Archives for March 2012

By Billy Corriher

If the comments at oral argument are any indication, the Supreme Court will soon overrule several lower court rulings that held corporations liable for violations of international law under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a law passed by the first Congress. The ATS granted federal courts jurisdiction to hear lawsuits by foreign persons for torts that violate international law.

The scope of liability under the ATS has been the subject of some debate. The Ninth Circuit recently ruledthat corporations can be liable. The Second Circuit in Kiobel, however, dismissed an ATS lawsuit against corporations, a decision the Court seems inclined to affirm. Justice Kennedy said no source of international law “recognizes corporate responsibility” for human rights abuses, concluding that “the case turns in large part” on that fact. Justice Alito was skeptical that any federal court should hear such a lawsuit: “There’s no connection between these events and the United States.”
[Read more…] about Court Seems Poised to Limit Corporate Liability for Human Rights Abuses

By Sushila Rao

Voting mostly along party lines, the Senate today voted to defeat the so-called Conscience Amendment, which embodied the Senate Republicans’ response to the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s requirement that group health plans must include “[a]ll Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.”  The Obama Administration later offered an “accommodation” for religious institutions whereby, in case a religious institution decides to opt-out and declines to provide coverage that includes contraceptive services, the insurance company would have to contact the concerned woman directly and offer her contraceptive coverage free of charge.”  This compromise has been largely rejected as inadequate by conservatives.

Many Senate Republicans have tried to couch their opposition to the policy as premised on the First Amendment right of employers, such as Catholic hospitals, to free exercise of religion, rather than their aversion to a woman’s ability to access birth control.  Proposed by Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the Conscience Amendment was attached to a highway bill,  and would allow employers to opt out of a new federal health-care mandate for their employees if they have religious objections.  Federal lawsuits have also been filed challenging the constitutionality of the policy on the anvil of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
[Read more…] about “Conscience Amendment” Defeated in Senate

By Yevgeny Shrago

When the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s proposal to permit multi-year athletic scholarshipssurvived an override vote earlier this month, some of the legal implications were obvious. The Department of Justice had already conducted a preliminary inquiry into the antitrust status of the NCAA’s old scholarship rules, which permitted scholarships to be granted for only one year at a time. Various powerfulpolitical figures, including the President, have expressed their displeasure with the way the NCAA handles its football national championship and conference realignment and the DoJ has hinted that there may be antitrust violations to be found in those parts of the sport as well.  It’s hard not to see the DoJ investigation as a message to the NCAA that it can no longer hide behind protestations of amateurism and higher education and that it must acknowledge that it has become a billion dollar business and act accordingly.

With the passage of this new proposal, the NCAA may have staved off one line of inquiry, but college sports are a dirty business on many levels and federal intervention will continue.  One criticism raised by flacks for the college sports industry is that DoJ must have better things to do.  They’re right: using the DoJ to make changes in college sports is not the most effective use of federal resources.  The US government may have a far more powerful weapon against the NCAA, one that the recent change has made even more available.  This weapon is the tax code.
[Read more…] about A Pressure Point for the NCAA?