THIS BOX IS FOR EVERYONE BUT AUSTIN
OTHER MONDAY DECISIONS
• In two 5-4 decisions, the court ruled that a person must be able to hire and fire someone to be considered a supervisor in discrimination lawsuits, making it harder to blame a business for a co-worker’s racism or sexism. The court then decided to limit how juries can decide retaliation lawsuits, saying victims must prove employers would not have taken action against them but for their intention to retaliate.
•Americans who are badly hurt by a generic drug may not sue the drug maker for compensation, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4, giving manufacturers a shield from liability for the medications taken most commonly in this country. The court majority said the federal Food and Drug Administration had approved the drug in question for sale and that federal approval trumps a state’s consumer-protection laws.
• The justices declined to review the dismissal of a landmark ruling that the Army Corps of Engineers was liable for billions of dollars in Hurricane Katrina flood damage that property owners blame on the corps’ maintenance of a New Orleans shipping channel. The Supreme Court offered no reasons for the decision.
•The justices rejected challenges to Environmental Protection Agency decisions allowing an increase in ethanol content in gasoline. They left in place a federal appeals court ruling that dismissed challenges to EPA decisions allowing a gasoline blend of up to 15 percent ethanol.
NEXT SESSION, JUSTICES WILL CONSIDER …
• reviving an EPA rule that would curb emissions from coal-fired power plants, in a clash over the Obama administration’s biggest air-quality effort. Attorneys general from 14 states, led by Texas, are challenging the rule alongside American Electric Power Co., Entergy Corp., Edison International, Peabody Energy Corp., Southern Co. and the United Mine Workers of America.
• a complicated immigration dispute about the status of children who have become adults during their parents’ years-long wait to become legal permanent residents of the United States.
• the constitutionality of a 2007 Massachusetts law that bars protests in 35-foot “buffer zones” around abortion clinic entrances, exits and driveways.
• whether a business and a union’s agreement is valid after the business helped the union organize in return for help with a ballot initiative.
• whether the Bay Mills Indian Community’s casino in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula can be ordered closed by a judge.
NEWS SERVICES
THIS BOX IS FOR AUSTIN ONLY
OTHER MONDAY DECISIONS
•Americans who are badly hurt by a generic drug may not sue the drug maker for compensation, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4, giving manufacturers a shield from liability for the medications taken most commonly in this country. The court majority said the federal Food and Drug Administration had approved the drug in question for sale and that federal approval trumps a state’s consumer-protection laws.
• The justices declined to review the dismissal of a landmark ruling that the Army Corps of Engineers was liable for billions of dollars in Hurricane Katrina flood damage that property owners blame on the corps’ maintenance of a New Orleans shipping channel. The Supreme Court offered no reasons for the decision.
•The justices rejected challenges to Environmental Protection Agency decisions allowing an increase in ethanol content in gasoline. They left in place a federal appeals court ruling that dismissed challenges to EPA decisions allowing a gasoline blend of up to 15 percent ethanol.
NEXT SESSION, JUSTICES WILL CONSIDER …
• reviving an EPA rule that would curb emissions from coal-fired power plants, in a clash over the Obama administration’s biggest air-quality effort. Attorneys general from 14 states, led by Texas, are challenging the rule alongside American Electric Power Co., Entergy Corp., Edison International, Peabody Energy Corp., Southern Co. and the United Mine Workers of America.
• a complicated immigration dispute about the status of children who have become adults during their parents’ years-long wait to become legal permanent residents of the United States.
• the constitutionality of a 2007 Massachusetts law that bars protests in 35-foot “buffer zones” around abortion clinic entrances, exits and driveways.
• whether a business and a union’s agreement is valid after the business helped the union organize in return for help with a ballot initiative.
• whether the Bay Mills Indian Community’s casino in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula can be ordered closed by a judge.
NEWS SERVICES
The Supreme Court stepped into an important constitutional dispute Monday between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans over the chief executive’s power to make recess appointments.
The justices said they will review a federal appeals court ruling that found Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate last year to appoint three members of the National Labor Relations Board.
The Constitution gives the president the power to make temporary appointments to fill positions that otherwise require confirmation by the Senate, but only when the Senate is in recess.
At issue for the Supreme Court: What constitutes a congressional recess and does it matter when a vacancy occurs?
George Washington was the first president to make a recess appointment, and Obama’s predecessors back to Ronald Reagan made significantly more such appointments than has Obama. On three earlier occasions, federal appeals courts upheld the appointments.
But the nature of the president’s actions, during brief Senate breaks that Congress explicitly said were not formal recesses, is driving the current legal controversy.
The case stems from Obama’s decision to fill the three NLRB vacancies on Jan. 4, 2012, with Congress on an extended holiday break. At the same time, however, the Senate held brief, pro forma sessions every few days as part of the Republicans’ explicit strategy of keeping Obama from filling vacancies through recess appointments. The president also used a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray as head of the financial protection agency, which the GOP had blocked for a year and a half.
Businesses and trade groups quickly went to court to challenge decisions made by the NLRB. Noel Canning, a Washington state bottling company, claimed an NLRB decision against it was not valid because the board members were not properly appointed and the board did not have enough members to do business without the improperly appointed officials.
In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed in a sweeping ruling. A panel composed of three Republican appointees said the only congressional break that counts as a recess is the one that occurs between formal yearlong sessions of Congress. Two of the three judges also said that only positions that come open during a congressional recess can be filled through a recess appointment. The court did not address the issue of how short a break can count as a recess.
If it stands, the ruling could invalidate hundreds of board decisions, and call into question the legitimacy of regulations issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, many of which affect the mortgage industry.
Obama has made relatively few recess appointments, 32 in his four-plus years in office, according to the Congressional Research Service. Bush made 171 such appointments, and President Bill Clinton filled 139 posts that way in their eight years in office, the research service said.
Since the Noel Canning ruling, a second appeals court also has weighed in against the administration. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said in a 2-1 decision that recess appointments can be made only between sessions of the Senate, not any time the Senate is away on a break. That case dealt with an earlier Obama appointee to the NLRB, whose nomination was blocked by the Senate.
The two judges in the majority are Republican appointees, while Obama named the dissenting judge.
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