text:
Friday, December 19, 2014
Civ. Pro. is the New Black
And...they're off! My 1Ls just began taking their exam, which I titled "Civ. Pro. is the New Black." Eschewing Ferguson-style controversy (I hope), I'm ruining using the TV show "Orange is the New Black" as the basis for the fact pattern. Piper and Alex are in a fight, the Correction Officers put Piper in the SHU, and there is some tainted meat sold by "Felon Meats, Inc." that makes Piper sick. Piper sues Alex, the prison (run by a private company, Prisons R Us), Felon Meats, and one of the Correction Officers. Various other prisoners attempt to intervene. I made sure to vet the exam with someone who doesn't know the show so students who have never seen it are not disadvantaged.
I always feel nervous while my students are taking their exams. Perhaps I'm just reflecting their nerves; more likely I'm afraid that I have not really taught them much over the semester, which their answers might reflect.
In this way, I suppose the exam is also an assessment of me as a teacher. Here's to hoping I pass!
Posted by Josh Douglas on December 19, 2014 at 01:51 PM in Civil Procedure, Teaching Law | Permalink | Comments (2)
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Civil Procedure "Creativity" Extra Credit
Stealing an idea from Andi Curcio of Georgia State University, which she shared on the Civ. Pro. list serv last year, for the past two years I have allowed my Civil Procedure students to earn extra credit by doing a "creative" project that helps to explain one of the main topics in the course. About a quarter of the students did something this year, ranging from amusing videos, to cartoons, to a spoof on the poem "The Raven," to a magazine article about "the talk," when a young girl asks her mother, "where do lawsuits come from?!" I show all of the projects at the beginning of the review session the day before the exam (earlier today). In my view, these projects provide some nice stress release, help make the concepts "sticky," and allow the students to exercise their creative juices. They often do things well beyond what I expected. Below the jump I've posted some of my favorites from this year. Enjoy!
Civil Procedure rap video (warning: there's a swear word at the beginning) (Alex Magara, Pete Rosene, Brandon Wells):
Hilter Rant Parody on International Shoe (Myranda Cotant and Emily McClure):
Civ. Pro. Cartoon (Ashley Angello):
Twas the Night Before the Civ. Pro. Exam (Catie Coldiron and Mary Tanner, performed wearing tacky Christmas sweaters!)
1. 'Twas the night before Civ Pro, and all through finals hell,
2. Not a creature was stirring, not even a 1L
3. The outlines were made so no one need cram
4. In hopes that 28 USC §1367 would be on the exam
5. The 1Ls were nestled all snug in their beds
6. While visions of A pluses danced in their heads
7. And everyone still wearing their thinking cap
8. Had just settled their brains for a long winter's nap,
9. When all of a sudden, someone's brain shuddered
10. The rules of 28 USC §1367 began to be muttered:
11. Where district courts have initial jurisdiction
12. All related state claims in the action
13. Give district courts supplemental jurisdiction
14. United Mine Workers of America v. Gibbs
15. Clarified when a district court does have dibs:
16. A state law claim gets into court when it reacts
17. From a common nucleus of operative fact
18. I knew in a moment there was more to the rule
19. So I asked friends for help so I'd keep my cool
20. And I whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
21. "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
22. On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!
23. There is still more to say so my grade does not fall
24. Now lets recite 1367 in all:
25. Unless there's an exception, as already stated,
26. Supplemental claims are in if sufficiently related;
27. If a claim is based just on diversity
28. There is an exception: we'll explain so that you see—
29. There's no jurisdiction for certain defendants
30. Rule 14, 19, 20, 24 get no pendant
31. This rule extends to plaintiffs on occasion–
32. 19 and 24 may have no relation
33. But now there's another exception afoot:
34. Supplemental claims can still be caput!
35. There are four situations in which to apply;
36. It can make district courts seem very sly
37. If novel or complex, the state law issue at hand,
38. The court may decline, and thus would remand;
39. If the secondary claim is too much to bear
40. The court can decide it need not be heard there;
41. If the district court has dismissed all other claims
42. The secondary cause can go down in flames;
43. The final reason a district court can decline
44. It's more broad in definition and can seem asinine.
45. In exceptional circumstances a court can refuse,
46. Their supplemental jurisdiction in this case to use
47. It's really quite simple once all in your head
48. There's really no reason to feel any dread;
49. So now you can see supplemental jurisdiction is a breeze
50. You are able to ace this exam with great ease,
51. So in the morning when you awake from slumber,
52. To school you will skip, not drag, moan or lumber;
53. Your fingers will fly, your brain quick as a whip
54. And nary a problem which you must skip.
55. At the end of the final you realize with delight—
56. "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"
(The) Personal Jurisdiction (a play on The Raven) (Whitney Grider and Grant Sharp):
Once upon a Civ Pro class, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many concepts and cases of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping (not true), suddenly there came a "Miss Grider,"
As of some one gently calling, calling my name, heart hitting the floor—
"Tis my day to be called on," I muttered, "calling my name, heart hitting the floor—
Hopefully this time and none more."
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the Mid-September;
And each classmate sighing that it was not their name called.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I sought to borrow
From my casebook, I thought in sorrow—sorrow for the loss of Pennoyer—
For the forgotten about Mitchell and Neff whom because of Pennoyer—
Nameless here for evermore.
"Pennoyer!" said I, "thing of evil!—still making students learn you!—
Whether by the Professor, or whether tossed at thee from attorneys before,
Desolate the ideas of Pennoyer, deserted lands—
In this jurisdiction—is there minimum contacts? –tell me—tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Jurisdiction "Nevermore."
"Be the minimum contacts needed for personal jurisdiction!" Mr. Sharp shrieked,
"Be continuous and systematic and related to the claim!"
An unrelated and isolated and infrequent contact is unconstitutional!
Leave Pennoyer in the past!—quit referring back to the forgotten lore!
Take the International Shoe doctrine, and take it out the door!
Quoth the Jurisdiction "Nevermore."
And Jurisdiction, never flitting, still needed, still needed
In every case or otherwise not constitutional
And first look for minimum contacts,
And look for if they offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice;
Posted by Josh Douglas on December 18, 2014 at 03:51 PM in Civil Procedure, Teaching Law | Permalink | Comments (5)
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Dodson on Twombly Creep
The following is by Scott Dodson (Hastings):
Yesterday's Supreme Court's opinion in Dart Cherokee held that a notice of removal need not be accompanied by evidence of the amount in controversy in a CAFA-removal case. The Court split 5-4 on the nerdy question of whether the Court could even review the issue itself because the Court of Appeals declined, in its discretion, to hear the appeal from the district court. That latter issue got quite a bit of play at oral argument, and coverage of the opinion's resolution of that issue has overshadowed the Court's decision on the merits, which pretty much everyone—myself included—thought fairly obvious.
But there's something funny, and potentially important, in the merits part of the decision that people seem to be overlooking.
Section 1446(a), which sets the standards for a notice of removal, requires the defendant to file a notice "containing a short and plain statement of the grounds for removal." This language mirrors Rule 8(a)(1), which sets the standards for pleading the jurisdictional basis for a claim filed in federal court, requiring a complaint to provide: "a short and plain statement of the grounds for the court's jurisdiction." The parallel language is not coincidence. In drafting the removal standard, Congress meant to borrow and incorporate the liberalized pleading standard from Rule 8(a)(1), which contains the identical language "a short and plain statement of the grounds for," and focuses on allegations of jurisdiction. Removal, after all, is concerned primarily with jurisdiction rather than the merits of the claim.
The Court has interpreted these standards before. For jurisdictional allegations, both in cases filed in federal court and in cases removed to federal court, the amount-in-controversy alleged in good faith by the plaintiff controls unless contested by the defendant. Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 276 (1977); St. Paul Mercury Indem. Co. v. Red Cab Co., 303 U.S. 283, 288 (1938). Thus, the standard for a "short and plain statement of the grounds for" the jurisdictional allegation of the amount in controversy for diversity jurisdiction is "good faith."
This standard of a good-faith allegation leaves no room, at least prior to contestation by the defendant, for an evidentiary requirement. Dart was surely correct, then, in holding that a notice of removal requires no evidence beyond the good-faith allegation of the jurisdictional amount.
But, oddly, the Court did not phrase the question that way. The opinion sets the question presented a somewhat different way, with my emphasis added:
To assert the amount in controversy adequately in the removal notice, does it suffice to allege the requisite amount plausibly, or must the defendant incorporate into the notice of removal evidence supporting the allegation? That is the single question argued here and below by the parties and the issue on which we granted review. The answer, we hold, is supplied by the removal statute itself. A statement "short and plain" need not contain evidentiary submissions.
The answer is correct: A "short and plain statement," at least without other requirements, need not contain evidentiary submissions. But the italicized language is perplexing. It suggests that, though evidence is not required, the standard does require that the removal notice allege the requisite amount "plausibly."
And, later, the opinion concludes (my emphasis added): "In sum, as specified in § 1446(a), a defendant's notice of removal need include only a plausible allegation that the amount in controversy exceeds the jurisdictional threshold. Evidence establishing the amount is required by §1446(c)(2)(B) only when the plaintiff contests, or the court questions, the defendant's allegation." Again, last sentence is clearly correct. But the Court also seems to hold that the removal standard requires a "plausible" allegation of the amount in controversy.
Where in the world did the insertion of the "plausibility" standard come from? The Court offers neither citation for it, nor textual support for it, nor reasoning for it. Further, the Court's reasoning repeats the proper standard of "good faith." What's up with plausibility?
The answer must be the infectious case Twombly, which established a new pleading standard of plausibility under Rule 8(a)(2) in federal court. This plausibility standard had never before been a part of any pleading regime; rather, Twombly imported it from the substantive antitrust context.
But importing plausibility to removal makes little sense. For one, removal already has a perfectly fine standard that has worked for 75 years: good faith. It is possible that the Court thinks that "plausible" is a useful, clarifying synonym for good faith. But it's far from obvious that "good faith" and "plausible" are synonyms in this context. And there's no indication that the standard of "good faith" was unclear (as if the gloss of "plausibility" would be helpfully clarifying).
For another, Twombly grafted plausibility onto Rule 8(a)(2), which has a different standard from either the removal standard or the Rule 8(a)(1) standard. True, all three standards use the same preliminary language requiring "a short and plain statement." But the removal and Rule 8(a)(1) standards go on to use the phrase "of the grounds [for jurisdiction]," while the merits pleading standard of Rule 8(a)(2) uses the different language "of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." In developing the "plausibility" standard, Twombly focused on Rule 8(a)(2) and its unique concluding language: "The need at the pleading stage for allegations plausibly suggesting (not merely consistent with) agreement reflects the threshold requirement of Rule 8(a)(2) that the 'plain statement' possess enough heft to 'sho[w] that the pleader is entitled to relief.'" Twombly's textual support for the plausibility standard—such as it is—has no bearing on jurisdictional allegations under Rule 8(a)(1) or § 1446(a).
For yet another, the rationale of Twombly maps poorly onto plausibility for removal allegations. Twombly foisted plausibility on merits allegations to guard against excessive discovery costs imposed on defendants at the behest of an implausible claim for relief: "Probably, then, it is only by taking care to require allegations that reach the level suggesting conspiracy that we can hope to avoid the potentially enormous expense of discovery in cases with no '"reasonably founded hope that the [discovery] process will reveal relevant evidence"' to support a . . . claim." Removal, of course, merely shifts the forum; discovery cannot be avoided simply by defeating removal. And, in removal, the notice is filed by the defendant, the putative beneficiary of the plausibility standard. Applying the plausibility standard to removal turns Twombly on its head.
So, in Dart, it appears that, without citation or, frankly, any reasoning at all, "plausibility" has snuck in to yet another place where it doesn't belong: removal. If so, this opens the door to arguments that Twombly's standard is even more broadly applicable than previously thought.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on December 16, 2014 at 04:28 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (5)
Monday, December 15, 2014
Pfander on Dart
SCOTUS on Monday decided Dart Cherokee Basin Operative Co. v. Owens; the Court held that a notice of removal need only contain a short and plain statement of the amount in controversy and evidence is necessary only if the plaintiff contests the amount. It was a 5-4 decision, with Justice Scalia, joined by Justices Kennedy and Kagan and in part by Justice Thomas, in dissent, arguing that the Court lacked authority to review a court of appeals summary denial of discretionary review of a remand order. Justice Thomas also filed a separate dissent.
