Welcome back to Supreme Court Preview! It's been a while since I last did one of these, but I guess it's OK as long as I stay ahead of the Court's argument schedule...
Supreme Court Preview is meant to serve as a resource of sorts for the dKos community, detailing the cases currently on the Court's docket. I'm progressing through them in the order the cases were granted, which generally follows the order in which they are being argued. If you're interested, however, here are links to the previous S. Ct. Previews that I've put together, based upon general subject matter:
Civil Rights/Liberties: Gonzalez v. Oregon [Assisted Suicide]
Free Speech: Garcetti v. Ceballos
Criminal Law/Procedure: Oregon v. Guzek, Georgia v. Randolph, Maryland v. Blake, Brown v. Sanders
Religion: Gonzalez v. O Centro Espirita
Civil Procedure: Martin v. Franklin Capital Corp., Lincoln Property Co. v. Roche, Unitherm Food Systems v. Swift-Eckrich
Sovereign Immunity: Central Virginia Comm. College v. Katz, United States v. Olsen
Miscellaneous: Lockhart v. United States [Social Security Act], Volvo Trucks North America v. Reeder-Simco [Business Competition], Wagnon v. Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation [Indian Affairs], IBM v. Alvarez, consolidated with Tum v. Barber Foods [Worker's Compensation], Schaffer v. Weast [Individuals With Disabilities Education Act]
Without further ado, here's a look at three more upcoming cases this term:
Domino's Pizza v. McDonald (9th Cir.) [Topic: Civil Rights]
Question Presented:
"In the absence of a contractual relationship with the defendant, are
allegations of personal injuries alone sufficient to confer standing on a
plaintiff pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1981?"
Background and Majority Opinion: [per curiam decision]
The statutes referenced in the Question Presented is an old and very important civil rights statute prohibiting race discrimination in the formation and performance of contracts. It authorizes civil rights plaintiffs to sue if their civil rights have been violated by a contractual partner, including employers.
John McDonald, an African-American man, was the president and chief shareholder of JWM Investments. He entered into a contract with Domino's Pizza. Unfortunately, Domino's later terminated the contract, and JWM Investments went belly-up allegedly as a result. McDonald claimed that Domino's terminated the contract because of some underlying racial discrimination on its part.
The district court dismissed his action, holding that McDonald had no standing to sue under §1981 since it was his corporation, not McDonald himself, which had a contract with Domino's and suffered potentially compensable injuries. On appeal to the Ninth Circuit, however, the district court was reversed. The Court noted that while a shareholder cannot sue for civil rights violations when only the corporation suffers injury, cases can and do exist where the individual, though not formally a party to the underlying contract, nevertheless suffers injuries because of the damage to the corporation. According to Ninth Circuit precedent, these individual injuries may include (as McDonald claimed) personal financial and emotional loss. Thus, even though McDonald was not a part to the underlying contract, he could bring an individual civil rights action against Domino's.
Potential Impact/Prediction:
At least a few other circuits have come to a contrary resolution of the Question Presented above, and to my knowledge the Ninth Circuit stands alone among the circuit courts in its interpretation of §1981 as allowing an individual to sue for civil rights violations under the statute even in absence of a contractual relationship. If the Court was to accept the Ninth Circuit's reasoning, §1981 would be quite a bit broader than currently conceived. That said, it seems likely that the Ninth Circuit, as often happens, will be reversed here.
Evans v. Chavis (9th Cir.) [Topic: Criminal Procedure]
Question Presented:
"Did the Ninth Circuit contravene this Court's decision in Carey v. Saffold
when it held that a prisoner who delayed more than three years before filing
a habeas petition with the California Supreme Court did not "unreasonably"
delay in filing the petition -- and therefore was entitled to tolling during that
entire period -- because the California Supreme Court summarily denied the
petition without comment or citation, which the Ninth Circuit construes as a
denial "on the merits"?
Background and Majority Opinion: [authored by Judge Betty Fletcher, a Carter appointee]
Back in 1991, Reginald Chavis was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in California for attempted first degree murder with the use of a weapon. He unsuccessfully challenged his conviction in California state court, and filed several unsuccessful state habeas petitions. He then filed a federal habeas petition in August of 2000.
