Congressional Court Watcher: Recent Appellate Decisions of Interest to Lawmakers (February 19–February 25, 2024)
Legal Sidebari
Congressional Court Watcher: Recent
Appellate Decisions of Interest to Lawmakers
(February 19–February 25, 2024)
February 27, 2024
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 cases identified in this Sidebar, or the legal questions they address, are examined in other CRS
general distribution products. Members of Congress and congressional staff may click here to subscribe to
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Decisions of the Supreme Court
Last week, the Supreme Court vacated its previously issued stay in a pending case and issued decisions in
two cases for which it previously heard oral arguments:
• Bankruptcy: The Court vacated an earlier administrative stay issued by Justice Samuel
Alito and denied an application submitted by 144 claimants, who are former Boy Scouts
who were sexual abuse victims, seeking to halt the implementation of a bankruptcy plan
for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) until the Court decides another pending case,
Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, L.P.. That case asks whether the Bankruptcy Code
authorizes judicial approval of nonconsensual, nondebtor third-party releases. The
Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware approved a bankruptcy plan for BSA that
allegedly would resolve over 82,000 claims of sexual abuse, including those brought
forth by the claimants, with a settlement trust fund exceeding $2.46 billion. The plan
includes judicially approved releases from liability for nondebtor affiliated third-party
organizations such as churches and schools, some of whom contributed to the trust. As a
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result of the denial, the bankruptcy plan may continue to go forward (Lujan Claimants v.
Boy Scouts of America).
• Criminal Law & Procedure: The Court unanimously reversed a Supreme Court of
Georgia judgment and barred the state from retrying a defendant on an acquitted charge
under the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause. In the original trial, the court
accepted conflicting verdicts from the jury regarding the same underlying homicide,
which found the defendant “guilty but mentally ill” on a felony murder charge and found
him “not guilty by reason of insanity” on a malice-murder charge. The Supreme Court of
Georgia ordered a retrial after vacating both verdicts as “repugnant” under Georgia state
law because reconciling them would require the defendant to have had two different and
incompatible mental states while committing the same crime. The defendant argued that
the Double Jeopardy Clause precluded a retrial for the crime that had been acquitted by
reason of insanity. The Court agreed and held that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred a
retrial on the acquitted charge (McElrath v. Georgia).
• Maritime Law: The Court unanimously reversed a Third Circuit panel decision in a case
involving a maritime insurance dispute between a boat owner and an insurance company
and held that choice-of-law provisions in maritime contracts are presumptively
enforceable. The Court—citing treatises, circuit court opinions, and Supreme Court
opinions from the 19th century—noted that long-standing precedent establishes a federal
maritime rule that choice-of-law provisions will be enforced with limited exceptions. The
Court declined to establish a new exception—that the choice-of-law provision should
yield to the law of the state that has “a materially greater interest” in the case or issue in
question—explaining that it would undermine the uniformity and clarity that the federal
rule is intended to promote (Great Lakes Ins. SE v. Raiders Retreat Realty Co., LLC).
Decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals
Topic headings marked with an asterisk (*) indicate cases in which 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 nonuniform application of the law among the circuits.
• Civil Rights: The D.C. Circuit held that the three-year statute of limitations for personal
injury actions under D.C. law, D.C. CODE § 12-301, applies to lawsuits brought under
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act. A
medical student challenging his expulsion brought ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims.
Since neither law contains a statute of limitations, the D.C. Circuit applied “settled
practice” to adopt a local time limitation not inconsistent with federal law or policy. The
court, which had ruled in 2022 that D.C.’s statute of limitations for personal injury
actions applied to discrimination claims under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, reasoned
that personal injury torts were the most analogous to civil rights claims and stressed the
importance of uniform statutes of limitations for civil rights laws. The court held that the
same statute of limitations was appropriate to enforce civil rights under the ADA and
Rehabilitation Act (Abreu v. Howard University).
• Copyright: The Fourth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part a jury verdict that
found an internet service provider (ISP) liable for copyright infringement of thousands of
musical works downloaded from or distributed by the ISP’s customers over the internet.
The panel affirmed the jury’s finding that the ISP committed contributory copyright
infringement based on the infringing conduct of its customers because the ISP knew of
the infringements and continued to provide internet service to the known infringers.
However, the panel reversed the trial court’s decision that the ISP was also vicariously
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liable for its customers’ copyright infringements. The panel held that the ISP could not be
vicariously liable because it did not receive a direct financial benefit from the infringing
activities. The panel remanded to the district court to reconsider the damages owed to the
copyright holders (Sony Music Ent. v. Cox Commc'ns, Inc.).
• Criminal Law & Procedure: The First Circuit held that the government did not
constructively amend at trial the Hobbs Act robbery count contained in the indictment of
the defendant. A constructive amendment occurs when the government’s evidence,
arguments, or statements during trial, or the court’s jury instructions, alter the offense
charged in the grand jury indictment. Here, the court concluded that the government’s
focus at trial on the victim’s home business as the target of the robbery, and not the victim
himself, did not amount to constructive amendment because it aligned with the
indictment and, in any event, the identity of the target is not a statutory element under the
Hobbs Act (United States v. Katana).
• Employment Law: The Ninth Circuit upheld the National Labor Relations Board’s
(Board’s) determination that, pursuant to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), a
Nevada employer was obligated to collect union dues from employees and remit those
dues to the union even after the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expired. The
Board has changed its position multiple times in recent years on whether the NLRA
permits an employer to unilaterally cease collecting dues after a CBA expires. In
affirming the Board’s changed interpretation, the Ninth Circuit noted that the Board
acknowledged that it was changing its interpretation and provided reasoned support for
the change. The panel further explained that the NLRA is ambiguous on the issue and
then upheld the NLRB’s permissible interpretation of the statute pursuant to the Chevron
doctrine (Valley Hosp. Med. Ctr., Inc. v. NLRB).
• Employment Law: In a case related to the above-described Valley Hospital Medical
Center, Inc. v. NLRB case, the same Ninth Circuit panel held that the employees’ union
dues authorization forms were valid under the Taft-Hartley Act despite failing to
reference specific provisions from the statute. The panel determined that the statutory
provision, 29 U.S.C. § 186(c)(4), regarding the authorization of the dues checkoff does
not dictate that specific language be used or included in the written authorization that
employees provide to their employers. Therefore, the court held that the failure of the
written authorizations to reference statutory provisions establishing when the employees
may revoke an authorization did not render those authorizations invalid (NLRB v. Valley
Health Sys., LLC).
• Federal Courts: The Third Circuit affirmed a federal district court’s decision to remand
a suit to state court after the defendant (a university hospital health system) attempted to
remove the matter to federal court under the federal-officer removal statute. The statute
permits private persons assisting federal officers in the performance of their official
duties to remove a case filed in a state tribunal to federal court. The defendant argued
that, because it operated an electronic health records portal in order to be eligible for
certain Medicare reimbursements pursuant to federal law, it was entitled to remove a
lawsuit concerning the operation of that portal to federal court. The panel concluded that
the hospital health system was not entitled to remove the suit to federal court because it
was not operating the patient portal “on behalf of the government”; it was merely
conducting its own business in a manner to comply with federal regulations (Mohr v. Tr.
of the Univ. of Pa.).
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Author Information
Jimmy Balser
Daniel T. Shedd
Legislative Attorney
Legislative Attorney
Rosemary W. Gardey
Legislative Attorney
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