James Pfander and Daniel D. Birk (Northwestern) have a piece called Article III Judicial Power, the Adverse-Party Requirement, and Non-Contentious Jurisidction (Yale L.J., forthcoming); Dart fits with some of what they wrote there (see, especially, pp. 27-28 and 79-80). Jim emailed the following (posted with his permission):
Dart serves as a nice illustration of the work that a construct of non-contentious jurisdiction can do in simplifying the exercise of jurisdiction over some uncontested matters. As you know, the problem in Dart arose from the one-sided and discretionary application for appellate review of the remand decision. Justice Thomas, echoing a position first articulated by Justice Scalia in Hohn v. United States, argued that the petition in Dart was not a "case" in the appellate court and was therefore not a matter within the Court's cert jurisdiction. There were no adverse parties joined and nothing was contested.
It's here that the construct of non-contentious jurisdiction can help. If one recognizes that federal courts have long presided over uncontested applications for the certification or recognition of a claim of right, so long as they require the exercise of judicial judgment (as Brandeis explained in the leading case, Tutun v. United States), then the treatment of ex parte applications for discretionary review (as in Hohn and Dart) presents no real mystery.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on December 15, 2014 at 08:22 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, December 12, 2014
Procedure week at SCOTUS
I have recaps at SCOTUSBlog of this week's oral arguments in Gelboim v. Bank of America on finality in MDL cases and in United States v. Wong/United States v. June on the jurisdictionality of the FTCA's limitations periods.
I do not predict an outcome in either recap and I usually am bad at predicting these things. But I will go out on a limb: The Court reverses in Gelboim and holds that a judgment disposing of all claims in one action within an MDL is a final judgment. The Court affirms in both Wong and June and holds that the FTCA limitations periods are non-jurisdictional and subject to equitable tolling. (Apologies in advance to all three attorneys if I just jinxed your cases).
Posted by Howard Wasserman on December 12, 2014 at 10:56 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, December 09, 2014
SCOTUSBlog Preview: Jurisdictionality and the FTCA
I have a SCOTUSBlog preview of tomorrow's arguments in United States v. Wong and United States v. June, which jointly consider whether the timing requirements for filing claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act are jurisdictional or procedural and whether they are subject to equitable tolling.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on December 9, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, December 08, 2014
Another police video produces confusion
Wow. It does appear that an FBI civil rights investigation still is ongoing (the mayor's claims nothwithstanding) and a § 1983 surely will follow. But this suggest the key framing of the two limits on video (and thus of body cameras): 1) Video is not certain, so everyone (courts, officials, and the public) errs when elevating video over all other evidence (call this the Scott/Plumhoff issue), but 2) What video says to you is not the same as what it says to someone else (call this the Dan Kahan issue).
This means we should not necessarily be surprised by the Eric Garner grand jury or by Hammond's mayor. They simply saw something different on that video than I (and many other people) did.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on December 8, 2014 at 03:48 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (1)
SCOTUSBlog Preview: Finality and MDL
I have a SCOTUSBlog preview of tomorrow's arguments in Gelboim v. Bank of America, which considers whether a decision dismissing all the claims in one action, where that action has been consolidated for pre-trial purposes with other still-pending actions through multi-district litigation, is a final and appealable order.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on December 8, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, December 04, 2014
Repost: First Annual Civil Procedure Workshop
Repost: Please note that the deadline for submissions is Monday, December 15.
We are pleased to announce the First Annual Civil Procedure Workshop, to be co-hosted by Seattle University School of Law, the University of Washington School of Law, and the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law. The Workshop will be held at Seattle University on July 16-17, 2015. Future conferences will take place at the University of Washington and the University of Arizona.
The Workshop will give both emerging and established civil procedure scholars an opportunity to gather with colleagues and present their work to an expert audience. We hope the Workshop will strengthen the study of procedure as an academic discipline. By assembling annually, colleagues will have regular opportunities to meet to exchange ideas, to collaborate, and to participate in a national conversation on civil procedure scholarship.
Scholars whose papers are selected will present their work in small panel sessions. A senior scholar will moderate each panel and lead the commentary. Confirmed participants for 2015 include Stephen Burbank, Scott Dodson, Myriam Gilles, Suzette Malveaux, Judith Resnik, Suja Thomas, and Tobias Barrington Wolff.
We welcome all civil procedure scholars to attend this Workshop. Those wishing to present a paper for discussion in the Workshop should submit a two-page abstract by December 15, 2014. While we welcome papers from both emerging and senior scholars, preference may be given to those who have been teaching for ten years or fewer. Workshop organizers will select papers to be presented by January 31, 2015. Please send all submissions or related questions to Brooke Coleman.
The Workshop will provide meals for registrants. Participants must cover travel and lodging costs. We will provide information about reasonably priced hotels as the date approaches.
Feel free to contact us with questions:
Brooke Coleman (Seattle), email@example.com
Liz Porter (UW), firstname.lastname@example.com
Dave Marcus (Arizona), email@example.com
Posted by Howard Wasserman on December 4, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, November 15, 2014
JOTWELL: Pfander on Bruhl on lower-court precedent
The latest Courts Law essay comes from Jim Pfander (Northwestern), reviewing Aaron-Andrew Bruhl's Following Lower-Court Precedent (U. Chi. L. Rev. 2014), which considers how and when SCOTUS cites to lower-court authority.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 15, 2014 at 10:31 AM in Article Spotlight, Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
District court invalidates South Carolina SSM ban
And spend a lot of time talking about Fed Courts stuff. Of course, the discussion mostly demonstrates that, quite often, neither parties nor courts fully understand this stuff.
1) The suit named three defendants: A probate judge (authorized under state law to issue licenses); the attorney general; and the governor. The court held that the judge and the AG were proper defendants because both were responsible for enforcing the state ban--the judge by issuing (or refusing to issue) licenses and the AG by initiating state-court litigation and by defending the ban in court. But the court held that the governor was not a proper defendant, because other than a generalized power as the chief executive, she is not responsible for enforcing these laws. The court thus dismissed that claim under the Eleventh Amendment.
The Eleventh Amendment dismissal makes no sense (to the extent any of this makes sense). The state is not a named defendant, nor is the state the "real and substantial party in interest" in an action nominally against the individual officer that would require payment from the state treasury. This was a purely equitable action against a named officer; that she is not the correct officer does not convert it back into an action against the state.
Most courts facing the "wrong Ex Parte Young defendant" rely on standing as the basis for dismissal, on the theory that the plaintiff's injury is not "fairly traceable" to that defendant's conduct. I am still not a fan of that, as I think this is all about substantive merits. But it makes at least a bit more sense than saying that suing the wrong individual creates an action against a state.
2) The AG instituted an original jurisdiction action against the probate judge in the State Supreme Court, seeking to enjoin him from issuing licenses in accordance with the Fourth Circuit's decision invalidating Virginia's ban. The supreme court stayed that action, pending resolution of an already-pending action in federal district court. The AG tried to argue that Rooker-Feldman barred jurisdiction over this action, because the issues were involved in the pending supreme court action. But the court easily swept that aside, finding 1) the state supreme court had stayed its action in deference to the federal proceedings, and 2) RF would not apply here, because the plaintiffs are not state-court losers challenging the validity of a court order or seeking to enjoin that order.
I must say, though--that the AG even brought this up reflects a misunderstanding of the recent direction of that doctrine.
3) The AG also tries to argue Younger abstention. Again, easily swept aside, since mere parallel litigation is not a basis for Younger abstention. Again, the plaintiffs want to enjoin enforcement of the SSM ban, not the state court proceedings. Again, the AG needs a Fed Courts class.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on November 12, 2014 at 01:51 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (11)
Friday, October 24, 2014
The Eleventh Amendment is a pain
This lawsuit, filed today, alleges that the NCAA violates the Fair Labor Standards Act by not paying student-athletes (who, it alleges, are akin to work-study students). Named defendants are the NCAA and every Division I school, many of which are state schools; the suit seeks unpaid wages and an injunction requiring the schools to stop violating the FLSA (meaning that students be paid wages going forward). The problem: States cannot be sued by name under the FLSA, which is a Commerce Clause enactment on which Congress cannot abrogate sovereign immunity. And Ex Parte Young is not available for recovering the unpaid wages, so the plaintiff cannot retrench and sue the president of each state university.
Without even getting into the FLSA merits, this is a case in which the Eleventh Amendment is genuinely a barrier to relief. The plaintiffs' best move is to try to proceed with their claims against the private schools, then hope the Department of Labor will be persuaded by the arguments and will jump into the case.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on October 24, 2014 at 08:36 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Sports | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Subject matter jurisdiction crossword
From Spencer Weber Waller (Loyola-Chicago): The Subject Matter Jurisdiction crossword puzzle.
The answer to 12-Down is "thetutor" (Spencer's TA); the answer to 15-Down is "Locke" (that section's torts professor). New York Times rules apply, so an answer can be more than one word. Have at it.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on October 21, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, October 20, 2014
Misunderstanding Rule 11
Via Slate, the lame-duck attorney general of Arizona cited FRCP 11 sanctions as a basis for no longer defending (or appealing, although that would be covered by FRAP 38) same-sex marriage bans. The argument, it seems, is that defending the bans (or appealing) would be seen as imposing unnecessary delay or expense or as a frivolous argument not warranted by existing law. Mark Stern at Slate and Josh Blackman both see this more as a political move. I want to suggest it must be, because the argument is wrong legally.First, FRCP 11(b)(1) only prohibits actions done for the purpose of causing delay or expense. It is surely a legitimate purpose for government to obtain a definitive and binding Supreme Court ruling on an issue of constitutional import.
Second, since SCOTUS has not spoken on the issue, it cannot be said that Arizona's constitutional arguments, even if a clear loser in the Ninth Circuit, are frivolous before SCOTUS. As Josh points out, neither SCOTUS's undoing of stays or cert. denials are binding precedent. And the state always can pose an argument for "modifying, or reversing existing law," perhaps by seeking en banc Ninth Circuit review. Or the state can skip unfriendly Ninth Circuit law by seeking cert before the court of appeals judgment. But any of those options requires that the state first defend and appeal to the Ninth Circuit. Surely FRCP 11 cannot be read to cut-off such litigation strategies.
Finally, let's be serious. When was the last time the government was sanctioned for defending the constitutional validity of one of its laws?
Posted by Howard Wasserman on October 20, 2014 at 06:07 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (3)
Whose job is it, FRE edition
I finally got around to reading the argument in Warger v. Schauers, dealing with whether FRE 606(b) prohibits inquiry into jury deliberations in trying to show that a juror was untruthful during voir dire. During the argument, counsel for respondent (the defendant, who won at trial) repeatedly argued that, if the Court believes it would be better to allow juror testimony on such claims, then it is a job for Congress to change the rule. Counsel repeated this point several times, always mentioning Congress as the source of any change.
But it is not Congress's job, at least not primarily--it is the Court's job, under the Rules Enabling Act. It is true that the original 606(b) from 1973 (it was amended once, in 2006) was affirmatively enacted by Congress as part of the original Federal Rules of Evidence. But since then, changes to the FRE follow the same procedure as changes to the FRCP or FRCrP, with the advisory committees and the Court taking the lead and Congress merely exercising a power to disapprove a submitted rule. And while Congress can always amend the rules through ordinary legislation, that is not the primary or presumptive way to make a change. When litigants talk about the meaning of the FRCP or the need for amendment, it is always discussed primarily in terms of the Court and the committees. I am wondering why it should be different with the FRE.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on October 20, 2014 at 01:56 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
Friday, October 17, 2014
Giving reasons
Richard's post on the problems created in Dart Cherokee by the court of appeals failure to explain its reasoning and Gerard Magliocca's CoOp post on recent examples of SCOTUS issuing procedural orders affecting constitutional litigation without explanation share a common theme--to what extent do courts, particularly reviewing courts, have an obligation to explain themselves. That obligation might be to reviewing courts, lower courts, current litigants, future litigants, or the public at large.
The problem is that the desire to provide explanation potentially butts against case-management concerns and the difficulty (if not impossibility) of providing reasoned explanations for every decision, including procedural decisions such as declination of discretionary review (the issue in Dart), cert. denials, and stays (or releases of stays) pending review. Courts do not have the time or resources to provide full-on reasons for every decision, particularly where reasons require consensus on a multi-member court. Then we have to figure out whether less-than-complete reasoning is better or worse than no reasoning at all. And we potentially fall back into the debates of the late '90s and early '00s about non-precedential opinions and the problems they create.
Importantly, neither Richard nor Gerard argues that courts should do this in every case, but only special cases--where failing to explain wuld effectively insulate a decision from review or the issues are signficant enough that special guidance is needed. I would reiterate that the decisions prompting the discussion involve particular procedural concerns rather than the ultimate merits.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on October 17, 2014 at 11:48 AM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Supremacy and uniformity
I generally have been understanding, if not sympathetic, to the Court's odd behavior with respect to marriage equality of late. I understood the underlying idea that the Court need not act if the circuits are taking care of business. And I am ok with the Court dropping hints in one direction (as it arguably did in denying the five cases at the beginning of the term). But two things give me some pause.
