Latest Case This Week: Rajala v. Spencer Fane (10th Cir.)

The Future of Faithless Electors and the National Popular Vote Compact: Part Two in a Two-Part Series

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR

In this second of a two-part series of columns about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the “faithless elector cases, Illinois Law dean and professor Vikram David Amar describes some good news that we may glean from those cases. Specifically, Amar points out that states have many ways of reducing elector faithlessness, and he lists three ways in which the Court’s decision paves the way for advances in the National Popular Vote (NPV) Interstate Compact movement.

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Impoverishing Women: Supreme Court Upholds Trump Administration’s Religious and Moral Exemptions to Contraceptive Mandate

JOANNA L. GROSSMAN

SMU Dedman School of Law professor Joanna L. Grossman comments on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the Trump administration’s religious and moral exemptions to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Grossman provides a brief history of the conflict over the growing politicization of contraception in the United States and argues that the exemptions at issue in this case should never have been promulgated in the first place because they have no support in science or public policy.

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Rajala v. Spencer Fane

Court: US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit

Docket: 19-3226

Opinion Date: July 10, 2020

Judge: Carolyn Baldwin McHugh

Areas of Law: Bankruptcy

Eric Rajala, the bankruptcy trustee for Generation Resources Holding Company, LLC, initiated separate adversary proceedings against Spencer Fane LLP and Husch Blackwell LLP (collectively, “the firms”) to recover legal fees he alleged were proceeds of a fraudulent transfer. The bankruptcy court denied the firms’ motions to dismiss, but then certified the decisions for immediate appeal. The Tenth Circuit consolidated the appeals and agreed to hear them on an interlocutory basis. The Tenth Circuit concluded that because the firms were not “transferees,” as that term is used in 11 U.S.C. 550, the Court reversed and remanded with instructions to dismiss Rajala’s adversary complaints. Consequently, Rajala may not recover the fees from the firms.