• Comments

Amicus Brief IMPA v. US (Cert)

A joint amicus brief submitted by NABL and several other municipal market groups in support of a petition for a writ of certiorari in the Indiana Municipal Power Agency v. US case, which raises several questions relating to the sequestration of Build America Bond (BAB) refund payments.

Interior of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. Source: Phil Roeder via Wikimedia Commons
Interior of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. Source: Phil Roeder via Wikimedia Commons

Download and Access

Amicus Brief

NABL joined an amicus brief submitted by a host of peer organizations in support of a petition for a writ of certiorari in the Indiana Municipal Power Agency v. United States of America case, No. 23-48. The case examines the federal government’s decision to sequester refund payments to issuers of Build America Bonds (BABs) starting in 2013 and continuing through present day. Petitioners are a group of several statewide and local public power agencies that have collectively issued more than $4 billion in BABs. They present two questions before the court:

  1. Whether a payment obligation imposed by Congress on the federal government under a money mandating statute and specifically exempted from later reduction can be reduced, without congressional repeal, by agencies based on administrative interpretations of later-enacted statutes that make no reference to the payment obligation contained in the earlier statute.
  2. Whether a statutory provision creates a contractual obligation when its language and the parties’ course of dealing reflect an intent to contract by the government.

On December 30, 2020, the Petitioners filed a complaint with the Court of Federal Claims, which was later amended. The amended complaint sought the full 35 percent of interest payments for 2013–20301 under two theories: (1) a statutory theory that the Government violates § 1531 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) by not making the full 35 percent payments, and (2) a contractual theory that the Government has breached a contract that arises out of § 1531. The Government moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and the Court of Federal Claims agreed that (1) no statutory claim existed because sequestration applied to these payments, and (2) no contractual claim existed because the ARRA did not create a contract between the government and Petitioners. Petitioners filed a motion for reconsideration, which was denied. They then appealed the order granting the Government’s motion to dismiss and the order denying reconsideration to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which upheld the lower courts ruling on February 17, 2023.

The Petitioners filed a request to the Supreme Court for a petition for a writ of certiorari on July13, 2023.

Read Joint Brief

List of Amici