The first is this post by Mike Dorf arguing that the Court's refusal to get involved is not a problem at the inter-circuit level, but at intra-state level, where a federal court of appeals and state high court might disagree, creating some confusion. He offers an interesting example: A federal circuit court recognizes the right to marriage equality and the executive responds by ordering clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But then a spousal privilege dispute arises in a state proceeding and the state supreme court refuses to recognize the privilege because, in its view, same-sex marriages are not constitutionally required. (The case has an added wrinkle--the state supreme court also disregarding the state executive's decision to issue the marriage license, which ought to be controlling). Nevertheless, it illustrates the multiple contexts and postures in which these issues arise.
The second was re-reading the justiciability discussion in Windsor in preparation for it (and Hollingsworth) in Fed Courts this week. I had forgotten how much Kennedy emphasized "the Supreme Court's primary role in determining the constitutionality of a law" and the Court's duty to address its constitutionality (what Scalia in dissent rejected as a "jaw-dropping . . . assertion of judicial supremacy"). Despite that rhetoric, the Court now seems in far less of a rush to perform that role.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on October 14, 2014 at 05:17 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Think about proposing programming for the annual meeting, or participating in a junior scholars workshop. And if you are ever interested in serving on a committee, let Russ Weaver (the executive director) know. The appointments usually happen in the summer, but he keeps track of volunteers all year long.
Posted by Marcia L. McCormick on October 14, 2014 at 11:00 AM in Civil Procedure, Corporate, Criminal Law, Employment and Labor Law, First Amendment, Gender, Immigration, Information and Technology, Intellectual Property, International Law, Judicial Process, Law and Politics, Legal Theory, Life of Law Schools, Property, Religion, Tax, Teaching Law, Torts, Travel, Workplace Law | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, October 13, 2014
First Annual Civil Procedure Workshop
We are pleased to announce the First Annual Civil Procedure Workshop, to be co-hosted by Seattle University School of Law, the University of Washington School of Law, and the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law. The Workshop will be held at Seattle University on July 16-17, 2015. Future conferences will take place at the University of Washington and the University of Arizona.
The Workshop will give both emerging and established civil procedure scholars an opportunity to gather with colleagues and present their work to an expert audience. We hope the Workshop will strengthen the study of procedure as an academic discipline. By assembling annually, colleagues will have regular opportunities to meet to exchange ideas, to collaborate, and to participate in a national conversation on civil procedure scholarship.Scholars whose papers are selected will present their work in small panel sessions. A senior scholar will moderate each panel and lead the commentary. Confirmed participants for 2015 include Stephen Burbank, Scott Dodson, Myriam Gilles, Suzette Malveaux, Judith Resnik, Suja Thomas, and Tobias Barrington Wolff.
We welcome all civil procedure scholars to attend this Workshop. Those wishing to present a paper for discussion in the Workshop should submit a two-page abstract by December 15, 2014. While we welcome papers from both emerging and senior scholars, preference may be given to those who have been teaching for ten years or fewer. Workshop organizers will select papers to be presented by January 31, 2015. Please send all submissions or related questions to Brooke Coleman.
The Workshop will provide meals for registrants. Participants must cover travel and lodging costs. We will provide information about reasonably priced hotels as the date approaches.
Feel free to contact us with questions:
Brooke Coleman (Seattle), email@example.com
Liz Porter (UW), firstname.lastname@example.com
Dave Marcus (Arizona), firstname.lastname@example.com
Posted by Howard Wasserman on October 13, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (1)
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Clearly established?
Back in June, we learned that at least the Eighth Circuit believes the right to burn a flag is clearly established. I wonder what the Seventh Circuit will think of the right not to have a police officer proselytize and hand-out information about a church in the course of a traffic stop.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on October 8, 2014 at 01:47 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman, Law Review Review | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, October 02, 2014
Is Ex parte Young Doomed?
Among the 11 cases in which the Supreme Court granted certiorari this morning is Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, a case out of Idaho (via the Ninth Circuit) that asks "Whether the Supremacy Clause gives Medicaid providers a private right of action to enforce 42 U.S.C. § 1396a(a)(30)(A) against a state where Congress chose not to create enforceable rights under that statute." This is the exact same question that the Supreme Court had before it--and narrowly ducked--two years ago in Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, a case I've written about here previously. And the fact that the Court has once again decided to take it up does not bode well for the plaintiffs--or, as I'll explain below, the future availability of remedies under Ex parte Young.
In Douglas, a 5-4 majority vacated the Ninth Circuit's affirmative answer to that question based upon an intervening change in the administrative posture in the case--without endorsing or criticizing the Court of Appeals' ruling. But in a strongly worded dissent on behalf of himself and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, Chief Justice Roberts argued that such remedies under the Supremacy Clause should not be available, lest the Supremacy Clause provide litigants with a means of making an end-run around their inability to enforce section 30(A) (the Medicaid statute's critical requirement that states fund Medicaid at levels sufficient to guarantee "equal access" to quality providers) either directly or via 42 U.S.C. § 1983. For Chief Justice Roberts, Douglas should have followed directly from the Court's earlier decisions in Alexander v. Sandoval (limiting direct enforcement) and Gonzaga University v. Doe (limiting 1983). Taking those cases one crucial step further, the Douglas dissent would have held, for the first time, that litigants may not pursue injunctive relief against state officers for violations of federal law under Ex parte Young unless the underlying federal law is itself privately enforceable.
The reason why such a conclusion would not be inconsistent with Ex parte Young and its progeny, the Chief Justice explained, is because "Those cases . . . present quite different questions involving the pre-emptive assertion in equity of a defense that would otherwise have been available in the State's enforcement proceedings at law." This hyper-narrow view of the scope of Ex parte Young, which was most forcefully advanced in a 2008 Stanford Law Review article by UVa Professor John Harrison, has never been embraced by a majority of the Supreme Court, and cannot be squared with any number of subsequent Supreme Court decisions. As Justice Scalia reiterated just three years ago, "[i]n determining whether the doctrine of Ex parte Young avoids an Eleventh Amendment bar to suit, a court need only conduct a 'straightforward inquiry into whether [the] complaint alleges an ongoing violation of federal law and seeks relief properly characterized as prospective.'" And because of these modest prerequisites, as then-Justice Rehnquist wrote in 1974, Ex parte Young "has permitted the Civil War Amendments to the Constitution to serve as a sword, rather than merely as a shield, for those whom they were designed to protect." In other words, litigants have been able to use Ex parte Young to affirmatively and prospectively vindicate federal rights against state officers whether or not they are otherwise facing state enforcement proceedings in which those rights might provide a defense. On the Douglas dissenters' view, such remedies would only be available when such enforcement proceedings were nigh...
And yet, Douglas came within one vote of cementing this far narrower understanding of the availability of such relief. And Justice Kennedy (who joined Justice Breyer's majority opinion in Douglas that ducked the issue) has already expressed at least some support for this view of Ex parte Young elsewhere. After Douglas came out, I wrote a short essay about the bullet that the Douglas Court dodged. With this morning's grant in Alexander, it increasingly appears that any solace one might have taken from that result may well be short-lived.
[Full disclosure: I co-authored an amicus brief on behalf of former HHS officials in support of the Respondent in Douglas--which argued, contrary to the position advanced by the Solicitor General in his amicus brief, that HHS has historically understood private enforcement of the equal access provision to be a critical part of the Medicaid scheme.]
Posted by Steve Vladeck on October 2, 2014 at 12:23 PM in Blogging, Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Scholarship in the Courts, Steve Vladeck | Permalink | Comments (10)
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
The Washington Redskins, the Lanham Act, and Article III
As the Associated Press reported yesterday, the five Native Americans who prevailed earlier this year before the U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) in their effort to have the Washington Redskins' trademarks cancelled have now moved to dismiss the lawsuit that the Redskins ("Pro-Football, Inc.") filed against them in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1071(b)(4). As I endeavor to explain in the post that follows, it certainly appears that their motion should be granted--and the Redskins' lawsuit dismissed either because the Lanham Act doesn't actually authorize such a suit, or, insofar as it does, it trascends Article III's case-or-controversy requirement in this case.
I. The Lanham Act's Cause of Action for "Adverse" Parties
In their Complaint in Pro-Football, Inc. v. Blackhorse, the Redskins explained that they were seeking:
an Order of this Court: (1) reversing the TTAB Order scheduling the cancellation ofthe Redskins Marks; (2) declaring that the word "Redskins" or derivations thereof contained in the Redskins Marks, as identifiers ofthe Washington, D.C. professional football team, do not consist of or comprise matter that may disparage Native Americans; (3) declaring that Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1052(a),is unconstitutional, both on its face and as applied to Pro-Football by the TTAB, under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and is void for vagueness; (4) declaring that the TTAB Order violates Pro-Football's rights under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution; and (5) declaring that Defendants' petition for cancellation in the TTAB challenging the Redskins Marks under Section 2(a) was barred at the time it was brought by the doctrine of laches.
But whereas the Redskins' Complaint routinely describes their lawsuit as an "appeal" of the decision by the TTAB (where it wouldn't be that weird to have the complaining party before the TTAB--the Blackhorse defendants--as the putative appellees), the Lanham Act actually authorizes something else altogether--a standalone, new civil action against an "adverse party" so long as that party was "the party in interest as shown by the records of the United States Patent and Trademark Office at the time of the decision complained of." The problem with application of that provision here, as the motion to dismiss quite persuasively explains, is that it's not at all clear how the defendants here are "the party in interest," at least in light of the specific nature of the Redskins' challenge:
Ordinarily, the adverse parties in an opposition or cancellation proceeding before the TTAB are two businesses claiming rights to the same or similar trademarks. Thus, when a party dissatisfied with a decision of the TTAB brings actions under 15 U.S.C. § 1071(b)(4), it is usually involved in a dispute with a business that uses a similar trademark, with the parties often joining claims for trademark infringement, unfair competition and other causes of action.
Here in contrast, there's no such relationship, and "PFI does not allege any wrongdoing on the part of the Blackhorse Defendants. PFI does not allege that they breached a contract, committed a tort, or violated any law. Instead, PFI's allegations are directed solely against the USPTO and PFI seeks relief only against the USPTO." In effect, the Redskins' claim is that the TTAB wrongly cancelled their trademarks--which, for better or worse, has rather little to do at this point with the complainants who initiated the cancellation proceedings in the first place. Thus, it certainly appears as if 15 U.S.C. § 1071(b)(4) does not in fact provide the Redskins with a cause of action against the Blackhorse defendants--and that the suit should be dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.
II. The Case-or-Controversy Requirement
But imagine, for a moment, that the Lanham Act does so provide--and that § 1071(b)(4) actually authorizes this suit. The motion to dismiss argues that, so construed, the Lanham Act would violate Article III's case-or-controversy requirement, and that seems right to me--albeit for slightly different reasons than those offered by the Blackhorse defendants.
The motion argues that "The Blackhorse Defendants' legal and economic interests are not affected by the registration cancellations and they will not be affected by this litigation." But I think the case-or-controversy defect here goes to the Redskins' Article III standing. After all, it's black-letter law that a plaintiff must allege (1) a personal injury ["injury in fact"]; (2) that is fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly wrongful conduct ["causation"]; and (3) that is likely to be redressed by the requested relief ["redressability"]. Although the Redskins were clearly injured, it's not at all clear to me how the Redskins satisfy either the causation or redressability prongs.
On causation, as should be clear from the above recitation of the Redskins' claims, none of them even as alleged in the Complaint run against the Blackhorse defendants--who were the complaining parties before the TTAB. After all, even though they initiated the proceeding that produced the TTAB order the Redskins seek to challenge, they did not themselves issue that order, nor are they a competing business somehow reaping financial or noneconomic advantage from the deregistration of the Redskins' trademark.
As for redressability, neither the TTAB nor the Director of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office are parties to the Redskins' suit, and so it is impossible to see how the relief the Redskins are seeking could be provided by the Blackhorse defendants. Again, one can imagine a different set of facts where the adverse party before the TTAB could have both (1) caused the plaintiff's injuries; and (2) be in a position to redress them, but I just don't see how either is true, here. It's certainly odd to think that the defect in this suit goes to the Redskins' standing--after all, if nothing else is clear, the Redskins are certainly injured by the TTAB's cancellation decision. But standing isn't just about the plaintiff being injured by a party nominally connected to the injury...
