Category

Category: Politics

Politics

Announcement of opinions for Wednesday, April 30

<img src="https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-loaded/v1/wXGjf9VO5jc71aOT_yufGXn9ye8UNv30" border=0 width="1" height="1" alt="Announcement of opinions for Wednesday, April 30" title="Announcement of opinions for Wednesday, April 30"> <p>On Wednesday, April 30, we will be live blogging as the court releases opinions in one or more argued cases from the current term.</p> <p>Click <a href="https://scotusblog.com/faqs-announcements-of-orders-and-opinions/">here</a> for a list of FAQs about opinion announcements.</p> <p><span id="more-505528"></span></p> <section class="custom-block"> <div class="arena-embed"> <div class="arena-chat" data-publisher="scotusblog" data-chatroom="FgXrAcJ" data-position="in-page"></div> </div> </section> <p>The post <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/announcement-of-opinions-for-tuesday-december-5-3/">Announcement of opinions for Wednesday, April 30</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com">SCOTUSblog</a>.</p>

mingooland · · 1 min read
Read more →
Politics

Argument about adequate education for a disabled child gets heated 

<img src="https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-loaded/v1/MQnH189t5ne3TNMTPQf8lXn9ye8UNv30" border=0 width="1" height="1" alt="Argument about adequate education for a disabled child gets heated " title="Argument about adequate education for a disabled child gets heated "> <p>Another day in our modern Supreme Court on Tuesday, as the argument in <em>A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools </em>was consumed less by discussion of substantive legal questions and more by debate about whether and to what extent the parties may have sandbagged the justices by changing their positions during the course of briefing. </p> <p><em>A.J.T. </em>involves the treatment of schoolchildren with disabilities, and in particular the statutory obligation not to discriminate on the basis of a disability. Several lower courts have adopted a rule obligating students who allege discrimination to satisfy a higher standard than courts require in other contexts. The student in this case, known as A.J.T. before the court, lost under that view in the lower courts and wants the justices to reject that dual standard.</p> <span id="more-505524"></span> <p>Arguing on behalf of A.J.T., Roman Martinez contended that the case is over, pointing to the school district’s new-found agreement that the standard should be the same in all contexts. Martinez told the justices that the school district’s shift of position should lead them to validate the unitary standard and send the case back to the lower court to select the appropriate standard.</p> <p>The justices seemed quite receptive to that idea. So, their main questions of Martinez were getting him to concede that (as Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it) “it’ll still be open to the court on remand to decide which standard is appropriate …, correct?” There were quite a few questions probing what seemed to be semantic differences between A.J.T.’s position and the position of the federal government, which filed a brief supporting her, but there was hardly a word by any of the justices suggesting that the standard should depend on whether unequal treatment occurred in school as opposed to somewhere else.</p> <p>The argument heated up when Lisa Blatt, representing the school district, accused Martinez and Nicole Reaves, who appeared for the government, of “lying” when they said Blatt had changed her position; she insisted she had never called for a different standard in the two contexts. </p> <p>Justice Neil Gorsuch was incensed by Blatt’s tone, and he immediately interrupted her to ask: “You believe that Mr. Martinez and the Solicitor General are lying? Is that your accusation?” When Blatt responded “Yes, absolutely.” Gorsuch replied: “I think you should be more careful with your words, Ms. Blatt.” Not backing down, Blatt replied “Well, they should be more careful …”</p> <p>Gorsuch allowed the argument to continue for several minutes, but he soon returned to the topic to say that he was “still troubled by your suggestion that your friends on the other side have lied …, and I’d ask you to reconsider that phrase. … People make mistakes. You can accuse people of being incorrect, but lying is another matter.” </p> <p>What followed was the most heated exchange between a justice and an advocate that I’ve heard in my decade of experience at the court. Feeling himself interrupted, Gorsuch admonished Blatt: “If I might finish.” He then proceeded for several minutes to read long quotations from her filings in the case, which he regarded as tending to “suggest you [were] arguing for a unique rule” in the education context, as Martinez and Reaves had stated. After a protracted sequence of those readings, he ended by asking Blatt: “Then would you withdraw your accusation?” When she said: “I’ll withdraw it,” Gorsuch concluded: “Thank you. That’s it.”</p> <p>The justices seemed to have no interest in adopting the higher standard for disability discrimination that Blatt suggested. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for example, described it as “a pretty big sea change,” and asked “[w]hy should we do it when … this didn’t come up until their reply brief [and w]e don’t have other circuits that have adopted” the school district’s view? Similarly, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was all but incredulous at Blatt’s insistence that disability statutes do not require accommodation for people with disabilities.</p> <p>I think we can expect a succinct opinion, sometime next month, sending this back to the lower court to rule on the correct standard.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/argument-about-adequate-education-for-a-disabled-child-gets-heated/">Argument about adequate education for a disabled child gets heated </a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com">SCOTUSblog</a>.</p>

