Legislation Would Loosen Civil Pleading Standards
Legislation introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter would loosen stricter pleading standards established in two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases.
The legislation requires courts to interpret civil procedure rules in a way that negates two Supreme Court decisions, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the National Law Journal reports. The decisions made it more difficult for plaintiffs to get past the pleading stage, the ABA Journal reported in a July article.
In Iqbal, the more recent decision, the Supreme Court said in May that the plaintiff had not pleaded sufficient facts to sustain a suit that contended his detention after Sept. 11 was motivated by racial bias. University of Pennsylvania law professor Stephen Burbank told the New York Times that the decision “is a blank check for federal judges to get rid of cases they disfavor.”