III. The Equities
Finally, although the motion to dismiss doesn't make this point, there's an equitable point here that I think deserves mention. Whatever the merits of the TTAB's underlying ruling, I have to think that the Lanham Act was not designed to disincentive individuals like the Blackhorse defendants from bringing non-frivolous claims seeking the cancellation of registered trademarks on the ground that they are disparaging. But if the Redskins are right, here, then any party that pursues such a proceeding before the TTAB is necessarily opening itself up to the (rather substantial) costs of a new federal civil action if it prevails, even when the subject-matter of the suit is simply an effort to relitigate the TTAB's underlying cancellation decision. (All the more so because the standard of review in the new lawsuit is de novo, with full discovery.)
Such a result strikes me not only as unwise, but as not possibly being what Congress could have intended when it enacted § 1071(b)(4). Indeed, in many ways, the Redskins' claims sure seem analogous to a SLAPP suit--all the more so when you consider that the Redskins could have, but did not, directly appeal the TTAB ruling to the Federal Circuit.
Posted by Steve Vladeck on September 23, 2014 at 08:47 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Corporate, Culture, Current Affairs, Intellectual Property, Steve Vladeck | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tuesday, September 02, 2014
A jurisdictional tragedy
Forget taxes. What is really important about Burger King's deal with Tim Horton's are the jurisdictional implications. Has Florida (and Miami in particular) lost its greatest contribution to the civil procedure canon? Might this set-up a final exam question in which a plaintiff tries to use BK's "home" in Florida to get general jurisdiction over the Canada-based parent company in Florida that will be birthed by the deal? Would BK now prefer to litigate in eastern Michigan (where Rudziewicz wanted to be), which is closer to Ontario?
Posted by Howard Wasserman on September 2, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, August 29, 2014
Video Chutzpah, defined
Stories have begun circulating about an incident in Minneapolis in January, in which officers seemed to escalate a situation in which a man was sitting in a restricted area near a public space, then used a TASER when he refused to give his name and attempted to walk away. Charges (trespass and "obstruction of the legal process") were dropped in July. Yesterday, the chief of the St. Paul Police defended the officers, beginning with: "As is often the case, the video does not show the totality of the circumstances."
He is right, of course. But that is certainly not going to be his line or the officers' line when they inevitably move for summary judgment in the inevitable § 1983 action.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 29, 2014 at 11:06 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, August 22, 2014
Would "Pattern or Practice" Litigation Work in Ferguson?
The following guest post is by Stephen Rushin, a VAP at Illinois.
Earlier this week, Howard wrote an interesting post about the possibility of DOJ intervention into the Ferguson Police Department under 42 U.S.C. § 14141. This statute gives the Attorney General authority to initiate structural reform litigation against local police agencies engaged in a "pattern or practice" of misconduct.
This post raised some important questions. How might the DOJ use § 14141 to reform the Ferguson Police Department? And would it work? Over the last two years, I've been empirically studying the DOJ's use of § 14141 litigation in American police departments as part of my doctoral dissertation. I am in the process of converting this dissertation into a book (in contract with the Cambridge University Press) that argues that § 14141 is the most effective legal mechanism available to combat police misconduct. So it is safe to say that I am a strong proponent of § 14141 litigation. But this regulatory mechanism is not without its limitations. After the jump, I'll breakdown what we know about § 14141, and I'll describe how this sort of structural reform litigation could work in Ferguson.
Let me start with a little background. Since Congress passed § 14141 in 1994, the DOJ has used the measure to reform police departments in cities all across the country, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Albuquerque, Seattle, Detroit. One of my earlier articles documents all of the formal DOJ action under § 14141. Below is a map showing all DOJ action under this statute (this doesn't include DOJ action in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands). That same article also describes trends in DOJ enforcement of § 14141 over time.
In practice the DOJ has settled virtually all § 14141 cases through largely extrajudicial negotiations. One notable exception is the recent litigation in Alamance County, North Carolina. In a forthcoming article, I draw on original interviews to describe and evaluate this largely "off-the-books" process and theorize on its effectiveness. Scholars like Mary Fan (UW Seattle) have argued that this sort of bargaining of constitutional reforms in the shadow of the law "may yield smarter and farther reaching reforms." And as Howard alluded to in his earlier post, Rachel Harmon and Kami Chavis Simmons have made valuable contributions in this field by describing how the federal government could use § 14141 to bring about more widespread and effective change in local police departments.
Studies in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati have suggested that § 14141 litigation can help police departments reduce misconduct. In my research, I argue that federal intervention via § 14141 helps reduce misconduct in several ways. For one thing, it forces municipalities to prioritize investment in police reform. Preventing unconstitutional misconduct is expensive. Take New Orleans as an example. There, estimates place the annual cost of the consent decrees facing the New Orleans Police Department and Orleans Parish Prison at around $18 to $33.5 million. In confronting such an immediate financial burden, communities are left with two options: reallocate scarce municipal resources to the cause of police reform, or generate more revenue through higher taxes. While this might seem troubling, interview participants in my study suggest that municipalities can recoup some of this cost through future reductions in civil suits for officer misconduct. As one city official in Detroit told me, "the amount of money that we have saved on lawsuits that we had endured for years … have paid for the cost of implementation of the monitoring two or three times" over.
Federal intervention via § 14141 also commonly spurs municipalities to bring in outside, reform-minded leadership to their police department. Federal intervention arms these local police leaders with legal cover to implement potentially unpopular, but necessary reforms. And it utilizes external monitoring to ensure that frontline officers substantively comply with top-down mandates.
That is the good news. But this regulatory method is far from perfect. For one thing, virtually all interview participants that took part in my study acknowledged that § 14141 litigation is most effective when the local police and political leadership are supportive of the reform. In 2010, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Perez announced that the Civil Rights Division was again "open for business" and would aggressively use its authority under § 14141 to reform local police departments. Even so, real questions remain about whether the DOJ can effectively use § 14141 to force reform in a municipality that defiantly and obstinately opposes federal intervention.
There are also serious questions about the sustainability of reforms achieved via § 14141. For example, in Pittsburgh, Police Chief Robert McNeilly oversaw the city's Bureau of Police throughout the implementation of § 14141 reforms. During his process, McNeilly was an ardent supporter of federal intervention, despite fierce backlash from his own officers. After federal oversight ended, though, the newly elected Pittsburgh mayor removed McNeilly from his post. Since then, the Bureau "is now sliding back towards where it was" before federal intervention. One of McNeilly's successors, Chief Nathan Harper, is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence on corruption-related charges. And the current Pittsburgh mayor recently acknowledged that the Bureau had regressed so much that it may be "on the verge of another consent decree."
All of this is to say that § 14141 is not a silver bullet. If a full DOJ investigation finds evidence of a pattern or practice of police misconduct in Ferguson, the use of § 14141 may help facilitate organizational change. At the end of the day, though, long-lasting reform in the Ferguson police department will require more than § 14141. It will require dedication by local politicians, supportive leadership in the police department, and organizational buy-in by frontline officers.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 22, 2014 at 10:00 AM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Summary judgment and the infield fly rule
No, not together, sadly.
The final version of An Empirical Analysis of the Infield Fly Rule is now on-line at the Journal of Legal Metrics/Journal of Law (the book will be out in a month or so). The article presents the results of a four-year study of all infield fly calls in Major League Baseball. I am extending the study for the 2014 and 2015 seasons, as well as trying to apply some advanced baseball metrics to measure the effect of the rule (or, more precisely, what the effect might be if we did not have the rule and infielders were free to intentionally not catch the ball in search of cost-benefit advantages).
And, completely unrelatedly, Mixed Signals on Summary Judgment is now posted to SSRN, and hopefully coming to a law review near you. Here is the abstract:
This essay examines three cases from the Supreme Court's October Term 2013 that addressed the standards for summary judgment. In one, the Court affirmed summary judgment against a civil rights plaintiff; in two others the Court rejected the grant of summary judgment against civil rights plaintiffs, arguably for the first time in quite awhile, but in procedurally confounding ways. The essay unpacks the substance and procedure of all three decisions, and considers their likely effect and what signals they send to lower courts and litigants about the proper approach to summary judgment.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 19, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Article Spotlight, Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, August 18, 2014
JOTWELL: Walker on the effect of teaching procedure
The new Courts Law essay comes from Janet Walker (York--Osgoode Hall) reviewing A Community of Procedure Scholars: Teaching Procedure in the Legal Academy, a piece by authors from four different systems (including Elizabeth Thornburg of SMU) comparing how civil procedure is taught in their law schools and the effect that has on procedure scholarship and procedural systems.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 18, 2014 at 02:18 PM in Article Spotlight, Civil Procedure | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Jurisdictional elements and merits
Here is a Ninth Circuit decision properly analyzing jurisdictionality in a Lanham Act case. The court held that the requirement that a trademark be "use[d] in commerce" is an element of the trademark claim and does not go to the court's jurisdiction over the claim. Relying on Arbaugh, the court held that the substantive provisions of the Lanham Act do not contain jurisdictional language and the actual jurisdictional grants for trademark cases (§ 1331 and 15 U.S.C. § 1121(a), along with 28 U.S.C. § 1338, which the court did not mention) do not use this language. Thus, "use in commerce" goes to the merits, not jurisdiction. This is spot-on analysis and the court made relatively light work of the arguments.
The court did not discuss it in these terms, but this case demonstrates the confusion created by so-called jurisdictional elements. The "use in commerce" element hooks the Lanham Act into Congress' Commerce power--Congress lacks the power (the jurisdiction) under that clause to regulate trademarks not used in interstate commerce. The "jurisdiction" here is Congress' prescriptive or legislative jurisdiction, its authority to prescribe legal rules to regulate real-world conduct. An internal limitation on congressional legislative power--like an external limitation such as the First Amendment ministerial exemption--constitutionally limits the scope of the legal rule and thus the rights granted and duties imposed under that rule.
But jurisdictional elements write that prescriptive-jurisdictional limitation into the statute, and the statutory claim, itself. Rather than absence of "use in commerce" rendering the statute unconstitutional as applied (as with a minister's ADA claim against a church), the failure of the jurisdictional element means the statute by its terms does not "reach" the conduct at issue. A Lanham Act plaintiff must prove "use in commerce" just as it must prove "reproduction, counterfeit, copy, or colorable imitation of a registered mark;" both go to whether there is an existing legal rule imposing liability on these defendants on the real-world facts at issue and thus whether the plaintiff's infringement claim has merit. In that regard, a jurisdictional element functions the same as an ordinary element of a statute. The jurisdictional element is there for a different reason than an ordinary element, but its role is the same--it controls the "reach" of the statute, which is uniformly understood as a merits concern. And it has nothing to do with whether the court has adjudicative jurisdiction to hear and resolve a claim because it is "arising under" that statute.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on August 12, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (2)
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Chokeholds and clearly established rights
This is a tragic story and has all the trappings of yet another racially polarized split involving police, city government, and the public. Plus, we have video, with all the confusion and false certainty that goes along with visual images of police-public encounters gone bad. The NYPD, the City, and the DA all are investigating, and I would not be surprised if DOJ jumped into the mix at some point (likely depending on what the City and DA do).
I want to skip ahead to several interesting issues that likely will arise in the inevitable § 1983 action:
1) What will the court do with the video on summary judgment? As I wrote in a draft paper for a SEALS discussion group, the Court last term in Plumhoff v. Rickard, just as in Scott v. Harris, was all too willing to interpret the video for itself and identify its single meaning (in favor of the defendant officer) as a basis for granting summary judgment. Will courts be similarly bold with potentially more damning video or will they be less willing to find a single message and leave it all to the jury? On that note, check out the lede of The Times article describing the officer "holding him in what appears, in a video, to be a chokehold." (emphasis added). That is the proper way to report on video, since it is about appearances and what different viewers will or might see. But it is veery different than what everyone (press, government officials, and courts) has done in, for example, describing video of high-speed chases.
2) According to The Times, chokeholds are expressly prohibited by NYPD regulations. How will that affect the qualified immunity analysis? In Hope v. Pelzer and Wilson v. Layne, the Court looked at department regulations and whether they endorsed or prohibited some conduct as indications of whether theright at issue is clearly established. While not conclusive, administrative regs can support a doctrinal consensus or demonstrate the absence of that consensus. Absent case law holding that chokeholds always violate the Fourth Amendment or violate the Fourth Amendment when in furtherance of arresting non-violent offenders, what will the court do with this officer violating clear departments regulations in dealing with a non-violent offender (they were trying to arrest the victim for selling loose cigarettes on the street).
