The Supreme Court of the United States announced a decision in one case today:
Sebelius v. Auburn Regional, No. 11-1231: This case concerns the amount of time within which health care providers may file an administrative appeal from the initial determination of the amount of reimbursement they are due for inpatient services provided to Medicare beneficiaries. The governing statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1395oo(a)(3), provides for a 180-day limit for filing appeals to the Provider Reimbursement Review Board. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services has in turn promulgated a regulation authorizing the Board to extend the 180-day limitation for up to three years for good cause. The providers here appealed to the Board more than ten years after the 180-day deadline had expired. The Board held that it lacked jurisdiction, and the District Court dismissed the hospitals’ claim. The D.C. Circuit, however, reversed, applying equitable tolling to the 180-day limit. Today, the Court reversed and remanded, holding that (1) the statutory 180-day limitation is not “jurisdictional”; (2) that the Secretary reasonably construed the statute to permit a regulation extending the time for a providers’ appeal to the Board to three years; and (3) that the presumption in favor of equitable tolling does not apply to administrative appeals of the kind at issue in this case.
The Court's decision is available here.
Late Friday afternoon, the Supreme Court of the United States granted review in six cases, three of which were consolidated:
Chadbourne & Parke LLP v. Troice, et al., No. 12-79; Willis of Colorado Inc. v. Troice, et al., No. 12-86; & Proskauer Rose LLP v. Troice, et al., No. 12-88: The three questions from the consolidated cases for which certiorari was granted are (1) Whether the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act (SLUSA) precludes a state-law class action alleging a scheme of fraud that involves misrepresentations about transactions in SLUSA-covered securities. (2) Whether a covered state law class action complaint that unquestionably alleges "a" misrepresentation "in connection with" the purchase or sale of a SLUSA-covered security nonetheless can escape the application of SLUSA by including other allegations that are farther removed from a covered securities transaction. (3) Does SLUSA, 15 U.S.C. §§ 77p(b), 78bb(f)(1), prohibit private class actions based on state law only where the alleged purchase or sale of a covered security is "more than tangentially related" to the "heart, crux or gravamen" of the alleged fraud?
Bond v. United States, No. 12-158: (1) Do the Constitution's structural limits on federal authority impose any constraints on the scope of Congress' authority to enact legislation to implement a valid treaty, at least in circumstances where the federal statute, as applied, goes far beyond the scope of the treaty, intrudes on traditional state prerogatives, and is concededly unnecessary to satisfy the government's treaty obligations? (2) Can the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 229, be interpreted not to reach ordinary poisoning cases, which have been adequately handled by state and local authorities since the Framing, in order to avoid the difficult constitutional questions involving the scope of and continuing vitality of this Court's decision in Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416 (1920)?
Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center V. Nassar, No. 12-484: Whether Title VII's retaliation provision and similarly worded statutes require a plaintiff to prove but-for causation (i.e., that an employer would not have taken an adverse employment action but for an improper motive), or instead require only proof that the employer had a mixed motive (i.e., that an improper motive was one of multiple reasons for the employment action).
Metrish v. Lancaster, No. 12-547: (1) Whether the Michigan Supreme Court's recognition that a state statute abolished the long-maligned diminished-capacity defense was an "unexpected and indefensible" change in a common-law doctrine of criminal law under this Court's retroactivity jurisprudence. See Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451 (2001). (2) Whether the Michigan Court of Appeals' retroactive application of the Michigan Supreme Court's decision was "so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement" so as to justify habeas relief. Harrington v. Richter, 131 S. Ct. 770, 786-87 (2011).