TURKIYE HALK BANKASI A. S., aka HALKBANK v. UNITED STATES

Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Second Circuit

No. 21–1450. Argued January 17, 2023—Decided April 19, 2023

The United States indicted Halkbank, a bank owned by the Republic of Turkey, for conspiring to evade U. S. economic sanctions against Iran. Halkbank moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that as an instrumentality of a foreign state, Halkbank is immune from criminal prosecution under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. The District Court denied the motion. The Second Circuit affirmed after first determining that the District Court had subject matter jurisdiction over Halkbank’s criminal prosecution under 18 U. S. C. §3231. The Second Circuit further held that even assuming the FSIA confers immunity in criminal proceedings, Halkbank’s charged conduct fell within the FSIA’s exception for commercial activities.

Held:

 1. The District Court has jurisdiction under §3231 over this criminal prosecution of Halkbank. Section 3231 grants district courts original jurisdiction of “all offenses against the laws of the United States,” and Halkbank does not dispute that §3231’s text as written encompasses the charged offenses. Halkbank instead argues that because §3231 does not mention foreign states or their instrumentalities, §3231 implicitly excludes them. The Court declines to graft such an atextual limitation onto §3231’s broad jurisdictional grant. The scattered express references to foreign states and instrumentalities in unrelated U. S. Code provisions to which Halkbank points do not shrink the textual scope of §3231. And the Court’s precedents interpreting the Judiciary Act of 1789 do not support Halkbank, as the Court has not interpreted the jurisdictional provisions in the 1789 Act to contain an implicit exclusion for foreign state entities. Pp. 3–5.

 2. The FSIA’s comprehensive scheme governing claims of immunity in civil actions against foreign states and their instrumentalities does not cover criminal cases. Pp. 5–14.

  (a) The doctrine of foreign sovereign immunity originally developed in U. S. courts “as a matter of common law” rather than statute. Samantar v. Yousuf, 560 U. S. 305, 311. In 1976, Congress enacted the FSIA, which prescribed a “comprehensive set of legal standards governing claims of immunity in every civil action against a foreign state.” Verlinden B. V. v. Central Bank of Nigeria, 461 U. S. 480, 488. The text of the FSIA indicates that the statute exclusively addresses civil suits. The first provision grants district courts original jurisdiction over “any nonjury civil action against a foreign state” as to “any claim for relief in personam with respect to which the foreign state is not entitled to immunity.” 28 U. S. C. §1330(a). The FSIA then sets forth a carefully calibrated set of procedures and remedies applicable exclusively in civil, not criminal, cases. Further, Congress described the FSIA as defining “the circumstances in which foreign states are immune from suit,” not from criminal investigation or prosecution. 90 Stat. 2891. In stark contrast, the FSIA is silent as to criminal matters, even though at the time of the FSIA’s enactment in 1976, the Executive Branch occasionally attempted to subject foreign-government-owned entities to federal criminal investigation. If Halkbank were correct, immunity from criminal prosecution undoubtedly would have surfaced somewhere in the Act’s text. Moreover, the FSIA’s location in the U. S. Code—Title 28, which mostly concerns civil procedure, rather than Title 18, which addresses crimes and criminal procedure—likewise reinforces the interpretation that the FSIA does not apply to criminal proceedings. Finally, this Court’s decision in Samantar, in which the Court analyzed the FSIA’s “text, purpose, and history” and determined that the FSIA’s “comprehensive solution” for suits against foreign states did not extend to suits against individual officials, 560 U. S., at 323, 325, similarly supports the conclusion here that the FSIA’s provisions do not extend to the discrete context of criminal proceedings. Pp. 5–9.

  (b) In response to all the evidence of the FSIA’s exclusively civil scope, Halkbank claims immunity from criminal prosecution based on one sentence in the FSIA, which provides that a “foreign state shall be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States and of the States except as provided in sections 1605 to 1607 of this chapter.” 28 U. S. C. §1604. Section 1604, however, must be considered in context. Section 1604 works in tandem with §1330(a): Section 1330(a) spells out a universe of civil cases against foreign states over which district courts have jurisdiction, and §1604 then clarifies how principles of immunity operate within that limited civil universe. Halkbank’s interpretation of §1604 is also difficult to square with its view of the exceptions to immunity contained in §1605, which Halkbank insists apply exclusively in civil matters. Halkbank’s §1604 argument reduces to the implausible contention that Congress enacted a statute focused entirely on civil actions and then in one provision that does not mention criminal proceedings somehow stripped the Executive Branch of all power to bring domestic criminal prosecutions against instrumentalities of foreign states. Nothing in the FSIA supports that result. Pp. 10–12.

