As I wrote above, nothing too exciting in the substance of Sotomayor’s dissent, perhaps except in the fact that her opinion would have allowed for greater access to Courts for whistleblowers under the FCA. In the unsurprising nonmilestone file, Justice Scalia wrote a concurrence rejecting both sides’ reliance on legislative history.
Even less exciting. More on ruling. The opinion can be used to discuss the debate between the justices and the whistle-blower law. More on the value of allowing recovery in the comments here.
The first paragraph of this post (and the quote) was the original core, but it probably warrants a bit of expansion. The last sentence itself was just added and underlines the point. As suggested, a little case like this can be a learning experience. It suggests that the garden variety case is pretty uncontroversial though it might deal with an important issue of federal law. This one is even less so because the provision was amended by the health care law, so the only question that appears to remain is its retroactive effect. The SCOTUSBlog link discusses this point.
The case here was 7-2 with Scalia finding it necessary to concur separately to ride his hobbyhorse that legislative history is of no value in determining the meaning of the text. The fact even Thomas finds it unnecessary to do this, particularly when the ruling is not based just on that, underlines the tedious nature of this. Breyer's and Stevens' involvement in legislative activity in particular show them the value of legislative history as one part of understanding the statute.
Stevens has what seems to me a more realistic view of judging as a whole. As a recent portrait of Stevens noted:
According to Stevens, that approach has its origins in his brief stint as a lawyer on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee. “That was probably one of the most important parts of my education,” Stevens told me. He recalled an incident involving an antitrust law: “I remember explaining one of the tricky problems in the statute to one of the members of the committee. I got all through it, and he said, ‘Well, you know, let’s let the judges figure that one out.’ ”
What that told him was that “the legislature really works with the judges—contrary to the suggestion that the statute is a statute all by itself,” Stevens said. “There is an understanding that there are areas of interpretation that are going to have to be filled in later on, and the legislators rely on that. It’s part of the whole process. And you realize that they’re not totally separate branches of government—they’re working together.”
Again, the health care law has a provision that moots the general question behind this lawsuit as the comments by "Steve" in the last link in opening paragraph notes. First, the specific subject matter at hand:
A qui tam action, as most folks probably don’t know, is an action by an individual plaintiff to recover from someone who has defrauded the government. The way the statutory scheme works is that the plaintiff has to give the government the first shot to bring the case itself, and if they decline, then he can prosecute it himself. The government gets the recovery either way, but the qui tam plaintiff (“relator”) gets a much bigger share if he actually has to do the work himself.
The case is about the breadth of the exceptions to this practice when the material is deemed to be in the public domain, so in effect not worth the bonus. Again:
I like the new amendments because the kind of proceedings the Supreme Court was looking at in this week’s case — state and local administrative proceedings — are decidedly not big news, and we shouldn’t treat facts disclosed in such proceedings as though they had been printed on the front page of the New York Times. If there’s anyone out there who really wants to scour through the record of every state administrative proceeding in hopes of finding evidence of a Medicaid fraud case, then they’re most likely adding value in the same way that an actual whistleblower would. This is a powerful antifraud device and if you don’t like your tax dollars being stolen (or stolen a second time, depending on your point of view), it’s a good thing to encourage these qui tam actions.
Important little tidbit, one of many lost in debates over mandates and death panels. I'd add it underlines the value of private action to promote governmental ends. This is why it is so important that certain suits against states are held barred by creative readings of the 10th and 11th Amendments -- even if the feds could bring suit to let's say enforce federal anti-discrimination laws involving the handicapped, it has limited time, resources and at times yes will to do so.
Again, quite a lot of stuff from a little case. The news and blog potential, even without looking at the details of the specific whistleblower action here, is clear and clearly underutilized.