As we enter the second half of June, all eyes may be trained on the Supreme Court, but work at the D.C. Circuit continues apace. The Court issued three administrative-law decisions last week. The acronyms are mostly the usual fare—FERC, NLRB, and FOIA—but here’s one you do not see every day: MEAN. Plus, an opinion […]

Readers may recognize the words in the title of this blog post as lyrics from Gordon Lightfoot’s melancholy ballad, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. If you’re interested, it can be heard on any given school morning in my minivan, where it vies with The Devil Went Down to Georgia for “most requested song.” Story […]

The D.C. Circuit did not decide a nondelegation case last week. But while I have you, and the nondelegation doctrine and fee-setting are surely on your mind, I commend to your attention a recent article Professor Erika Lietzan: User Fee Programs. It surveys fee programs across the federal government and touches on the question whether […]

There were no opinions out of the D.C. Circuit last week–only an order granting a motion for summary affirmance in False Claims Act appeal. While there are interesting Article II questions surrounding qui tam actions, the order simply applies settled law that pro se litigants cannot pursue claims on behalf of the United States. For […]

We have three opinions from the D.C. Circuit last week, including another dispatch from the Loper Bright frontier. Let’s begin there. May FERC require a power generator to upgrade its circuit breaker so that another generator can safely connect to the regional power grid? The generator’s duties with respect to facility upgrades are governed by […]

The D.C. Circuit issued two decisions last week. Both offer early examples of what administrative deference and respect looks like now that courts no longer defer to agency interpretations of statutes under Chevron. In Pacific Gas & Electric Company v. FERC, the Court once again considered PG&E’s obligations to distribute (“wheel”) its competitor’s energy to […]

The D.C. Circuit issued ten opinions last week, nine of which involved administrative law. We have three FERC opinions, two NLRB opinions, and one each about FCC, FDA, FEC, and DHS. Buckle your seatbelts, it’s going to be a long post. Beginning with the FERC cases: In Shell Energy North America v. FERC, the D.C. […]

In Absolute Healthcare v. NLRB, the D.C. Circuit granted a petition to review (in part) an NLRB order finding that an employer committed unfair labor practices and ordering various remedial measures. But to describe the decision in this way is to obscure a rather unusual feature of the case. Here is how Judge Walker, in a […]

Last week was criminal law week at the D.C. Circuit. All three opinions issued in criminal appeals. I’ll turn to those shortly, but first something a little closer to this blog, if a bit further back in time: two weeks ago, fellow blogger, Judge Thomas B. Griffith, visited Mizzou Law School to speak about our […]

The D.C. Circuit decided one administrative law appeal last week.* In American Forest Resource Council v. Williams, AFRC challenged two rules postponing the effective date of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule that would have reduced the amount of land designated as critical habitat for an endangered species of spotted owl. The Service published […]

Today, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring. Had he looked at the D.C. Circuit Opinions page, he might well have concluded that it was early fall—a time when the term is only beginning, and the flow of opinions slows to a trickle. Last week saw only one opinion* released, and this week promises to be […]

Belatedly, here are the summaries of last week’s decisions. Yesterday’s unsealed opinion in United States v. Trump will await a future post.  Both decisions from last week come in lawsuits against Attorney General Garland relating to matters that have been in the news. The first, Langeman v. Garland, concerns the FBI’s decision to terminate Michael […]

Last week was a quiet one at the D.C. Circuit. No new opinions at all, but the Court corrected an opinion it issued in July. Hyland Hunt provides a thorough summary of the decision, Advanced Energy United v. FERC, here. Among other things, the Court held that petitioners’ rehearing petition was untimely. In doing so, […]

Benjamin Franklin famously observed that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Equally inevitable in federal litigation: jurisdictional tussles. Last week’s decisions feature a range of jurisdictional disputes: primary jurisdiction, statutory jurisdiction, standing, and sovereign immunity. We also encounter a perennial tax question. In Fairless Energy v. FERC, […]

The administrative law headline for the past week is that the Supreme Court has again invoked the Major Questions Doctrine to hold agency action unlawful—this time, President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. In a separate opinion, Justice Barrett offers a thoughtful explication of that doctrine. In her view, it merely “emphasize[s] the importance of context […]