The U.S. Supreme Court issued four opinions on Thursday, May 29, closing out the month with decisions that tighten the limits on sentence reductions for federal prisoners, revive a Mississippi death row inmate’s racial discrimination claim, and extend workplace protections to delivery drivers who never cross a state line.
The two sentencing cases arrived together and produced consistent results. In Fernandez v. United States, the court held 8-1 that a prisoner’s lingering doubts about whether his conviction was valid do not constitute “extraordinary and compelling reasons” to seek a shorter sentence under the federal compassionate release statute. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented alone — the court’s only dissent in either sentencing case. The companion ruling, Rutherford v. United States, addressed whether a prisoner can point to a gap created when Congress changed mandatory minimum gun penalties without making those changes retroactive. The court said no, 6-3. Barrett again wrote the majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Jackson dissented.
The day’s closest vote came in Pitchford v. Cain. By a 5-4 margin, the court threw out the conviction and death sentence of Terry Pitchford, who was 18 when he was charged in the 2004 killing of a Mississippi shopkeeper. The issue was not Pitchford’s guilt but how his 2006 trial was conducted. The local district attorney used peremptory challenges to remove four Black prospective jurors. Pitchford’s lawyers objected under Batson v. Kentucky, the 1986 ruling that bars race-based jury strikes. The trial judge rejected the challenge. The jury that convicted Pitchford included one Black juror in a county where 40 percent of the population is Black.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. Kavanaugh wrote that the trial court failed to complete the third and final step of the Batson process — the step at which a defendant’s lawyers are entitled to argue that the prosecutor’s race-neutral explanations are pretextual. That step, he wrote, “never occurred” in Pitchford’s case despite repeated efforts by his counsel. The Mississippi Supreme Court had ruled that Pitchford waived his right to make that argument. The U.S. Supreme Court called that conclusion unreasonable. The case returns to the lower courts.
Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Barrett. Gorsuch wrote that overturning a state court conviction in federal post-conviction proceedings requires more than showing legal error — it requires showing that no reasonable jurist could have reached the state court’s conclusion. In his view, Pitchford did not meet that bar.
The fourth ruling was unanimous and reached a question that has grown in practical importance as gig-economy delivery networks have expanded. In Flowers Foods v. Brock, the court held that workers who transport goods on the final leg of an interstate journey are covered by the Federal Arbitration Act’s exemption for interstate transportation workers — even if the workers themselves never cross a state line. The exemption allows covered workers to take employment disputes to court rather than being forced into arbitration. Gorsuch wrote the opinion, the fourth consecutive decision in which the court declined to narrow the exemption.
Gorsuch used a hypothetical involving three drivers each carrying a shipment across state lines, with only the middle driver crossing the border. He wrote that all three are engaged in interstate commerce because each plays a direct and necessary role in completing the journey. The employer’s proposed rule, he wrote, “cannot be right.”
The court has indicated it will release additional opinions on Thursday, June 4.
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