Holland v. Rosen — civil — affirmance — Ambro

Until last year, New Jersey relied on monetary bail to ensure defendants’ appearance at their trials. The opinion in this case explains how this system produced perverse results: “In practice, the State’s reliance on monetary bail resulted in the release of defendants who could afford to pay for their release, even if they posed a substantial risk of flight or danger to others, and the pretrial detention of poorer defendants who presented minimal risk and were accused of less serious crimes.” So New Jersey replaced its cash-bail-based system with one that relied mainly on non-monetary measures ranging from monthly phone check-ins to electronic monitoring and home confinement, and the state’s pre-trial jail population dropped by over 20%.

That sounds like good news for everyone … except for those wealthier criminal defendants who before would have been able to just write a check but now faced restrictions on their pre-trial liberty. One of them challenged the new regime, represented by Kirkland & Ellis with Paul Clement handling the oral argument personally, seeking an injunction to prevent the state from imposing any restrictions on him without first offering him monetary bail, but today the Third Circuit rejected his challenge and affirmed. The Third Circuit identified the key legal issue as whether there is a federal constitutional right to monetary bail as an alternative to non-monetary conditions of pretrial release, and, “Our answer is no.”

Joining Ambro were Fuentes and Restrepo. Arguing counsel were Paul Clement of Kirkland & Ellis for the challengers, Stuart Feinblatt of the NJ AG’s office for the state, and Alexander Shalom of ACLU of NJ for amici supporting the state.

UPDATE: how on earth did the opinion omit the critical fact that the defendant (arrested for his role in a bar fight) was a Cowboys fan? S.P. Sullivan has the story at NJ.com.

Walsh v. Defenders Inc. — civil / class action — affirmance — Greenberg

The Third Circuit affirmed a district court’s order remanding a class action to state court under the local controversy exception to jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act. CAFA allows class-action defendants to remove larger class actions to federal court, and the local-controversy exception allows class plaintiffs to get some cases back to state court. The outcome here turns on the specific facts of what the opinion describes as a “confusing case.”

Joining Greenberg were Chagares and Bibas. The case was decided without oral argument.