McDonald v. City of Chicago, (decided June 28, 2010): Second Amendment right identified as to federally administrated areas in District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008, also applied to states (i.e., incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment)
National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (decided June 28, 2012): upheld the Affordable Care Act’s mandate for everyone to buy insurance as exercise of Congress’s taxing power (which can be used to provide for country’s “general welfare”)
United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (decided June 28, 2012): Stolen Valor Act (criminalizing false statements about one’s military decorations) struck down on First Amendment grounds (though shame still has an effect: remember Admiral Boorda who committed suicide after he was caught in a lie about just one medal on his “fruit salad”?)
United States ex rel. Brown v. Lane, 232 U.S. 598 (decided June 28, 1914): upheld Secretary of the Interior’s right to remove “for good cause” all the members of a tribal council elected by tribe members without notice or hearing or right of appeal (i.e., in reality it could be “for bad cause” or “for no cause at all”)
Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (decided June 28, 1971): First Amendment not violated by statute allowing public funding of religious schools of secular subject textbooks and materials; established the “Lemon test”, where the statute has to 1) have a secular purpose 2) not have the effect of advancing or inhibiting religion and 3) not result in excessive entanglement with religion
North v. Russell, 427 U.S. 328 (decided June 28, 1976): Equal Protection not violated when lower criminal courts in small towns could have nonlawyer judges when in city courts judges had to be lawyers; first level of appeal in small towns was to courts with lawyer judges
Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (decided June 28, 1977): Nixon could not deny request for records created while he was President (might have been a different result if he could argue self-incrimination, but he had been pardoned by Ford)
Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (decided June 28, 1978): race can be used as factor in admission to public university (here, the University of California, Davis Medical School) but quotas are impermissible
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (decided June 28, 1993): expert opinions in federal court (even as to state law claims) have to be based on reliable principles reliably applied; this holding was later encoded as amendment to Fed. R. Evid. 702
Mitchell v. Helms, 530 U.S. 793 (decided June 28, 2000): First Amendment not violated by government loans to religious schools for secular programs
Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914 (decided June 28, 2000): struck down Nebraska statute making “partial birth abortion” (properly called late term abortion) illegal even if mother’s life endangered; this was held inconsistent with Roe (but is the Nebraska statute really revived under Dobbs?)
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (decided June 28, 2004): U.S. citizen can be detained as an “enemy combatant” but has the right to habeas corpus with due process; effectively superseded by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which stripped federal courts of jurisdiction
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