Legal Sidebari
Congressional Court Watcher: Recent
Appellate Decisions of Interest to Lawmakers
(March 28–April 3, 2022)
April 4, 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 a decision in one case for which it heard oral arguments:
Arbitration: In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court held that in reviewing an application
to confirm or vacate an arbitration award under Sections 9 and 10 of the Federal
Arbitration Act (FAA), federal courts may not “look through” the application to decide
whether the underlying dispute gives rise to federal-question jurisdiction. The FAA does
not confer federal-question jurisdiction over arbitration disputes, and courts must instead
have an independent jurisdictional basis for considering those claims. The Court
distinguished applications under Sections 9 and 10 from petitions to compel arbitration
under Section 4 of the FAA, as the Court held previously that Section 4 permits a federal
court to “look through” a petition to compel arbitration to determine whether a federal
question exists (Badgerow v. Walters).
The Supreme Court also granted certiorari in three cases:
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Criminal Law & Procedure: The Supreme Court agreed to consider whether an Arizona
Supreme Court ruling that a state procedural rule precluded a death-row inmate’s request
for post-conviction relief was an adequate and independent state-law ground for denying
his claim (Cruz v. Arizona).
Environmental Law: The Court agreed to review a case from the Ninth Circuit on
whether a California law, which bans the sale of whole pork meat from animals confined
in a manner inconsistent with state standards (regardless of whether those animals were
held outside of California), violates the “dormant” Commerce Clause in light of its out-
of-state effects (National Pork Producers Council v. Ross).
Intellectual Property: Granting certiorari in a case from the Second Circuit, the
Supreme Court is asked to consider whether pop-artist Andy Warhol violated the
copyright of photographer Lynn Goldsmith by repurposing her photograph of the
musician Prince, or whether the repurposing was sufficiently transformative as not to
violate the Copyright Act (Andy Warhol Found. for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith).
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 Rights: In a case where a plaintiff alleged that a transit system did not provide
meaningful access to disabled bus riders, the Eighth Circuit held that the system’s alleged
violation of Department of Transportation regulations—requiring drivers to announce any
stop at the request of a disabled rider and to receive appropriate training to assist disabled
riders—did not constitute a per se violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA). Still, the court reversed the lower court’s summary judgment in favor of the
agency, concluding that there were genuine issues of material fact on which the suit
might be able to proceed (Segal v. Metro. Council).
Civil Rights: The Eleventh Circuit held that a plaintiff satisfied constitutional standing
requirements to bring suit against a hotel for omitting accessibility-related information
from its website as required by ADA regulations. Although the plaintiff indicated she had
no intention to visit the hotel, the court concluded that her alleged emotional injury
arising from the illegal act gave her a sufficiently concrete and particularized injury to
have standing to bring suit (Laufer v. Arpen LLC).
Consumer Protection: A divided Seventh Circuit held that a plaintiff did not satisfy
constitutional standing requirements to bring suit under the Fair Debt Collections
Practices Act over a collection letter she received on a time-barred debt. The majority
held that neither the risk that plaintiff might have mistakenly paid the debt, the alleged
mental harm caused by receiving the letter, nor her call to the debt collector to dispute the
debt and contacting of a lawyer for advice, gave rise to a concrete injury (Pierre v.
Midland Credit Management, Inc.).
Criminal Law & Procedure: The Eighth Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence
imposed by a district court on a criminal defendant, including the payment of restitution
under 18 U.S.C. § 2429, a provision of the Abolish Human Trafficking Act of 2017
(AHTA). The AHTA provision provides the amount of restitution owed to the victim by
cross-reference to 18 U.S.C. § 2259(b)(3), but the relevant provision is actually found in
18 U.S.C. § 2259(c)(2). The court concluded this was a clerical error that arose when
Congress amended § 2259 and enacted AHTA within weeks of the other. It therefore
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construed the AHTA to reference the appropriate provision of § 2259 (United States v.
Kempter).
*Criminal Law & Procedure: Adding to a circuit split, the Tenth Circuit joined the
Seventh and Fourth Circuits in holding that directly forcing a bank customer to withdraw
money from an ATM constitutes a federal bank robbery under 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a),
because the funds belonged to the bank when the withdrawal occurred. The lower court,
aligning with the Fifth Circuit’s view, had concluded that the bank customer, rather than
the bank itself, had possession of the funds when the robbery occurred, so a necessary
element of § 2113(a)—that the money belonged to or was in “the care, custody, control,
management, or possession” of a bank—was not satisfied (United States v. Chavez).
International Law: The Second Circuit held that the Act of State Doctrine did not
foreclose federal antitrust and related state law claims against Haitian government
officials and multinational corporations for allegedly conspiring to fix prices of
remittances and telephone calls from the United States to Haiti. The court reasoned that
the Doctrine bars suit where there is an official act of a foreign state performed within its
own territory and the relief sought would require a U.S. court to declare invalid the
foreign sovereign’s official act. The court remanded to the district court holding, inter
alia, that the factual predicate applying the Act of State Doctrine did not exist because the
claims did not require the court to determine whether any foreign official act was invalid
(Celestin v. Caribbean Air Mail, Inc.).
International Law: The D.C. Circuit held that neither the International Organizations
Immunities Act (IOIA) nor the World Health Organization (WHO) Constitution
prevented a class action suit from proceeding against a WHO-affiliated organization
alleged to have benefited from human trafficking and forced labor. The IOIA grants
covered organizations immunity from suit in U.S. courts to the same degree enjoyed by
foreign governments under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The circuit
court held that the organization’s alleged role as a financial intermediary in the forced
labor operation fell under the FSIA’s exception to sovereign immunity for suits based on
commercial activities. The organization also claimed immunity under the WHO
Constitution, but the panel held that the immunity provision of that treaty did not have the
force of U.S. law (Rodriguez v. Pan Am. Health Org.).
Labor & Employment: Based upon intervening Supreme Court decisions, the Third
Circuit, joining the Ninth, Seventh, and Eighth Circuits, overruled its precedential
decision and held that a union’s collective bargaining agreement’s (CBA’s) arbitration
clause does not survive the CBA’s expiration or termination and, as such, the arbitration
clause cannot be viewed as a term of a new implied-in-fact CBA. The court held that, as a
matter of contract law, the arbitration provisions expired with the CBA because they do
not have their own durational clause (Pittsburgh Mailers Union Local v. PG Publishing
Co.).
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Author Information
Michael John Garcia
Juria L. Jones
Deputy Assistant Director/ALD
Section Research Manager
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