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 […]

We have three administrative law opinions from the D.C. Circuit last week.   The first two concern gas pipelines. In Center for Biological Diversity v. FERC, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club petitioned the Court to review FERC’s decision approving a project to construct liquified natural gas facilities in Alaska’s North Slope. […]

Yesterday, my husband took me to see a performance by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The band is the modern iteration of Glenn Miller and his Orchestra, the great swing band of the late 1930s and early 1940s. The orchestra disbanded after Glenn Miller went missing while serving in World War II but formed again in […]

The D.C. Circuit has been good to its Washington neighbors lately, awarding victories to the federal agency/officer in four of the five opinions it issued last week.  In Midwest Ozone Group v. EPA, EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule Update was back before the Court following a remand and revision. Professor Nielson profiled the remand in […]

With Christmas season behind us, my children have found one way to keep the spirit alive through the long, cold winter nights that lie ahead: by continuing to demand The Twelve Days of Christmas as their bedtime song. You might think this would grow old, even for my toddler, but they keep the excitement up […]

Humane Society of the United States v. U.S. Department of Agriculture returned this week. D.C. Circuit Reviewer Hyland Hunt wrote an in-depth post on this interesting case earlier this year. As Hyland explained, the case grew out of the longstanding practice by incoming presidential administrations of halting (and, upon review, withdrawing) the outgoing administration’s rules […]

No opinions from the D.C. Circuit this week, but events of the week certainly promised decisions to look forward to. On Monday, October 31, Judge Pan blocked the proposed merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster on the ground that it would substantially lessen competition “in the market for the U.S. publishing rights […]

The D.C. Circuit issued no opinions last week. The week of silence is fitting, for at its end, the Court lost one of its luminaries: Judge Laurence Silberman. His career was long and his talents, many, and he dedicated both to the service of his country. Several moving tributes published in the past day review […]

The D.C. Circuit issued nine opinions this week, six of which concern administrative law or related topics.  Beginning with the traditional administrative law cases, Bloomberg v. SEC concerns FINRA’s proposal to create a centralized service that provides bond-market participants core reference data for new issues of corporate bonds. SEC approved the proposal, and Bloomberg—a private […]

Nasdaq may have broken a seven-week losing streak on Wall Street, but its losses continued at Constitution Avenue. More on that in a moment, but first a quick look at non-opinion news because this week has been an eventful one at the D.C. Circuit. On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously vindicated the D.C. Circuit, which […]

The Court issued only one opinion last week, but fortunately for readers of this blog, it involves administrative law. It also provides an enlightening grammar lesson for any reader who, like me, learned most of her grammar in a foreign language class. Gentiva Health Services, Inc. v. Becerra involved a challenge to CMS’s methodology for […]

The Court issued three decisions touching on administrative law this week.* There is no obvious theme uniting the three, which cover much of the waterfront of executive regulatory authority, from labor relations, to energy, to public health and immigration. Two decisions resolve petitions for review of final agency action, and the third, an interlocutory appeal […]

Last week, the D.C. Circuit resolved four sets of petitions for review and one appeal. Each set of petitions for review models a different form of regulatory cooperation between the government and private entities: a statute that incorporates industry standards, private enforcement of an agency license, agency review of rules promulgated by self-regulatory organizations, and […]

It was quite a week for hot-button issues in Washington, D.C. During the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court resolved two petitions in cases challenging S.B. 8—the Texas law prohibiting abortions after about six weeks—the D.C. Circuit decided cases touching on January 6, the travel ban, a mask mandate, and, of course, Entergy Arkansas’ […]