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Dayton v. Hanson - appeal dismissed
May 27, 2007 by Ross Runkel at LawMemo
As I expected, the Supreme Court dismissed the "appeal" in Office of Senator Mark Dayton v. Hanson on May 21, 2007. So the lower court decision remains undisturbed.
Hanson sued his ex-employer - the Office of Senator Mark Dayton. The Dayton folks argued that the suit had to be halted for fear of violating the constitution's speech or debate clause, but the DC Circuit said things could go forward.
The Office of Senator Mark Dayton filed an appeal to the US Supreme Court. That was cute trick. Most cases get to the Supreme Court by writ of certiorari, and the Court gets to pick and choose which of those cases it will allow in the door. But if a case properly gets to the Court on appeal, then the Court has no choice and must decide it.
Very few cases fit into the "appeal" category, and this was not one of them.
Here is what I predicted, and exactly what came about:
First, there is a jurisdictional question. This an "appeal," rather than a certiorari case. A small number of cases from the circuit courts qualify for "appeal," and this is not one of them. So the appeal will be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction at the Supreme Court level.
Second, the Court can, if it wishes, treat the appeal papers as if they were certiorari papers and then go ahead and grant certiorari - in which case they would have jurisdiction. I expect the Court will not do that. The decision below was not wrong, there is no split of authority among the circuits, and the whole dispute really is not particularly important.
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