美国诉米勒案

This case concerns a bankruptcy trustee's attempt to recover $145,000 misappropriated by shareholders of a failed Utah-based business to pay their personal federal tax liabilities. The trustee filed an "avoidance" suit against the United States under §544(b) of the Bankruptcy Code, invoking Utah's fraudulent-transfer statute as the applicable law. The government argued that sovereign immunity barred such a claim, as no actual creditor could sue the government under state law. The case reached the Supreme Court, which resolved a circuit split on whether §106(a)'s sovereign immunity waiver extends to state-law claims nested within a §544(b) claim.

In an 8-1 ruling delivered by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court's decision. The Court held that §106(a)'s sovereign immunity waiver applies only to the §544(b) claim itself, not to state-law claims nested within it. Consequently, a bankruptcy trustee cannot use §544(b) to pursue state-law fraudulent transfer claims against the United States where sovereign immunity would bar those claims outside of bankruptcy.

The central dispute was whether §106(a) of the Bankruptcy Code, which waives the government's sovereign immunity "with respect to" §544, also waives immunity for the underlying state-law fraudulent transfer claims that serve as the basis for a §544(b) avoidance action.

The decision limits bankruptcy trustees' ability to recover fraudulent transfers made to the federal government, particularly tax payments to the IRS. Trustees are now restricted to the Bankruptcy Code's two-year lookback period rather than longer state-law periods. The ruling was seen as a surprise to the bankruptcy sector but with limited far-reaching implications.