SCOTUS takes Arizona immigration case, 7th Circuit bankruptcy case

The Supreme Court of the United States has accepted several cases, including the high-profile Arizona immigration lawsuit and a bankruptcy case from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In an order list released Monday, the nation’s highest court granted certiorari in the case of Arizona v. U.S., No. 11-182, a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s immigration-focused Senate Bill 1070. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision last year by U.S. Judge Susan Bolt to halt several key parts of the law from taking effect in 2010. Several states, including Indiana, have enacted “immigration reform” laws in recent years.

The SCOTUS also accepted the 7th Circuit’s case RadLAX Gateway Hotel, LLC v. Amalgamated Bank, No. 11-166, which comes from the Illinois bankruptcy court and poses the question: Can a debtor pursue a Chapter 11 plan that proposes to sell assets free of liens without allowing the secured creditor to credit bid, but instead providing it with the indubitable equivalent of its claim under Section 1129(b)(2)(A)(iii) of the Bankruptcy Code?

Also on Monday, the justices issued a per curiam opinion in a 7th Circuit case that has been pending on certiorari review for three months. In Hardy v. Cross, No. 11-74, the justices summarily reversed the 7th Circuit on a habeas corpus case. The justices held the lower court’s ruling overturning a decision of an Illinois state court was inconsistent with the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. Section 2254, which “imposes a highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings and demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt.”