On March 11, the Supreme Court removed the dispute over Medicaid work requirements, which was previously scheduled for March 29, from its argument calendar.
The House of Representatives passed a bill that would overhaul federal labor law with the express purpose of making it easier for unions to organize workers and more difficult for employers to.
In a resounding victory for public-private partnerships, the
Fourth Circuit s decision in
Cunningham v. Lester, et
al., No. 20-1086, F.3d - (4th Cir. Mar. 4,
2021) has affirmed federal employees immunity from the
Telephone Consumer Protection Act ( TCPA ) when acting in
furtherance of a government mandate. The TCPA imposes strict
statutory penalties for unsolicited robocalls ranging from $500 to
$1,500 per violation. But the Supreme Court has held the TCPA
does not contain a waiver of sovereign immunity.
See
Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 577 U.S. 153, 166 (2016).
The question presented in
Cunningham was whether a
plaintiff can avoid the TCPA s sovereign-immunity shield by
suing federal employees for damages in their individual
Background
The decision arose in response to three motions for summary
judgment and a motion for default judgment brought by the
plaintiffs in four actions, all of them relating to the individual
defendant s internet harassment. Justice Corbett aptly
described the facts of the case:
These cases concern extraordinary campaigns of malicious
harassment and defamation carried out unchecked, for many years, as
unlawful acts of reprisal. [The defendant], has used the internet
to disseminate vicious falsehoods against those towards whom she
bears grudges, and towards family members and associates of those
against whom she bears grudges. [The defendant] is destitute and
In the years following the Supreme Court s decision in
Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1549 (2016) which held that bare procedural violation[s],
divorced from any concrete harm, [do not] satisfy the
injury-in-fact requirement of Article III district
courts have had to grapple with the question of standing under the
Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U.S.C. § 1681,
et
seq., and in particular, what injuries resulting from an
alleged violation of FCRA are sufficiently concrete to invoke
Article III standing.
This blog post discusses claims arising under Section
1681b(b)(1)(A) of the FCRA. Under that section, a consumer
reporting agency (CRA) may furnish a consumer report to an employer