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Thomas' financial forms prompt call for inquiry

WASHINGTON — A group of House Democrats is pushing for an investigation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over long-running omissions that he made in filling out financial disclosure forms.

In disclosure forms stretching back about 20 years, Thomas failed to report employment by his wife, Virginia "Ginni" Lamp Thomas, who grew up in Omaha and earned her law degree from Creighton University.

Thomas wrote to the Committee on Financial Disclosure early this year, asking to amend the reports he had previously filed to reflect his wife's various jobs over the years. That included compensation she received from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank that is a prominent opponent of the new federal health care law.

Thomas wrote that the omissions were inadvertent and the result of a "misunderstanding of the filing instructions."

The group pushing for an investigation is led by New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee.

She and 19 other House Democrats sent a letter this week asking the Judicial Conference to refer the matter to the Justice Department to determine civil or criminal sanctions against Thomas.

A spokeswoman for the court pointed Friday to Thomas' previous description of the omissions as inadvertent and said he had no further comment.

Critics have questioned how Thomas' failure to properly complete the forms could possibly have been an inadvertent misunderstanding, given his position on the highest court in the land.

"Due to the simplicity of the disclosure requirements, along with Justice Thomas's high level of legal training and experience, it is reasonable to infer that his failure to disclose his wife's income for two decades was willful, and the Judicial Conference has a non-discretionary duty to refer this case to the Department of Justice," according to the letter.

The letter also pointed to a New York Times story about Thomas' friendship with Dallas real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

Fourth Circuit dismisses health reform ... - Employment Law Daily

(No. 11-1057), a district court had declared the PPACA’s individual mandate unconstitutional. However, a three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit ruled unanimously that Virginia lacked standing to sue. Thus, the appeals court vacated the judgment of the district court and sent the case back with instructions to dismiss the case.

Virginia contended that Congress lacked constitutional authority to enact the individual mandate in the PPACA. However, noted the court, the individual mandate imposes no obligations on the state of Virginia. Nevertheless, Virginia maintained that it had standing to bring this action because the individual mandate allegedly conflicts with a newly-enacted state statute, the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act (VHCFA), which states that “[n]o resident of this Commonwealth…shall be required to obtain or maintain a policy of individual insurance coverage.”

The appellate court disagreed: “Contrary to Virginia’s arguments, the mere existence of a state law like the VHCFA does not license a state to mount a judicial challenge to any federal statute with which the state law assertedly conflicts. Rather, only when a federal law interferes with a state’s exercise of its sovereign ‘power to create and enforce a legal code’ does it inflict on the state the requisite injury-in-fact.”

Liberty University. In a 2-1 decision, the Fourth Circuit also vacated a different district court’s decision declaring the PPACA constitutional.

In Liberty University v. Geithner (No. 10-2347), the Fourth Circuit hinged its opinion on the penalty imposed by the PPACA if individuals do not purchase insurance. Arguing that the penalty in essence is a form of a tax, the court concluded that a suit cannot be brought against this “tax” because the federal Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) “provides that ‘no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person.’” The court thus vacated the district court ruling because the AIA bars a suit seeking to bar the collection of a tax, despite the fact that neither Liberty University nor the federal government had claimed that the AIA affected the case.