3) What happens when the plaintiff tries to make his Monell claim against the city? On one hand, the express prohibition on chokeholds in department regs would seem to weigh against any argument that the city had a policy of allowing its officers to utilize such holds, since the very opposite is true--he really is the "bad apple" expressly disobeying how we told him to behave. On the other hand, according to The Times, more than 4% of excessive-force complaints to the Civilian Complaint Review Board involve allegations of officers using chokeholds, a number that has gone up in the past decade; this could support an argument that the city is failing to train its officers on its own policies or that the city is being deliberately indifferent to the actual practices and actions of officers who are employing chokeholds despite department prohibitions. (Note that many of those complaints never go anywhere or are unsubstantiated--the point is that many citizens are talking about officers using chokeholds).
Posted by Howard Wasserman on July 19, 2014 at 10:25 AM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (6)
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Standing and defendants
In affirming the district court and invalidating Utah's ban on marriage equality, the Tenth Circuit considered standing sua sponte. But, as with the D.C. Circuit's decision on the filibuster, the standing issue was not about the plaintiffs (who want to get married and are prevented from doing so, thus obviously have standing), but about the defendants--whether the governor and attorney general were proper defendants in this Ex Parte Young action. (This was necessary as a preliminary to whether the governor and A/G could appeal, since the county clerk of Salt Lake County, a named defendant who is directly responsible for issuing marriage licenses to four sets of plaintiffs, declined to appeal).
Under Ex Parte Young, the named defendant must be the executive officer responsible for enforcing the challenged law. And the plaintiffs should lose if they sue an officer who is not responsible for enforcing that law. But the Tenth Circuit did not explain why this should be a component of the plaintiffs' standing, as opposed to the merits of the constitutional claim.
In fact, the unique position of the governor and A/G in this case illustrates why treating this as standing makes no sense. Under Utah law, the governor and A/G are not directly responsible for issuing marriage licenses (that rests with county clerks) or for doing things that require recognition or non-recognition of out-of-state marriages (not giving spousal benefits, not allowing joint tax returns, not giving marital deductions, etc.). But they are responsible for advising, supervising, and compellling the clerks and other state officials who refuse in recognizing same-sex marriages, which made them responsible defendants subject to suit. In essence, the court accepted "supervisory" Ex Parte Young liability (which makes sense, since executives delegate all the time).
But we regularly deal with supervisory liability in § 1983 damages actions, without ever invoking standing. For example, imagine Officer Y uses excessive force against A; A sues Supervisor X for failing to supervise Y, but it turns out that X is not Y's supervisor under state law. Without question, A loses. But the court would not say that A lacks standing; instead, that claim fails on the merits. Or compare this Eighth Circuit decision holding that an officer violated a person's rights by enforcing a flag-burning ordinance. The plaintiff also brought a Monell claim against the city for failing to properly train the officer, which the court rejected because, under Missouri law, cities are not responsible for training police officers. So the city could not be liable and the Monell claim failed on the merits. Again, no mention of standing.
So why if "you got the wrong guy" is a merits matter in these actions for retroactive relief, it makes no sense whatsoever for it to become a standing matter in Ex Parte Young actions for prospective relief.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 25, 2014 at 07:13 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (5)
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
The end of umpires?
That is the proposal from John McEnroe to make tennis more interesting--have the players call their own lines, as a way to introduce greater intensity into the game. Players would be given challenges and McEnroe argues that the threat of fan anger would keep players in line. It has been said that back in the day, if the umpire clearly missed a call, the player who benefitted from the blown call would tank the next point as an equalizer (I am not sure if that is true). On surfaces where the ball leaves a mark (notably clay), a player will often point to the spot of the ball to show the opponent before an argument begins.
Continuing my previous suggestion that sports rule as enforced by umpires are analogous to rules of procedure--the framework rules regulating the process in which the players control the outcome through performance of skills: This is the sports equivalent of arbitration; the parties have privatized the dispute-resolution process into something they create and control themselves, perhaps less formally, rather than using formalized "outside" processes and arbiters that they work with but exert less control over. Maybe that means McEnroe's proposal will work about as well as arbitration.
On a different note on McEnroe's suggestion: This video is pretty funny. Latvian Ernests Gulbis is asked about McEnroe's proposal to get rid of umpires; Gulbis misunderstands and thinks the reporter asked about getting rid of vampires and begins to discuss the benefit of getting ride of vampires (in the metaphorical sense of hangers-on).
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 24, 2014 at 10:37 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Sports | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, June 23, 2014
JOTWELL: Thornburg on Hadfield and Ryan and information disclosure
The new Courts Law essay comes from Elizabeth Thornburg (SMU), reviewing Gillian K. Hadfield & Dan Ryan, Democracy, Courts, and the Information Order, 54 J. European Sociology 67 (2013), exploring the demoratizing role of civil litigation, particularly discovery and the public value of information disclosure.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 23, 2014 at 10:21 AM in Article Spotlight, Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Lance Armstrong: Another Civ Pro exam
Judge Wilkins on the District of the District of Columbia addressed a host of motions to dismiss in the False Claims Act and common law fraud lawsuit against Lance Armstrong and others over false statements and claims relating to the Postal Service sponsorship of Armstrong and his team; the case began as a qui tam action by rider Floyd Landis and the United States intervened. For some reason, when sports disputes hit the courts, they carry procedure and jurisdiction problems with them.
If you are looking for a single source for a lot of possible exam issues, this 81-page decision has a little bit of everything: 1) Presentation of outside documents and facts on a motion to dismiss and the possibility of converting a 12(b)(6) to summary judgment; 2) when an action commences under Rule 3 and the validity of Rule 3 in the face of different state law; 3) handling lawsuits against no-longer existing corporate entities; 4) Relation back of a new party's complaint (the U.S., when it intervened) where the relevant statute of limitations provides for relation back; 5) propriety of the manner of service of process; 6) propriety of using 12(b)(6) to assert a statute of limitations defense; and 7) how to plead fraud under FRCP 9(b).
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 21, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, June 20, 2014
When dissent rhetoric comes true
In covering summary judgment in civ pro, I teach an Eighth Circuit case called Sitzes v. City of West Memphis. A police officer drove, perhaps without lights or sirens, 80-90 mph through a residential neighborhood towards what may or may not have been a genuine emergency and hit a car, killing the driver and injuring the passenger. A divided court held that intent-to-harm was the applicable standard and granted summary judgment in favor of the officer. It is a great teaching case because both the majority and dissent parse the evidence in the record in identifying what may or may not be genuine disputes of material fact and join issue with what facts are material in light of the applicable legal standard. It is also one of the few cases in Civ Pro that genuinely seem to get students riled up.
At one point, the dissenter (a district judge sitting by designation) went into parade-of-horribles mode. The majority held that there was no intent to injure since the officer genuinely subjectively believed he was rushing towards an emergency. That being so, the dissent argued, "an officer could avoid Section 1983 liability for driving 100 miles per hour through a children's playground during recess time, by stating that he subjectively believed there was an emergency and the path through the playground was the most direct to get to the claimed emergency." The majority's only responses were: 1) that's not this case and 2) "we think it very likely that an officer who intentionally drove through a playground . . . could be held liable even under the intent-to-harm standard, regardless of the officer's avowed belief, at least absent some compelling exigency not described in the hypotheticals."
True, it is a golf course not a playground and the video seems to suggest it was not crowded. And it was a pursuit, apparently begun when officers attempted to serve outstanding drug warrants, perhaps the "compelling exigency" the majority demanded; it was not the officers using the golf course as a short-cut to reach some other location. And, fortunately, the officers did not hit anyone, so we need not address the § 1983 or due process questions.
On the other hand, why chase him onto the course, with all the attendant risks? There was a police helicopter in the chase, so the guy was not going anywhere.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 20, 2014 at 11:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (1)
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Standing is easier when you're Younger
An open issue in the standing discussion in SBA List is the extent to which the threat of an administrative proceeding, a la a complaint about false electoral speech before the Ohio Elections Commission, constitutes sufficient harm to allow standing for a preenforcement challenge to the underlying statute. The Court emphasized that adminstrative proceedings impose burdens on time, cost, and distraction to possible speakers and that a Commission finding that some speech was false may be viewed by the public as a state-imposed sanction--all genuine injuries-in-fact. The Court cited Ohio Civil Rights Commission v. Dayton Christian Schools for the proposition that "If a reasonable threat of prosecution creates a ripe controversy, we fail to see how the actual filing of the administrative action threatening sanctions in this case does not." But the Court ultimately punted on the question because Commission proceedings might be followed by criminal prosecution, presenting an additional element of harm in this case.
But the Court's hesitancy or ambiguity on this point is unwarranted and potentially troubling. There should be no question that genuinely threatened administrative enforcement proceedings should be sufficient for preenforcement standing.
Dayton was a Younger case, which held that federal courts must abstain in deference to ongoing coercive enforcement proceedings before a state civil rights commission. The portion of Dayton quoted in SBA List was from Footnote 1, in which the Court quickly disposed of any ripeness concerns, citing two other Younger decisions, both of which involved threatened criminal prosecutions, Steffel v. Thompson and Doran v. Salem Inn.
The key is recognizing that connection between standing and Younger. Younger requires abstention in deference to three types of pending state proceedings, including civil enforcement proceedings, especially those in which the state is party to the proceeding and in which the state initiates the formal process following some other preliminary investigation. The Sprint Court expressly recognized the administrative proceedings in Dayton as of the type to which a federal court must abstain. And the Court has never suggested that administrative proceedings must be supported by criminal prosecution to trigger abstention; a purely civil administrative proceeding is enough. Younger does not require abstention where those civil-enforcement proceedings are threatened but not pending. The issue then is one of standing or ripeness (or both)--whether there is a sufficiently credible threat (how sufficient is the point of Marty's post) that any such proceeding will be initiated. This creates a window for individuals to get into federal court--in the time between when the threat of initiation becomes real and when proceedings actually have been initiated.
So now we can frame the standing question for preenforcement challenges in those terms. If there is a credible threat of initiation of any proceeding and it is a proceeding from which Younger would require federal abstention once that proceeding is initiated, then the plaintiff has standing (or the action is ripe, whatever) for a preenforcement challenge. This now preserves that window for getting to federal court. Otherwise, if a genuine threat of a purely administrative proceeding is not sufficient to trigger standing, then a plaintiff is forever blocked from that federal forum--he cannot bring a preenforcement challenge and Younger kicks-in once the government initiates the administrative proceeding. In SBA List, it seems obvious that a federal court would abstain once Commission proceedings were pending against a speaker--that is what the district court initially held in the case (before other things happened procedurally). Therefore, the real threat of those Commission proceedings alone--whether or not supported by criminal prosecution--should be enough to establish standing.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 19, 2014 at 07:07 AM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (2)
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
More on SBA List and standing
Marty Lederman offers some thoughts at SCOTUSBlog on the future of standing after SBA List. He focuses on something I glossed over a bit: The seeming inconsistency between Clapper, which required that an injury be "certainly impending," and prior case law (referred to in passing in a footnote in Clapper) which only required a "substantial risk" of harm. In SBA List, Justice Thomas presents them as alternative standards. Marty parses the decision, suggesting the Court applied a uniquely forgiving standard there, given that there was little chance (not even substantial and certainly not "certainly impending") of the state bringing a criminal prosecution on top of the administrative proceedings that were more likely. He also argues that the Court has the flexibility to make the requirements looser or stricter, depending on future contexts (considering, e,g., whether free speech is involved or whether election issues are involved or something else).
That "something else" might be the difference between challenges to regulations of the public's primary conduct as opposed to regulations of law-enforcement techniques and practices.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 18, 2014 at 12:53 AM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, First Amendment, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (7)
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
IRS: "sorry, can't produce" or a bad example of hiding the ball?
Last week, the IRS stated that it lost numerous emails from Lois Lerner concerning the targeting of conservative groups for tax exempt status because her computer crashed. And this week, the IRS is now revealing that it has lost numerous additional emails from key IRS officials. Politics aside, it is interesting to think how this discovery issue involving electronically stored information (ESI) would be addressed in a federal court under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP).
The facts surrounding this issue almost read like a law school exam hypothetical. The IRS received a subpoena to produce emails between key IRS officials and other government agents that might suggest targeting. The IRS knew months ago, in February, that it could not produce the emails, but failed to inform Congress that the emails were lost until just the last few days. The IRS has taken the position that the emails were lost during a computer crash in 2011 but that the IRS has made a "good faith" effort to find them having spent $10 million dollars (of tax payer money) to deal with the investigation including the cost to piece together what could be found. The IRS does not deny that the recipients, other government officials, may still be in possession of the emails. The IRS, however, maintains that because the subpoena was only directed at the IRS, not other government agencies, the non-IRS recipients of the emails are not required to produce them.
