Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority

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Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority

Opinion analysis: Court gives broad meaning to “confidential” in FOIA exemption for commercial and financial information – Mark Fenster

Opinion analysis: Punitive damages not available under general maritime law in personal-injury unseaworthiness action – Joel Goldstein

Opinion analysis: Long-time prohibition on registration of scandalous and immoral trademarks is struck down – Megan Carpenter

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Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
17-1201	11th Cir.	Jan 14, 2019 Tr.Aud.	Apr 29, 2019	9-0	Kagan	OT 2018

Holding: Title 16 U.S.C. §831c(b), which serves to waive the Tennessee Valley Authority’s sovereign immunity from suit, is not subject to a discretionary function exception of the kind in the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Judgment: Reversed and remanded, 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Kagan on April 29, 2019.

Opinion analysis: When the federal government acts as a commercial enterprise, the courthouse doors open wider (Gregory Sisk)
Argument analysis: When is the government not really the government for immunity from tort liability? (Gregory Sisk)
Argument preview: When the Tennessee Valley Authority’s activities cause personal injury, may it claim discretionary policy immunity from liability? (Gregory Sisk)
Petition of the day (Aurora Barnes)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
Feb 26 2018	Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due March 29, 2018)
Mar 20 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response from March 29, 2018 to April 30, 2018, submitted to The Clerk.
Mar 21 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is extended to and including April 30, 2018.
Apr 25 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response from April 30, 2018 to May 30, 2018, submitted to The Clerk.
Apr 26 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is further extended to and including May 30, 2018.
May 23 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response from May 30, 2018 to June 29, 2018, submitted to The Clerk.
May 24 2018	Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is further extended to and including June 29, 2018.
Jun 29 2018	Brief of respondent Tennessee Valley Authority in opposition filed.
Jul 13 2018	Reply of petitioner Gary Thacker, et ux filed.
Jul 18 2018	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 9/24/2018.
Sep 27 2018	Petition GRANTED.
Sep 28 2018	The order granting the petition for a writ of certiorari is amended as follows: The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted limited to Question 1 presented by the petition.
Nov 13 2018	Brief of petitioners Gary Thacker, et ux filed.
Nov 19 2018	Joint appendix filed.
Nov 28 2018	SET FOR ARGUMENT ON Monday, January 14, 2019
Nov 30 2018	CIRCULATED
Dec 11 2018	Record requested from the U.S.C.A. 11th Circuit.
Dec 13 2018	Brief of respondent Tennessee Valley Authority filed. (Distributed)
Dec 18 2018	Record received from the U.S.C.A. 11th Circuit is electronic and located on PACER.
Dec 26 2018	Record from the U.S.D.C. Northern Dist. of Alabama is electronic and located on the District courts web site.
Jan 04 2019	Reply of petitioners Gary Thacker, et ux filed. (Distributed)
Jan 14 2019	Argued. For petitioners: Franklin Taylor Rouse, Huntsville, Ala. For respondent: Ann O'Connell Adams, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D. C.
Apr 29 2019	Judgment REVERSED and case REMANDED. Kagan, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
May 31 2019	JUDGMENT ISSUED.

Featured Posts

Opinion analysis: Court gives broad meaning to “confidential” in FOIA exemption for commercial and financial information – Mark Fenster

Opinion analysis: Punitive damages not available under general maritime law in personal-injury unseaworthiness action – Joel Goldstein

Opinion analysis: Long-time prohibition on registration of scandalous and immoral trademarks is struck down – Megan Carpenter
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On Monday, the Supreme Court released orders from the June 20 conference; the justices granted eight new cases, for a total of five hours of oral argument next term: Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr, Ovalles v. Barr, Dex Media Inc. v. Click-To-Call Technologies, LP, Maine Community Health Options v. United States, Moda Health Plan Inc. v. United States, Land of Lincoln Mutual Health Insurance Co. v. United States, Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org Inc. and Banister v. Davis.
Also on Monday, the justices released their opinions in four argued cases: United States v. Davis, Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, Iancu v. Brunetti and The Dutra Group v. Batterton.
The Supreme Court will release opinions in one or more argued cases on Wednesday at 10 a.m.
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
- Gamble v. United States
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Recent Decisions
- Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media Where commercial or financial information is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner and provided to the government under an assurance of privacy, the information is “confidential” within the meaning of 5 U. S. C. §552(b)(4), the Freedom of Information Act’s Exemption 4.
- Iancu v. Brunetti The Lanham Act prohibition on the registration of “immoral” or “scandalous” trademarks infringes the First Amendment.
- The Dutra Group v. Batterton A plaintiff may not recover punitive damages on a maritime claim of unseaworthiness.
- United States v. Davis Title 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(3)(B), which provides enhanced penalties for using a firearm during a “crime of violence,” is unconstitutionally vague.
see all this term’s cases »
Current Relists
- Atlanta Gas Light Co. v. Bennett Regulator Guards Inc. (1) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit erred in concluding that it had jurisdiction to review the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision to institute inter partes review of respondent’s patent over respondent’s objection that it was time-barred; and (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit erred when it rejected the longstanding principle that a dismissal without prejudice leaves the parties as if a suit had never been brought, splitting the circuits.
- Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California (1) Whether the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy is judicially reviewable; and (2) whether DHS’s decision to wind down the DACA policy is lawful.
- Kelly v. United States Whether a public official “defraud[s]” the government of its property by advancing a “public policy reason” for an official decision that is not her subjective “real reason” for making the decision.
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Cases argued 69

Cases decided 61

Summary reversals 5

Merits cases granted to date 74

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On June 3, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke with David Rubenstein for the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual lecture at the Supreme Court.

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Cases argued	69
Cases decided	61
Summary reversals	5
Merits cases granted to date	74

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