mingooland · · 4 min read
Read more →
Politics

Justices appear sympathetic to victims of SWAT raid on the wrong house

<img src="https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-loaded/v1/AvPZ0CHDo__fMvo5rPmN0Xn9ye8UNv30" border=0 width="1" height="1" alt="Justices appear sympathetic to victims of SWAT raid on the wrong house" title="Justices appear sympathetic to victims of SWAT raid on the wrong house"> <p>The Supreme Court on Tuesday morning was sympathetic to the victims of a “wrong house” raid in 2017, with several justices expressing surprise at the federal government’s efforts to contend that the actions of FBI agents were shielded from liability because their acts were discretionary. But it was not clear whether that their skepticism of the agents’ conduct would lead to the result that the victims were seeking.</p> <p>The case began when a six-agent SWAT team, led by FBI Special Agent Lawrence Guerra, conducted a pre-dawn raid on the suburban Atlanta home where Hilliard Toi Cliatt, his then-partner, Curtrina Martin, and Martin’s seven-year-old son were living. The team broke down the front door with a battering ram and set off a flashbang grenade. The team then pulled Cliatt out of the closet where he had been hiding with Martin and handcuffed him, and it held both of them at gunpoint. </p> <span id="more-505521"></span> <p>When agents questioned Cliatt and he mentioned his address – 3756 Denville Trace – they realized that the SWAT team had raided the wrong house: Their warrant was for 3741 Landau Lane, the home of a gang member that they were targeting. But Guerra had not confirmed the address on the home’s mailbox before authorizing the start of the raid. </p> <p>Martin and Cliatt sued the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a 1946 law that allows people to sue the federal government (which would normally otherwise be immune) for injuries or property loss caused by government employees “while acting within the scope of” their office, when a private person could also be held liable for the same conduct in the same jurisdiction. Both the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled for the government, prompting Martin and Cliatt to come to the Supreme Court, which agreed last year to take up their case. </p> <p>As the case came to the Supreme Court, it focused on two questions. The first was the interaction (or lack thereof) between two different parts of the FTCA. A provision known as the “discretionary function” exception bars claims under the FTCA that are “based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or an employee of the Government, whether or not the discretion involved is abused.” Another provision, known as the “law-enforcement proviso,” allows claims arising out of “assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or malicious prosecution” committed by federal law-enforcement officers. </p> <p>The 11th Circuit ruled that Martin and Cliatt could not bring claims for wrongdoing that were not covered by the law-enforcement proviso – for example, their claims for negligence, trespass, and infliction of emotional distress. </p> <p>Representing Martin and Cliatt, Patrick Jaicomo told the justices on Tuesday that the discretionary-function exception never applies to claims under the law-enforcement proviso. Indeed, he noted, in 1974 Congress added the law-enforcement proviso precisely to “ensure a legal remedy for the intentional torts of federal police.” If the claims that “Congress amended the statute to affirmatively guarantee” are not covered, he asked, “what is left of the Federal Tort Claims Act?” </p> <p>Jaicomo faced some skepticism about the potential breadth of the rule for which he was advocating. Justice Clarence Thomas asked how the justices should determine “how far a proviso like this applies,” while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that the two provisions might not always be <br>“mutually exclusive.” “I wonder,” she said, “whether the kinds of policy determinations that I thought the discretionary function was about could arise in some law enforcement circumstances,” even if they did not here. </p> <p>Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed concern that Martin and Cliatt were asking the justices “to answer a question we didn’t grant” review to decide. </p> <p>Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested that the Supreme Court should send the case back to the 11th Circuit for another look, telling Jaicomo that his clients’ case would be “an awkward vehicle” to address broader issues because “it really wasn’t teed up for us that way.” </p> <p>Jaicomo resisted that suggestion, countering that such a result “will also implicitly be saying that the exact sort of case that Congress amended this act to allow is going to be doomed by the Eleventh Circuit’s precedent.” </p> <p>Representing the federal government, Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General Frederick Liu argued that the law-enforcement proviso does not carve out an exception to the discretionary-function exception – which in turn bars Martin and Cliatt’s claims. </p> <p>Sotomayor was dubious that Congress intended to prohibit these kinds of claims, telling Liu that Congress had adopted the law-enforcement proviso after a wrong-house raid in Collinsville, Ill. Why would it bother to do so, she queried, “if we accept that they had the discretion to think there was danger, with or without a warrant, the emergency doctrine exception would let them break down the door.” </p> <p>Gorsuch was also unconvinced. He pressed Liu, asking incredulously whether there was no policy indicating that federal officers should not break down the wrong door of a house or “traumatize its occupants? Really?” </p> <p>The second question before the court arose from the 11th Circuit’s ruling that Martin and Cliatt’s claims under the law-enforcement proviso were also barred under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which provides that the Constitution and federal laws are “the supreme Law of the Land” and state laws cannot supersede them. Applying its earlier decisions, the court of appeals explained that the federal government can rely on the clause as a defense against state-law liability in FTCA cases if it can show that the government official’s acts “have some nexus with furthering federal policy” and “can reasonably be characterized as complying with the full range of federal law.” </p> <p>When the case came to the Supreme Court, the federal government agreed with Martin and Cliatt that the 11th Circuit’s ruling on the supremacy clause was wrong – although it contended that the justices did not need to reach that question in the first place. The court therefore appointed Christopher Mills, a former clerk to Thomas, to defend the 11th Circuit’s decision, but the justices had relatively few questions for him on Tuesday.</p> <p>In his questioning of Liu, Justice Brett Kavanaugh (who was otherwise fairly quiet) outlined a possible disposition of the case. The court can say that the supremacy clause does not block Martin and Cliatt’s claims, he suggested. And it can say that the law-enforcement provision only applies to the provision of the FTCA carving out an exception from liability for intentional torts. “And we can stop there,” he posited, “and leave questions about how to apply the discretionary function exception to the facts of this case for remand” to the court of appeals. It seemed like at least five justices might be on board for such a ruling. </p> <p>A decision is expected by late June or early July. </p> <p>The post <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/justices-appear-sympathetic-to-victims-of-swat-raid-on-the-wrong-house/">Justices appear sympathetic to victims of SWAT raid on the wrong house</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com">SCOTUSblog</a>.</p>

