Tag: Supreme Court

Alan Blinder Owes Me $5 for Wasting My Time

By
Michael F. Cannon

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Alan Blinder writes one of the most error-ridden and discourse-debasing op-eds I have ever read. About any topic. Ever.

A sampling:

[O]ur country was founded on the idea that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable. Access to affordable health care is surely essential to two of these three rights, maybe to all three.

This is absurd. Does Blinder really mean to say that until about a hundred years ago, when modern medicine really began, the lack of access to affordable health care alienated every single human being to walk the Earth from their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

I wish people would think—long and hard—before they write about health care. Especially the smart ones.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties

Cato’s Amicus Brief Helps Persuade Supreme Court to Protect Private Property Rights

By
Ilya Shapiro

This blogpost was co-authored by Cato legal associate Anna Mackin.

Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause case whose cert petition Cato supported with an amicus brief. In that brief, we joined the Pacific Legal Foundation in urging the Court to preserve a remedy long-recognized in American courts: compensation for government destruction of private property.

Over a year ago, the Federal Circuit blithely ignored this constitutionally guaranteed protection, ruling that so long as it might be characterized as “temporary,” no government flooding of private land can constitute a Fifth Amendment violation. If upheld, this sweeping opinion could prevent recovery for the destruction of private property whenever the government characterizes its own actions as “temporary,” without any assurances of the length of this “temporary” loss.

Notable Supreme Court commentators saw the importance of this case early on, and our amicus brief was featured on SCOTUSblog’s “petition of the day” page. Many thanks to Brian Hodges at PLF for working with Cato on the brief – one of just four filed in the case. Congratulations also and especially to Matthew Miller & Julie Greathouse of Perkins & Trotter, who represent AGFC, for their successful legal strategy.

It is gratifying to see the Court snap up this opportunity to protect private property rights – it is more likely than not that it will reverse the lower court – implicitly validating the position Cato and PLF advanced in this case. We’ll now be filing a brief on the merits that will urge the Court to maintain constitutional protections against government intrusions on private property. The Court will hear the case next term, probably this fall, with a final decision expected by early 2013.

For more on AGFC v. United States, check the case’s SCOTUSBlog page or its Supreme Court docket page. Jonathan Adler also blogged about the case at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties, Regulatory Studies

Biden Confident about ObamaCare Litigation. Should He Be?

By
Tim Lynch

Over the weekend, Vice-President Joe Biden said that he was confident the Supreme Court would not invalidate President Obama’s health care law.  Here’s Biden:

I’m not going to speculate about something I don’t believe will happen.

Flashback to 2000 when the Supreme Court declared then-Senator Biden’s initiative, the Violence Against Women Act, unconstitutional because it was beyond the limited powers of Congress.   At the time, Biden wrote:

I am disappointed, but not surprised, by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision Monday to strike down the one piece of the landmark Violence Against Women Act that empowers a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault to sue her attacker in federal court. … The Supreme Court has been inching toward this decision for the last several years. In case after case, the court has grown increasingly bold in stripping the federal government of its ability to make decisions on behalf of the American people. … This court, molded by conservatives, has proven eager to substitute its own judgment for that of the political branches democratically elected by the people to do their business.

Go here and here for additional background.

Topics: 
Law and Civil Liberties

Yes, Ms. Pelosi, We’ve Been Serious the Whole Time

By
Ilya Shapiro

The start of my latest Obamacare op-ed, hot off the pixels:

“Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”  With those words, Justice Anthony Kennedy sent the legal establishment reeling.

Was the Supreme Court really taking seriously the preposterous claims of the Tea Party-inspired hacks who were suing the federal government?  Was there really a chance that five justices, acting as would-be partisan hacks themselves, would throw out President Obama’s signature achievement?  Could Obamacare, which name everyone is now allowed to use because the administration itself has adopted it, really fall on some technicality about mandating economic activity rather than regulating it when it occurs?

In a word, yes.

Read the whole thing at CNN.com.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties

Administrative Agencies Are Not a Power Unto Themselves

By
Ilya Shapiro

Cato legal associate Trevor Burrus co-authored this blogpost.

