2004—Asked by the state senate whether its November 2003 ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health really imposes same-sex marriage, the Massachusetts supreme court answers yes (by the same 4-3 split as in its original ruling).
2005—In Hernandez v. Robles, a New York state trial judge rules that New York’s longstanding statutory definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman violates the state constitution. In July 2006, New York’s highest court, by a 4-2 vote, will reverse this ruling.
2016—A divided Ninth Circuit panel rules, in Smith v. Schriro, that Robert Douglas Smith was intellectually disabled when he committed acts of kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder in 1980. In the opening paragraph of her dissent from Judge Stephen Reinhardt’s lead opinion, Judge Consuelo Callahan observes (emphasis added):
“The one thing everyone appears to agree on is that Smith is not intellectually disabled. When tested in 2005 the experts found that he had an IQ of between 87 and 93, well within the low-average to average range of intellectual ability. Yet despite this fact, the majority reverses because it is certain that Smith was intellectually disabled in 1980 when he murdered Sandy Owen. The majority reaches this conclusion by disregarding the findings of the state courts, denying those courts the deference they are due, and expressing supreme confidence in its own ability to detect past intellectual disability despite substantial conflicting evidence and the fact that Smith is not now intellectually disabled. Accordingly, I dissent.”
2022—A Ninth Circuit panel rules (in Singh v. Garland) that unless aliens receive a Notice to Appear in a single document specifying the time and date of the alien’s removal proceedings, any in absentia removal order directed at the alien is subject to rescission. When the court denies rehearing en banc months later, Judge Daniel P. Collins, joined by eleven colleagues in dissent, will object that the panel decision “seriously misconstrues the text” of federal immigration law on “an exceptionally important question” and “casts doubt on the validity of potentially tens of thousands of in absentia removal orders that have been issued in this circuit over the last two decades.”