The Supreme Court on Thursday issued its decision in LeDure v. Union Pacific Railroad Company. But the resolution was a single sentence stating that the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit was “affirmed by an equally divided Court.” As is customary in this situation, the Supreme Court revealed only that the vote was evenly split — not the identities of the justices on each side.
The Supreme Court heard argument on Monday in LeDure v. Union Pacific Railroad Company. The case involves the Locomotive Inspection Act, a federal statute that requires railroads to regularly inspect and implement safety measures for their locomotives.
The Supreme Court is poised to decide yet another case involving one of the many federal statutes that govern the nation’s railroads and railworkers. Just like in other recent railroad cases, this one at first glance seems to present only a narrow question about an obscure statute, but methodological questions lurking beneath the surface may end up sharply dividing the justices.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued its first 5-to-4 decision in an argued case of the 2020-21 term — though not in a hot-button constitutional case, but in a narrow statutory dispute about jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court heard telephonic argument on Monday in Salinas v. U.S. Railroad Retirement Board. The case presents a narrow question about the Railroad Retirement Act and the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act, two federal statutes that govern pensions, unemployment benefits and sickness benefits for the nation’s railworkers.
The federal statutes that govern pay and benefits for railroad workers don’t often make for blockbuster decisions. But given their complexity, and their significance to hundreds of thousands of current and former railroad workers, these laws generate lots of litigation; and in recent years, more railworker cases than you might expect have found their way to the Supreme Court.