Jennifer Lee Mascott
How Judge Mascott rules, drawn from 3 signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
How Judge Mascott decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
Applies a strict clear-statement rule to sovereign-immunity waivers, reading a fee-shifting statute against the government only when the text is unambiguous, and treats a deep circuit split as itself evidence that the required clarity is absent.
“U.S. Supreme Court precedent instructs that we are to interpret statutes to waive federal sovereign immunity only if such a waiver is clear from the statutory text.”
In her Buele Morocho dissent, Mascott read the admission provisions together with the 1996 statutory structure and rejected a literal reading that would impose stricter detention rules on people who requested lawful entry at the border than on those who entered undetected.
“The majority’s interpretation is inconsistent with both the text and structure of IIRIRA and with any ordinary, or commonsense, understanding of the phrase ‘seeking admission.’”
Procedural preferences
Favors en banc review of exceptionally important, circuit-splitting questions before a panel holding hardens into binding precedent, pointing to the practical downstream effects of the ruling as a reason to rehear.
“This extension should be reviewed now, before being cemented as circuit precedent. These cases readily merit en banc consideration.”
Cautions
In special-education disputes, she emphasizes the statutory role and institutional competence of state and local officials and resists court orders that prescribe a single placement for years without continued review.
“This mandating of detailed, finely grained educational policy determinations is not the proper role of federal courts.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
Writing separately when the full court declined to rehear a panel decision awarding Equal Access to Justice Act attorney's fees to immigration detainees, Judge Mascott urged rehearing on the grounds that sovereign-immunity waivers require clear statutory text, that a deep circuit split showed the fee statute was not clear, and that the panel had effectively extended circuit precedent on when the government's position is not 'substantially justified.'
Dissenting from denial of panel rehearing in an IDEA placement dispute, Mascott argued that federal courts should not substitute detailed educational-policy judgments for local and state officials and would have remanded administration of the student's individualized education program to those officials.
Mascott dissented from orders releasing two immigration detainees and read the admission statutes to require mandatory detention for people who entered without inspection and later sought lawful status.
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