The Alito Project: PFAW Incorrectly Claims that Supreme Court Effectively Overruled Judge Alito in the FMLA Case
[This is a footnote to my post below about Judge Alito’s decision on the Family and Medical Leave Act.]
In PFAW’s preliminary report on Judge Alito’s opinions, the group claims on page one:
Alito claimed that the federal government could not apply the Family and Medical Leave Act to state employees, a decision effectively reversed by the Supreme Court . . .
(All emphasis in this post is mine.)
This claim is false. The Supreme Court did not effectively reverse Judge Alito’s decision at all. A unanimous panel decision of the Tenth Circuit has held that the Supreme Court was analyzing a different provision than the one examined by Judge Alito. The Tenth Circuit panel looked at the same issue, taking the Supreme Court’s decision into account, and came down the same way as Judge Alito’s unanimous panel had.
So PFAW just plain got it wrong. (Shocker, huh?)