If this issue arose in federal court, under FRCP 26, parties are required at the outset to submit a "discovery plan" that includes how ESI will be retained and exchanged in order to prevent unnecessary expense and waste. The FRCP requires the parties to take reasonable steps to preserve relevant ESI (a litigation hold) or face possible sanctions. Under Rule 37's so-called safe harbor provision, however, "absent exceptional circumstances, a court may not impose sanctions ... for failing to provide electronically stored information lost as a result of the routine, good-faith operation of an electronic information system." The IRS is hanging its hat on this safe harbor rule by arguing that, despite a good-faith effort, the emails were lost. Did the IRS, in fact, make a good faith effort?While there is confusion among the courts on how to apply the good faith standard, there is precedent for a court to monetarily sanction the IRS if the court found that the IRS acted negligently when it lost the emails. The court would also have the authority to issue an adverse inference instruction (inferring that the lost evidence would have negatively impacted the IRS's position), if it determined that the IRS acted grossly negligent or willful.
An important fact which will probably be discussed during the next few hearings is whether the IRS violated its own electronic information retention policy. The IRS was put on notice of the investigation last year, and so had a duty to put a litigation hold on the emails at that time (the very essence of what "good faith" means). It seems that the general IRS retention policy of ESI was six months (although now it is longer), but emails of "official record" had to have a hard copy which would never be deleted. Whether these emails constituted an "official record" is hard to determine since Lerner won't testify to their content.
Even assuming the emails were lost before a litigation hold could be placed (or despite a litigation hold being in place), at the very minimum, it seems "good faith" means that the IRS should have notified Congress in February that it lost the emails. Rule 26 would have required Congress to do so. Indeed, such notice would have brought this issue to the forefront and could have saved a lot of money - the money it apparently has already cost to piece together some of the emails, and the money it will cost as the parties argue over whether the IRS negligently or willfully destroyed evidence. If the IRS had been upfront from the beginning, then subpoenas could have been issued months ago to other agencies who, as employers of the lost email recipients, might have copies of the missing emails.
If this discovery issue had arisen in federal court, the IRS would have likely been subject to monetary sanctions and possibly an adverse inference instruction. Shouldn't the IRS be held to these standards?
Posted by Naomi Goodno on June 17, 2014 at 06:03 PM in Civil Procedure, Current Affairs, Information and Technology, Law and Politics, Tax | Permalink | Comments (7)
Monday, June 16, 2014
Standing, ripeness, and SBA List
Not surprisingly, SCOTUS in Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus reversed the Sixth Circuit and held that the First Amendment challenge to Ohio's prohibition on knowingly or recklessly false campaign speech was justiciable; Justice Thomas wrote for a unanimous Court in a challenge brought by a group that wanted to run ads suggesting that supporting the Affordable Care Act means supporting taxpayer funded abortions. A few things of note (in addition to Richard's comments).
Injury-in-fact is established for purposes of a preenforcement challenge when the plaintiff alleges an intention to engage in some conduct "arguably affected with a constitutional interest" that is prohibited by the challenged statute where there is a credible threat of prosecution. That threat be shown by past prosecutions against similar conduct by the plaintiff or others similarly situated and by the absence of any disavowal of intent to prosecute. Threat may also include bringing administrative proceedings (such as those at issue here), at least when combined with a threat or risk of criminal enforcement (the Court left open whether administrative proceedings alone is enough of an injury to create standing).Although this is a free speech case and the Court relied on many free speech cases (especially Steffel v. Thompson and Babbitt v. United Farm Workers), the Court spoke about all preenforcement challenges generally. It did not suggest, as some lower courts have said, that there is a lesser standard or reduced burden for free speech cases, but that more is required as to other constitutional rights. This arguably could change lower-court analysis of challenges to, for example, some abortion regulations.
At the same time, the Court did not demand the certainty of injury (i.e., state enforcement of the law) that the Court appeared to require just last year in Clapper v. Amnesty International. The Court did cite Clapper's statement that "allegation of future injury may suffice if the threatened injury is 'certainly impending,' or there is a 'substantial risk' that the harm will occur," but it focused more on substantial risk and did not demand a similar level of certainty. Although the Court does not discuss it, I think the difference lends support to my idea that the Court silently treats standing differently when the challenged law regulates primary conduct of individuals (i.e., whether they can engage in some political expression) as opposed to laws regulating what law enforcement officers can do in investigating oro pursuing criminal activity (i.e., whether they can surveil calls or use chokeholds).
Note that the Sixth Circuit had also analyzed the imminence of the threat of prosecution, concluding it was not sufficiently imminent. But it held that the lack of imminence meant the case was not ripe, while SCOTUS addressed the same question in standing terms. Justice Thomas noted Medimmune's footnote 8 that both standing and ripeness "boil down to the same question," and insisted on speaking in standing terms because that is what prior cases have done.
But the Court did not explain what is the proper realm for these doctrines and how litigants and courts are to know. To the extent standing and ripeness remain distinct aspects of justiciability, how are we to know which to argue? Lea Brilmayer long ago argued that standing arose when the plaintiff wanted to challenge a no-lawn-sign ordinance because his neighbor wants to post the sign, while ripeness arose when the plaintiff did not want to post the sign until next year. But standing cases (certainly since Lujan and including SBA) have focused on plaintiff's present intent and immediate plans to engage in some conduct (such as going to see the Nile crocodile), which sounds like ripeness as Brilmayer has defined it. Or we might say that the plainiff's immediate intent to engage in some conduct goes to standing, while the likelihood that the government will act to enforce goes to ripeness. But SBA discussed both of those as distinct elements that together went to standing.
The Sixth Circuit did consider two additional "prudential" elements for ripeness beyond imminent threat of prosecution--whether the factual record is sufficiently developed and the hardship to the plaintiffs if judicial relief is denied at this stage. SCOTUS cited its decision in Lexmark to suggest that such prudential factors no longer are part of any justiciability analysis, including ripeness (the focus of Richard's post). And even if they were, the Court disposed of both in a short paragraph, hinting that, at least where there is a legitimate threat of prosecution (creating standing), a preenforcement challenge to the constitutionality of a law always will be ripe.
So what role, independent of standing, if any, does ripeness continue to play in constitutional litigation?
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 16, 2014 at 04:29 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, First Amendment, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (3)
Ripeness, In and After SBA List v. Driehaus
Today's unanimous standing decision in Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus generally came as little surprise: confronted with speakers wishing to criticize candidates for office, the Court gave a green-light to a pre-enforcement First Amendment challenge. Along the way, however, the Court had a few interesting things to say about ripeness. In this post, I'd like to explore the possibility that SBA foretells future changes in ripeness doctrine.
By way of background, SBA List involved a First Amendment challenge to Ohio's law against recklessly false speech regarding officials and candidates for office. One of the plaintiff groups had previously suffered early enforcement proceedings under this law and felt chilled from further speech of a similar kind. Viewing the case as one about standing, the Court explained that the key question was whether the plaintiff's threatened injury was sufficiently likely. The Court found the requisite threat based on a variety of considerations, including the fact that the plaintiffs planned to continue speaking on the same subject and the legal possibility that administrative complaints could be initiated by any person, including political rivals with an incentive to do so. Though the Court didn't say so, these and other considerations seem to distinguish SBA List from the famous/infamous case Los Angeles v. Lyons, which found that the threat of a police choke-hold policy didn't give rise to a justiciable injury.
Perhaps the most basic question in SBA List was what doctrinal box to use. The Sixth Circuit had treated the case as one about ripeness, by which it meant three factors: the likelihood of the alleged injury, the record's fitness for review, and the hardship to the parties if relief were postponed. By contrast, the Supreme Court focused on standing, which demands an actual or imminent injury in fact that is traceable to the violation and redressable by a favorable judgment. In a footnote, however, SBA List said that the standing and ripeness issues both "originate" in Article III and "boil down to the same question," at least in this case. In other words, the key issue was whether there was a sufficiently credible threat of enforcement to give rise to an adequately probable injury, as demanded under both standing and ripeness. Later, SBA List confronted the "prudential" ripeness factors going to fitness and hardship. After raising doubts about whether prudential grounds are ever a sound basis for denying federal jurisdiction, the Court left that matter for another day, since all the ripeness factors had been satisfied in the case at hand.
Reading between the lines, SBA List appears to be setting the stage for holding that the prudential ripeness factors aren't constitutional at all, but rather are either unwarranted or substantive components of certain statutes providing for judicial review. This move is familiar after the decision earlier this year in Lexmark International v. Static Control Components, which (among other things) clarified that "prudential standing" doctrines are actually substantive requirements embedded in various statutory causes of action. Making this connection apparent, SBA List quoted Lexmark when it noted that merely "prudential" factors normally aren't a sound basis for denying federal jurisdiction. This approach also seems consonant with recent ripeness cases. Consider National Park Hospitality Association v. Department of the Interior, a 2003 Supreme Court decision that, like SBA List, was written by Justice Thomas. While noting that ripeness is rooted in part in Article III, National Park described ripeness without breaking out likelihood of injury as a distinct requirement, and it followed Lujan in characterizing ripeness as being at least potentially grounded in the Administrative Procedure Act.
If the Court ultimately goes down this path, there is a chance that something valuable might be lost. Under the prevailing standing framework, the key question is whether the plaintiff faces a sufficient threat of injury. Under the ripeness heading, by contrast, the intuitive question is whether the plaintiff has a sufficient threat of injury right now, as opposed to at a later time. In other words, ripeness calls for a comparison of risks across time. That comparative or relative aspect allows the Court to alter the required showing of injury in light of the situation at hand. If the Court rejected that relative ripeness analysis as merely prudential, it might find it harder than expected to live with a non-comparative, one-size-fits-all notion of adequate injury for constitutional purposes. SBA List itself illustrates that difficulty when, in attempting to reconcile competing standing cases, it notes that imminent injury requires either a "certainly impending" injury or only a "substantial risk" of one. Relative analysis, it seems, is hard to purge from the law of justiciability.
The above is cross-posted from Re's Judicata.
Posted by Richard M. Re on June 16, 2014 at 04:13 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, June 14, 2014
CFP Deadline: Seventh Junior Faculty Fed Courts Workshop
The full CFP is here. The submission deadline is Friday, June 20. Send abstracts to firstname.lastname@example.com. Contact Matt Hall or Kent Barnett (both at Georgia) with questions.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 14, 2014 at 04:02 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Teaching Law | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Falling in line on the FTAIA
The Second Circuit last week became the latest circuit (joining the Third and Seventh) to overrule circuit precedent and hold that the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act (FTAIA), which limits the extraterritorial reach of the Sherman Act, is a nonjurisdictional merits limitation. This court focused more on Arbaugh and the absence of "jurisdictional language," rather than Morrison's absolute "extraterritoriality-is-always-merits" approach. But, citing the Seventh Circuit, the court recognizes the merits nature of the FTAIA. The court makes one nice move with the FTAIA's legislative history and its repeated references to jurisdiction. References to the "subject matter jurisdiction of United States antitrust law" are not unambiguously about the adjudicative authority of the federal courts, but instead are better understood as inartfully referring to the prescriptive scope of federal law, which goes to the merits of any claim under that law.
The Second Circuit also recognized that Congress was as confused as the courts about jurisdictionality and as likely as the courts to use terms loosely and inaccurately, at least prior to Arbaugh in 2006. This suggests that even if Congress did include "jurisdictional language" in a pre-2006 statute, courts still must look carefully at whether it really meant adjudicative jurisdiction or whether it meant jurisdiction in some other sense (notably in referring to its own legislative authority). Morrison's absolute approach helps in this reading of statutory text and history.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 10, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
Setting traps in a deposition
A while ago, I linked to a New York Times Verbatim video, in which actors recreate depositions, based on the transcripts. In this one, a lawyer gets increasingly agitated as he goes round and round with the deponent about the meaning of "photocopier." At the time, I missed this feature on the lawyer taking the deposition, David Marrburger, a partner at Cleveland's Baker-Hostetler. Marburger states that in reality he was not angry or agitated during the deposition; he actually enjoyed stringing along the deponent (the exchange goes on for 10 pages), who clearly had been prepped by his lawyer to obfuscate, in a way that was going to make him and the defendant look bad. Watching the reenactment, it was pretty obvious what the deponent was doing and pretty easy to guess why. While the video is funny, the background story provides a nice lesson both for lawyers defending depositions against doing this and for lawyers taking depositions about how to handle it.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 4, 2014 at 08:14 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
Wow, there is a right that is clearly established
According to the Eighth Circuit, it is the right to destroy an American flag for expressive purposes. And an officer who does not know that is the plainly incompetent officer who does not warrant qualified immunity and should be liable for damages.
