Last Month at the Supreme Court | January 2024

Happy New Year from Dykema’s appellate group!  We extend warm wishes of peace and prosperity for all. The January 2024 edition kicks off the year delving into challenges to the administrative state and prohibition on discrimination. Learn about the constitutionality of SEC Administrative Law Judges, taxing unrealized gains as income, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as it applies to job transfers, the Court’s decision in the Americans with Disabilities Act “tester” case, and Chief Justice Roberts’ end-of-year remarks.

Decision Alert: Court Dismisses Acheson for Mootness, so Civil Rights Testers Can Continue to Enforce the ADA

On December 5, 2023, in the term’s first opinion in an argued case, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer as moot. The opinion, authored by Justice Barrett, reasoned that the case was moot because Deborah Laufer voluntarily dismissed her pending suits after her lawyer was sanctioned for defrauding hotels during settlement negotiations.The opinion leaves for another day the other jurisdictional issue presented by the case—standing to sue over accessibility information under the ADA. Read the full synopsis here.  

Court Fields Bevy of SEC Challenges

In SEC v. Jarkesy, the Supreme Court grapples with three distinct challenges to SEC enforcement with wide-reaching administrative law implications: whether enforcement by the SEC violates the Seventh Amendment, whether such enforcement violates the nondelegation doctrine, and whether Congress violated Article II in granting for-cause removal protection to administrative law judges (ALJs) whose heads also enjoy similar protection. Read the full synopsis here.

Court Faces the Mandatory Repatriation Tax

In Moore v. United States, Charles and Kathleen Moore invested $40,000 in an Indian company that supplies tools to small farming businesses, in exchange for more than 10% of the common shares. The company is a Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC), meaning it is majority-owned by U.S. persons but operates abroad. Shareholders of CFCs were generally taxed on foreign earnings only when those earnings were repatriated to the United States according to a provision called “Subpart F.” However, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 changed this and introduced a one-time Mandatory Repatriation Tax (MRT) that retroactively taxed CFC earnings after 1986 even if they had not been repatriated. Read the full synopsis here.

Court Tackles Statutory Interpretation of “Discrimination” Under Title VII

In Muldrow v. City of St. Louis MO, Jatonya Muldrow alleges that the City of St. Louis Police Department transferred her to a different position and then denied her a requested transfer because of her sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Section 703(a)(1) of the Act forbids employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin concerning “terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.” The Eighth Circuit held that Muldrow’s forced transfer and transfer denial did not violate Title VII because the law prohibits only adverse employment actions that result in materially significant disadvantages for employees. Read the full synopsis here.

Year-End Report by Chief Justice Roberts

On December 31, 2023, the Chief Justice issued his annual written report, which focused on the future of artificial intelligence in the judiciary.  He predicted that “human judges will be around for a while,” while also suggesting that “judicial work—particularly at the trial level—will be significantly affected by AI.”  He gave assurances that federal judiciary committees will consider the use of AI in federal court litigation, and rejected any suggestion that, as a result of AI, “judges are about to become obsolete.” Read the full synopsis here.

For more information, please contact Chantel Febus, James Azadian, Christopher Sakauye, McKenna Crisp, Monika Harris, or Puja Valera.