Cases compared
Anthony Lewis v. HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital vs. Douglas Wain, et ux., Petitioners v. Kimberly Nell Bunnell, Chief Regional Judge, 22nd Judicial Circuit Division 9, Fayette County, Kentucky, et al. vs. N. R. v. Keith M. Ellison, Attorney General of Minnesota
Civil Rights cases on the Supreme Court docket, side by side.
No. 25-1041No. 25-1271No. 25-1287
Side by side
| Fact | Anthony Lewis v. HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital | Douglas Wain, et ux., Petitioners v. Kimberly Nell Bunnell, Chief Regional Judge, 22nd Judicial Circuit Division 9, Fayette County, Kentucky, et al. | N. R. v. Keith M. Ellison, Attorney General of Minnesota |
|---|---|---|---|
| Docket | 25-1041 | 25-1271 | 25-1287 |
| Status | Dismissed | Before Arguments | Before Arguments |
| Date | October Term 2025 (2025–2026) | October Term 2025 (2025–2026) | October Term 2025 (2025–2026) |
| Question presented | 1. Whether the district court deprived Dr. Lewis and his counsel of their statutory or procedural right to amend the First Amended Complaint without leave of court pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(1)(B). 2. Whether the district court violated Dr. Lewis’s and his counsel’s First Amendment right to petition pursuant to the holding in NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963) (First Amendment) and its progeny. 3. Whether the district court violated Dr. Lewis’s and his counsel’s Thirteenth Amendment right to petition pursuant to the holding in Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 22 (1883) (Thirteenth Amendment; Civil Rights Act of 1866) and its progeny. | 1. Whether absolute judicial immunity under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 bars a civil rights claim against a state court judge who issued a dispositive ruling against plaintiffs three days after being served at her judicial chambers with those same plaintiffs' federal civil rights complaint naming her as a defendant, where the ruling dismissed counterclaims that had been pending for nearly six years at a hearing noticed only for limited procedural matters? 2. Whether Williams v. Pennsylvania, 579 U.S. 1 (2016), and Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868 (2009), which together establish that the Due Process Clause requires mandatory disqualification where a judge has a significant personal stake in a matter adverse to a litigant, create a constitutional limitation on the scope of absolute judicial immunity when the judge's “judicial act” is itself the source of the constitutional violation — specifically, the act of issuing a ruling while subject to a direct personal adversarial conflict with the parties before her? 3. Whether absolute judicial immunity extends to judicial acts taken after a judge has been served at her judicial chambers with a § 1983 civil rights complaint naming her as a defendant, where those acts directly and adversely affect the plaintiffs in that same § 1983 action, thereby creating the precise conflict of interest that Williams v. Pennsylvania and Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. held constitutionally intolerable? | 1. Whether this Court lacks jurisdiction because the decision below rests on adequate and independent state law grounds. 2. Whether Petitioners lack standing to challenge ICWA and MIFPA’s placement preference s for extended family members because otherwise applicable Minnesota law also grants the twins’ extended family members placement prefer-ence over Petitioners. 3. Whether the Juvenile C ourt’s consideration of Petitioners’ challenge to ICWA and MIFPA as part of the permissive-intervention analysis comported with the First Amendment and due process, when Petitioners had no legally pro-tected stake in the juvenile proceedings, when Petitioners’ challenge was considered only as evidence of Petitioners’ attitude toward the children’s tribal identity, and when the Juve-nile Court had multiple independent grounds for denying permissive intervention. 4. Whether ICWA and MIFPA’s preferences for placement of tribal member children with their extended family members rather than non-relative foster parents — regardless of the race of any potential placement — comports with equal protection. |
| Summary | Dr. Anthony Lewis sought Supreme Court review of lower-court proceedings involving HCA Florida Lawnwood Hospital. His petition, which was dismissed, argued that the district court wrongly prevented him from amending his complaint as allowed by the federal rules and violated asserted First and Thirteenth Amendment rights to petition the courts. | The petition asks the Court to decide whether a state judge may be sued under federal civil-rights law after issuing a case-ending ruling against plaintiffs shortly after being served with their federal complaint against her. The case concerns the conflict between judges’ usual immunity from damages suits for judicial acts and the due-process right to an impartial judge when the judge may have a personal interest in the matter. | Former foster parents of two children covered by the Indian Child Welfare Act challenge Minnesota child-placement decisions that applied federal and state Indian-child placement preferences. They argue that the preferences violate equal protection and that they should be allowed to pursue that challenge in the children’s case; the Supreme Court has not yet decided the petition. |
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