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A tightly stretched fence wire snapped into Ricky Koel’s right eye, piercing the globe. He arrived at Citizens Medical Center—vomiting from pain but still able to perceive light—indicating vision could be saved with timely intervention. Staff suspected a ruptured globe, a known emergency. Yet instead of referring him to an ophthalmologist or arranging transfer, the hospital summoned an optometrist—unqualified under EMTALA or hospital bylaws to screen. Mr. Koel was misdiagnosed, not transferred, and left permanently blind.

This case presents a clean vehicle to resolve a core EMTALA issue left open by the Court’s dismissal of Moyle v. United States, 603 U.S. 324 (2024): when hospitals fail to treat or transfer patients with known emergencies. Unlike Moyle, there 1s no state law barrier here—only a failure to follow EMTALA’s mandate. EMTALA forbids hospitals from treating emergency patients differently based on diagnosis, staffing, cost, or internal workarounds. The Questions are:

1. Whether the emergency imperative of EMTALA displaces a State Law medical malpractice exception just as the EMTALA emergency imperative displaced a state law abortion ban for purposes of the District Court’s injunction in Moyle v. United States?

2. Whether the Tenth Circuit’s zeal to adhere to the EMTALA malpractice exception in Repp v. Anadarko Mun. Hosp. exposes a Circuit Split with the Fourth Circuit’s “standard to which the hospital adheres” rule in Power v. Arlington Hosp. Ass’n?

1. Whether federal laws banning 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing handguns from federally licensed firearm dealers violates the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep arms.

2. Whether the Fourth Circuit erred by finding that the district court’s certification of a nationwide class action pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(2) constituted an abuse of discretion because the district court’s certification came after it granted summary judgment for the Plaintiffs but prior to its issuance of a final order.

This is a sexual assault case involving a speedy trial issue where the State brought Petitioner to trial seven years after the alleged crime. The delay was largely attributable to the discovery violations by the State on multiple occasions. By the time the case went to tnal, the chief accuser had died and was thus unavailable for in-person cross-examination at trial (the State presented to the jury her prior hearsay statements and preliminary hearing testimony). The Oklahoma Court of Crimimal Appeals held that this delay not only was not presumptively prejudicial, but that the death of the chief accuser prior to trial actually benefitted the accused. The questions presented are:

1. Does a delay of seven years from alleged criminal act to trial trigger the presumption of prejudice under Doggett v. United States, 505 U.S. 647 (1992)?

2. Under the factors articulated by this Court in Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972), is the pre-trial death of the chief accuser in a sexual assault case sufficiently preyudicial for a Sixth Amendment violation?

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1. Whether an individual’s probation or supervised release status categorically strips them of Second Amendment protection under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), or whether courts must apply #ruen’s historical analysis to determine if the specific predicate offense historically justified disarmament, as required by the Fifth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Diaz?

2. Is the lifetime ban on possession of firearms by all felons, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), plainly unconstitutional on its face under Bruen because it is permanent and applies to all persons convicted of felonies?

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The government prosecuted Petitioners under a statute with undisputed racist origins. Congress criminalized illegal entry, as well as illegal reentry, into the United States in 1929 at the urging of “proud” white supremacists, nativists, and eugenicists to keep the American bloodline “white and purely Caucasian.” The core focus of these provisions has remained substantively the same since 1929. But the Ninth Circuit upheld the law based on a reenactment in 1952 and amendments in the 1980s and 1990s, none of which grappled with the law’s racist past.

This case poses important questions about the role of appellate courts in applying the framework from Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation, 429 U.S. 252 (1977), to a federal law used for a large swath of federal criminal prosecutions, along with countless civil rights cases.

The question presented is:

Whether a legislature can cleanse the taint of a racially discriminatory law by silent reenactment or amendment when the law was originally adopted for an impermissible discriminatory purpose.

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Petitioner was sentenced to serve a mandatory term of life in prison because the law of the time required a mandatory life sentence when defendants had two or more felony drug offense convictions. 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A); 21 U.S.C. § 851. Within a month of obtaining the orders expunging prior state convictions—orders that meant that if Petitioner were sentenced today, he would no longer be subject to a mandatory life sentence and would face a mandatory as low as 15 years—Petitioner filed a second-in-time § 2255 motion in the district court seeking a reduction in sentence as a result of the orders of expungement. He acknowledged that he had filed and lost a first § 2255 motion but cited this Court’s case law establishing that a second or successive actions based on new facts should be heard in the district court. See Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 943 (2007). The district court transferred the case to the Sixth Circuit as a § 2244 application. Petitioner appealed that order.

Two separate actions proceeded in the circuit court. The applicable standards for those separate actions were vastly different. For the second or successive application, Petitioner needed to make a showing including that “no reasonable factfinder would have found the movant guilty of the offense.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(h)(1). For the separate matter, Petitioner needed to show that, under this Court’s case law, he had filed an action that was properly brought in the district court and did not require pre-certification from the circuit court. The Sixth Circuit dismissed the second matter, noting that the circuit had held that transfer orders were not appealable and that it would address the appropriateness of transfer orders as a part of the second or successive application proceeding. See Howard v. United States, 533 F.3d 472, 474 (6” Cir. 2008).

The Court has held that 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(E)’s limitation on petitioning the Court for writ to certiorari did not apply to the district court’s finding that a filing was a second § 2255 rather than a first. Castro v. United States, 540 U.S. 375, 380-81 (2003). But case law is unclear on whether a related or similar questions, such as whether the district court erred 1n transferring the case on a finding that the law did not allow a second § 2255 motion requesting a reduction of sentence following an expungement order that could not have been entered any earlier.

The question presented 1s whether a circuit court errs in finding that a transfer order 1s not appealable, dismisses a petitioner’s appeal of the district court’s decision that the petitioner’s filing was not a legitimate second-in-time § 2255 motion based on new facts, and fold the issue of the appropriateness of the transfer order into the § 2244 application proceeding. The circuit court may wait beyond the 90 days to petition this Court for review of the dismissal of the appeal of the transfer order, deny the § 2244 application and affirm the district court’s transfer. If 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(E) applies, the Court is precluded from hearing Petitioner’s appeal of the district court’s transfer order. Petitioner notes that the Court has accepted review of a similar question whether “28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(E) deprives this Court of certiorari jurisdiction over the grant or denial of an authorization by a court of appeals to file a second or successive motion to vacate under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.” Bowe v. United States, No. 24-5438.

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The compassionate-release statute permits courts to reduce a prisoner’s sentence if the court finds that “extraordinary and compelling reasons” warrant relief. 18 U.S.C. § 83582(c)(1)(A). Congress placed only two limits on what can count as an “extraordinary and compelling reason”: (1) 1t must be “consistent with” “applicable policy statements” from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, id.; and (2) “lrJehabilitation of the defendant alone shall not be considered an extraordinary and compelling reason,” 28 U.S.C. § 994(t).

Sections 401 and 403 of the First Step Act of 2018 reduced penalties for certain drug and firearm offenses going forward. Because of these changes, individuals sentenced today for these offenses often face mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment decades shorter than they would have received before the First Step Act.

The question presented is: Whether, as four circuits permit but six others prohibit, a district court may consider disparities created by the First Step Act’s prospective changes in sentencing law when deciding if “extraordinary and compelling reasons” warrant a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(a).

This same question is also presented in Rutherford v. United States, No. 24-820 (cert. granted June 6, 2025), and Carter v. United

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: : 1, Whether the district court violated Mr. Ayala-Alas’s due process rights by requiring him to proceed to trial with only a Spanish interpreter despite his limited Spanish proficiency. 2. Whether the district court erred in denying a motion to compel discovery and then allowed late disclosure of critical evidence after jury selection. ——

| | 3, Whether the sentencing enhancements for leadership and obstruction of justice were improperly applied .

| | without sufficient factual support. = : : . ” 4. Whether the trial court’s refusal to grant a duress imstruction and its deal of a motion to continue Geprived Mr. Ayala-Alas of a fair trial. :

5. Whether the Government’s improper closing arguments and burden-shifting statements prejudiced Mr. Ayala-Alas’s right to a fair trial. .