  (c) Halkbank’s remaining arguments lack merit. While the Court did state in Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corp. that the FSIA is the “sole basis for obtaining jurisdiction over a foreign state in federal court,” 488 U. S. 428, 439, the Court made clear that the FSIA displaces general “grants of subject-matter jurisdiction in Title 28”—that is, in civil cases against foreign states, id., at 437. Halkbank also warns that if the Court concludes that the FSIA does not apply in the criminal context, courts and the Executive will lack “congressional guidance” as to procedure in criminal cases. But that concern carried no weight in Samantar, which likewise deemed the FSIA’s various procedures inapplicable to a specific category of cases—there, suits against foreign officials. And in any event, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure would govern any federal criminal proceedings. Finally, Halkbank argues that U. S. criminal proceedings against instrumentalities of foreign states would negatively affect national security and foreign policy. But the Court must interpret the FSIA as written. And if existing principles do not suffice to protect national security and foreign policy interests, Congress and the President may always respond. Pp. 12–14.

 3. The Second Circuit did not fully consider various common-law immunity arguments that the parties raise in this Court. The Court vacates the judgment and remands for the Second Circuit to consider those arguments. Pp. 14–16.

16 F. 4th 336, affirmed in part, vacated and remanded in part.

 Kavanaugh, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson, JJ., joined. Gorsuch, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Alito, J., joined.


REED v. GOERTZ

Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Fifth Circuit

No. 21–442. Argued October 11, 2022—Decided April 19, 2023

A Texas jury found petitioner Rodney Reed guilty of the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Reed’s conviction and death sentence. In 2014, Reed filed a motion in Texas state court under Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing law. Reed requested DNA testing on certain evidence, including the belt used to strangle Stites, which Reed contended would help identify the true perpetrator. The state trial court denied Reed’s motion, reasoning in part that items Reed sought to test were not preserved through an adequate chain of custody. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, and later denied Reed’s motion for rehearing. Reed then sued in federal court under 42 U. S. C. §1983, asserting that Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing law failed to provide procedural due process. Reed argued that the law’s stringent chain-of-custody requirement was unconstitutional. The District Court dismissed Reed’s complaint. The Fifth Circuit affirmed on the ground that Reed’s §1983 claim was filed too late, after the applicable 2-year statute of limitations had run. The Fifth Circuit held that the limitations period began to run when the Texas trial court denied Reed’s motion, not when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied rehearing.

Held: When a prisoner pursues state post-conviction DNA testing through the state-provided litigation process, the statute of limitations for a §1983 procedural due process claim begins to run when the state litigation ends, in this case when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Reed’s motion for rehearing. Pp. 3–6.

  (a) Texas’s three threshold arguments lack merit. First, Reed has standing because Reed sufficiently alleged an injury in fact: denial of access to the requested evidence by the state prosecutor (the named defendant). A federal court conclusion that Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing procedures denied Reed due process would “amount to a significant increase in the likelihood” that Reed “would obtain relief that directly redresses the injury suffered.” Utah v. Evans, 536 U. S. 452, 464. Second, Texas’s invocation of the State’s sovereign immunity fails because the Ex parte Young doctrine allows suits like Reed’s for declaratory or injunctive relief against state officers in their official capacities. 209 U. S. 123, 159–161. Third, Reed’s procedural due process claim does not contravene the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Pp. 3–4.