mingooland · · 6 min read
Read more →
Politics

Supreme Court sides with HHS in dispute over calculation of Medicare payments to hospitals

<img src="https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-loaded/v1/-onXKLLlrrg8gCUA25whLHn9ye8UNv30" border=0 width="1" height="1" alt="Supreme Court sides with HHS in dispute over calculation of Medicare payments to hospitals" title="Supreme Court sides with HHS in dispute over calculation of Medicare payments to hospitals"> <p>The Supreme Court on Tuesday <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-715_5426.pdf">ruled for the federal government</a> in its dispute with a group of more than 200 hospitals over the formula used to identify and compensate hospitals that serve a large number of lower-income patients. The vote was 7-2, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing for the majority in a case that she described as “highly technical.” </p> <p>Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She warned that the majority’s interpretation of the law at issue “will deprive hospitals serving the neediest among us of critical federal funds that Congress plainly attempted to provide.” </p> <span id="more-505509"></span> <p>The Medicare program provides health insurance to Americans who are elderly or disabled, and it reimburses hospitals that care for those patients. To provide hospitals with an incentive to treat lower-income patients, who are often more expensive to treat, the Medicare program provides an enhanced payment to hospitals that treat larger numbers of such patients. </p> <p>One part of the formula used to calculate the enhanced payment is known as the “Medicare fraction,” which in turn considers (among other things) the number of patients who were “entitled to supplementary security income benefits” – a federal program that provides a subsistence allowance to lower-income Americans who are elderly, blind, and disabled. The Department of Health and Human Services interpreted the phrase to apply to patients who were entitled to receive SSI benefits during the month in which they were hospitalized, while the hospitals interpreted the phrase more broadly to apply to all patients who were enrolled in the SSI system when they were hospitalized, even if they did not receive a payment during that month. </p> <p>The majority on Tuesday sided with the federal government. Barrett explained that “SSI benefits are cash benefits.” And the Medicare law also makes clear, she continued, that whether someone is eligible to receive those benefits “is determined on a monthly basis.” Therefore, she concluded, “an individual is considered ‘entitled to [SSI] benefits’ for purposes of the Medicare fraction only if she is eligible for such benefits during the month of her hospitalization.” </p> <p>In her dissent, Jackson contended that the majority’s decision was “based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of how SSI’s cash-benefit program works.” When it adopted the enhanced-payment program, Jackson reasoned, Congress’s goal was to ensure that hospitals that serve a disproportionately large number of lower-income patients had access to the funding that they need. The formula’s use of SSI benefits, she stressed, was to “draw from that program’s pre-existing pool of individuals that have already been designated as our society’s neediest — <em>not</em> to assess the wholly irrelevant fact of whether any such individual actually received a cash payment under the SSI program during the month of their hospitalization.” </p> <p>The post <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/supreme-court-sides-with-hhs-in-dispute-over-calculation-of-medicare-payments-to-hospitals/">Supreme Court sides with HHS in dispute over calculation of Medicare payments to hospitals</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com">SCOTUSblog</a>.</p>

mingooland · · 3 min read
Read more →