BREAKING: #SCOTUS Grants Stay in Mellouli v. Lynch

August 22nd, 2015

Last term, the Supreme Court decided the case of Mellouli v. Lynch, and reversed the 8th Circuit’s decision affirming the petitioner’s removal. However, as I discussed with Kimberly Robinson of Bloomberg, the Court only reversed the case, and did not remand it. The 8th Circuit remanded the case to the Board of Immigration Appeals. The court noted, that SCOTUS “did not explicitly remand for further proceedings to this court or to the BIA.”

Melloui then filed an emergency stay with the Supreme Court.

Yesterday, Circuit Justice Alito referredĀ the petition to the entire Court, and granted a stay pending “the timely filing of a petition for a writ of certiorari, or of a petition for writ of mandamus and prohibition, and further order of this Court.”

I think this may be an illustrationĀ of what Richard Re calls a “SCOTUS Repeater.” Once the Court has taken an interest in a case once, it is more likely to take an interest in it again. This isn’t a cert grant, but at a minimum, the Justices were aware of the facts, and quickly jumped in to stop the remand.