Samuel+Alito

Name: **Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr** Date of Birth: **April 1, 1950** Current Age: **58** Date of Appointment: **January 31, 2006** Appointed by: **George W. Bush** **Personal History** Early life: Middle class/ not much info Education: **Graduated from Yale Law school and Princeton University** Legal/Political Career prior to serving on the US Supreme Court: **Served for more than 15 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit** Friends/Family/Mentors/Experiences that could have shaped your justice's views: Wife named Martha-Ann. Has two children **US Supreme Court Career** Voting Record: Votes majority almost 100% of the time. **Decisions 1** : Heidi Ahlborn was injured and disabled in a car accident. She received Medicare payments of $215,645 through the Arkansas Department of Human Services (ADHS) to pay for her medical treatment. In order to be eligible for the Medicare payments, Arkansas law required Ahlborn to give the ADHS the "right to any settlement, judgment, or award" she might receive because of the accident, up to the amount Medicare had paid for her treatment. Only $35,581 of the settlement was earmarked for her medical treatment. When the ADHS demanded that she repay the full $215,645, Ahlborn refused, and the issue went to a federal district court in Arkansas. **Question** "Do federal Medicaid statutes limit the amount a state can recover in reimbursement from a third-party payment to the portion earmarked for medical treatment? " Conclusion: The answer was yes. The Court ruled that federal Medicaid statutes only allow a state to recover the part of a third-party settlement earmarked for medical expenses. ** Decisions 2:  ** Ash, an African American and an employee at a Tyson Foods poultry plant, was passed over for a promotion and sued the company for employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A jury found for Ash and awarded damages, but the District Court granted Tyson's motion for judgment as a matter of law, and ordered a new trial. In the course of its opinion, the Eleventh Circuit also held that the Tyson plant manager's use of the word "boy" to refer to Ash was not evidence of racial animus, because it was never coupled with racial comments. **Question** (1) "Did the Circuit Court use the proper standard of evidence for establishing that an employer's asserted nondiscriminatory reason for a hiring decision is pretextual?" (2) "Can an employer's use of the word "boy" to refer to an employee ever be evidence of racial animus? " Conclusion:The answer was yes and no.T he Court ruled that the Eleventh Circuit had made two separate errors in its decision. **Decisions 3:** Bobby Lee Holmes was sentenced to death after he was convicted of murder and several other crimes. At trial, he was not permitted to introduce evidence suggesting that another person had committed the crimes. **Question** "Does South Carolina's rule governing the admissibility of evidence of third-party guilt violate a defendant's Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and Sixth Amendment rights to confrontation and compulsory process (the ability to compel witnesses to testify)?"

Conclusion:T he Court held that exclusion of a defendant's evidence based on the strength of the prosecution's evidence denies the defendant his constitutional right to "'a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense.'" **Judicial review: Votes for the individual over the government.**