SCOTUS makes extremely rare 9-0 decision (education case)
-
Supreme Court OKs Deaf Student’s Discrimination Lawsuit Against Michigan School District
-
9-0 SCOTUS decisions are not "extremely rare." In fact, most years 9-0 decisions represent the majority (or largest plurality) of cases. Most SCOTUS cases are about mundane elements of the law, about which the justices are often in agreement.
5-4 decisions are almost always the rarest decisions, but they often get the most media coverage because of the subject matter of those decisions.
Regardless of the facts involved in the case, the legal argument in the case sparking this post was rather esoteric and boring to non-attorneys. It dealt with the legal doctrine of "exhaustion of administrative remedies. Plaintiffs generally must exhaust all administrative (i.e., executive branch) avenues for resolution of their dispute before being able to avail themselves of the judicial branch. It's a separation of powers concept, but also, and more importantly, a judicial economy issue (i.e., shoving as many litigants as possible off to administrative law judges makes more room on judicial branch judges' dockets for other litigants).
Here, the plaintiff brought suit under both the IDEA and ADA acts with a list of requested remedies to redress his harm; amongst those requested remedies was compensation and lost income. If all of the requested remedies were recoverable under the IDEA act, then the plaintiff would have had to exhaust all administrative methods of resolving his claim before bringing suit in federal court; however, since compensation and lost income are not remedies available under the IDEA act (but possibly recoverable under the ADA), the plaintiff was not required to exhaust all administrative avenues before filing suit.
Again, most SCOTUS decisions are as boring as you probably found reading the above synopsis.
-
According to the stuff I've read, we are both right about the 9-0 decisions.
Overall they make a lot of them, but this is due mainly to technical issues (ie is a specific type of defense allowed) that have to do with a trial, which they send back down to the trial courts.
When they make a final decision (ie Roe v Wade), they make very few of them.
-
@raphjd said in SCOTUS makes extremely rare 9-0 decision (education case):
Overall they make a lot of them, but this is due mainly to technical issues (ie is a specific type of defense allowed) that have to do with a trial, which they send back down to the trial courts.
When they make a final decision (ie Roe v Wade), they make very few of them.This is how you tell me you're not a lawyer without telling me you're not a lawyer.
The SCOTUS is an appellate court (since it rarely uses it original jurisdiction powers); therefore, it doesn't generally render "final decisions" in the way I suspect you're thinking.
For example, the SCOTUS didn't render the final judgment and orders in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org. After the SCOTUS made its determination that the lower court's ruling was incorrectly decided, it remanded (i.e., transferred) the case back to the Fifth Circuit for that court to further review the case and render the final judgment.
Again, 9-0 decisions are not extremely rare. They aren't extremely rare because most of the cases heard by the SCOTUS are mundane, boring cases where the Court is merely resolving conflicting judgments between and amongst the lower district courts on mundane, boring elements of the law.
