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Tag: Bradley Joondeph

The SCOTUS Pregame Show

This post is intended for those who do not follow the Court’s work closely, but are tuning in now largely because of the ACA decision. (For avid Court watchers, this stuff is terribly obvious, so I apologize.) My goal is just to briefly explain what work is left for the Court this Term, and how it might affect the timing of when HHS v.Florida (and Florida v. HHS and NFIB v. Sebelius) are handed down.

First, the numbers. Setting aside the ACA cases, the Court essentially has twelve other decisions to hand down. (I say essentially, because Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbsare separate cases, though they raise the same basic Eighth Amendment question. Thus, they are sure to be decided together, whether in two opinions or one, and probably with the same majority opinion author.) Those are, in the order of argument:

1.  First American Financial Corp. v. Edwards (argued November 28)
2.  Williams v. Illinois (argued December 6)
3.  Knox v. SEIU (argued January 10)
4.  FCC v. Fox Television Stations (argued January 10)
5. United States v. Alvarez (argued February 22)
6.  Southern Union Co. v. United States (argued March 19)
7.  Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs (argued March 20)
8.  Christopher v. SmithKine Beecham Corp. (argued April 16)
9.  Dorsey v. United States (curvelined with Hill v. United States) (argued April 17)
10.  Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter (argued April 18)
11. Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band v. Patchak (curvelined with Salazar v. Patchak) (argued April 24)
12. Arizona v. United States (argued April 25)

The Court will hand down one or more opinions–almost certainly more than one–this coming Monday, June 18. The Court will then announce–probably on Monday, probably before noon–whether it will hand down any more opinions later next week. Of course, it will not announce which opinions, just whether it will hand any more down.

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The Anti-Injunction Act Complications

The big news from [last Friday’s] two decisions was not that Virginia lacks standing; that was a problem lurking in that case from the beginning, a nettlesome issue going all the way back to Judge Hudson’s first opinion (in August 2010) rejecting the United States’s motion to dismiss on 12(b)(1) grounds. Virginia would have stood on much stronger ground had it also alleged an injury in fact from the effect of the minimum essential coverage provision’s necessarily pushing more Virginia residents onto the state’s Medicaid rolls, and thus imposing a significant financial cost on the state. But the Commonwealth failed to do this, instead resting on the claim that it had standing based on the alleged “conflict” between its Virginia Health Care Freedom Act and the individual mandate. This was a weak argument from the beginning, and the Fourth Circuit’s holding was entirely unsurprising.

What is surprising–perhaps not on the merits, but in relation to the attention the issue has received to date, from the courts and the parties–is the court’s holding in Liberty Universityv. Geithner that federal courts lack any subject matter jurisdiction over a suit seeking to enjoin enforcement of the individual mandate because such jurisdiction is precluded by the Anti-Injunction Act. In this respect, there are some important points worth noting:

* This is a potential problem in every lawsuit currently challenging the individual mandate. That is, if the Fourth Circuit’s analysis is correct, then the Supreme Court would lack jurisdiction to hear any private plaintiff’s claim that the minimum coverage provision exceeds Congress’s enumerated powers until after a taxpayer was assessed a penalty under ACA 1501, paid the penalty, and sued the federal government for a refund. The case thus would not reach the Supreme Court until somewhere in the neighborhood of 2015 or 2016.

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