  (b) The sole question before the Court is whether Reed’s §1983 suit raising a procedural due process challenge to Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing law was timely under the applicable 2-year statute of limitations. The statute of limitations begins to run when the plaintiff has a “complete and present cause of action,” Bay Area Laundry and Dry Cleaning Pension Trust Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal., 522 U. S. 192, 201, a determination the Court makes by focusing first on the specific constitutional right alleged to have been infringed. See McDonough v. Smith, 588 U. S. ___, ___. Here, that right is procedural due process. A procedural due process claim is complete not “when the deprivation occurs” but only when “the State fails to provide due process.” Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U. S. 113, 126. Texas’s process for considering a request for DNA testing in capital cases includes both trial court proceedings and appellate review, which under Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure 79.1 encompasses a motion for rehearing. In Reed’s case, the State’s alleged failure to provide Reed with a fundamentally fair process was complete when the state litigation ended—when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Reed’s motion for rehearing. Therefore, the statute of limitations began to run on Reed’s §1983 claim when Reed’s motion for rehearing was denied. Pp. 4–6.

995 F. 3d 425, reversed.

 Kavanaugh, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Gorsuch, J., joined.


MOAC MALL HOLDINGS LLC v. TRANSFORM HOLDCO LLC et al.

Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Second Circuit

No. 21–1270. Argued December 5, 2022—Decided April 19, 2023

The question presented—whether 11 U. S. C. §363(m) of the Bankruptcy Code is jurisdictional—arises in the context of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Sears, Roebuck and Co. Sears sold most of its pre-bankruptcy assets to respondent Transform Holdco LLC, including the right to designate to whom a lease between Sears and petitioner MOAC Mall Holdings LLC should be assigned. MOAC leases space to tenants at the Minnesota Mall of America. The agreement with Transform required Sears to assign the lease to any assignee duly designated by Transform. When Transform later designated the Mall of America lease for assignment to its wholly owned subsidiary, MOAC filed an objection with the Bankruptcy Court, arguing that Sears had not shown “adequate assurance of future performance by the assignee” as the Code requires, §365(f )(2)(B). The Bankruptcy Court disagreed with MOAC’s adequate-assurance argument and issued an order authorizing the lease assignment (Assignment Order). The Code contemplates that interested parties like MOAC may appeal such an order, but the effect of a successful appeal is limited by §363(m), which states that “[t]he reversal or modification on appeal of an authorization under [§363(b) or §363(c)] of a sale or lease of property does not affect the validity of a sale or lease under such authorization to an entity that purchased or leased such property in good faith . . . unless such authorization and such sale or lease were stayed pending appeal.” Fearing the implications of §363(m) on an appeal, MOAC sought to stay the Assignment Order. The Bankruptcy Court denied the stay, reasoning that an appeal of the Assignment Order did not qualify as an appeal of an authorization described in §363(m), and emphasizing Transform’s explicit representation that it would not invoke §363(m) against MOAC’s appeal. After the Assignment Order became effective, Sears assigned the lease to Transform’s designee, and MOAC appealed the Assignment Order. The District Court sided with MOAC on the adequate-assurance issue. Transform filed for rehearing, arguing that §363(m) deprived the District Court of jurisdiction. The District Court determined that Second Circuit precedent bound it to treat §363(m) as jurisdictional and dismissed the appeal. The Second Circuit affirmed.

Held: Section 363(m) is not a jurisdictional provision. Pp. 5–15.

 (a) This case is not moot. Transform argues that this case is moot because MOAC’s ultimate relief hinges on the Bankruptcy Court’s ability to reconstitute the Mall of America lease as property of the estate, and no legal vehicle remains available for undoing the lease transfer under the Code or otherwise. A case remains live “[a]s long as the parties have a concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the litigation,” and it “ ‘becomes moot only when it is impossible for a court to grant any effectual relief whatever to the prevailing party.’ ” Chafin v. Chafin, 568 U. S. 165, 172. As in Chafin, MOAC simply seeks “typical appellate relief,” id., at 173, and it cannot be said that the parties have “no ‘concrete interest,’ ” id., at 176, in whether MOAC obtains that relief. Transform’s response—which MOAC vigorously disputes—is that any ultimate vacatur of the Assignment Order will not matter irrespective of the Court’s answer to the question presented. This kind of argument is foreclosed by Chafin. This Court declines to act as a court of “first view” to determine if Transform is correct that no relief remains legally available. Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566 U. S. 189, 201. Pp. 5–6.

 (b) Section 363(m) is not a jurisdictional provision under this Court’s clear-statement precedents. Pp. 7–15.

