1. The first question presented involves the proper scope of review of an arbitration award under the Federal Arbitration Act.

The Courts of Appeals are split on whether the doctrine of manifest disregard of the law survived this Court’s decision in Hall Street Associates, L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc., 552 U.S. 576 (2008). Hall Street held that the enumerated grounds for vacatur of an arbitration award in the FAA are “exclusive.” Four Circuits have since held that manifest disregard no longer exists; four Circuits have held that it does; and the remaining three have yet to address the issue. State courts applying the FAA typically follow the federal circuits where they are located, confirming and amplifying this split. See Hoskins v. Hoskins, 497 8.W.3d 490, 498-500 (Tex. 2016) (Willet, J., concurring) (“The upshot of today’s decision is that we avoid the sort of quagmire that surrounds the TAA’s federal counterpart, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA)….And so courts and commentators await a definitive answer from the Supreme Court.”) (footnotes omitted). Furthermore, courts that do recognize manifest disregard have developed varying formulations of the doctrine. This Court’s resolution of these issues is essential, given the very substantial stakes in many arbitrations.

Thus, the first question presented is: is manifest disregard of the law a ground to vacate an arbitration award and if so, what does it mean?

2. The second question presented involves consent to service of petitions to confirm or vacate an arbitration

Issue I: Whether a district court’s imposition of an appeal bond for the expressed purpose of inhibiting appellants’ pursuit of their statutory right of appeal, by factoring speculative or legally prohibited costs into determining the bond amount’ contrary to F.R.A.P. 7, 1s reviewable on motion in the affected, pending appeal as an alternative to filing an entirely new appeal, where the 6 Circuit’s contrary reasoning creates both a split of authority among circuits and a dichotomy between the appellate rights of the wealthy and non-wealthy contrary to 5‘ and 14th Amendment equal protection principles. Issue II: Whether the 6 Circuit’s dismissal of Petitioners’ merits appeals for failure to file appeal bond, without providing Petitioners’ a reasonable opportunity to post bond after dismissing their separate bond appeal and denying reconsideration of their motions to eliminate bond, violated binding precedents and was_ predicated on _ specious reasoning.

1. Whether the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit erred in refusing to review the evidentiary error that infected the Tax Court’s Opinion, issued nine years after trial, on the erounds that, although the appellant made extensive arguments regarding the error in the body of its brief, it waived its right to have the error considered under the plain error standard of review by citing to that standard of review in a footnote.

2. Whether the Internal Revenue Service’s anti- textual anti-abuse rule, 26 C.F.R. § 1.701—2, which permits the Commissioner to “recast” a partnership transaction to achieve’ the Commissioner’s preferred tax result even if, as here, the transaction “fallls] within the literal words of a particular statutory or regulatory provision,” 1s invalid under this Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024).

To collect an unpaid $9,897.88 property tax bill, the Arkansas Commissioner of State Lands foreclosed and auctioned an office building and land owned by BAS worth over $1,500,000. To avoid violating the Fifth Amendment for an unconstitutional taking, the Commissioner was obligated to return the equity to BAS. Tyler v. Hennepin County, 598 U.S. 631 (2028). When the Commissioner did not do so, BAS sued in an Arkansas court for a de facto taking. The Arkansas Supreme Court, however, categorically barred BAS’s federal takings claim because the Commissioner had not waived sovereign immunity under the Arkansas Constitution.

The question presented 1s:

Does a state’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment ob- hgation to pay just compensation waive sovereign 1m- munity when it takes private property?

This case concerns the hhability standard under Title VII when an employee experiences workplace sexual harassment at the hands of a customer. The First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits apply the same negligence standard to customer harassment that applies to harassment by coworkers, reasoning that employers are directly liable whenever they know (or should know) about workplace harassment and fail to take appropriate steps to stop it. The Sixth Circuit rejected this consensus in favor of a novel standard holding employers liable only when they intend for harassment to occur. The question presented 1s:

Whether, as ten circuits have held, the negligence standard that applies to Title VII claims of workplace harassment by a coworker also applies to workplace harassment by a customer, or whether, as the Sixth Circuit held, an employer must have intended for the employee’s sexual harassment to occur?

(1)

Respondent Andrew J. Cuomo is the former Governor of the State of New York from 2011 until his resignation in 2021. On March 25, 2020 the Cuomo administration issued a COVID-19 Transfer Directive to all New York hospitals and nursing homes requiring that all nursing homes must comply with the expedited receipt of residents from hospitals while, at the same time, prohibiting nursing homes from testing any hospital transferee for COVID-19.

