Congressional Court Watcher: Recent Appellate Decisions of Interest to Lawmakers (March 25–March 31, 2024)
Legal Sidebari
Congressional Court Watcher: Recent
Appellate Decisions of Interest to Lawmakers
(March 25–March 31, 2024)
April 1, 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
The Supreme Court did not issue any opinions or agree to hear any new cases last week.
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.
• Criminal Law & Procedure: In a revised opinion, the Third Circuit concluded that the
defendant’s armed robbery convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 2113(d) made him subject to
enhanced penalties under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) for carrying a firearm during the
commission of a “crime of violence.” The defendant argued that his robbery convictions
could not constitute crimes of violence because Section 2113(d) can cover reckless
conduct, and caselaw recognizes that reckless acts do not meet the “crime of violence”
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definition. The circuit panel held that Section 2113(d) is divisible into different crimes
and that the particular offenses for which the defendant was convicted constituted crimes
of violence because they required purpose or knowledge. More broadly, the circuit court
held that whenever a federal offense is predicated on the commission of another crime (as
is the case under Section 2113(d)), the elements of the predicate crime also count as
elements of the first offense (United States v. Jordan).
• Education: The Fourth Circuit held that a religiously affiliated private school’s tax-
exempt status under 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3) did not make the school subject to Title IX of
the Education Amendments of 1972. The circuit panel ruled that Title IX’s application to
entities “receiving Federal financial assistance” required those entities to receive
affirmative forms of financial aid from the federal government through the direct or
indirect transfer of funds. The panel decided that the withholding of a tax burden to
Section 501(c)(3) entities did not constitute an affirmative grant of funds satisfying this
requirement. The panel also decided that those entities’ receipt of tax-deductible
charitable contributions did not equate to “receiving Federal financial assistance”
(Buettner-Hartsoe v. Baltimore Lutheran High Sch. Ass’n).
• Education: In a revised opinion, a divided Fifth Circuit panel considered the interplay
between the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA). The panel held that a district court erred in dismissing a student’s
stand-alone ADA suit against a school when the “gravamen” of the complaint involved a
denial of a right to a free appropriate public education guaranteed by the IDEA. The
circuit majority held that plaintiffs who have properly exhausted their IDEA remedies, or
who seek relief unavailable under the IDEA (e.g., compensatory damages), may file suit
under the ADA asserting claims related to the denial of appropriate educational services
(Lartigue v. Northside Indep. Sch. Dist.).
• Election Law: A divided Third Circuit panel held that a Pennsylvania requirement that
mail-in and absentee voters sign and date a declaration on the return envelope containing
their mail ballot, or else have their undated or misdated ballots set aside, did not violate
the Civil Rights Act’s Materiality Provision. That provision generally bars officials from
limiting a person’s right to vote because of an error or omission that is immaterial to
determining voting qualifications. The majority decided that the Materiality Provision
applies only when a state is determining who is eligible to vote and not to rules governing
how a qualified voter casts a ballot, regardless of the purpose those rules serve. The
circuit court reversed the lower court decision and remanded the case to the district court
to consider the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims (Pa. State Conf. of NAACP Branches v.
Sec’y Commonwealth of Pa.).
• Immigration: A divided Fifth Circuit panel rejected Texas’s motion to stay a preliminary
injunction blocking enforcement of a state law, S.B. 4, which authorizes the state to
arrest, criminally sanction, and remove aliens it believes to have crossed into the United
States illegally. In reviewing the state’s request for a stay, the appeals court considered
whether Texas was likely to succeed in its argument that the district court had insufficient
legal grounds to block the law from going into effect. The panel majority decided that
there was strong support for the district court’s conclusion that Congress intended the
federal statutory framework governing the entry and removal of aliens to leave no room
for supplementary state measures. The majority also held that Texas had not sufficiently
demonstrated that S.B. 4 would not be an obstacle to objectives of federal immigration
law. In particular, the majority ruled that Texas had not shown that the state statute did
not subvert federal authorities’ ability to determine when or whether to pursue criminal or
removal proceedings against those who entered the United States without authorization.
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• The majority also held that Texas had not shown that Article I, Section 10, of the
Constitution, which permits states to respond to an “invasion” without awaiting federal
action, applied or permitted the state to regulate matters preempted by federal
immigration law (United States v. Texas).
• *Labor & Employment: The Federal Circuit held that the Equal Pay Act (EPA) applies
to the federal government as it does to other employers, and it widened a circuit split over
when prior pay may justify salary differentials among male and female employees. The
EPA generally bars discrimination in compensation between similarly situated employees
of the opposite sex, subject to exceptions that include when the difference is because of a
“factor other than sex.” The Fourth and Seventh Circuits have held that prior pay is a
“factor other than sex” that, standing alone, can justify differential treatment, while the
Ninth Circuit has decided that prior pay can never justify differential pay. The Sixth,
Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have taken a middle approach, under which an employer
may consider prior pay only if a pay disparity is based on at least one other permissible
factor. The Federal Circuit largely endorsed the middle approach, although it would also
allow employers to use prior pay alone if they can show that employee’s prior pay level
was not based on sex discrimination (Boyer v. United States).
• Labor & Employment: The Second Circuit clarified its application of the McDonnell
Douglas test, which is used to determine if a Title VII employment discrimination case
can survive a motion for summary judgment when the employee lacks direct evidence of
discrimination. Under McDonnell Douglas’s third step, after an employer proffers a
facially nondiscriminatory reason for an employee’s disparate treatment, the employee
must show that this justification was pretextual. The circuit court held that an employee
need not show that the employer’s stated justification was entirely pretextual; instead, the
employee can satisfy the third step by producing evidence that discrimination was at least
one motivating factor for the employer’s action (Bart v. Golub Corp.).
Author Information
Michael John Garcia
Deputy Assistant Director/ALD
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