A police officer in Gape Girardeau, MO arrested Snider--pursuant to a warrant obtained from a county judge on an application from the county prosecutor--for violating the state's flag desecration law. According to the case, neither the officer nor the prosecutor (nor, we must assume, the judge) knew about Texas v. Johnson; the charges were dismissed and Snider was released when a reporter called the prosecutor and told him about the case. Snider then filed a § 1983 action, claiming the arrest violated the First and Fourteent Amendments.
The Eight Circuit agreed that the officer (who conceded that Snider's rights were violated) lacked qualified immunity. Johnson and United States v. Eichman established in 1989-1990 that someone could not be punished for using the American flag to express an opinion and a reasonably competent officer in 2009 (the time of Snider's arrest) would have known that. The officer was not saved by the judge issuing a warrant; while a warrant typically indicates the officer acted in an objectively reasonable manner in effecting an arrest, this case fell within the exception where no reasonably competent officer would have concluded that the warrant was valid, given the clearly established state of the law.
There is some other good § 1983 stuff in this case, including the unexplained intervention of the State of Missouri, attorney's fees (imposed in part on the State, even though it could not have been liable in the case), and the rejection of a failure-to-train claim against the city (one could argue that an officer who does not know something as basic as Johnson has not been constitutionally trained) because the State, not the local government, is responsible for training local police officers.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on June 3, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, First Amendment, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (2)
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Donald Sterling v. NBA: Your new Civ Pro exam
Donald Sterling sued the NBA to stop his league-imposed punishment and the forced sale of his team. A $ 2 billion offer from Steve Ballmar was accepted by Sterling's wife, Shelly on behalf of the trust that owns the team, having had Donald declared mentally incompetent; the NBA has approved that deal and canceled a planned hearing of the Board of Governors (the other 29 owners) to strip Donald of ownership. The lawsuit, with Sterling and the trust as plaintiffs against the NBA, asserts claims for a violation of the state constitution, federal antitrust, and various breach of contract claims; it seeks damages and an injunction halting the NBA-imposed punishments (a $ 2.5 million fine and lifetime suspension from the NBA) and the hearing to terminate his ownership.Oddly, these claims are either not ripe or about to become moot, depending on what happens with the sale. The NBA has not yet held the hearing to terminate his ownership, so he has not yet suffered any damages from it. And since the league will cancel the hearing if the sale goes through, that claim becomes moot. If the sale goes through, expect the league to rescind the fine, mooting that element of relief. It might even lift the lifetime suspension--what involvement will Sterling have with the league if he is no longer an owner?--mooting that claim. And assuming the sale goes through, what damage will Sterling have suffered? Two billion dollars will be more than double the sale price of any NBA franchise and likely more money than he would have earned from continued ownership of the team. So, at best, maybe he can get the non-economic value of being an NBA owner--except he is such a pariah now among NBA owners that it would be hard to put any real value on this.
What Sterling really wants is an injunction halting the sale of the team, at least pending outcome of the litigation. But to get that, Shelly Sterling needs to be involved in the case, since she claims an interest in controlling the trust and pushing through the sale. So either she has to be joined under FRCP 19 or she will try to intervene under FRCP 24. (Note: I don't do much more than lecture on these two rules, just to show other ways of bringing parties into cases But Rule 19 confuses students, who think it applies more broadly to cover simple joint-tortfeasor situations; having a nice clear example, purely involving injunctive relief, is helpful).
Jurisidction here hinges on the antitrust claim and § 1331; there is supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims (although Sterling's lawyer--who in an ongoing media blitz has come across as the worst kind of slickster lawyer who does not actually care about things like law and procedure--did not mention that or any other basis for jurisdiction over the non-federal claims). But, here is where it gets fun. Antitrust experts generally agree that the antitrust claim is nonsense--Sterling signed a series of agreements and contracts to become owner of an NBA franchise and cannot claim harm if those contracts harm the public or competitors. Sterling really is arguing that, by violating its own Constitution and By-Laws in punishing him (arguments that are not entirely frivolous), the NBA has breached those agreements; in other words, this is really a state-law case. So perhaps the court declines supplemental jurisdiction under § 1367(c)(2) because the state claims predominate. Moreeover, the court is going to have to figure out who controls the trust (Donald or Shelly) and, perhaps, whether Donald is competent. Those sound like potentially complex issues of state law, warranting the court to decline jurisdiction under § 1367(c)(1). Finally, and most obviously, if the antitrust claim is that weak and the court dismisses it relatively early, it could decline jurisdiction simply for that reasons under § 1367(c)(3).
Update: An alert reader emails with another way Shelly Sterling could be brought into this case: She agreed to indemnify the NBA for any judgments arising from the sale of the team, including for lawsuits by her husband. So, having been sued, the NBA could now implead Shelly and the trust to enforce the indemnification agreement in the same action. Sterling then could assert claims against Shelly relating to any injunction of the sale.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on May 31, 2014 at 11:02 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics, Sports | Permalink | Comments (3)
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
The awfulness of Wood v. Moss
OK, if Town of Greece did not get me too worked up, Tuesday's decision in Wood v. Moss (summary here), while not surprising, is so bad as to have me going the other way. And this was a Ginsburg opinion for a unanimous Court, so I am all alone on the island on this one. The Court held that two Secret Service agents enjoyed qualified immunity because no case law had held that agents engaged in crowd control were obligated to ensure that competing groups are at comparable locations or given equal access at all times when reasonable security concerns are in play. Sounds simple enough, but inside the opinion is a lot of really bad stuff.
First, the Court makes explicit (it previously was implicit) that the absence of qualified immunity is an element of the claim, rather than qualified immunity being an affirmative defense. The Court stated that the plaintiff must plead facts, under the Twiqbal standard, showing that the defendants violated a constitutional right and that the right was clearly established. So this means qualified immunity is the default starting point--a plaintiff must carry the burden of persuasion both as to the facts on the ground and the state of the law.
Second, for the third time, the Court assumed without deciding that a Bivens could be used for First Amendment claims (the issue was not preserved below). Eventually some defendant will be smart enough to preserve this issue (the hints are there) and the Court will resolve it--and likely not in a good way.
Third, while the Court purported to resolve the case on the second prong of the qualified immunity analysis (no clearly established right ) rather than the first (no right violated), the analysis kept conflating the prongs and moving back and forth between them--there was a lot of discussion about why there was no violation here because the agents were motivated not by viewpoint discrimination but by security concerns. This is partly a consequence of the Court's insistence that the second prong must consider the right in the particular factual context and not at too high a level of generality, which invites entwinement of the two prongs. But the analysis (particularly at pp. 14-end) is all about why the agents were justified in moving the anti-Bush protesters (but not the pro-Bush protesters) in this case, not about anything having to do with prior case law. That sounds like the Court saying the plaintiffs did not sufficiently plead a violation.
Fourth, the decision does not leave any obvious room for protesters to ever challenge Secret Service decisions regarding crowd control (which is what Justice Scalia urged during argument). The Court pays lip service to the principle that "government officials may not exclude from public places persons engaged in peaceful expressive activity solely because the government actor fears, dislikes, or disagrees with the views those persons express." And it insists (as the defendants conceded) that the First Amendment might be violated if the agents moved some protesters with "no objectively reasonable security rationale." But that principle will virtually always be trumped by the overriding concerns for protecting the President and it is impossible to imagine a case in which a court would find that the Secret Service lacked an objectively reasonable security rationale while protecting the President. Indeed, the only purported security rationale in this case was keeping the protesters out of "weapons range" of the President (Ginsburg repeats that phrase four times), even though there is no indication on the facts pled that anyone had or planned to use a weapon. Someone being in range raises, per se, a valid security rationale.
But the Court then summarily dismissed any significance of allegations regarding the diners permitted to remain inside the restaurant--obviously in "weapons range" of the President--as undermining the security rationale. The justices simply accept the defendants' argument that the diners "'could not have had any expectation that they would see the President that evening or any opportunity to premeditate a plan to cause him harm,'" and thus were not a security risk, even if within weapons range. Of course,the anti-Bush demonstrators also did not expect to see the President in the open courtyard; they originally only expected to be able to stand along the path of the President's motorcade as it drove by (with pro-Bush protesters on the opposite sidewalk). So they, too, could not have had any opportunity to premeditate a plan. If the diners were not security threats because they were not expecting to be near the President, then neither should the protesters be security threats. Except for one difference--the protesters held anti-Bush views and were there to express those views. So is the Court saying that everyone who disagrees with the President is a security threat if in weapons range and thus can constitutionally be kept from getting "too close" to the President (at least when he is outside his secure car)?
Fifth, the Court does a lot of factfinding (without acknowledging as much, of course) on a case that remains at the pleading stage. The Court finds and accepts the defendants' security rationale, even though the defendants still have not answered the complaint or offered their own factual allegations or evidence. The Court makes determinations about what maps of the area, included as part of the Complaint, show (perhaps another example of plaintiffs pleading themselves out of court by providing the additional information needed to comply with Iqbal). And the Court rejects inferences about differential treatment of the protesters as compared with the diners. It appears to be apply Iqbal's "obvious alternative explanation," although without saying so. Otherwise, these at least should be matters for discovery and summary judgment, if not the factfinder.
Finally, the plaintiffs alleged past instances of viewpoint discrimination by other Secret Service agents; they were trying for an inference from these past instances to an informal agency policy of viewpoint discrimination to the individual defendants acting pursuant to that policy. The Court rejected this out of hand, insisting that Bivens liability can attach only to the officer's own misconduct and declining to accept the plaintiffs' inferences. Putting aside that reasonable inferences should be drawn in the plaintiffs' favor on a 12(b)(6) motion, this seriously cramps the ability to ever plead viewpoint discrimination in the absence of an agent dumb enough to announce that he is moving speakers because of their viewpoint. Moreover, the Court points to the agency's official policy--which expressly prohibits viewpoint discrimination--as evidence that the agents did not act improperly. But repeated past instances of ignoring official policy at least raise an inference that officers regularly ignore official policy, suggesting that these officers also ignored the policy. At the very least, that should be enough at the pleading stage.
As I pointed out previously, at oral argument Justice Kennedy mused that "it seems to me that if this complaint doesn't survive, nothing will." And given what the Court finally said in this case, nothing will.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on May 27, 2014 at 08:25 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink | Comments (2)
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Standing, the Merits, and Judge Fletcher's "Softened" Views
On Monday, I blogged about standing in Town of Greece v. Galloway, and Howard's subsequent comments on that subject have reminded me of an interesting recent development in standing scholarship that I'd like to draw attention to here. In short, Judge Fletcher—a renowned critic of modern standing doctrine—recently wrote that his "views have softened somewhat."
To recap, Howard initially suggested that standing might be found in Town of Greece and other Establishment Clause cases based on a plaintiff's feeling of religious offense or exclusion, even in the absence of coercion. But in fleshing out that instinct, Howard found it tricky to avoid collapsing the distinction between standing and the merits—a move that current standing doctrine frowns on. To state Howard's point using the categories of my earlier post, when trying to make answer #5 work, it's tempting to slide into answers #4 or #6.
In particular, it's tempting to slide into the theory famously put forward by then-Professor and now-Judge William A. Fletcher. To grossly simplify his beyond-classic article, Fletcher argued that the scope of standing should turn on the merits, that is, on the meaning of the substantive law at issue. From that vantage, an inquiry into "injury in fact" seemed pointless—or worse. In a well-known passage, Fletcher compared the injury-in-fact requirement with "substantive due process." Here's an excerpt:
To use a phrase that is particular anathema to those members of the Court most anxious to tell us that there are Article III limitations on statutory grants of standing, one may even say that the 'injury in fact' test is a form of substantive due process.
This was a drop-the-mic moment—a powerful and compelling charge of intellectual hypocrisy.
One difficulty with that line of attack, however, is that a lot of people like substantive due process, and many of them are otherwise sympathetic to Fletcher's critique of standing doctrine. As so often happens, inconsistency could be viewed as a two-edged sword.
With that background, consider Fletcher's recent contribution to a terrific Alabama Law Review symposium in honor of Fletcher's work on standing. I'll only reproduce portions of Fletcher's keynote remarks here, but I recommend reading them all:
I have rethought a few things, helped in part by the papers contributed to this Symposium. In my article, I criticized the Supreme Court for not admitting what it was doing. The Court wrote that its purpose in limiting standing under Article III was to exercise judicial restraint and thereby preserve our democracy. In Justice Scalia's words, the Court was preventing the "overjudicialization" of our government. But each time the Court holds that a grant of standing to enforce a statutory duty is unconstitutional under Article III, the Court is doing precisely what it says it is not doing. It is not deferring to the exercise of power by our democratically elected legislative body. Quite the contrary. It is restraining Congress's power and increasing its own.