  (1) Congressional statutes are replete with “preconditions to relief,” Fort Bend County v. Davis, 587 U. S. ___, ___, such as filing deadlines, see United States v. Kwai Fun Wong, 575 U. S. 402, 410, and exhaustion requirements, see Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U. S. 154, 157–158, 166, and n. 6. Congress can, if it chooses, make compliance with such rules “important and mandatory,” Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U. S. 428, 435, but that does not, in itself, make such rules jurisdictional. Because the “jurisdictional” label is consequential and has sometimes been loosely used by this Court, the Court has endeavored “to bring some discipline” to this area. Ibid. This Court has clarified that the jurisdictional label bears “on the power of the court, rather than [on] the rights or obligations of the parties.” Reed Elsevier, 559 U. S., at 161. The Court will only treat a provision as jurisdictional if Congress “ ‘clearly states’ ” as much. Boechler v. Commissioner, 596 U. S. ___, ___. This clear-statement rule does not require Congress to use “ ‘magic words,’ ” but Congress’s statement must be clear and not merely “plausible” or “better” than nonjurisdictional alternatives. Id., at ___. Pp. 7–8.

  (2) The Court identifies nothing in §363(m)’s limits that purports to “gover[n] a court’s adjudicatory capacity.” Henderson, 562 U. S., at 435. The text does not address a court’s authority or refer to the jurisdiction of district courts. Instead, the provision takes as a given the exercise of judicial power over any “authorization under subsection (b)” and explicitly contemplates that appellate courts might “revers[e] or modif[y]” any covered authorization, even though a reversal or modification of a covered authorization may not “affect the validity of a sale or lease under such authorization” to a good-faith purchaser or lessee under certain prescribed circumstances. This is not the stuff of which clear statements are made. Rather, this Court has treated similar statutory caveats as “significan[t] evidence of nonjurisdictional status.” Reed Elsevier, 559 U. S., at 165. Given §363(m)’s clear expectation that courts will exercise jurisdiction over any covered authorization, its text can be read as merely cloaking certain good-faith purchasers or lessees with a targeted protection of their newly acquired property interest, applicable even when an appellate court properly exercises jurisdiction. See Scarborough v. Principi, 541 U. S. 401, 414. Section 363(m) reads like a “statutory limitation,” Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 516, that is tied in some instances to the need for a party to take “certain procedural steps at certain specified times,” Henderson, 562 U. S., at 435.

  Statutory context further clinches the case. Section 363(m) is separated from the Code provisions that recognize federal courts’ jurisdiction over bankruptcy matters, 28 U. S. C. §§1334(a)–(b), (e). And unlike other Code provisions, see §305(c), §363(m) contains no “clear tie” to the Code’s plainly jurisdictional provisions, Boechler, 596 U. S., at ___. That §363(m) issues directions does not suffice to make it jurisdictional, as the Court routinely holds statutory commands nonjurisdictional notwithstanding emphatic directives. Pp. 9–11.

  (3) Transform’s creative arguments do not excavate a clear statement from §363(m)’s unassuming text. First, appealing to supposed traditional principles of in rem jurisdiction, Transform insists that §363(m) is jurisdictional because it reflects those principles. This follows, Transform says, because §363(m) operates to ensure that (absent a stay) courts cannot disturb a transfer to a good-faith purchaser, thereby confirming that the court lacks a basis to exercise in rem jurisdiction over it. Setting aside MOAC’s credible retort to this argument, Transform’s contentions merely offer a reason to think Congress intended §363(m) to be jurisdictional. That, without more, does not show a clear jurisdictional statement. See Boechler, 596 U. S., at ___. Second, Transform maintains that former Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 805 was understood to be jurisdictional because some appellate courts relied upon it to dismiss appeals that challenged the validity of a sale, without a consideration of the merits. Transform says that Congress transplanted Rule 805 wholesale into §363(m). But this argument fails at the gate: every lower court case Transform cites for support predates §363(m)’s 1978 enactment, and thus long predates the Court’s modern efforts on jurisdictional nomenclature. The Court routinely rejects such arguments, and does so here. Pp. 11–15.

Vacated and remanded.

 Jackson, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.