Publications
Order List
Greetings Court fans!
The Court granted cert in 2 cases today, but before I get to those summaries, a brief clarification/correction from Friday’s update. An alert reader of my summary of Scalia’s recusal opinion noted that my description of the facts might have been a bit misleading. In my description I noted that Scalia was a guest on the VP’s government plane on the trip to Louisiana, but failed to note that both Scalia and the VP were guests of a third party. In other words, it was not as if Scalia was a guest of the VP on the hunting excursion; they just shared a plane ride to Louisiana. Sorry if this point was not clear in my update, and apologies to Scalia for failing to accurately describe the facts.
Ok, on to the grants:
1. Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma v. Thompson (02-1472) and Thompson v. Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (03-853). These cases, raising questions on the interpretation of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, were consolidated and present the following questions: (1) Can the federal government repudiate express contractual commitments for which it has received consideration, either by spending down discretionary agency appropriations otherwise available to pay its contracts or simply by changing law and contracts retroactively? (2) Do government contract payment rights that are contingent on the availability of appropriations vest when agency receives lump-sum appropriation that is legally available to pay contracts or is government’s liability calculated only at the end of the year after the agency has spent its appropriations on other activities? (3) Does the ISDEAA require the government to pay contract support costs associated with carrying out self-determination contracts with Indian Health Service, when appropriations were otherwise insufficient to fully fund those costs and would require reprogramming funds needed for nocontractable, inherently federal functions such as having Indian Health Service? (4) Does Section 314 of the 1999 Omnibus emergency supplemental appropriations act bar the Cherokee Nation from recovering its contract support costs?
2. Wilkinson v. Dotson (03-287): Under Heck v. Humphrey, a prisoner cannot file a Section 1983 action based on allegations that would undermine the validity of his underlying conviction without first invalidating that conviction through appropriate state or federal habeas procedures. In this case, the Court will decide whether this limitation prevents a prisoner from filing a 1983 suit to challenge parole proceedings when the only outcome of the suit would be a new parole hearing.
That’s all for today. Look for opinions tomorrow and possibly Wednesday. Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to send along comments, questions or corrections! Hope you all have a great week!
Sandy
From the Appellate Practice Group at Wiggin and Dana.
For more information, contact Sandy Glover, Aaron Bayer, or Jeff Babbin