The US Supreme Court granted certiorari in two cases on Monday: Albence v. Chavez and Henry Schein v. Archer & White Sales. These cases are scheduled to be heard during the next term.

The Albence v. Chavez case centers on the question of whether a non-citizen who is both set to be removed from the country and is also seeking deferral or withholding of that removal should be detained based on 8 USC § 1231 or 8 USC § 1226. Each of the respondents in this case is an individual who was undocumented, who was removed from the US, and who then returned seeking asylum. Each of these individuals was then detained again and sought an individualized bond determination that is generally granted at the discretion of the government under § 1226.

The government argued, however, that it could not exercise this discretion because the immigrants were instead detained under § 1231, which states that a returning non-citizen that has already been removed will have their previous removal proceedings reinstated upon their return with no eligibility for a reopening or review. The Supreme Court has agreed to determine which provision should be applied. The court of appeals ruled in favor of the respondents.

In Schein v. Archer & White Sales, the Supreme Court will determine whether an exemption of certain claims in an arbitration agreement negates questions of delegating the arbitration to an arbitrator.

This is the second time this case is coming before the Supreme Court. The first time hearing the case, the court held that the Federal Arbitration Act does not permit a court to decide an arbitrability question if the parties have clearly delegated that question to an arbitrator. The court remanded he case to the court of appeals to determine whether there was a delegation of the arbitrability question in the agreement. The court of appeals again declined to compel arbitration, and thus the case was appealed to the Supreme Court a second time.