WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued its first opinion of the new term, saying a lawyer cannot combine two laws to sue the federal government for violating identity-theft protection laws banning the printing of credit-card numbers and expiration dates on receipts.
The justices’ first such rendering of the term was unanimous as the court turned aside lawyer James Bormes’ attempt to sue the United States using a combination of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Little Tucker Act.
In an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court said Bormes cannot “mix and match FCRA’s provisions with the Little Tucker Act’s immunity waiver to create an action against the United States.”
The federal government is the largest creditor, lender and employer in the United States, and government lawyers said in court papers that if Bormes’ suit were allowed, the government could face “massive liability.”
The Fair Credit Reporting Act prohibits the showing of more than the last five digits of a card number or the expiration date on a credit card or debit card receipt, and defines a person liable under the act as “any individual, partnership, corporation, trust, estate, cooperative, association, government or governmental subdivision or agency.”
Bormes’ court filing receipt from the government’s pay.gov website showed four digits of his credit card number and the expiration date on his $350 receipt.
A federal judge in Illinois threw out Bormes’ class-action lawsuit, saying that Congress did not explicitly waive the federal government’s sovereign immunity in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. But the lawsuit was revived by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which said the Little Tucker Act supplied the necessary waiver. Government lawyers argued that the appeals court should have not looked to a second law, when the Fair Credit Reporting Act clearly did not make the government liable for damages.
Scalia said the court was not making a decision on whether the government can be sued under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. “But whether or not FCRA contains the necessary waiver of immunity, any attempt to append a Tucker Act remedy to the statute’s existing remedial scheme interferes with its intended scope of liability,” Scalia said.
The case now goes back to the federal appeals court.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court won’t review a decision to throw out sanctions and a $600,000 award against Miami prosecutors in a witness-tampering investigation where members of the defense team had purportedly been secretly recorded.
The high court Tuesday refused to hear an appeal from Dr. Ali Shaygan, who has been acquitted of 141 counts of illegally prescribing painkillers. A federal judge said publicly that three prosecutors and a Drug Enforcement Administration agent acted “vexatiously and in bad faith” for failing to obtain permission before authorizing two witnesses to record conversations with Shaygan’s attorney and his investigator.
But a federal appeals court threw out the sanctions and award, saying the judge violated the prosecutors’ dueprocess rights in 2009 when he issued a public reprimand for their purported misconduct.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 11/14/2012