Case at a Glance

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay employees for all hours worked. These two cases, consolidated for review by the Supreme Court, raise the same legal issue in similar factual contexts: is the time which employees spend walking and waiting in line during the process of donning and doffing required safety equipment, itself considered compensable work such that employers must pay employees for that time.

• Previewed by Barbara J. Fick, an associate professor of law at Notre Dame Law School in Notre Dame, Indiana.

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Case at a Glance

Kansas seeks to impose its motor fuel taxes on non-Indian distributors of gas at on-reservation tribal gas stations. The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation claims these taxes would impermissibly interfere with tribal and federal interests and would prohibit the tribe from imposing its own taxes to maintain reservation roads. The Court must decide how to evaluate state taxation that affects on-reservation economic activities.

• Previewed by Bethany Berger, an assistant professor at Wayne State University Law School and the associate editor and co-author of Felix Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (forthcoming 2005).

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In certain circumstances, the Oregon Death with Dignity Act permits a physician to prescribe medications that would enable a mentally competent, terminally ill patient to end his or her life. The U.S. attorney general has determined, however, that the federal Controlled Substances Act prohibits the distribution of such medications for the purpose of facilitating a suicide. The state of Oregon has now asked the Court to determine whether that is a permissible interpretation of federal law.

• Previewed by Kelly Vincent O'Donnell and Prof. Vikram David Amar of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, California.

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The IDEA requires school districts to offer a free appropriate public education to children with disabilities. Parents can seek an administrative hearing to enforce this right. Some circuit courts of appeals place the burden on the school district to show at the hearing that its proposed program for the child meets the IDEA's requirements. In the case on review, the Fourth Circuit ruled that the general evidentiary rule that places the burden of proof on the party who is initiating the proceeding and seeking relief should apply to IDEA administrative hearings.

• Previewed by Terry Jean Seligmann, a professor of law and director of legal research and writing at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

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On appeal, the California Supreme Court invalidated two of the "special circumstances" that the trial jury had found at the guilt phase of Ronald Sanders' trial. The court nevertheless upheld his death sentence on the grounds that the jury's consideration of the invalid special circumstance was harmless error. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review whether the state courts properly applied the harmless-error doctrine in this instance.

• Previewed by Kathy Swedlow, an associate professor at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan.

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In this case, tenants sued their apartment management company and others in state court for toxic mold damages. The defendants, invoking the parties' diversity of citizenship, "removed" the case to federal court and contended that the apartment management company is a diverse corporation. However, the tenants contend that the "real party in interest" is an unnamed, non-diverse affiliate of the management company and thus that the federal court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over this case.

• Previewed by Mary Phelan D'Isa, a professor at the T.M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan.

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Public employees do not forfeit all their First Amendment rights when they take a government job. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' old formulation that a policeman "may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman" lost force years ago. However, the case now before the Court presents the argument that public employees lack free-speech protection for speech conducted pursuant to their routine duties.

• Previewed by David L. Hudson, Jr., a research attorney with the First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

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The Federal Tort Claims Act waives the sovereign immunity of the United States in circumstances in which the United States, if it were a private person, would be liable. The Respondents in this case were injured in a mine accident and allege that their injuries were caused by the federal mine inspectors' failure to perform their duties. The parties disagree on whether the Act's waiver extends to the alleged negligence of a federal mine inspector.

• Previewed by Ralph Anzivino, a professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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A jury found that a truck manufacturer's pricing policy violated the Robinson-Patman Act by favoring certain dealers over others. The Supreme Court has been asked to answer whether a violation may exist in the absence of evidence that the favored and disfavored dealer were competing for the same customer in each transaction. The Court has also been asked to clarify who can sue as a "purchaser" under the Act.

• Previewed by Mark A. Cohen, the editor-in-chief of Minnesota Lawyer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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After commencement of bankruptcy proceedings, the liquidating supervisor of the bankrupt estate of Wallace's Bookstores Inc. commenced proceedings against four state colleges with which Wallace's had done business. The supervisor sought to recover money from the colleges and to prevent them from collecting money from Wallace's. The Supreme Court is now asked whether the colleges can dismiss the proceedings on the ground of sovereign immunity.

• Previewed by Jay E. Grenig, a professor of law at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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