SCOTUS Scoop : Can the government bust into your home with impunity?
A lot of interesting developments. Thus, much like the Ninth Amendment, the inclusion of certain court orders, opinions, or oral arguments is not meant to deny or disparage the existence of others. There’s just only so much space per scoop.
Mo’ cases, mo’ problems
The Court said it will hear USPS v. Konan, which was brought by a woman who says the United States Postal Service intentionally refused to deliver her mail for two years. The question is whether the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows people to sue the federal government but exempts actions arising from “the loss” or “miscarriage” of letters, covers claims that USPS deliberately refused to deliver the mail. (Can’t wait to see the made-for-TV movie. Why wouldn’t they deliver her damn mail? What was in it?)
The Court also agreed to hear a case involving lower courts’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions. In particular, it will consider whether several courts properly paused President Trump’s Executive Order ending birthright citizenship for people born to illegal immigrants. The Administration had filed an emergency motion asking the Supreme Court to limit the lower courts’ injunctions so that it could enforce the EO against everyone except for the named plaintiffs. The Supreme Court declined —for now—instead opting to hear arguments first.
Nationwide injunctions have been front and center lately, given that they’ve been used to halt executive actions from both parties, including Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and Trump’s spending freezes. My hot take? Sometimes nationwide injunctions are not just appropriate, they’re necessary. If a court cannot stop the government from, say, issuing illegal payments across the country, then those payments will be paid out before the plaintiffs can prevail—making a win meaningless. So while it might make sense to implement nationwide injunctions with care, scrapping them altogether is a mistake.
Bring on the good cases!
The Court released exactly zero blockbuster opinions over the past two weeks, though those are coming. Instead we got answers to these burning questions:
1) If a filing deadline falls on a weekend or holiday, does it extend to the next business day? Yes.
2) When calculating Medicare payouts that incentivize hospitals to serve lower-income (and often more expensive) patients, is that payment based on whether the patients were actually eligible for Supplementary Security income benefits that month or whether they were merely enrolled in the program? Eligibility.
3) Are military reservists entitled to “differential pay” (that is, the difference between their military and civilian pay) any time during an emergency or only when there’s a substantial connection between their service and the emergency. Any time.
Oral Argument Recap:
Does the government own your kids?
Okay, maybe that’s a bit incendiary. The Court heard arguments concerning whether parents can opt out of sex- and gender-related school instruction for their kids. You can read my longer run-down of the 2+ hour argument here, but in brief:
The school basically argued that opt-out is unworkable, which 1) is suspicious, given that they never said so until litigation, and 2) is incredibly unsatisfying. Nobody cares if opt-out is difficult to implement if it’s constitutionally required! The school also added that if the parents didn’t like the policy, they should run for the school board (yet another deeply unsatisfying argument).
The parents, by contrast, argued they have a right to opt their children out of instruction based on their sincerely-held religious beliefs. I agree, with a caveat: all parents enjoy such a fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children, whether based on religious or secular beliefs. The government does not own my children. (Also, maybe if schools kept to things like reading and arithmetic and stopped getting involved in hot-button social topics, we would get a lot fewer opt-outs. More school choice would help, too.)
Much of the argument focused on how far that parental right goes. Can parents object to books that merely show a same-sex couple getting married? (Justice Alito noted that’s not what’s happening here—these books push a specific viewpoint.) Can they demand their kids not be around classmates with gender dysphoria? Or bar teachers from displaying photos of same-sex spouses on their desks? (Even the parents’ lawyer said probably not.)
There are a lot of constitutional threads here: from free exercise, to viewpoint coercion, to discrimination among religions, to burdens on access to public education. But based on oral argument, it looks like the parents are likely to win.
Can the government bust into your home with impunity?
The Court also heard arguments over whether the government can blow off the door-hinges of the wrong home, toss in a flash grenade, and handcuff your family without consequence. That’s what happened to Curtrina Martin, her partner, and young son when a SWAT team raided the wrong house.
They sued, but found that it’s shockingly difficult to hold the federal government accountable—even when it blows open your doors and bursts into your home in the middle of the night.
Under a doctrine called sovereign immunity, the federal government generally can’t be sued without its consent. Congress has graciously allowed us to sue in some circumstances, including by passing the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), but there are some exceptions. One is for “discretionary acts.”
The Eleventh Circuit dismissed several of Martin’s claims, saying the leading FBI agent’s method of identifying the target house was within his discretion. It tossed the rest on the theory that the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause bars prosecution under the FTCA where the government’s acts further federal policy and comply with federal law.
Martin now argues that the “discretionary function exception” categorically does not apply to certain claims against law enforcement officers and that sovereign immunity does not block the suit.
At oral argument, many of the justices rejected Martin’s argument that the discretionary acts exception never applies to these types of claims. But they also seemed skeptical that the officers really had any discretion in the first place. Justice Gorsuch asked whether federal officers truly have discretion to barge into the wrong person’s home and “traumatize its occupants.”
Because everyone (including even the government) agreed that Martin’s claims should not have been dismissed on the basis of the Supremacy Clause, it seems likely Martin will gather a win on that point and the case will be remanded back down to the lower courts to determine the scope of the discretionary function exception as it applies to claims against police officers
Heard at oral argument
Brb. Getting this tattooed on my forehead.
Trump at the Supreme Court:
Trump filed an emergency motion asking the Court to allow him to enforce his policy of disallowing transgender individuals from the military. A lower court had blocked it, finding it likely violated the Equal Protection Clause. Trump is asking the Court to lift that injunction while litigation continues.
In which I prove my value to my employer myself:
I was lucky enough to interview poker star, nay, LEGEND Daniel Negreanu. We talked about everything from unfair poker rules, to freedom of thought, to how equality before the law has been turned on its head, to solving homelessness and the difficulty of building portapotties, etc. I have spent countless hours watching Kid Poker make incredible calls, engage in great table talk, and win bracelets. It was a true pinch-me moment. Naturally, I managed to squeeze in references to PLF cases, the Supreme Court, and constitutional law. Watch below.
