Utah Law Developments
| Publication year | 2015 |
| Pages | 43 |
| Citation | Vol. 28 No. 6 Pg. 43 |
November, 2015
Appellate Highlights
Rodney R. Parker, Dani Cepernich, Nathanael Mitchell, Adam Pace, and Taymour Semnani
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following appellate cases of interest were recently decided by the United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, Utah Supreme Court, and Utah Court of Appeals.
United States v. Spaulding, __ F.3d __, 2015 WL 5105472 (10th Cir. September 1, 2015)
The Tenth Circuit held, as a matter of first impression, that Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(e) is jurisdictional. Because the lower court lacked jurisdiction to entertain a motion to withdraw the defendant’s guilty plea after the imposition of a sentence, the Tenth Circuit vacated the judgment and remanded with instructions to reinstate the original sentence.
Harvey v. UTE Indian Tribe of the Uintah & Ouray Reservation, 797 F.3d 800 (10th Cir. August 13, 2015)
The Tenth Circuit held that a district court order remanding a case to state court on the basis that the defendants did not unanimously join or consent to removal is patently unreviewable.
In re C.W. Min. Co., __ F.3d __, 2015 WL 4717709 (10th Cir. August 10, 2015)
A first-time transaction between debtor and creditor can still meet the ordinary course of business exception, when viewed in the context of other, similarly-situated entities.
Cressman v. Thompson, 798 F.3d 938 (10th Cir. August 4, 2015)
The court rejected a First Amendment compelled speech claim over the Oklahoma standard license plate, which depicts a Native American shooting an arrow towards the sky. After a bench trial, the district court concluded that a reasonable person would not understand the license plate image to convey the pantheistic message to which appellant objected and therefore that appellant was not compelled to speak. The Tenth Circuit affirmed, reasoning that appellant’s lack of objection to the only message that a reasonable observer of the license plate would discern (relating to Oklahoma’s Native American History) was fatal to his claim.
Sharp v. Rohling, 793 F.3d 1216 (10th Cir. July 15, 2015)
Petitioner’s statements obtained during an interview in which a detective made representations about leniency and promised to find shelter for the petitioner and her two children, who were homeless at the time, were involuntary and the state court’s admission of those statements was not harmless error.
Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged, Denver Colo. v. Burwell, 794 F.3d 1151 (10th Cir. July 14, 2015)
The Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs, concluding that the mandate and accommodation scheme of the Affordable Care Act do not substantially burden the plaintiffs’ religious exercise under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or infringe upon their First Amendment rights.
Bonidy v. United States Postal Service, 790 F.3d 1121 (10th Cir. June 26, 2015)
The court rejected a postal worker’s challenge to a federal regulation that prohibited him from carrying his firearm onto USPS property. First, the court held that the parking lot should be considered a single unit with the federal building, for which prohibition of firearms is clearly allowed. As an alternative ground, the court upheld the regulation under an intermediate scrutiny analysis, which it held was appropriate in the context of Second Amendment challenges.
Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah & Ouray Reservation v. Utah, 790 F.3d 1000 (10th Cir. June 16, 2015)
In this latest episode in a nearly forty-year long battle...
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