Legal Docket: Deception and disability rights

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday the 10th of February.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad to have you along with us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Before we continue this morning, an exciting opportunity for families of The World and Everything in It, WORLD’s daily video news for students is once again offering a free trial for three months.

REICHARD: WORLD Watch. It’s a great way for families with young students at home to keep up on the news of the day, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s a way to spark meaningful conversations about current events, to see your kids grow in compassion and discernment, and pray for the world together.

EICHER: For more information visit: worldwatch.news/radio. We’ll include a link in our show notes as well. worldwatch.news/radio

Now after the trial period is over at the end of three months we’ll offer to continue WORLD Watch each day for just $6.99-a-month, and that comes out to only about thirty five cents a program, that’s a great deal tailored for families who value learning together.

This offer ends on February 18th

REICHARD: And now time for Legal Docket. First, a case with big numbers, big questions, and even bigger loopholes.

The question is: Can a technically truthful statement still be a crime if it is a misleading statement? Or put another way: can a half-truth land you in whole trouble?

The trial court heard this dispute in 2022, with lots of media coverage in Chicago:

PBS: Jury selection has been completed in the federal tax fraud trial of a member of a prominent political family. 11th Ward Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson is facing seven charges that he lied to federal bank regulators and filed false tax returns.

Yes, that Daley, from the family that ran a political machine and made the term “Chicago politics” synonymous with political corruption. He’s the grandson of the late mayor Richard J. Daley and the nephew of former mayor Richard M. Daley.

PBS: His lawyers are arguing that you know he’s just sort of sloppy and forgetful, a bit of a hot mess. Prosecutors say, you know, hot mess or not, lying on your taxes is still a crime.

EICHER: The case is Thompson versus U.S. At issue are three loans former Alderman Thompson took out, totaling up to more than $200,000. He used the money to buy into his law firm, pay off a tax bill, and settle another debt.

When the bank collapsed and the feds came calling, Thompson told them only about the 100-thousand that he owed. He left out the detail of two other loans that accounted for the rest of it.

REICHARD: So the government charged him with fraud.

Thompson defended himself, saying he never outright lied. He really did take out a loan for $110,000.

Still, the jury convicted Thompson on all 7 counts of tax fraud. And he appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now, the justices must decide whether “misleading but true” is enough to convict.

Chief Justice John Roberts posed a hypothetical:

ROBERTS: …You know, a police officer pulls a person over, thinks he's drunk, says, you know, have --have you been drinking? And the person says, "I've had one cocktail," when, in fact, he had one cocktail and four glasses of wine. I mean, is that treated differently under the statute that says just "false" and the statute that says "false and misleading"? I can see that being misleading, but I'm not sure it would qualify as false under the literal meaning of the word.

Thompson’s attorney Chris Gair argued that Congress only criminalized outright falsehoods under the relevant law. Not misleading half-truths.

GAIR: At the outset, at its most basic, the word "false" means not true. It is, therefore, implausible to suggest that the statute that punishes false statements includes some types of true statement. "False" and "true but misleading" are different concepts. When Congress means to prohibit both, it does so explicitly using both terms, as it has in over 100 places in the United States Code.

EICHER: Arguing for the government, Assistant Solicitor General Caroline Flynn. She argued that Thompson’s omissions were functionally false. After all, leaving out that hundred-thousand-dollar detail? That’s more than an “oops.”

FLYNN: …a statement is false if it conveys an untrue message to the listener in context, even if the precise words used, considered in a vacuum, could possibly carry another meaning. So, here, when, in response to receiving an invoice telling Petitioner that he owed the FDIC $269,000, Petitioner then told the FDIC's agents that he was shocked by the letter, had no idea where the 269 number comes from, and had borrowed $110,000, he made a false statement because he clearly conveyed the message that he did not owe the higher amount. And 12 members of the jury in this case, who were not given a specialized definition of what "false" means and, therefore, must have applied the concept as ordinarily understood, agreed.

