Williams, Judge, United States District Court for the Northern District of California v. United States
The Supreme Court declined to hear a case brought by federal judges who argued that Congress illegally blocked their promised annual cost-of-living pay raises four separate times in the 1990s.
Three justices — Breyer, Scalia, and Kennedy — dissented from the denial, arguing the case raised a serious and unresolved question about whether Congress can renege on a law guaranteeing judges' salaries would keep pace with inflation.
How it got here: Federal judges won summary judgment in district court, but the Federal Circuit reversed 2-1, and the judges asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, which it declined.
The Case in Depth
What happened
In 1989 Congress passed the Ethics Reform Act, which limited judges' outside income but promised automatic annual raises tied to inflation to offset that loss. In four different years during the 1990s, Congress passed appropriations riders blocking those scheduled raises. A group of federal judges sued, claiming the riders violated the Constitution's guarantee that judicial pay cannot be cut while a judge remains in office.
The question before the Court
Did Congress violate the Constitution's promise that judges' pay can't be cut when it repeatedly blocked automatic inflation raises that a 1989 law had promised federal judges?
Why it matters
The denial leaves in place a lower-court ruling that Congress can block promised judicial salary adjustments before they take effect, even when a law like the Ethics Reform Act mechanically guarantees them. Federal judges' real pay has fallen relative to inflation, and the decision not to intervene leaves that trend unresolved by the Supreme Court.
What changes now
Because certiorari was denied, the Federal Circuit's ruling against the judges stands as final, and the constitutional question about inflation-adjustment guarantees for judicial pay remains unresolved by the Supreme Court. No further proceedings occur in this case, though the underlying dispute over how Congress may block automatic judicial pay increases could resurface in future litigation.
What this does not decide
The denial of certiorari means the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of whether blocking the Ethics Act's inflation adjustments violates the Compensation Clause. The lower court's decision against the judges remains in place, but the constitutional question itself was left open, not affirmed by the full Court.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Breyer
“When a case presents a serious Compensation Clause question, as this case does, we should hear and decide it.”Breyer's closing argument for why the Court should have granted certiorari.
Breyer argued the Court should have granted certiorari because the case raised a serious, previously unresolved Compensation Clause question: whether Congress can cancel a precisely calculated, automatic inflation adjustment it had already promised judges. He distinguished United States v. Will, contending its reasoning applied only to imprecise, discretion-laden pay formulas, not the Ethics Act's mechanical formula. He also rejected prudential reasons for avoiding the issue, including concerns about judges ruling on their own pay, and argued the real decline in judicial salaries made the question especially pressing.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Because the Court denied review, there is no majority reasoning to summarize; the only substantive analysis in this document comes from Justice Breyer's dissent from the denial of certiorari, explaining why he thought the Court should have taken the case.
- Breyer argued that the Compensation Clause's core purpose is protecting a judge's reasonable expectation of pay once a law has fixed and mandated a salary schedule, whether that schedule sets a flat amount or a precise, mechanical inflation formula.
- He distinguished the Court's earlier decision in United States v. Will, which allowed Congress to block judicial raises before they legally 'vested,' by noting that the pay formula at issue in Will depended on unpredictable presidential and congressional discretion, unlike the Ethics Act's fixed, automatic formula.
- Breyer reasoned that reading Will to allow Congress to cancel even a precise, mechanically calculated raise at any point before the fiscal year began would let Congress defeat any attempt to protect judges' real income from inflation, which he doubted the Will Court intended.
- He also rejected the government's alternative argument that a 1982 appropriations provision independently barred the judges' claim, noting it singled out judges for special treatment and raised its own constitutional doubts.
- Breyer concluded that the constitutional question — whether Congress can go back on a definite, formula-based promise to protect judges' real salaries — was serious, unresolved, and important enough to warrant the Court's review.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes United States v. Will (449 U. S. 200)
Breyer's dissent argues this 1980 ruling addressed only vague, discretion-based pay formulas, not the Ethics Act's precise, mechanical one.