U.S. Supreme Court – Page 81 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Supreme Court Determines That Traditional Stay Continues to Be Available to Aliens Appealing from Removal Orders

Post author:Jessica E. Slavin
Post published:April 22, 2009
Post category:Federal Law & Legal System Human Rights Immigration Law Legal Writing U.S. Supreme Court

As I blogged about previously, in January the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of Nken v. Holder, which raised the question of whether the 1996 amendments to judicial review provisions that removed the automatic stay of deportation pending appeal had replaced the automatic stay with a traditional stay standard or a heightened, extremely restrictive standard, one that almost never would allow a stay.

Today, in a 7-2 opinion authored by Justice Roberts, the Court announced its decision in favor of the alien, determining that the disputed 1996 statutory provision did not take away the appellate courts’ traditional stay power in appeals pending deportation.

Beach Reading?

Post author:Daniel Suhr
Post published:April 20, 2009
Post category:Judges & Judicial Process Speakers at Marquette U.S. Supreme Court

Apparently the news editors at the Los Angeles Times read the Marquette Law Review. That’s at least one possible conclusion one could draw from the juxtaposition of two recently published items.

Dean Kearney is in a unique place to analyze the relationship between the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, having clerked for judges on both courts. Introducing Ninth Circuit Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain’s Hallows Lecture one year ago, Dean Kearney noted,

Over the past couple of decades, Judge O’Scannlain has emerged as a leader on the Ninth Circuit. This includes the court’s most important work, its cases, where Judge O’Scannlain plays an unusually important role not only in his own docket but also in the court’s en-banc process. An O’Scannlain dissent from denial of en-banc rehearing frequently gets some attention across the country — in Washington, D.C.

Lo and behold, this past Sunday the Los Angeles Times carried a story highlighting how conservatives on the Ninth Circuit use dissents from denial of en-banc rehearing to send “a signal flare to the U.S. Supreme Court.” Carol Williams’ report gives particular attention to Judge O’Scannlain:

Seeking a Practical Age Discrimination Standard

Post author:Paul M. Secunda
Post published:March 30, 2009
Post category:Federal Civil Litigation Labor & Employment Law U.S. Supreme Court

In Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., being argued Tuesday, March 31, the Supreme Court will address how to analyze mixed-motive claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). Nothing less than meaningful access for employment discrimination plaintiffs to relief under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (CRA of 1991) is at stake.

Background

To understand the importance of the Gross case to employment discrimination law, it is necessary to understand a fundamental distinction that has arisen in so-called individual disparate treatment cases, where a worker claims to have suffered an adverse employment action based on a protected characteristic under an employment discrimination statute. Initially, most of these cases were handled under the McDonnell Douglas pretext framework, which requires an employee to establish that the employer’s putative legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for its employment actions are pretextual and the real reason for the action was unlawful discrimination.

In 1989, the Supreme Court developed another model for proving disparate treatment discrimination in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins. There, a woman denied promotion to partner in an accounting firm was able to show both legitimate and illegitimate motives for the employment action. Although a plurality of the Court decided that the plaintiff could make out a case by showing the illegitimate reasons for not promoting her were the “motivating reason,” a significant concurrence by Justice O’Connor set up that the illegitimate reason had to be a substantial part of the employer’s motivation and direct evidence was required to show that motivation. Many courts thereafter followed Justice O’Connor’s formulation.

Two years later, Congress enacted the CRA of 1991, requiring only that the illegitimate reason had to be motivating. Unfortunately, Congress did not make clear its intentions about what framework should govern age discrimination claims under the ADEA.