EICHER: Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan posed vivid hypotheticals of their own:

SOTOMAYOR: Counsel, - if you say a packet of toxic mushrooms is a hundred percent natural. Toxic mushrooms are a hundred percent toxic. But it may be misleading if you're selling it because people may bel

REICHARD: Kagan suggested sending the case back to lower court to figure out whether Thompson’s statement was false and misleading, or plain old false.

Meanwhile, Justice Neil Gorsuch wondered whether this case is even suitable to alter the scope of laws on fraud. In this clip you’ll hear him say: “QP” … that means “question presented.”

GORSUCH; Ms. Flynn, the question presented is whether the statute prohibits making a statement that is misleading but not false. That's the QP, not --not what qualifies as falsity, how much context, who shot John. None of that's in --in the QP.

Thompson’s lawyers say a ruling against him could criminalize vague or incomplete statements in financial dealings.

On the other hand, a ruling for Thompson could open up a creative new loophole for fraud.

EICHER: Now to a case about firefighting, disability, and retirement benefits. The Supreme Court is hearing Stanley v. City of Sanford, a showdown over disability rights under the A-D-A—the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Karyn Stanley spent almost two decades fighting fires in Sanford, Florida. But when Parkinson’s forced her into early retirement, she got an unwelcome surprise—her health benefits ran out after just two years. That’s because of a policy change made 15 years earlier.

REICHARD: Stanley argues it’s discrimination. She says retirees like her were promised coverage until age 65—but because she left due to a disability, she lost that safety net. The city, meanwhile, says the rules were in place long before she retired.

Now, the justices will decide: Can retirees sue for disability discrimination over lost benefits? The ruling could have big implications for workers forced out by illness.

EICHER: The city’s argument at the Supreme Court is that the ADA doesn’t cover retirees.

Stanley says she was qualified at the time the City put its policy in place. But in 2003, the City limited health subsidies for disabled retirees to just 24 months. Stanley says she didn’t find out about that until her own subsidy expired.

REICHARD: The issue? The ADA says it protects “qualified individuals.” But does the definition of “qualified” depend on whether a person is “employed”?

Her lawyer, Deepak Gupta:

GUPTA: I do want to urge the Court in its opinion to be careful not to foreclose other scenarios that the City's reading would permit, particularly given the City's failure to identify any plausible reason why Congress would have wanted to draw this arbitrary line. A firefighter who becomes disabled saving people from a burning building could be discriminated against the next month. A retired firefighter who develops a respiratory condition from years of smoke exposure could lose health coverage.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed the City on its argument that you first have to retire and then sue to make retirement benefits take effect. Listen to her exchange with Christopher Conner for the City:

JACKSON: Okay. And she says, at the time that I held the job, I became disabled and that policy applied to me. It --I was subject to it in that period of time. So…why would we pretend as though that is not a fact in the case, not here, and decide this on a broader question that relates to people who did not hold the job during the time that they were qualified?

CONNER: Because the policy that she describes, that she claims is discriminatory and she describes in her complaint, on its face only applies to a person who becomes completely unable to perform their job and is, therefore, unqualified.

EICHER: The City argues its policy is compassionate because disabled retirees at least get 24 months of benefits.

But Stanley’s lawyer points out that non-disabled retirees keep their subsidies until Medicare kicks in at age 65.

Justice Alito is seeking a guiding principle:

ALITO: Your client says that -I'm a victim of discrimination based on disability because I should be treated the same way as somebody who worked 25 years. How is a court supposed to determine whether this distinction between somebody who works 25 years and somebody who works a shorter period and retires based on disability is unlawful? What is the test for determining that?

GUPTA: Yeah. I mean, I think it will --it will turn a lot on the claim. Let me try to describe what I think is going on here…

REICHARD: The City says it must cut benefits to control costs.

Justice Kagan suggested that the court could decide this case narrowly, just for Stanley, rather than the broader issue of post-employment ADA claims.

For Stanley, though, the stakes amount to $1,000 a month. That’s not trivial for a career firefighter now fighting Parkinson’s Disease.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.