Argument of Speaker
Mr. Speaker: Justice Stevens has the opinion of the court today in case 06-618 Dayton versus Hanson.
Argument of Justice Stevens
Mr. Stevens: The Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 provides employees of members of congress for the remedy of certain adverse employment actions.
Invoking the District Court jurisdiction under that act appellee Brad Hanson brought this damages action against the appellant the office of former Senator Mark Dayton.
He alleged that he had been terminating in violation of three federal statutes.
The senator’s office moved to dismiss the action based on a claim of immunity under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.
The District Court denied the motion to dismiss and the Court of Appeals affirmed.
The office then invoked our jurisdiction under §412 of the statute and we proposed consideration of jurisdiction tending hearing the case on the merits.
For reason stated in the opinion filed with the clerk we conclude that we do not have jurisdiction under §412 of the Act.
We therefore dismissed the appeal. Moreover, treating the appellant’s jurisdictional statement as a petition for the Writ of Certiorari we deny the petition because the decision of the D. C. Circuit is not in obvious conflict with any of its sister circuits on the application of the Speech or Debate Clause to suits challenging personnel decision of members of congress.
Our opinion is unanimous.
The Chief Justice did not participate in the consideration or deliberation of the case.
