Second Circuit: In re: World Trade Center Lower Manhattan Disaster Site Litigation

Given answers to questions certified to New York court, exposure to liability is insufficient grounds to waive the state's prohibition of state constitutional challenges made by state entities to state statutes. 


http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/57bd403b-df30-4dd7-8243-9eb9a1d9f495/1/doc/15-2181_opn_2.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/57bd403b-df30-4dd7-8243-9eb9a1d9f495/1/hilite/

Fourth Circuit: Kathy A. Netro v. GBMC

Portion of unpaid state court judgment that plaintiff would eventually have to reimburse to the federal government sufficed for Article III injury for the plaintiff.

Statute, although not formally a qui tam statute, effected a partial assignment of claim sufficient for standing.

Delay in payment of judgment not unreasonable, though.


http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/171597.P.pdf

Fifth Circuit: State of Texas v. EEOC, et al

Standing, Discrimination, Administrative

State has Article III standing to challenge EEOC employment guidance, as it would have to either change its hiring policies or incur costs. 

Since the agency, although it has no enforcement authority, can make policy changes that cause injuries sufficient for Article III harms, lack of enforcement power is not a per se bar to the action being sufficiently final under the APA.

Safe harbors and definitions for key terms speak to finality.

An agency can alter rights without issuing guidance that courts are legally bound to defer to.

Dissent.  Nope, and not ripe, either.


State of Texas v. EEOC, et al

Sixth Circuit: USA v. Ralph Dennis

ERISA

Health care providers have no direct standing under the Act.

Assignment of the right to payment is sufficient to guarantee derivative standing under the Act.

Where a provider and an insurer have a post-reimbursement recoupment agreement and reversal of payment is not subsequently passed back to the customer, a provider's claim that the insurer has recouped covered costs doesn't state a claim under the Act, since the insured customer is not affected by the question.

 Circuit split hinted at.

USA v. Ralph Dennis