Justia U.S. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Appellant, a former official of the District of Columbia Office of the Inspector General (OIG), claimed that he was fired in retaliation for exercising his First Amendment rights by refusing to sign an affidavit his employer drafted for him in response to a former subordinate's employment discrimination claim and instead, appellant rewrote the affidavit in a manner critical of the OIG's decision to terminate the subordinate. The court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the OIG on the First Amendment retaliation claim and appellant petitioned for rehearing. The court held that because appellant spoke as a government employee, the district court rightly granted summary judgment in favor of appellant's employer on this retaliation claim. Therefore, the petition for rehearing was denied. View "Bowie v. Maddox" on Justia Law

Appellant, as personal representative of her brother's estate, sued to recover damages for the shooting death of her brother by a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) detective and contended on appeal that she did not receive a fair trial. The principal issue concerned the district court's rulings on the inadmissibility of portions of an internal MPD report regarding the altercation between the detective and appellant's brother. A related issue involved a violation of the pretrial disclosure requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26. The court held that there was no abuse of discretion by the district court. The record revealed that the district court properly excluded those parts of the report likely to confuse the jury and unfairly prejudice the government. The court held that the government failed to comply with Rule 26(a)(2)(E) by not supplementing the medical expert's disclosure to reflect an interview with the detective on which the expert intended to rely at trial, but that the violation was harmless and so the district court's refusal to strike the expert's testimony was not an abuse of discretion. Accordingly, because appellant's other claims of error and her bias claim were unpersuasive, the court affirmed the judgment. View "English v. District of Columbia, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for attempted enticement of a minor and for traveling across state lines with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. At issue was whether the evidence was sufficient to support his convictions; whether his counsel provided constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel; and whether the conditions of supervised release the district court imposed were erroneous. The court held that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find the necessary intent beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant committed the crimes. The court remanded defendant's ineffective assistance claims for analysis by the district court in the first instance. The court further held that defendant's challenge to the condition that restricted his loitering in arcades and parks and on possessing a camera were foreclosed by United States v. Love where the Love court withheld the same conditions on plain error review. The court also held that the computer-related conditions of supervised release were not plainly erroneous.

In 1988, defendant was convicted of assault with intent to commit rape while armed; assaulting, resisting or interfering with a police officer with a dangerous weapon; and two counts of first-degree burglary while armed. Defendant was sentenced to prison for 18 years to life and while defendant was in prison, the District of Columbia enacted the Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA), D.C. Code 22-4001 to -4017. Defendant challenged SORA under various provisions of the U.S. Constitution, most notably the Ex Post Facto Clause. The court held that, like the sex offender registration requirement in Smith v. Doe, SORA's registration requirement did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause where neither the Council of District Columbia's intent nor SORA's effects were so punitive as to render SORA a form of punishment. The court also held that defendant failed to show that he was entitled to relief in regards to his Fifth Amendment claims. The court further rejected defendant's Eighth Amendment and equal protection claim and defendant's claim under the D.C. Human Rights Act. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

While providing security for a U.S. State Department convoy in the Gaza Strip, Mark Parsons was killed by a roadside bomb. Parsons's estate and his family sued the Palestinian Authority under the Antiterrorism Act of 1991, 18 U.S.C. 2333, alleging that the Authority had provided material support for and conspired with the terrorist or terrorists who detonated the bomb. The court held that, although it agreed with the district court that the family's conspiracy claim theories were too speculative to survive summary judgment, the court believed a reasonable juror could conclude that Authority employees provided material support to the bomber. Accordingly, the court affirmed with respect to the conspiracy claim but reversed as to material support.

This case arose when the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), division of the Department of Homeland Security, changed local work assignments for its inspectors without first negotiating with their union. CBP petitioned for review of the Federal Labor Relations Authority's (Authority) affirmance of an arbitrator's conclusion that this was an unfair labor practice. The court denied the petition for review and rejected CBP's argument that it had no duty to bargain over the disputed changes in work assignment policies because the changes were "covered by" the Revised National Inspectional Assignment Policy (RNIAP) and that, in the alternative, that CBP had no duty to bargain over the changes it made pursuant to the RNIAP because they did not alter inspectors' "conditions" of employment. Accordingly, the court deferred to the Authority's reasonable determination that the RNIAP was not a collective bargaining agreement subject to the "covered by" doctrine and the Authority's reasonable conclusion that the cases CBP cited did not govern the dispute here. Therefore, the court held that the Authority adequately explained its conclusion.

Petitioner was incarcerated when he petitioned the court for writs of mandamus to prevent the district court from transferring two of his civil cases to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. The court had recently held that the filing fee provision of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 38 U.S.C. 1915(b), applied to a prisoner who filed a petition for writ of mandamus in connection with an underlying civil case. At issue was whether the PLRA's three-strikes provision, section 1915(g), likewise applied to a mandamus petition in an underlying civil case. The court held that petitioner's mandamus petitions were subject to the PLRA's three-strikes provision and consequently, petitioner was barred from proceeding in forma pauperis where the underlying actions, which the district court ordered to be transferred to Maryland, were civil in nature. Therefore, the court denied the motions for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and ordered petitioner to pay the full fee in each case before the court would consider his petitions.

Petitioner petitioned the court on July 14, 2010, for a writ of mandamus to compel the district court to grant him in forma pauperis status and permit him to file his civil rights damages suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1983. At issue was whether a dismissal of a complaint for failure to state a claim based on Heck v. Humphrey counted as a "strike" under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 38 U.S.C. 1915(g). The court concluded that it did and joined the Fifth and Tenth Circuits in holding that in the absence of proof "that the conviction or sentence ha[d] been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus," the petitioner failed to state a claim for purposes of section 1915(g). Accordingly, because petitioner, while incarcerated, had filed at least three civil actions that were dismissed on the ground that they were frivolous, malicious, or failed to state a claim, and he had neither offered any valid reason as to why he should not be required to pay in full the appellate filing fee before the court would consider his mandamus petition, nor claimed he was in imminent danger within the meaning of the exception under section 1915(g) of the PLRA's three-strikes provision, the court denied petitioner's motion for leave to appeal in forma pauperis and ordered him to pay the full fee before the court would consider his petition.

Bally's Park Place, Inc. (Bally's) petitioned for review of a decision and order of the NLRB which found that Bally's committed unfair labor practices in violation of sections 8(a)(1) and (3) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. 158(a)(1),(3), when it discharged an employee because of his support for the United Auto Workers. The court held that substantial evidence supported the NLRB's view of the disputed events and that the court would not disturb the NLRB's conclusion that the employee's termination was unlawful. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review and granted the NLRB's cross-application for enforcement.

This case concerned petitioner's handling of accounts belonging to seven Wachovia Securities, Inc. (Wachovia) customers. Petitioner, a registered representative associated with Wachovia, a member of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), petitioned for review of an order of the SEC sustaining a disciplinary action against her by the NYSE. The court denied the petition for review and affirmed the SEC order because the court concluded that the SEC's decision was reasonable and supported by substantial evidence.