Supreme Court Actions
The U.S. Supreme Court issued rulings in four cases in the last two weeks.
This past week, in Warner-Lambert v. Kent, an equally divided Court (J. Roberts, recused) affirmed a Second Circuit ruling without opinion on whether federal law preempts a state law-based claim that the FDA's approval of a drug was based upon fraud. In Boulware v. U.S., in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Souter, the Court held that a stockholder who treats income from a distribution by a corporation that has no earnings as a "return of capital" need not produce evidence of prior intent to treat the distribution as such to avoid a criminal tax evasion charge. SCOTUSBlog has more.
Last week, in Fed Ex v. Holowecki, Justice Kennedy wrote for seven members of the Court that an individual filing a discrimination complaint with the EEOC should not be penalized because of mistakes made by the agency, and allowed an age discrimination lawsuit to proceed despite the filing of a non-standard "charge" form. Justices Thomas and Scalia disagreed, arguing the majority absolved the EEOC of the obligation to correctly administer the law.
In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Thomas in Sprint/United Management Company v. Mendelsohn, the Court held that the question of whether evidence of discrimination by other supervisors (known as "me, too" evidence) should be admitted in an employment discrimination case depended upon a "fact-intensive, context-specific inquiry," thereby adopting a case-by-case approach that will give plaintiffs a greater chance of surviving summary judgment.
While the Court was in recess this week, last week the high court heard argument in four cases on issues including a punitive damages award arising from the Exxon Valdez disaster, federal preemption of state law based pharmaceuticals fraud claims, the quantum of proof to prove a false claim in federal contracting, and a question of statutory interpretation regarding federal money-laundering law.
It also granted certiorari in three cases last week, all of which are likely to be argued next Term. They involve a warrantless car search after the arrest of its occupant, the kind of review appropriate for jury instructions in a habeas case, and the government's power to take land for unrecognized Indian tribes.