Citizens All Along: Derivative Citizenship, Unlawful Entry, and the Former Immigration and Nationality Act

In Woodford v. Ngo, the Supreme Court cemented the judicial assumption that most prisons have effective and navigable internal grievance procedures within the doctrinal rules surrounding the Prison Litigation Reform Act's (PLRA) exhaustion requirement. Reliance on the assumption has contributed to a body of PLRA exhaustion doctrine that maps poorly onto the factual realities of the prison context and requires constant clarification by the Supreme Court. Indeed, the Supreme Court has been called upon twice in the past decade to sort out the mess of doctrinal rules governing PLRA exhaustion, first in Ross v. Blake and just this year in Perttu v. Richards. Examining the Court's path to Ross and Perttu, this Comment argues that the Court's reliance on the assumption mandated in Woodford blinded it to the potential constitutional problems generated by Ross, which led to the circuit split at issue in Perttu. Thus, the Court must clarify the boundaries of PLRA exhaustion for the second time in fewer than ten years. Efficiency is one of the core purposes of PLRA exhaustion, and the Supreme Court’s perpetual cycle of clarifying (and reclarifying, and reclarifying again) its construction of a single statutory provision fails to serve that end.

In this Comment, Zoë Lewis Ewing evaluates the implementation of the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), a New York law passed in 2019 to provide shortened sentencing ranges for domestic violence survivors convicted of crimes. It identifies an inconsistency in sentencing courts’ application of the law’s causation standard, which requires that a petitioner’s experience of domestic violence be a “significant contributing factor” to their criminal conduct. Some courts interpret the prong narrowly, while others apply a broad causation standard. This Comment argues that courts should opt for the latter approach and consider causation in the DVSJA satisfied if domestic violence was “sufficiently significant to have likely helped bring about the criminal conduct.”

The Fair Housing Act (FHA) makes it unlawful to deny people with disabilities “reasonable accommodations.” But courts have long split over how to interpret this provision. At the center of the divide is the statutory requirement that an accommodation be “necessary to afford . . . equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.” Some courts interpret this language to impose a strict-necessity standard, requiring that an accommodation be truly indispensable. Other circuits instead read the statute as imposing a lenient-necessity standard, requiring only that the requested accommodation ameliorate the plaintiff’s disability. Rather than pick one interpretation, this Comment suggests that courts should tailor the necessity standard they employ to the type of case that is brought. Analyzing the text of the statute, Ben Griswold argues that the term “use and enjoy” invokes common law property ideas that should inform the interpretation of the reasonable accommodation provision. This textual analysis indicates that courts should apply a lenient-necessity requirement to cases brought by housing occupants requesting a specific accommodation, but should apply a strict-necessity requirement in cases brought by developers seeking zoning variances. Further, this interpretation addresses important information asymmetries, enabling courts to more optimally select for societally beneficial accommodations.