All Respondents, to be separately described, worked in concert to effectuate an abrupt, compulsory and large-scale transfer of the state’s then hospitalized COVID-19 patients to the state’s nursing homes despite the immediately announced condemnation of this action by the leading patient-oriented medical experts in the field of elderly care.

Promptly thereafter and as predicted by the outside medical experts, the number of COVID-19 deaths at the state’s nursing homes grew by the thousands which the Respondents then endeavored to cover up, until it became too obvious to hide. The Directive was finally rescinded on May 10, 2020, but by that point, 9,000 COVID-positive patients had been transferred and 15,000 patients residing there during the period March 25-May 10, 2020, eventually died of COVID-19.

The questions presented are:

1. How could the Second Circuit have reasonably concluded that the State Respondents Governor Cuomo and Ms. DeRosa, his Chief of Staff, could not have

Whether 18 U.S.C. 922(¢)(1), the federal statute that prohibits the possession of a firearm by a person who has been convicted of a crime punishable by imprison- ment for a term exceeding one year, violates the Second Amendment as applied to a defendant with a predicate conviction under 18 U.S.C. 922(¢)(8), which prohibits the possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of a con- trolled substance.

(I)

1. Whether the State’s use in a capital sentencing proceeding of rap lyrics composed by a Black defendant to argue to a nearly all-White jury that the Black defend- ant must be a violent and dangerous person because he wrote the rap lyrics, violates due process, fundamental fairness, and equal protection under the Eighth and Four- teenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

2. Whether the State’s introduction of a state-em- ployed and out-of-court expert’s serology report and find- ings at trial, via the testimony of another expert who tes- tified to and relied upon the absent expert’s out-of-court statements as a basis of the second expert’s own findings, violates the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution under Smith v. Arizona, 602 U.S. 779 (2024).

(I)

Question 1

Whether the circuit court improperly determined that a subsequent pleading rather than the initial complaint, is the operative bar date for claim preclusion in conflict with Lawlor v. National Screen Service Corp., 349 U.S. 322 (1955), Lucky Brand Dungarees, Inc. v. Marcel Fashions Group, Inc., 590 U.S. 405 (2020), and the Third Circuit’s own precedent in Morgan v. Covington Township, 648 F.3d 172 (8d Cir. 2011).

Question 2

Whether the Due Process Clause is violated when a court dismisses a legal-malpractice claim with prejudice at the pleading stage by resolving a disputed factual issue concerning the existence of an attorney-client relationship against the plaintiff, notwithstanding documentary evidence submitted in opposition to dismissal, without leave to amend.

Question 3

Whether, under Semtek International Inc. v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 531 U.S. 497 (2001), federal courts must apply the forum state’s claim-preclusion and accrual rules when evaluating state-law professional- malpractice claims, rather than federal common-law preclusion principles.

1. QUESTIONS PRESENTED | 2

2. LIST OF PARTIES | | 5

3. OPINIONS BELOW | : . 6

4. JURISDICTION — ~ 10

5. CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY PROVISIONS 13

6. STATEMENT OF THE CASE 17

7. REASONS FOR GRANTING THE WRIT - 30

8. CONCLUSION . 33

APPENDIX A - District Court Order (E.D. Ky., No. 5:25-cv-417-REW, Nov. 17, 2024) 38

APPENDIX B - Sixth Circuit Entry, No. 25-6054 , — 46

APPENDIX C - Damages Justification Based on Federally Adopted Facts / 47 | | Page 1 of 49

1. Whether an indictment charging conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance under 21 USCS 846 and 841(a) fails to state an offense where it places the adverb “knowingly” in the future-tense which grammatically did not allege that the defendant was aware of the nature of the substance.

2. Whether trial and appellate counsel were constitutionally ineffective under

, Strickland v. Washington, 466 US 668 (1984) for failing to object to this defective indictment, the missing mens rea instruction, and denial of due process, and whether the lower courts misapplied Slack v. McDaniel, 529 US 4/3 (2000) by refusing a Certificate of Appealability on this debatable constitutional question.

3. Whether courts may uphold indictments that grammatically misplace the mens } rea term, omitting the controlled-substance knowledge element, on the rationale that the indictment “tracked the statute,’’ contrary to Russell v. United States, 369 US 749 (1962) and United States v. Resendiz-Ponce, 549 US 102 (2007).

i

2. Whether a court violates the Party Presentation Principle and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause by rejecting an agency’s functional confession of error and unilaterally asserting defenses on behalf of the government to uphold a decision rendered by an unlicensed examimer.