While I have not exactly changed my mind, I have to say that my views have softened somewhat. I no longer insist so vigorously that the Court explain what it is doing and why, and I no longer object so strenuously to the Court's substituting its view for Congress's.
[Fletcher then discussed leading standing cases involving the Establishment Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and environmental law.]
... I regard all three lines of cases as examples of the Supreme Court's use of its lawmaking power. ...
The Supreme Court has not, and will not, explain its Establishment Clause, equal protection, and environmental standing decisions in the way that I have just explained them. It has not, and will not, state openly the degree to which it is making law. This is not a new phenomenon. Common law courts have always been reluctant to say openly the degree to which they are changing the law. They much prefer to emphasize the degree to which their decisions are consistent with, even compelled by, decisions reached in earlier cases. I do not regard the Court's unwillingness, perhaps inability, to explain what it is doing as illegitimate or improper. The Justices are acting in the way they and their predecessors have always acted, making law even as they seek to disguise the degree to which they are doing it.
Given that Fletcher has been an intellectual leader both in the academy and, now, on the bench, his "softened" views seem noteworthy—particularly since they're coupled with a candid description of how "[c]ommon law courts have always been reluctant to say openly the degree to which they are changing the law." Indeed, Fletcher's softer attitude toward standing doctrine seems linked to a similar change in attitude toward the exercise of what he calls the Supreme Court's "lawmaking power." As he puts it, "I no longer object so strenuously to the Court's substituting its view for Congress's."
To my mind, Fletcher's "rethought" view of standing addresses a significant set of questions raised by his original piece. And it adds an interesting perspective on the standing issue in Town of Greece and many other cases.
The above is cross-posted from Re's Judicata.
Posted by Richard M. Re on May 22, 2014 at 09:54 AM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Judicial Process | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Injury and standing, rights and merits
In this post, I suggested that the difference between an injury and a right (or claims of right) marks the difference between standing and merits. Richard's post explaining unspoken standing issues in Town of Greece offered as one possibility that while coercion is necessary to state an Establishment Clause claim, something less (say, mere offense at being subjected to sectarian prayer) is enough of an injury for standing. So are we saying the same thing?
My initial inclination was no. Richard notes that mere offense has not been sufficient injury in other contexts; for example, the stigma of race discrimination is insufficient to establish standing, as is knowledge of general wrongdoing by government. But I saw the offense in Greece as something different and more direct. The plaintiffs were offended by sectarian prayer with which they were directly confronted and made to sit through. A pure stigmatic or generalized injury would be a citizen who did not attend council meetings, but alleged that she was harmed simply because sectarian prayers were going on. It was not that there was something unique about the Establishment Clause that the Court was afraid to address; the nature of the conduct and thus the injury genuinely were different.
But as I think on it further, I am less sure we are not saying the same thing. The difference between Warth or Schlesinger and Town of Greece is the different nature of an injury caused by the Establishment Clause compared with the Equal Protection Clause, given the unique purposes of each provision. But if so, that is problematic for my attempted explanation for the standing/merits divide. It necessarily means that whether someone has suffered an injury-in-fact turns on the potential right at issue--in other words, something may be injury for one source of right (Establishment) but not for another (Equal Protection). This more closely links injury to right (or claim of right). And the closer those two things come together, the less standing doctrine makes sense as a concept distinct from merits and the more it appears as nothing more than a cheat to preempt ordinary merits analysis on some constitutional claims.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on May 20, 2014 at 01:59 PM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (5)
Two procedural cases of note
Two procedural cases having nothing to do with one another, other than being interesting (to me).
1) Monday's SCOTUS Orders List included Thomas v. Nugent, in which the Court GVR'd to the Fifth Circuit for further consideration in light of last week's per curiam reversal without full briefing (also of the Fifth Circuit) in Tolan v. Cotton (which I wrote about here and here). I will simply quote what an alert reader wrote in an email: "So if the holding of Tolan is 'remember the basic concept of summary judgment, dummy,' then Thomas v Nugent seems to stand for the proposition 'you probably did it again, dummy, but your work was so sloppy that we're not even going to check it until you rewrite it.'" That about covers it.
2) Scott Dodson (Hastings) points me to this Ninth Circuit decision, written by Fed Courts guru Judge William Fletcher. A lot of Civ Pro/Fed Courts/Civil Rights stuff in here. Of particular note is the discussion at pp. 25-27. Part of the case involved the failure by the county to take sufficient steps to immediately find the family of an unidentified man shot and killed by a police officer (thus denying the family the opportunity to bury him in accordance with their Muslim faith). Among the many claims were I/I/E/D and negligence claims by the victim's siblings; the district court found they lacked standing because they had no legal interest in the disposition of the victim's remains and thus had not suffered an injury-in-fact. The court of appeals rejected that conclusion. The plaintiffs suffered emotional harm allegedly caused by the county's actions, which was sufficient to establish standing. Instead, the siblings' claims failed on the merits, because the county owed no duty to the siblings (defeating the negligence claims) and the county did not intend to cause the siblings emotional distress (defeating the I/I/E/D claims). But the absence of a valid claim of right reflects a failure of the claims on the merits, not an absence of standing/jurisdiction.
This standing analysis--resting on the distinction between injury-in-fact and right (in the Hohfeldian sense)--provides a different explanation for Richard's post on standing in Town of Greece (I tried to put this as a comment to that post, but Typepad is having some problems). There is a difference between whether a plaintiff has suffered an injury and whether his rights have been violated; the former goes to standing while the latter goes to the merits. In other words, a person can be injured, and thus have standing, even if the conduct at issue did not violate their rights, thus losing on the merits.
Here, for example, the siblings' emotional distress constitutes an injury-in-fact for standing, even if their rights were not actually violated (because there was no duty and no intent). In Town of Greece, the plaintiffs suffered an injury in that they were offended or felt excluded, even if their rights were not violated because only actual coercion runs afoul of the First Amendment; again, the plaintiffs have standing, but the claim fails on the merits. Or take one more example: The victim here suffered an injury-in-fact in being shot, providing standing (for his survivors), even if turns out the use of force was reasonable and thus the claim fails on the merits.
Now perhaps this distinction between injury and right is artificial or impossible to implement. But it may be the only way that standing does not swallow merits.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on May 20, 2014 at 09:31 AM in Civil Procedure, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (1)
Monday, May 19, 2014
The Missing Standing Decision in Town of Greece
As part of my ongoing quest to discover under-appreciated jurisdictional issues, I'd like to return to the Court's recent decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway. In that case, the plaintiffs objected to the use of sectarian prayers to solemnify public proceedings, and the Court found no Establishment Clause violation in part because the public prayers at issue were not deemed coercive. That holding raises an interesting threshold question: in the absence of coercion, did the plaintiffs have standing to bring their claim in the first place? Bizarrely, the Supreme Court has never directly addressed this issue, even though it arises in many Establishment Clause cases.
I can see a bunch of possibilities, all with problems.1. The Court could try to squeeze a conventional "injury in fact" out of the situation in Town of Greece. For instance, the plaintiffs could have argued that the sectarian invocation imposed costs on attendees in the form of wasted time. But that kind of argument would generate causation problems, including because the town would likely employ other, equally time-consuming forms of solemnification in the event that its actual prayer policy were struck down. There is also something dissatisfying about basing standing on what seems like a convenient excuse, or an "ingenious academic exercise in the conceivable," when the real reasons for bringing suit -- and hearing the case -- lay elsewhere.
2. The Court could invoke municipal taxpayer standing, which was briefly noted in the District Court and Court of Appeals decisions in Town of Greece. Obviously, this approach wouldn't work in many public prayer and display cases. Further, the prayers at issue in Town of Greece seemed to involve only "incidental" expenditures, and did not necessarily involve the kind of direct cash outlay that, under recent cases, serves as the basis of taxpayer standing. Finally, taxpayer standing is generally in decline at the Court, and, in that context, it is odd for municipal taxpayer standing to be going strong. As Judge Sutton has pointed out, cities can have populations larger than those of states.
3. Maybe, in cases like Town of Greece, the Court is thoughtlessly issuing "drive-by jurisdictional rulings" that it would focus on and reconsider in a future case, if only the point were squarely argued. On this view, there was actually no standing in Town of Greece or any similar Establishment Clause case. The main problem with this approach is that it would mean that there was actually no standing in Town of Greece or any similar Establishment Clause case. While objectionable and counter-intuitive, that result isn't impossible. In fact, something similar happened a few years ago in another Establishment Clause case, Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn.
4. Perhaps the coercion issue controls both standing and the merits, such that the two inquiries effectively collapse into one another. This would presumably mean that, in ostensibly finding no Establishment Clause violation on the merits, Town of Greece actually (or simultaneously) found no jurisdiction. That possibility comports with the widespread sense that standing is often just the merits by other means. But the Court has given no sign that it's issuing jurisdictional holdings in cases like Town of Greece, even though jurisdictional and merits inquiries are different and can have distinct consequences for the parties. And, of course, standing is supposed to be separate from the merits.
5. Coercion could be viewed as relevant to the merits, while something less than coercion might suffice to create "injury in fact" for standing purposes. For example, standing might arise from being religiously offended or from personally witnessing an establishment of religion. This is probably what most people think is going on in Town of Greece. But offense short of coercion normally isn't enough for standing. For example, stigmatization caused by racial discrimination has been found inadequate. And personally witnessing an illegality usually isn't enough to obtain standing either. So something unusual must be going on in Establishment Clause cases for this approach to work -- and the awkwardness of saying so may explain why the Court has repeatedly ducked this issue.
6. Finally, the Court might be prepared to set aside the doctrinal "injury in fact" analysis. Since this is my blog, let me offer my own preferred means of doing so: in cases without coercion or other traditional injuries in fact, the Court might afford standing to those persons with the greatest interest in bringing the claim. In Town of Greece, the challengers seemed to fit that bill. There are problems here, too, of course. Comparing potential claimants won't always be easy; and the Court has said that standing can remove entire issues from the federal courts, thereby excluding even "best" plaintiffs. Still, the justices sometimes seem to follow this basic approach, and even say so. If you're curious to read more, here's a link to my article, "Relative Standing."
Which answer is best? Are there others?
This post is cross-posted at Re's Judicata.
Posted by Richard M. Re on May 19, 2014 at 10:07 AM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts | Permalink | Comments (1)
Friday, May 09, 2014
More on Tolan and summary judgment
At the Civ Pro & Fed Courts Blog, Ed Brunet and John Parry comment on SCOTUS's per curiam/summary reversal/some other strange procedure in Tolan v. Cotton, the § 1983 summary judgment case I wrote about earlier this week. Ed and John note that this is the first SCOTUS victory for a civil rights plaintiff in a summary judgment case in quite awhile. I would argue that the effect of the decision, and the meaning we should draw from it, is wrapped up in the strange process the Court used to decide the case (whatever we call it--GVR, summary reversal, per curiam decision, or something else)
One possibility they propose is that this represents a change in the Court's attitude, a sharp reminder to lower courts to take seriously the requirement to identify obvious factual disputes and to deny summary judgment when evidence genuinely goes in competing directions. Doing so in a per curiam opinion signals that this is nothing new legally, but simply a reminder of what it is well-established courts are supposed to be doing all along. On the other hand, by doing so in a per curiam opinion without full briefing, the Court removes some of the precedential weight of the decision.
Another possibility Ed and John propose is that the Court was just looking to correct grievous error in a very simple case, making this one of those one-off cases in which SCOTUS corrects egregious error without a broader rulemaking goal. But if that was the goal, the Court could have genuinely GVR'd the case or issued a summary reversal. By also writing an opinion--even per curiam--identifying the factual disputes and the conflicting evidence showing those disputes, the Court arguably is trying to do more: Demonstrating the appropriate analysis and trying to pull lower courts into line.
As I said earlier, I believe much depends on how the Court decides Plumhoff v. Rickard and the analysis the Court uses to get there. If the Court speaks, a la Scott v. Harris, about some testimony being "blatantly contradicted" by the record and thus insufficient to create factual disputes, that will remove a lot of the force from Tolan as a major summary judgment decision. If the Court rules for the defendant (as I expect) without a lot of focus on summary judgment, it may leave Tolan more room to do something.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on May 9, 2014 at 02:14 PM in Civil Procedure, Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman | Permalink | Comments (0)