Hillman v. Maretta

Hillman v. Maretta

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Conference of May 16, 2019

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
11-1221	Va. S. Ct.	Apr 22, 2013 Tr.Aud.	Jun 3, 2013	9-0	Sotomayor	OT 2012

Holding: The Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance Act (FEGLIA), which establishes a life insurance program for federal employees, allows an employee to designate a beneficiary to receive the proceeds of the policy when the employee dies. That law preempts a Virginia law that allows the family of a deceased employee to sue the designated beneficiary for the proceeds if the beneficiary happens to be the employee’s former spouse.

Judgment: Affirmed, 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Sotomayor on June 3, 2013. Justice Scalia joins the opinion except as to footnote 4. Justice Thomas and Justice Alito filed opinions concurring in the judgment.

Opinion analysis: States can’t override federal employees’ life insurance designations (Tejinder Singh)
Argument recap: Looking for the less wrong answer (Tejinder Singh)
Argument preview: Divorce, death, and preemption (Tejinder Singh)
Petition of the day (Matthew Bush)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
Apr 11 2012	Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due May 14, 2012)
Apr 18 2012	Order extending time to file response to petition to and including May 31, 2012.
May 18 2012	Brief of respondent Judy A. Maretta in opposition filed.
May 29 2012	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of June 14, 2012.
May 29 2012	Reply of petitioner Jacqueline Hillman filed. (Distributed)
Jun 18 2012	The Solicitor General is invited to file a brief in this case expressing the views of the United States.
Dec 14 2012	Brief amicus curiae of United States filed.
Dec 14 2012	Letter proposing a lodging of the government's group life insurance contract with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company received from the Solicitor General.
Dec 26 2012	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 11, 2013.
Jan 11 2013	Petition GRANTED.
Feb 11 2013	SET FOR ARGUMENT ON MONDAY, April 22, 2013
Feb 22 2013	Joint appendix filed. (Statement of costs filed)
Feb 22 2013	Brief of petitioner Jacqueline Hillman filed. (Distributed)
Mar 1 2013	CIRCULATED.
Mar 7 2013	Record received from Supreme Court of Virginia. (1 Box)
Mar 25 2013	Brief of respondent Judy A. Maretta filed (Reprinted). (Distributed)
Apr 1 2013	Brief amicus curiae of Association of Federal Health Organizations filed. (Distributed)
Apr 1 2013	Motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate in oral argument as amicus curiae and for divided argument filed.
Apr 1 2013	Brief amicus curiae of United States filed. (Distributed)
Apr 12 2013	Motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate in oral argument as amicus curiae and for divided argument GRANTED.
Apr 15 2013	Reply of petitioner Jacqueline Hillman filed. (Distributed)
Apr 22 2013	Argued. For petitioner: Daniel H. Ruttenberg, Vienna, Va. For respondent: Steffen N. Johnson, Washington, D. C.; and Elaine J. Goldenberg, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D. C. (for United States, as amicus curiae.)
Jun 3 2013	Adjudged to be AFFIRMED. Sotomayor, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Scalia, J., joined as to all but footnote 4. Thomas, J., and Alito, J., filed opinions concurring in the judgment.
Jul 5 2013	MANDATE ISSUED.
Jul 5 2013	Record returned to Supreme Court of Virginia.

Featured Posts

Opinion analysis: Court rejects issue preclusion in affirming Crow Tribe’s treaty hunting right – Gregory Ablavsky

Tom Goldstein and David Savage talk through abortion, precedent and the Supreme Court – SCOTUStalk

Justices grant bankruptcy petition – Amy Howe
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This Week at the Court
The Supreme Court released orders from the May 16 conference on Monday; the justices granted Ritzen Group Inc. v. Jackson Masonry, LLC.
On Monday, the justices released their opinions in Mission Product Holdings Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC, Herrera v. Wyoming and Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht.
On Thursday, the justices meet for their May 23 conference.
Major Cases
- Department of Commerce v. New York
  (1) Whether the district court erred in enjoining the secretary of the Department of Commerce from reinstating a question about citizenship to the 2020 decennial census on the ground that the secretary’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq; (2) whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the APA, a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker -- including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking executive branch officials -- without a strong showing that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis; and (3) whether the secretary’s decision to add a citizenship question to the decennial census violated the enumeration clause of the U.S. Constitution.
- Lamone v. Benisek
  In case in which the plaintiffs allege that a Maryland congressional district was gerrymandered to retaliate against them for their political views: (1) whether the various legal claims articulated by the three-judge district court are unmanageable; (2) whether the three-judge district court erred when, in granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, it resolved disputes of material fact as to multiple elements of plaintiffs’ claims, failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and treated as “undisputed” evidence that is the subject of still-unresolved hearsay and other evidentiary objections; and (3) whether the three-judge district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction despite the plaintiffs’ years-long delay in seeking injunctive relief, rendering the remedy applicable to at most one election before the next decennial census necessitates another redistricting.
- Kisor v. Wilkie
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., which direct courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation.
- Rucho v. Common Cause
  (1) Whether plaintiffs have standing to press their partisan gerrymandering claims; (2) whether plaintiffs’ partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable; and (3) whether North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map is, in fact, an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
- The American Legion v. American Humanist Association
  (1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.
- Gamble v. United States
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause.
see all this term’s cases »
Recent Decisions
- Herrera v. Wyoming Wyoming’s statehood did not abrogate the Crow Tribe’s 1868 federal treaty right to hunt on the “unoccupied lands of the United States”; the lands of the Bighorn National Forest did not become categorically “occupied” when the forest was created.
- Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht “Clear evidence” that the Food and Drug Administration would not have approved a change to a drug’s label – thus pre-empting a state-law failure-to-warn claim – is evidence showing that the drug manufacturer fully informed the FDA of the justifications for the warning required by state law and that the FDA, in turn, informed the drug manufacturer that the FDA would not approve a change to the drug’s label to include that warning; the question of agency disapproval is primarily one of law for a judge to decide.
- Mission Product Holdings Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC A bankruptcy debtor’s rejection of an executory contract under 11 U.S.C. §365 has the same effect as a breach of that contract outside bankruptcy; such an act thus cannot rescind rights that the contract previously granted.
see all this term’s cases »
Current Relists
- al-Alwi v. Trump (1) Whether the government’s statutory authority to detain Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi has unraveled; (2) whether, alternatively, the government’s statutory authority to detain al-Alwi has expired because the conflict in which he was captured has ended; and (3) whether the Authorization for Use of Military Force authorizes, and the Constitution permits, detention of an individual who was not “engaged in an armed conflict against the United States” in Afghanistan prior to his capture.
- Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. (1) Whether a state may require health-care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains, i.e., by burial or cremation; and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus and require abortion doctors to inform patients of the prohibition.
- Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. Whether a state, consistent with the 14th Amendment, may require an ultrasound as part of informed consent at least 18 hours before an abortion.
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Cases argued 70

Cases decided 32

Summary reversals 4

Merits cases granted to date 73

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Justice Thomas at Pepperdine Law School

On March 30, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke with former clerk Brittney Lane Kubisch and Pepperdine University President-elect James Gash at Pepperdine University School of Law. Thomas told the audience that he had no plans to retire from the Supreme Court.

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Cases argued	70
Cases decided	32
Summary reversals	4
Merits cases granted to date	73

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13
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16
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20
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23
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