Supreme Court Decision Syllabus (SCOTUS Podcast)

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In Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, the Supreme Court held that FIFRA expressly preempts a state-law failure-to-warn claim demanding a cancer warning on Roundup's label, since the EPA had approved the label without one and federal law requires using the approved label. The Court (per Justice Kavanaugh) reversed a $1 million Missouri verdict; Justice Thomas concurred; Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Gorsuch, dissented.
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The TPS statute bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims.
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In Blanche v. Lau, the Supreme Court held that the Immigration and Nationality Act does not require a border officer to have clear and convincing evidence that a lawful permanent resident has committed a crime involving moral turpitude before treating that resident as an applicant for admission. Lau, a lawful permanent resident, was charged with trademark counterfeiting, briefly traveled abroad, and on his return was paroled rather than admitted because of the pending charge; after he pleaded guilty, the Government initiated removal proceedings charging him as inadmissible. The Second Circuit vacated the removal order, holding that the officer needed clear and convincing evidence of the crime at the time of reentry to deny him already-admitted status. Reversing, the Court explained that removing a permanent resident on inadmissibility grounds involves two steps—commission of the crime suffices to treat him as seeking admission, while conviction is required to find him inadmissible—and that nothing in the statute imposes a clear-and-convincing-evidence burden on border officers; the Board's evidentiary standard applies only at the removal hearing, where Lau's guilty plea easily satisfied it. The Court rejected Lau's argument that conviction must precede being treated as seeking admission, since the statute incorporates only the listed crimes and not their conviction requirement, and it remanded without deciding whether Lau's offense actually involved moral turpitude. 
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In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Supreme Court held that an alien standing in Mexico does not "arrive in the United States" within the meaning of the Immigration and Nationality Act by attempting and failing to set foot in the country; arrival occurs only when the alien crosses the border. The case arose from the Government's 2016 "metering" policy, under which border officials stood on the U.S. side and limited the number of asylum seekers allowed to enter and be processed each day; asylum seekers and the group Al Otro Lado challenged the policy, and the District Court and a divided Ninth Circuit panel held that an alien arrives—and thus must be inspected and may apply for asylum—upon encountering a U.S. official at the border, even while still on the Mexican side. Reversing, the Court reasoned that "arrives in" carries its ordinary meaning of physically entering a place, that surrounding INA provisions distinguishing actual from attempted entry confirm this reading, and that the presumption against extraterritoriality cuts against applying the asylum provisions to aliens still outside the country. The Court found the respondents' anti-surplusage argument insufficient to overcome the text, rejected their treaty-based argument as foreclosed by precedent, and dismissed their policy concerns as overstated and tied to a hypothetical rather than the rescinded metering policy actually at issue. The Court first held the case was not moot, since the declaratory judgment still barred the Government from resuming metering. The decision reversed and remanded, drawing a concurrence from Justice Thomas and dissents from Justices Sotomayor and Jackson.
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 The Helms-Burton Act itself abrogates the sovereign immunity of Cuban agencies and instrumentalities 
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