Kansas v. Glover and Conditional Irrelevance

SHERRY F. COLB

Cornell law professor Sherry F. Colb discusses the concept of “conditional irrelevance”—which she first identified in a law review article in 2001—and explains why the concept is useful for understanding the arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Kansas v. Glover. Through the lens of conditional irrelevance, Colb explains why the knowledge of one fact (that the owner of the vehicle in that case lacked a valid license) should not itself provide police reasonable suspicion to stop the vehicle.

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Lovitky v. Trump

Docket: 19-5199

Opinion Date: February 11, 2020

Judge: Judith Ann Wilson Rogers

Areas of Law: Constitutional Law, Government & Administrative Law

The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's suit, alleging that President Trump violated the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 by obscuring liabilities on financial disclosure reports, because plaintiff has not shown that he has a clear and indisputable right to mandamus-type relief. Specifically, plaintiff alleged that President Trump violated the Act by over-disclosing; that is, by listing debts in Part 8 of his May 2018 and May 2019 financial disclosure reports for which he was not personally liable. The court rejected plaintiff's contention that the declaratory judgment statute and the federal question statute provided statutory bases for jurisdiction. The court also held that the Mandamus Act did not provide a base for jurisdiction, because plaintiff failed to plausibly allege that the Ethics Act, once interpreted, imposed a clear and indisputable duty on President Trump to differentiate personal from business liabilities. Therefore, the court vacated the portions of the district court's decision addressing whether the equities would favor issuing mandamus-type relief but otherwise affirmed the judgment of the district court dismissing the case for lack of jurisdiction.

United States v. Cooper

Docket: 17-3057

Opinion Date: February 11, 2020

Judge: Arthur Raymond Randolph

Areas of Law: Criminal Law, White Collar Crime

The DC Circuit affirmed Defendants Cooper and Bryant's appeal of their convictions and sentences for theft of public money and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The court held that the district court correctly concluded that Cooper's statements could be used at trial where the evidence showed that Cooper's statements were given freely and voluntarily; a special agent's testimony did not meaningfully prejudice the defense; the district court did not err by denying Cooper's motion for a mistrial during the government's rebuttal where the prosecutor did not misstate the evidence applicable to Cooper, and the occasional inadvertent references to "these defendants" when discussing acts not attributable to Cooper were quickly remedied; and the district court's calculation of the restitution amount was appropriate.

Baystate Franklin Medical Center v. Azar

Docket: 18-5264

Opinion Date: February 11, 2020

Judge: Sentelle

Areas of Law: Government & Administrative Law, Health Law

Baystate filed suit against the Secretary, challenging his promulgation of a final rule calculating the wage index for hospital reimbursements in 2017. Baystate alleged that the Secretary failed to comply with the statutory requirement to calculate a wage index that reflected the actual wage levels in Massachusetts, relied on data that he knew to be false, and entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem. The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment for the Secretary, holding that the Secretary's interpretation of his authority under the Medicare statute was lawful and his action was not arbitrary and capricious. In this case, the Secretary provided a reasonable explanation for his decision to enforce the deadline and reject Nantucket's revised data; the decision to enforce the deadline against third-party hospitals was not arbitrary or capricious; and the Secretary's interpretation of his authority to enforce a deadline in calculating the wage index fell squarely within them.