Administrative agencies are accorded huge deference — too much deference — by the courts. Acting as police, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, agencies increasingly act as a law unto themselves and do a majority of the federal government’s work.

Through this arrangement, Congress is put in a win-win situation: the government can delegate decision-making to agencies and avoid political accountability. Because of these concerns, it is vitally important that courts’ deference to agencies not go too far.

In Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., two former pharmaceutical sales representatives sued to recover overtime pay. The Fair Labor Standards Act, however, exempts “outside salesmen” from overtime requirements and for over 70 years a Department of Labor rule has broadly defined “outside salesman” to include those who perform any part of the work required to sell goods. Pharmaceutical companies, as well as many other businesses, have long organized their business practices around this rule.

When former pharmaceutical employees brought a similar suit in the Second Circuit, the Secretary of Labor filed an amicus brief explaining that the rule would be thereafter changed not to exclude pharmaceutical employees. The Second Circuit deferred to this ad hoc rule change and held for the plaintiffs.

In Christopher, however, the Ninth Circuit refused to defer to the Labor Department’s attempt to change a long-standing rule. Cato thus joined the Washington Legal Foundation and the Allied Educational Foundation on an amicus brief to advise the Court that the Ninth Circuit was, believe it or not, correct. As the Ninth Circuit said, an “about-face regulation, expressed only in ad hoc amicus filings” does not deserve even the broad deference already accorded to agencies. Moreover, we stress that, if such deference were allowed, it would encourage agencies to avoid the regular rulemaking procedures that allow affected parties to give “notice and comment” on the proposed changes.

Administrative agencies should not be allowed any more leeway to increase their often unreviewable power.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties

Supreme Court: No Privacy Act Liability for Mental and Emotional Distress

By
Jim Harper

Back in July of last year, I wrote about a case in the Supreme Court called FAA v. Cooper. In that Privacy Act case, a victim of a government privacy invasion had alleged “actual damages” based on evidence of mental and emotional distress.

Cooper, a recreational pilot who was HIV-positive, had chosen to conceal his health status generally, but revealed it to the Social Security Administration for the purposes of pursuing disability payments. When the SSA revealed that he was HIV-positive to the Department of Transportation, which was investigating pilot’s licenses in the hands of the medically unfit, the SSA violated the Privacy Act. Cooper claimed that he suffered mental and emotional distress at learning of the disclosure of his health status and inferentially his sexual orientation, which he had kept private.

The question before the Court was whether the Privacy Act’s grant of compensation for “actual damages” included damages for mental and emotional distress. This week the Court held … distressingly … [sorry, I had to] … NO. Under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, the Privacy Act has to be explicit about providing compensation for mental and emotional distress. Justice Alito wrote for a Court divided 5-3 along traditional ideological lines (Justice Kagan not participating).

The decision itself is a nice example of two sides contesting how statutory language should be interpreted. My preference would have been for the Court to hold that the Privacy Act recognizes mental and emotional distress. After all, a privacy violation is the loss of confident control over information, which, depending on the sensitivity and circumstances, can be very concerning and even devastating.

The existence of harm is a big elephant in the privacy room. Many advocates seem to be trying to lower the bar in terms of what constitutes harm, arguing that the creation of a risk is a harm or that worrisome information practices are harmful. But I think harm rises above doing things someone might find “worrisome.” Harm may occur, as in this case, when one’s (hidden) HIV status and thus sexual orientation is revealed. Harm has occurred when one records and uploads to the Internet another’s sexual activity. But I don’t think it’s harmful if a web site or ad network gathers from your web surfing that you’ve got an interest in outdoor sports.

The upshot of Cooper is this: Congress can and should amend the Privacy Act so that the damages it must compensate when it has harmed someone include real and proven mental and emotional distress.

