Supreme Court·Administrative power
Justices signal possible new limits on agencies fining businesses in-house; Friday conference weighs Trump's asylum ban
At Tuesday's argument in Department of Labor v. Sun Valley Orchards, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh questioned whether the Labor Department can impose H-2A farmworker penalties in its own proceedings rather than in federal court, and Kavanaugh cited the 40-year-old Tull precedent that civil penalties "could only be enforced in courts of law," SCOTUSblog's Ronald Mann wrote. Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed to past approval of administrative civil penalties, and Mann predicted the case will "come down late and be sharply divided." The justices meet in private conference Friday with 11 new relists, including the government's appeal over President Trump's asylum-ban Proclamation 10888, SCOTUSblog reported.
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