facilitate

On August 5, 1999, Michael Crawford stabbed Kenneth Lee in the torso during a confrontation at Lee's apartment. Crawford and his wife Sylvia had gone there after Sylvia alleged that Lee had attempted to rape her several weeks earlier. Lee was taken to the hospital and later died from his wounds. Police arrested both Crawford and Sylvia that night. Detectives gave Miranda warnings and interrogated Sylvia twice at the station house. In her recorded statement Sylvia initially denied involvement but eventually admitted she had led Crawford to Lee's apartment and had seen the stabbing. Crawford also gave police a statement describing the events and his belief that Lee may have reached for something before the stabbing. At trial Crawford asserted self-defense, but Sylvia did not testify because of Washington's marital privilege. The State offered Sylvia's tape-recorded statement as evidence that the stabbing was not in self-defense and invoked the hearsay exception for statements against penal interest. The trial court admitted the statement after finding it bore particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. The jury convicted Crawford of assault. The Washington Court of Appeals reversed after applying a nine-factor test and concluding the statement lacked sufficient indicia of reliability. The Washington Supreme Court reinstated the conviction. It determined that Sylvia's statement interlocked with Crawford's statement and therefore bore adequate guarantees of trustworthiness, noting that both accounts were ambiguous on whether Lee had possessed a weapon. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.

In February 2002, Vincent and Liza Concepcion entered into an agreement for the sale and servicing of cellular telephones with AT&T Mobility LLC. The contract provided for arbitration of all disputes between the parties but required that claims be brought in the parties' individual capacity and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class or representative proceeding. The agreement authorized AT&T to make unilateral amendments, which it did to the arbitration provision on several occasions. The parties agree that the December 2006 revisions control. The revised agreement requires customers to complete a one-page Notice of Dispute form. It allows AT&T to offer settlement. It provides that AT&T must pay all costs for nonfrivolous claims. Arbitration must take place in the county where the customer is billed. For claims of $10,000 or less, the customer may choose in-person, telephone, or submission-based proceedings. The agreement preserves the right to bring claims in small claims court. It requires AT&T to pay a $7,500 minimum recovery plus twice the claimant's attorney's fees if the arbitration award exceeds AT&T's last written settlement offer. The Concepcions purchased AT&T service advertised as including free phones but were charged $30.22 in sales tax based on the phones' retail value. In March 2006, the Concepcions filed a complaint against AT&T in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. Their suit was consolidated with a putative class action alleging that AT&T had engaged in false advertising and fraud by charging sales tax on phones it advertised as free. In March 2008, AT&T moved to compel arbitration under the terms of its contract with the Concepcions. The Concepcions opposed the motion on the ground that the arbitration agreement was unconscionable under California law because it disallowed classwide procedures. The District Court denied AT&T's motion. It described the arbitration agreement favorably in several respects. Nevertheless, the court found the provision unconscionable under the California Supreme Court's Discover Bank decision because AT&T had not shown that bilateral arbitration adequately substituted for the deterrent effects of class actions. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. It also found the provision unconscionable under California law as announced in Discover Bank. The court held that the Discover Bank rule was not preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act because the rule was simply a refinement of the unconscionability analysis applicable to contracts generally in California. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

The petitioners were fourteen same-sex couples and two men whose same-sex partners were deceased. They lived in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. Those states defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman under their constitutions and statutes. The petitioners filed suits in federal district courts in their home states. They sought marriage licenses or recognition of marriages lawfully performed elsewhere. James Obergefell and John Arthur traveled from Ohio to Maryland to marry aboard a medical transport plane because Arthur suffered from ALS; Obergefell later sought to be listed as surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate. April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, Michigan nurses, adopted three children but could not both serve as legal parents under state adoption rules. Army Reserve Sergeant Ijpe DeKoe and Thomas Kostura married in New York before DeKoe's deployment to Afghanistan and later settled in Tennessee. Each district court ruled in the petitioners' favor. The respondents appealed. The Sixth Circuit consolidated the cases and reversed the district court judgments. The petitioners sought certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted. Same-sex couples had begun establishing families after substantial cultural and political developments in the late twentieth century. Earlier litigation had addressed the legal status of gays and lesbians, including challenges that reached the Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas.