Quote:
Originally Posted by Rococo
Further to this point, Kelhus, without looking up the result, how confident are you that you could predict which way Thomas voted in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern?
In that case, a former employee of Norfolk Southern sued his former employer, a Virginia railroad corporation, under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA) to recover for injuries allegedly caused by exposure to carcinogens in Virginia and Ohio. The question before the court was whether the employee's lawsuit, which was premised on a Pennsylvania consent statute requiring out-of-state corporations to consent to personal jurisdiction in Pennsylvania courts as a condition of registering to do business in the Commonwealth, violated the Due Process Clause.
Or how about Coinbase v. Bieleski?
In that case, the plaintiff filed a putative class action on behalf of Coinbase users alleging that Coinbase, an online currency platform, failed to replace funds fraudulently taken from the users' accounts. Because Coinbase's User Agreement provides for dispute resolution through binding arbitration, Coinbase filed a motion to compel arbitration. The District Court denied the motion. Coinbase then filed an interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit under the Federal Arbitration Act, which authorizes an interlocutory appeal from the denial of a motion to compel arbitration. The question before the Court was whether a district court must stay its proceedings while an interlocutory appeal on the question of arbitrability is ongoing.
Or how about U.S. v. Texas?
In 2021, the Secretary of Homeland Security promulgated new immigration-enforcement guidelines that prioritized the arrest and removal from the United States of noncitizens who are suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals or who have unlawfully entered the country only recently, for example. Texas and Louisiana claimed that the Guidelines contravened two federal statutes that they read to require the arrest of certain noncitizens upon their release from prison or entry of a final order of removal. The District Court found that the States would incur costs due to the Executive's failure to comply with those alleged statutory mandates, and that the States therefore had standing to sue based on those costs. The question before the Court was whether Texas and Louisiana had Article III standing to challenge the Guidelines.
I of course could find dozens and dozens of cases like this every year.
Ok. I guess you can call this a copout but all of these require me to determine how Thomas would interpret legal documents I am not familiar with. Even if I assume he is going to interpret the documents through a conservative lens, I would still need to know what they actually say.
I am not familiar with Pennsylvania consent statute or the Due Process Clause (first case), the relevant wording of the User Agreement and Arbitration Laws (2nd case), and relevant Guidelines or Statutes (3rd case).
In most of the recent culture war related cases I am more familiar with the laws in question, so it is easier. For example, I know racial discrimination is prohibited, and unlike the progressive justices Thomas actually cares when federal laws are clearly being violated, so it is easy to assume he would vote against Harvard's blatant racial discrimination.
In those other cases you brought up, I don't really know what the relevant laws are.
