SCOTUS NEWS
Amy Howe
The court announced that Stephen Hammer, a partner in the Dallas office of Gibson Dunn would brief and argue on behalf of the 4th Circuit decision in Riley v. Garland in a short, unsigned order issued on Tuesday afternoon. In Riley, the justices are expected to weigh in on the 30-day limit to request review of a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling denying a request for a stay of deportation in a country in which an immigrant’s life or freedom was threatened. Pierre Riley, who is a Jamaican native and has lived in New York since nearly 30 years, claims that he will be killed if forced to return to Jamaica. The Biden administration agrees that the court of appellations was wrong to conclude that the 30-day filing deadline for a petition to stop deportation was jurisdictional, meaning that the court could not review the petition after the deadline had passed. But the government urged the justices to send the case back to the lower court for another look in light of a recent decision by the Supreme Court holding that a similar statutory filing deadline is not jurisdictional.
Riley encouraged the justices to go ahead and take up the case and, if necessary, appoint a “friend of the court” to defend the 4th Circuit’s ruling, as they occasionally do when the federal government changes its position.
The court granted review on Nov. 4. On Tuesday, just under one month later, the justices appointed Hammer, who clerked for Judge Gregory Katsas on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Jeffrey Sutton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit before clerking for Roberts, who serves as the “circuit justice” for the 4th Circuit.
Hammer is a Texas native and former Rhodes Scholar who served two tours of duty in Afghanistan as a U.S. Army officer before going to law school. In 2019, he achieved the highest score on the Texas Bar Exam.
story originally seen here