The date is the key issue here, because the "Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996" ("AEDPA") sets a one year statute of limitations on all habeas petitions (i.e. one year after the state court's decision on your state habeas petition). However, this one-year date doesn't count the time in which the petition is pending in state courts, as long as the petition is "properly filed" and there is no "unreasonable delay" in the petitioner's appeals within the state court system.
So, back to Mr. Chavis. His first habeas petition was filed in 1994 with the California Court of Appeal, which was soon denied. AEDPA's statute of limitations came into effect in 1996, but it wasn't until 1997 that Chavis filed a habeas petition with the CA Supreme Court -- three years after the first petition was denied in the Court of Appeal. After this was denied, Chavis filed a federal habeas petition with the federal District Court. The District Court deemed Chavis' three-year delay in appealing to the CA Supreme Court to be "unreasonable", denying the federal petition because it wasn't filed within AEDPA's time limitation.
It is unnecessary to get into all the details here, but the Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court, holding that AEDPA's statute of limitation wasn't running for those three years because his petitions were still "pending" in state court during that time. In short, the Court held that it was not an "unreasonable delay" because the CA Supreme Court's decision on Chavis' petition - which was without any comment or citation - was a decision "on the merits", as opposed to a procedural dismissal based upon it being untimely.
Potential Impact/Prediction:
This is another in a series of cases determining the rather technical issue of when exactly the AEDPA statue of limitations begins. The resolution of this (and sister) cases is important mainly to resolve circuit splits and to clarify an ambiguous area of the law. My guess is that the Ninth Circuit will be reversed here, which will continue the general trend over the past decade or so towards making it more difficult for convicted persons to file habeas petitions.
Dolan v. United States Postal Service (3rd Cir.) [Topic: Sovereign Immunity/Statutory Construction]
Question Presented:
"Does not this case -which involved a determination of whether the
district court had jurisdiction over the claim of plaintiff when her injury
was caused by the negligent placement of mail at the place of delivery
-call for an exercise of this Courts supervisory power where there is a
dispute between the circuits of the Court of Appeals as to whether the
exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U .S.C. § 2680 (b) barred
this lawsuit and where the Third Circuit narrowly construed the Act?"
Background and Majority Opinion: [authored by Judge Jane Roth, a Bush I appointee]
In 2001, Barbara Dolan was injured when she allegedly tripped and fell over a number of letters and packages left on her porch by a Postal Service employee. After filing an unsuccessful administrative claim, she (and her husband) brought suit against the US and the Postal Service under the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA").
The FTCA generally provides the federal government sovereign immunity from lawsuits brought against it - meaning that typically, the government could not be sued for (for example) negligence. Nevertheless, the FTCA does allow the feds to be sued if and when a federal employee was negligent during the course of his employment. The Act does not, however, waive immunity for any claims arising out of the "negligent transmission of letters or postal matters."
So the Dolans went forward with the negligence suit against the US, but the District Court dismissed the case, and the Dolans appealed.
The Third Circuit affirmed. The Court first noted the longstanding rule that District Courts do not have jurisdiction over suits against the feds unless Congress passed a law expressly waiving its sovereign immunity. Further, even when Congress does provide a waiver, the waiver is construed strictly in favor of the government.
The issue here was the definition of "negligent transmission" of mail - does this include "negligent placing" of the mail, which would mean the government has immunity in the case? The Court conducted a short examination of Congress' intent with the "negligent transmission" phrase, concluding that Congress intended "transmission" to be broad enough to cover the "placing" of mail, since indeed "placing" mail is such a common activity of the Postal Service. Thus, the Court held affirmed the lower court's dismissal.
Potential Impact/Prediction:
This is another case accepted by the Supremes because of a circuit split on the issue - the Second Circuit had previously held that "transmission" doesn't including "placing." This case will likely not be of much more importance than resolving this split on a relatively minor issue. My guess is that the Third Circuit will be affirmed, though it will be interesting to see how much emphasis Roberts and O'Connor's replacement put on the "congressional intent" aspect of interpretation versus deciding the case simply with reliance on the longstanding rule that sovereign immunity waivers should be construed in favor of the government.