Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WORTH NOTING—Federal appeals court cases of note, (Apr 11, 2025)

By WK Editorial Staff

A roundup of recent published federal appeals court decisions of interest to the labor and employment law community.

5th Cir.: Court reverses dismissal in same-sex wedding case, certifies question to Texas Supreme Court. In a case involving a county judge who refuses to perform same-sex marriages based on religious beliefs, the Fifth Circuit reversed a district court's dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, which had been predicated on findings of lack of standing and ripeness. The county judge had challenged Canon 4A(1) of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, which mandates that judges’ extrajudicial activities must not cast doubts on their impartiality, arguing that this canon's application to his refusal to officiate same-sex marriages was unconstitutional. The district court had also noted it would have abstained from deciding the case under the Pullman doctrine, contingent on the resolution of a related state court case involving a similar issue. The Fifth Circuit found the judge had standing as he faced a credible threat of enforcement action from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which had previously issued a warning to another judge under similar circumstances. The court also held the claims were ripe for review and declined to abstain under Pullman, instead certifying a question to the Supreme Court of Texas to resolve whether Canon 4A(1) prohibits judges from publicly refusing to perform same-sex weddings for moral or religious reasons while continuing to perform opposite-sex weddings (Umphress v. Hall, No. 20-11216 (5th Cir. Apr. 4, 2025)).

9th Cir.: Court orders return or destruction of inadvertently disclosed confidential documents. The Ninth Circuit vacated a district court's order denying plaintiffs’ motion to require a media organization to return or destroy confidential documents that were inadvertently disclosed to it by plaintiffs’ counsel in an employment discrimination action against Nike, Inc. The appeals court held that it had jurisdiction over the appeal and that the district court had authority to order the media organization to return or destroy the documents. The court found that the media organization, as an intervenor, was a party to the case and subject to the district court's inherent case-management authority. The court also held that the media organization did not have a First Amendment right to withhold the documents and that the district court's exercise of its inherent authority furthered a substantial government interest unrelated to the suppression of expression. The case was remanded for further proceedings (Cahill v. Nike, Inc., No. 24-2199 (9th Cir. Mar. 18, 2025)).

11th Cir.: Res judicata bars qui tam action after prior FCA retaliation claim. A physician at a hospital in Alabama, who previously filed an FCA retaliation claim against the hospital and associated entities based on his termination allegedly due to whistleblowing on opioid overprescription, appealed the dismissal of his subsequent qui tam action under the False Claims Act. The physician claimed the hospital forced overprescription of opioids and fraudulently billed Medicare and Medicaid, causing about $4 million in fraudulent billing annually. His qui tam action was dismissed by the district court on the grounds of res judicata, citing the prior dismissal of his retaliation claim for failure to state a claim. Upon review, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's decision, emphasizing that both the retaliation and qui tam actions involved the same parties and derived from the same nucleus of operative facts, namely the alleged forced overprescription and fraudulent billing practices at the hospital. The court found the physician's qui tam action was barred by res judicata because it could have been raised in the prior action, and the dismissal of the prior lawsuit with prejudice precluded re-litigation of the same issues (Milner v. Baptist Health Montgomery, No. 23-12985 (11th Cir. Mar. 31, 2025)).

Cases: SexDiscrimination Discrimination Procedure Privacy EvidenceDiscovery Whistleblowers Discharge