3. Whether a tribunal violates the Mandate Rule and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause by unilaterally altering the legal framework on remand such that it failed to adjudicate the causal link in the prima facie stage of the McDonnell Douglas framework. ,

4. Whether an administrative decision that is void for lack of jurisdictional authority can have preclusive effect over a federal Titie VII claim, particularly where that claim was decided under the McDonnell Douglas framework in conflict with the standard for summary judgment.

1

Florida plans to execute Ronald Heath on February 10, 2026. It is Florida’s twentieth execution in the last 12 months—shattering all previous records for the State. Shortly before Heath’s death warrant was signed, internal Florida Department of Corrections (“FDOC’”) records were published showing that, over the course of this unprecedented succession of executions, FDOC officials have on numerous occasions carried out lethal injection executions using expired drugs, incorrect dosages of drugs, and drugs not called for in the State’s protocol. The records also reflect mishandling of drugs and other deviations calling into question FDOC’s ability to properly maintain and transport lethal chemicals. And, during at least one recent execution, the inmate labored for 20 minutes before dying, manifesting outward signs of distress despite Florida’s use of a paralytic drug, which generally masks such signs.

Heath proffered these records, as well as a medical expert’s opinion that the specific protocol deviations reflected in the FDOC records place Heath, the next inmate Florida intends to execute, at substantial risk of severe pain. Heath claimed below that Florida’s documented, repeated maladministration of its lethal injection protocol places him at imminent risk of harm in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The Florida Supreme Court, treating Heath’s standalone maladministration claim as a traditional method-of-execution challenge, summarily denied relief, holding that Heath’s claim failed under the traditional requirements of Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35 (2008), and Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 868 (2015), did not warrant discovery, and was

1

I. In Taylor v. United States, this Court announced a categorical approach to recidivism enhancements in federal sentencing. See 495 U.S. 575, 602 (1990). The basic analysis requires an elements-to-elements comparison between a defendant’s prior convictions and the generic offense or offenses singled out for special treatment by a sentencing statute or the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual. Since the test focuses on substance, not labels, “minor variations in terminology” cannot overcome actual correspondence between elements. See id. at 599. Here, the Fifth Circuit relied on Taylor’s minor-variation-in- terminology language to declare irrelevant a substantive difference between Texas robbery and the new Hobbs Act- inspired “robbery” definition from the Guidelines. In Texas, a thief becomes a robber by causing injury to a random passerby during an escape from the scene of an ordinary theft, but the same after-the-fact injury would be insufficient to prove a taking “by means of’ force as required by the Hobbs Act and the Guidelines. To date, no other Court of Appeals has misapplied Taylor’s minor-variation-in-terminology caveat to paper over a substantive mismatch between corresponding elements reaching different types of conduct. The question presented 1s this: did the Fifth Circuit misapply the categorical approach by dismissing an elemental mismatch as a mere variation in terminology?

1

18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) imposes a lifelong prohibition, punishable by up to 15 years imprisonment, on the possession of any firearm or ammunition, for any purpose, by “any person … who has been convicted in any court of … a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.”

In hght of New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), does § 922(g¢)(1) violate the Second Amendment, either on its face or as applied to Petitioner—a United States citizen who possessed ammunition for purposes of self-defense and had only a single, remote prior felony conviction, which did not involve a firearm or a judicial finding of dangerousness?

1

Petitioner Shawn Johnson was a felon only because of his nonviolent offenses of manufacturing and uttering counterfeit United States currency. After being convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the Fourth Circuit rejected his as-applied challenge to the constitutionality of Section 922(g)(1) because it categorically rejects all as-applied challenges to Section 922(¢)(1)’s constitutionality. Did the Fourth Circuit apply the wrong legal standard to Petitioner’s as-applied challenge? And did the Fourth Circuit err in concluding that Section § 922(g)(1)’s categorical ban on the possession of a firearm—by each and every convicted felon—is constitutional.

-L-

Whether the lower federal court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the defendant, who was an authorized practitioner with the authority to administer drugs as part of his practice at the time of the alleged offense, due to the lower court’s improper reliance on regulatory definitions and testimony outside of the U.S. Code that regulates the distribution of drugs in the practice of medicine?

In other words, did this Court’s holding in Loper foreclose the Attorney General’s reliance on a CFR to define what constituted a legitimate prescription versus “illegal drug dealing” when the defendant was licensed to administer the controlled substances under the Controlled Substance Act?