Topics: 
Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Obamacare Argument Post-Mortem

By
Ilya Shapiro

Now that I’ve woken from the first full night’s sleep since the Supreme Court’s three-day Obamacare marathon began, I can share my thoughts on how the argument went, in case you haven’t seen my first and second days’ reports for the Daily Caller:

  1. The Anti-Injunction Act: On an argument day that can best be described as the calm before the storm, it quickly became clear that the Supreme Court would reach the constitutional issues everyone cares about. That is, regardless of how the justices resolve the hyper-technical issue of whether the Anti-Injunction Act is “jurisdictional,” this law – which prevents people from challenging taxes before they’re assessed or collected – does not apply to the Obamacare litigation. There were also hints that the Court was skeptical of the government’s backup merits argument that the individual mandate was justified under the Constitution’s taxing power. Perhaps the only surprising aspect of the hearing was how “cold” the bench was; it’s rare for the justices to allow advocates to speak at length without interruption, but that’s what they generally did today. That’s yet another indication that the Court will get past the AIA appetizer to the constitutional entree.
  2. The individual mandate: From Justice Kennedy’s noting that the government is fundamentally transforming the relationship of the individual to the government, to Chief Justice Roberts’s concern that “all bets are off” if Congress can enact economic mandates, to Justice Alito’s invocation of a hypothetical burial-insurance mandate, to Justice Scalia’s focusing on the “proper” prong of the Necessary and Proper Clause – and grimacing throughout the solicitor general’s argument – it was a good day for those challenging the individual mandate.  Paul Clement and Mike Carvin, who argued for the plaintiffs, did a masterful job on that score, showing again and again the unprecedented and limitless nature of the government’s assertion of federal power.  The solicitor general meanwhile, had a shaky opening and never could quite articulate the limiting principle to the government’s theory that at least four justices (and presumably the silent Justice Thomas) were seeking.  While trying to predict Supreme Court decisions is a fool’s game, the wise should take note that if Tuesday’s argument is any indication, Obamacare is in constitutional trouble.
  3. Severability: The most likely ruling on severability is that all of Obamacare will fall along with its fatally flawed individual mandate.  While such a result would be legally correct, it would still be stunning.  Perhaps even more remarkable is that the severability argument proceeded under the general assumption that the mandate would indeed be struck down.  This was not a mere hypothetical situation about which the justices speculated, but rather a very real, even probable, event.  There’s still a possibility that a “third way” will develop between the government’s position (mandate plus “guaranteed issue” and “community rating”) and that of the challengers (the whole law) – perhaps Titles I and II, as Justices Breyer and Alito mused (and as Cato’s brief detailed) – but the only untenable position would be to sever the mandate completely from a national regulatory scheme that obviously wouldn’t work without it.
  4. Medicaid expansion/coercion: The justices don’t want to reach the factually complicated and legally thorny Medicaid issue.  That may be another marginal factor pushing one or more of them to strike down all of Obamacare under a straightforward severability analysis and leave the “spending clause coercion” issue for another day.  This was perhaps the most difficult of the four issues to predict, and having heard argument doesn’t really make that task easier.  A majority of the Court was troubled by the government’s “your money or your life” stance, but it’s not clear what standard can be applied to distinguish coercion from mere inducements.  Then again, if this isn’t federal coercion of the states, I’m not sure what is.

General post-argument reaction: All of my pre-argument intuitions were confirmed, and then some:  The Court will easily get past the AIA, probably strike down the individual mandate, more likely than not taking with it all or most of the rest of the law (including the Medicaid expansion).  Still, it was breathtaking to be in the courtroom to see the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito all on the same page.  (For example, when Justice Kennedy’s first question during yesterday’s hearing was, “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” – a question hostile to the government – my heart began racing.)  Much as I’d love to think that my briefs helped get them there even a little bit, ultimately it’s the strength of the constitutional claims and the weakness of the government’s positions that prevailed – or will prevail if the opinions that come down in three months follow along the lines set by this week’s arguments.  They may not of course – trying to predict the Supreme Court isn’t a science—but I’m coming out of this week feeling very good.

Finally, for links to all of Cato’s briefs and my last series of op-eds on the Obamacare litigation, see Monday’s blog post.

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Health Care, Law and Civil Liberties

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