Tuesday round-up

Yesterday the Supreme Court released opinions in four cases. In Fort Bend County v. Davis, a unanimous court held that Title VIIs requirement that a plaintiff exhaust administrative remedies before filing suit is a nonjurisdictional claim-processing rule that can be waived by an employer. Jess Bravin reports for The Wall Street Journal that the court refused to limit workers ability to claim discrimination, ruling that employers cant get such lawsuits thrown out years later by asserting the employee should first have brought charges through federal or state regulators. At the International Municipal Lawyers Associations Appellate Practice Blog, Lisa Soronen notes that after this opinion, employers must be more vigilant about making sure the employee met the charge-filing requirement as soon as a lawsuit is filed. Additional commentary comes from Hera Arsen at Ogletree Deakins and from Howard Wasserman at PrawfsBlawg.

In Azar v. Allina Health Services, the court ruled 7-1 that the Department of Health and Human Services was required to conduct notice-and-comment rulemaking before altering its Medicare hospital-reimbursement formula. The court held unanimously in Taggart v. Lorenzen that a court can sanction a creditor for violating a bankruptcy discharge order only if there is no fair ground to doubt that the order barred the creditors conduct. Finally, in Mont v. United States, the court held 5-4 that pretrial imprisonment on a new criminal charge puts a term of federal supervised release on hold.

The justices also issued orders from their conference last week. They added three cases to their merits docket for next term and asked for the governments views in a long-running dispute between Texas and New Mexico over water rights. Amy Howe covers the order list for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. Greg Stohr reports at Bloomberg that [t]he U.S. Supreme Court agreed to use a case involving the wreckage of the pirate Blackbeards flagship[, Queen Annes Revenge,] to decide whether states can be sued for copyright infringement. Kevin Daley reports at The Daily Caller that [t]he dispute, which arose when North Carolina passed a state law removing a private companys copyrights over images and video of the QAR, probes congressional power to set the terms of state government immunity.

Amy Howe reports for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court, that the justices yesterday denied the governments request to expedite consideration of a recent petition for review of a lower-court order that blocks the administration from terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. At CNN, Ariane de Vogue reports that the order means it’s unlikely, although still possible, that the court will take up the issue before all the lower courts have ruled.

Kimberly Robinson reports at Bloomberg Law that, during an interview with financier-philanthropist David Rubenstein yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas [didnt] seem eager to retire anytime soon. Mark Walsh covers the event for this blog. Additional coverage comes from Robert Barnes for The Washington Post and Tony Mauro at The National Law Journal.

Briefly:

• At The Atlantic, Garrett Epps writes that last weeks decision in Nieves v. Bartlett, in which the court held that a plaintiffs First Amendment retaliatory-arrest claim failed because police officers had probable cause to arrest him, will make it harder to hold officers to account when theyas we all know they sometimes doarrest citizens in retaliation for speech they dont like.
• In a post on Linked In, Dan Cotter reviews retired Justice John Paul Stevens recent memoir.
• At truthdig, Bill Blum maintains that two under-the-radar decisions that the court has already handed down already provide confirmation that the Supreme Court is moving ever further to the right.

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