Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center

The Kentucky attorney general should have been permitted to intervene on the Commonwealth’s behalf in litigation concerning Kentucky House Bill 454. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion on behalf of the 6-3 majority. Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer concurred in the judgment but did not join the majority opinion. No provision of law limits the jurisdiction of federal appellate courts to allow intervention by a party who was not part of the litigation—the state attorney general in this case. Nor is there a mandatory claims-processing rule that precludes the attorney general’s intervention. Contrary to the conclusion of the court below, the attorney general’s motion to intervene was not “untimely,” as he filed as soon as the secretary for Health and Family Services decided not to defend the law. Finally, allowing the attorney general to intervene would not cause unfair prejudice to the parties, so the appellate court erred in denying the attorney general’s motion to intervene. Justice Clarence Thomas authored a concurring opinion making the additional point that the attorney general was not a “party” to the district court’s final judgment thus negating a premise of the respondents’ jurisdictional argument. Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Breyer, concurred in the judgment because, in their view, granting the attorney general’s motion to intervene would not be an “end-run around the timely-appeal rule” but a product of the timing of the litigation and a new need for the attorney general to enter the suit. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, arguing that while the majority acknowledges that courts have “sound discretion” to permit or disallow intervention, it “nonetheless bends over backward to accommodate the attorney general’s reentry into the case.” Justice Sotomayor expressed concern that the decision would broadly allow government officials to “evade the consequences of litigation decisions made by their predecessors of different political parties.”