Mid-Term Roundup

With the Corporate Court halfway through its 2011-2012 term, we take this opportunity to look back at the opinions that it has issued so far. The Court’s less tendentious rulings tend to be released before the more closely divided ones, so it is unsurprising that all of these cases were decided 9-0 or 8-1. However, the Corporate Court’s unanimity aside, four of these holdings spell bad news for everyday Americans, while two go against corporate interests, and the implications of a final decision remain to be seen.

First, the bad news.

In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, the Court held 9-0 that a “ministerial exception” shields religious institutions from liability for discriminatory or retaliatory employment actions.  The Court applied a totality of the circumstances test to conclude that the employee in this case – a teacher of primarily secular subjects at a religious school – was a “minister,” and that therefore the ministerial exception applies and her suit is barred. This holding will make it difficult for teachers to speak out against misdeeds within religious institutions for fear of retaliation, and will allow religious institutions to discriminate with impunity.

In Minneci v. Pollard, the Court held 8-1 that employees of a private corporation operating a federal prison may not be held liable under federal law for committing constitutional violations. The plaintiff sued for damages under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, claiming that his Eighth Amendment right not to be cruelly punished had been violated. The Corporate Court held that there is no reason to imply a Bivens remedy because Pollard has an adequate remedy in state tort law. Pollard would clearly have had a Bivens remedy if he were incarcerated in a prison run by the government. Yet because he was placed in a prison run by a private contractor, he is denied that remedy.

In National Meat Association v. Harris, the Corporate Court decided in favor of an industry trade group, holding 9-0 that a California state law designed to protect consumers from contaminated meat and to ensure humane treatment of animals is preempted by the Federal Meat Inspection Act. As a result of the Court’s decision, it will be easier for potentially contaminated meat to get into California grocery stores, and more difficult for all states to protect public health and humane treatment of animals.

In Perry v. Perez, the Supreme Court rejected a district court’s attempts to draw interim electoral maps for the upcoming elections, ordering it to give greater deference to the legislature’s racially gerrymandered maps. With pending lawsuits challenging the maps, the San Antonio court designed interim maps to be used during the 2012 electoral season. The Supreme Court rejected the court-drawn maps for failing to defer adequately to the legislature’s choices, and remanded with the instruction to modify the legislature’s maps only where there are alleged legal problems that have a likelihood of success on the merits. The Court’s ruling will likely have the effect of diluting minority voting rights in the 2012 elections.

Now, the good news.

In Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, the Court held that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act allows a consumer claiming harassment to sue in federal court, reversing the lower courts’ holding that Congress intended to limit jurisdiction to state courts. By siding with Mims, the Supreme Court has provided consumers with the ability to hold companies accountable for unlawful telephone harassment in federal court, where they might receive greater relief than they would in the courts of states with weaker consumer protections.

In a case with narrower application, the Court held in Pacific Operations Offshore v. Valladolid that the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act extends workers’ compensation coverage to workers who can show a “substantial nexus” between their injury and their work on the Outer Continental Shelf.  As a result, workers in the offshore extractive industries who are injured or killed while working onshore may still receive benefits under the OCSLA if they can show a “substantial nexus” between their injury and operations on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Finally, in the ambiguous category is United States v. Jones, in which the Court addressed the right of individuals to be free from warrantless government tracking of their vehicles’ locations through GPS technology. Although the Court technically ruled against the government, it delivered only a limited victory for privacy rights, holding that the installation and use of a GPS tracker on an automobile constitutes a “search.” Whether or not a warrant is required for such a search remains an open question, and one that will undoubtedly trouble privacy advocates.

The Court returns from its mid-term recess on Tuesday, February 21, when it will hear oral argument in Freeman v. Quicken Loans.

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Supreme Court Rules Unanimously In Offshore Workers’ Comp Case

This morning the Supreme Court issued its decision in Pacific Operators Offshore, LLP v. Valladolid (.pdf download), affirming the Ninth Circuit’s holding that workers in the offshore extractive industry who are injured while working onshore may receive workers compensation under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). In this unanimous opinion, written by Justice Thomas, the Court applied standard methods of statutory interpretation in a straightforward manner to resolve a split among the circuit courts in interpreting the OCSLA.

Juan Valladolid was killed when a forklift crushed him while he was working for Pacific Operations Offshore, an oil extraction company.  Valladolid spent 98% of his working hours on an oil platform on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) three miles from the California coast but died while working onshore to clean up scrap metal taken from operations on the OCS.  Valladolid’s widow, Luisa, argued that she was entitled to benefits under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (the Act), which requires employers or their insurance providers to pay benefits to individuals or surviving relatives when employees suffer “any injury occurring as the result of operations conducted on the [OCS] for the purpose of exploring for, developing, removing, or transporting by pipeline the natural resources…of the [OCS].” An administrative law judge denied Luisa Valladolid’s claim for benefits because her husband’s death did not occur “on the subsoil and seabed of the [OCS], or the artificial islands and structures erected thereon.”

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed this decision and held that the plain language of the Act shows that a death or injury does not have to occur on the OCS for an injured employee or surviving relative to receive benefits as long as there is “a substantial nexus between the injury and extractive operations on the shelf.” The Ninth Circuit’s test conflicted with those devised by two other circuits. The Third Circuit had adopted an expansive reading of the statute as covering all injuries that would not have occurred “but for” the operations on the OCS – including, for example, a worker “killed in a car accident on the way to the helicopter that was to fly him to the rig” that he worked on. The Fifth Circuit, on the other hand, had adopted a much narrower interpretation, holding that the statute covered only injuries actually suffered “on an OCS platform or the waters above the OCS.”

Surprisingly, given the Supreme Court’s penchant for reversing the Ninth Circuit’s decisions, the Court in this case affirmed the Ninth Circuit’s ruling and its “substantial nexus” test, through a common sense reading of the statute in question. As a result, workers in the offshore extractive industries who are injured or killed while working onshore may still receive benefits under the OCSLA if they can show a “substantial nexus” between their injury and operations on the Outer Continental Shelf.

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