Casey Byrne ’26 won the championship round of the 60th annual Hardt Cup Tournament held on April 11, 2024.

Byrne and cofinalist William Allred ’26 argued a fictional appeal of a Ninth Circuit ruling in Gay v. Parsons before a Supreme Court panel of Sarah K. Campbell JD/MPP ‘09, a justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court; Robin Rosenberg JD/MA ‘89, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida; and Mary Scriven T ‘84, U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Florida. Scriven acted as Chief Justice.

The two advocates argued the issue of whether psychologists preparing risk assessment reports for the California Board of Parole Hearings are entitled to absolute immunity. In Gay v. Parsons, Omar Sharrieff Gay, an African American Muslim man in the California prison system, claimed that the state psychologists who evaluated him in his bid for parole asked racially and religiously biased questions during a risk assessment, leading to their conclusion that he posed a high risk of committing future violent acts.

Read more about the moot court at: https://law.duke.edu/news/caseybyrne...

Sponsored by the Duke Law Moot Court Board.