mandatory application of life-without-parole sentences to adults convicted of “felony murder,” despite no evidence that they acted with malice. Felony murder is a legal doctrine that permits a defendant to be prosecuted for murder for a death that occurred while he was allegedly committing a separate felony, even if he had no intent to kill. In 1980, the Michigan high court effectively ended the “felony murder” doctrine in the state by ruling that malice — defined as intent to kill or to do “great bodily harm,” or “wanton and willful disregard” that conduct is likely to have such a result — is a necessary element of any murder charge, including felony murder. But the court made its decision applicable only to pending and future trials, not to defendants like Langston convicted prior to the ruling. Langston contends that imposition of Michigan’s most severe sentence without evidence of malice is unconstitutionally excessive. As State Court Report has reported, a similar state constitutional challenge recently failed in Colorado. Another is awaiting decision in Pennsylvania.

Watch the arguments in the Michigan cases here.

Sarah Kessler is an advisor to State Court Report.

Erin Geiger Smith is a writer and editor at the Brennan Center for Justice.