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

This case arose when Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, request with the Secret Service, seeking records of every visitor to the White House Complex over a period of seven months. The district court ordered the agency to release the records or assert specific FOIA exemptions on a document-by-document basis. The court held that, both in the 1974 FOIA Amendments and the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA), 44 U.S.C. 2201 et seq., Congress made clear that it did not want documents like the appointment calendars of the President and his closest advisors to be subject to disclosure under FOIA. Granting Judicial Watch's request for certain visitor records would effectively disclose the contents of those calendars. Therefore, the court concluded that such records were not "agency records" within the meaning of FOIA. The White House Complex also housed components that Congress did intend to subject to FOIA. The court concluded that these records of visits were "agency records" subject to disclosure under FOIA. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part and reversed in part. View "Judicial Watch, Inc. v. United States Secret Service" on Justia Law

Petitioners challenged the EPA's final rule establishing emission standards for sewage sludge incinerators under section 129 of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7429. The court remanded to the EPA portions of the rule for further explanation without vacating the current maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards. Specifically, the court directed the EPA to clarify why its Clean Water Act Part 503, 40 C.F.R. pt. 503, regulations controlled for other non-technology factors; to clarify issues related to its upper prediction limit and variability analysis; and to elaborate on how it could use a statistical method to determine whether a limited dataset was representative of incinerators for which it had no data, and to explain why it chose the variables it did for that statistical analysis. In all other respects, the court upheld the EPA's rule against petitioners' challenges. View "Nat'l Assoc. of Clean Water Agencies v. EPA, et al." on Justia Law

Appellants - safari clubs, hunters, and international conservationists - alleged that the Service's failure to take actions concerning the straight-horn markhor was arbitrary and capricious. The court concluded that appellants' claims relating to the 1999 downlisting petition were moot where appellants have obtained all the relief that they sought; appellants' claims concerning the alleged failure of the Service to timely process four applications to import straight-horn markhor trophies were moot and the hunters' related due process claims were necessarily moot as well; and there was no record evidence to support the claim that any of appellants suffered an injury-in-fact from the Services' alleged ongoing policy of delay. Accordingly, the court remanded the case with instructions to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. The portion of the district court's order addressing the claims raised on appeal was vacated. View "Conservation Force, Inc., et al. v. Jewell, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to possessing with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of cocaine base and subsequently appealed the district court's partial denial of his motion for a sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). Defendant argued that the district court should have applied the Fair Sentencing Act's, Pub. L. No. 111-220, 124 Stat. 2372, new 60-month mandatory minimum retroactively in his section 3582(c)(2) proceeding. The court concluded that defendant's argument was foreclosed by its decisions in United States v. Bigesby and United States v. Fields, which held that a defendant convicted and sentenced prior to the Act's effective date could not benefit from the Act's new mandatory minimums in a subsequent proceeding. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Swangin" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, a group of shippers who paid rate-based fuel surcharges, filed an antitrust action alleging that freight railroads engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy. On interlocutory appeal, the freight railroads seek to undo class certification because separate trials were needed to distinguish the shippers the alleged conspiracy injured from those it did not. The court vacated the district court's class certification decision and remanded the case to permit the district court to reconsider its decision in light of Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, which clarified the law of class actions after the district court had certified the class. View "In re: Rail Freight Fuel Surcharge Antitrust Litig." on Justia Law

Petitioners and intervenors petitioned for review of FERC's orders (1) approving PJM's method of disbursing a monetary surplus that resulted from the way it operated its markets, and (2) requiring PJM to recoup money refunded to the virtual marketers in connection with the administrative dispute over the surplus. The court held that FERC gave the virtual marketers reasonable notice that their refunds were under reconsideration, but that FERC's orders were arbitrary and capricious because they were insufficiently justified. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review of the Surplus Orders and granted the petition for review of the Recoupment Orders, remanding for further proceedings. View "Black Oak Energy, LLC v. FERC" on Justia Law

This case concerned challenges to the 2011 Hours of Service (HOS) rule issued by the FMCSA. In Case No. 12-1092, ATA asserted that the new safety-oriented provisions in the final HOS rule were overly restrictive and costly. In Case No., 12-1113, Public Citizen claimed that the rule was insufficiently protective of public safety. The court concluded that what remains of the 2003 Final Rule after two remands and three rulemakings were highly technical points best left to the agency. Therefore, the court generally affirmed the rule and vacated only the agency's application of the 30-minute break to short-haul drivers where the agency failed to explain its decision under the requirements of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Ass'n of the United States v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. View "American Trucking Ass'ns v. FMCSA, et al." on Justia Law

This appeal concerned plaintiff's filing of an administrative complaint with the FEC alleging that various organizations violated election laws during their efforts to keep him off the ballot. The FEC dismissed the complaint and the district court subsequently granted summary judgment against plaintiff, later denying his motion to alter or amend its judgment. Plaintiff appealed. The court rejected plaintiff's claim of competitor standing where he sought to compel FEC enforcement against his opponents years after the campaign had run its course, and claim of informational standing where he asserted an injury that was not sufficiently concrete to confer standing. Accordingly, the court dismissed the appeal and concluded that the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear the suit because plaintiff lacked standing. View "Nadar v. FEC" on Justia Law