Legal Sidebari
Congressional Court Watcher: Recent
Appellate Decisions of Interest to Lawmakers
(Mar. 7–Mar. 13, 2022)
March 14, 2022
The federal courts issue hundreds of decisions every week in cases involving diverse legal disputes. This
Sidebar series selects decisions from the past week that may be of particular interest to federal lawmakers,
focusing on orders and decisions of the Supreme Court and precedential decisions of the courts of appeals
for the thirteen federal circuits. Selected cases typically involve the interpretation or validity of federal
statutes and regulations, or constitutional issues relevant to Congress’s lawmaking and oversight
functions.
Some of the cases identified in this Sidebar, or the legal questions they address, are examined in other
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Decisions of the Supreme Court
Last week, the Supreme Court issued decisions in one case for which it heard oral arguments:
Criminal Law & Procedure: The Court unanimously agreed that a criminal defendant’s
convictions for burglarizing ten units of a storage facility one night did not arise on
“occasions different from one another” under the Armed Career Criminal Act, which
would have triggered heightened criminal penalties (Wooden v. United States).
Decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals
Topic headings marked with an asterisk (*) indicate cases where the appellate court’s controlling opinion
recognizes a split among the federal appellate courts on a key legal issue resolved in the opinion,
contributing to a non-uniform application of the law among the circuits.
Civil Procedure: The Federal Circuit held that two car distributors incorporated in New
Jersey and California were not required to defend patent-infringement claims in a Texas
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CRS Legal Sidebar
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district court. The Texas court had found venue was proper based on the presence of
independently owned and operated car dealerships in the district that sold the distributors’
motor vehicles. On a petition for a writ of mandamus, the Federal Circuit held that the
distributors had insufficient control over the dealerships for venue to be appropriate in the
Texas district (In re Volkswagen Group of America, Inc.).
Civil Procedure: The Sixth Circuit held that 28 U.S.C. § 1291, which allows parties to
appeal immediately a district court’s non-final order granting a preliminary injunction,
does not allow the immediate appeal of a state court’s preliminary injunction order upon
removal of the case to federal court (Schuler v. Adams).
*Civil Rights: In considering how the “joint employer” doctrine applies to employment
discrimination claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, a divided Second Circuit
panel joined a majority of circuits in concluding that a non-exhaustive list of factors,
drawing from common-law principles of agency, determine whether entities are
“employers” and “employees” under Title VII. The joint employer doctrine involves
claims that arise when an entity shares significant control over an employee with another
entity (Felder v. U.S. Tennis Ass’n).
Class Actions: A divided Eleventh Circuit held that the Class Action Fairness Act does
not allow a review of a district court’s sua sponte remand of a class action to state court
because the decision lacks the “motion to remand” required by the Act. Generally, the Act
authorizes an appellate court to “accept an appeal from an order of a district court
granting or denying a motion to remand a class action to the State court from which it
was removed” (Ruhlen v. Holiday Haven Homeowners, Inc.).
Public Health: The Fourth Circuit affirmed a district court’s permanent injunction
barring South Carolina from terminating its Medicaid provider agreement with Planned
Parenthood. The court found that Medicaid’s free-choice-of-provider provision, 42
U.S.C. § 1396a(a)(23), codified Congress’s desire to extend a choice of medical
providers to qualifying individuals, and South Carolina’s mandate restricted those
individuals’ ability to access medical care unrelated to abortion services (Planned
Parenthood South Atlantic v. Kerr).
Sovereign Immunity: In a case involving a family’s effort to recover an art collection
seized by the Hungarian government during World War II, the D.C. Circuit held that the
plaintiffs’ claims against a stated-owned Hungarian company fell under the Foreign
Sovereign Immunities Act’s exception to sovereign immunity for claims against a foreign
state’s agency or instrumentality where “rights in property taken in violation of
international law are in issue” (De Csepel v. Republic of Hungary).
Author Information
Michael John Garcia
Caitlain Devereaux Lewis
Deputy Assistant Director/ALD
Section Research Manager
Congressional Research Service
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