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

AMI filed suit challenging the 2013 rule adopted by AMS, a branch of the Department of Agriculture, that modified its prior rule implementing Congress's requirements of country-of-origin labeling (COOL), 7 U.S.C. 1638a. The 2013 rule requires retailers of "muscle cuts" of meat to list the countries of origin and production steps occurring in each country. AMS's previous rule only required a list of the countries of origin preceded by the phrase "Product of." The 2013 rule also eliminated the prior rule's allowance of commingling. AMI argued that compulsion to make the disclosures required by the 2013 rule exceeded the authority granted by the COOL statute and violated its First Amendment rights. The court concluded that AMI was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its claims and that any error in the district court's balancing of the other factors governing the issuance of a preliminary injunction could not on these facts outweigh the likely outcome on the merits. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court denying AMI's motion for a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the 2013 rule. View "American Meat Institute, et al. v. AGRI, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine. On appeal, defendant claimed that counsel's prior representation of an individual involved in the same arrest created an impermissible conflict of interest. The court concluded that, even under the Cuyler v. Sullivan standard applied to cases involving successive representation, defendant still had to demonstrate that counsel's alleged conflict of interest adversely affected his performance. Defendant has not done so where defendant claimed that counsel's performance was defective because counsel coerced defendant into pleading guilty but the record conclusively showed that defendant's guilty plea was voluntary, not coerced. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of conviction because the record conclusively rebutted defendant's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. View "United States v. Wright" on Justia Law

Congress passed the Durbin Amendment as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Pub. L. No. 111-203, 124 Stat. 1376, which modified the Electric Funds Transfer Act (EFTA), Pub. L. No. 96-630, 92 Stat. 3641. At issue were two key provisions of the EFTA: section 920(a), which restricted the amount of the interchange fee and section 920(b), which prohibited certain exclusivity and routing priority agreements. Merchant groups challenged the Board's issuance of regulations imposing a cap on the per-transaction fees banks received (section 920(a)) and, in an effort to force networks to compete for merchants' business, requiring that at least two networks owned and operated by different companies be able to process transactions on each debit card (section 920(b)). Merchant groups sought lower fees and even more network competition. The court applied traditional tools of statutory interpretation and held that the Board's rules generally rest on reasonable constructions of the statute. The court remanded one minor issue regarding the treatment of so-called transactions-monitoring costs to the Board for further explanation. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the merchants and remanded for further proceedings. View "NACS, et al. v. FRS" on Justia Law

The Union petitioned for review of the FLRA's decision that the IRS did not commit an unfair labor practice under 5 U.S.C. 7116 when it failed to provide the Union notice or an opportunity to bargain over an increase in the workloads of IRS Case Advocates. Determining that it had jurisdiction to consider the Union's petition, the court concluded that FLRA precedent established that this bargaining obligation arises only when an agency initiates a change in its policies, practices, or procedures, and FLRA reasonably relied on that precedent. FLRA's determination that the Arbitrator erred in finding an unfair labor practice was adequately explained and was neither arbitrary nor capricious. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review. View "National Treasury Employees Union v. FLRA" on Justia Law

Defendant challenged his conviction and sentence for witness tampering and obstruction of justice. The court concluded that defendant failed to show that his counsel's failure to invoke an entrapment defense prejudiced defendant. The court also concluded that the district court did not commit plain error in sentencing defendant under U.S.S.G. 2J1.2 to concurrent sentences for the same length, one for witness tampering, the other for obstruction of justice. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Solofa" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to drug offenses, but reserved his right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress. Finding no waiver of defendant's argument, the court concluded that the July 2009 search was unlawful because defendant's grandmother could not lawfully permit the police to search defendant's closed shoebox. The court vacated the portion of the district court's order relating to the evidence seized in the January 2010 search and remanded to let the district court have the first opportunity to address whether the evidence seized in January was the fruit of the unlawful search of the shoebox. Accordingly, the court remanded for further proceedings. View "United States v. Peyton" on Justia Law

Defendants Jones, Thurston, and Ball were convicted of distributing small quantities of crack cocaine, but acquitted of conspiracy to distribute drugs. On appeal, defendants challenged their sentences. The court concluded that, given the highly corroborated accounts of defendants' conspiratorial conduct and the district court's evident care in weighing the evidence, it was not clearly erroneous to find that defendants had conspired to distribute crack; nor was it clearly erroneous for the district court to find that the evidence established a single conspiracy; the court rejected defendants' remaining procedural challenges; and defendants's below-guidelines sentences were substantively reasonable. The court rejected defendants' claim that their sentences violated their Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury because they were based, in part, on defendants' supposed involvement in the very conspiracy that the jury acquitted them of participating in. The court held that binding precedent of the court established that the practice did not violate the Sixth Amendment when the conduct was established by a preponderance of the evidence and the sentence did not exceed the statutory maximum for the crime. Finally, even if Thurston and Bell suffered a constitutional injury under the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. 3161-3174, the sentence reductions they received were adequate remedies. Accordingly, the court affirmed defendants' sentences. View "United States v. Jones" on Justia Law

PETA requested records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552 et seq., concerning NIH investigations of animal abuse at a university research lab, and specifically sought documents related to any investigations into complaints filed against three identified researchers. On appeal, PETA challenged NIH's Glomar responses. The court affirmed the validity of NIH's Glomar responses as to any documents that would reveal whether NIH had investigated the three researchers. Because PETA's request encompassed additional types of documents that would not disclose any investigations of the three researchers, the court vacated in part the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of NIH. View "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. National Institutes of Health" on Justia Law

Petitioner, an employee for the EPA, appealed the denial of his claims against the EPA for allegedly retaliating against him in violation of several environmental whistleblowing provisions. There was no adverse action evidenced in Claims 2-8 that the EPA unequivocally barred petitioner from performing Ombudsman duties on December 14, 2000 and that neither petitioner nor Ombudsman Martin were confused about the effect of that action. The ALJ dismissed the claims and the Board affirmed. The court concluded that substantial evidence supported the decision to dismiss the claims. View "Kaufman v. Perez" on Justia Law

Petitioners challenged 2009 and 2012 final rules issued by EPA revising the new source performance standards for steam generating units. The court concluded that, because EPA has not yet resolved petitioners' petitions for reconsideration, the only objections that were properly before the court were those the petitioners made during the public comment periods. The court concluded that EPA reasonably concluded that a unit emitting more than 0.03 lb/MMBtu should remain "subject to an opacity limit" and "use a COMS or perform periodic visual inspections to comply with the opacity standard" to verify that the pollution control and monitoring systems were operating properly; UARG's procedural objection to the allegedly inadequate notice and opportunity to comment was moot; UARG's contention that EPA failed to respond to comments on the 2008 proposal was moot; and the court rejected Texas' challenges to EPA's refusal to allow state-law affirmative defenses against the enforcement of new source performance standards. Accordingly, the court denied the petitions for review. View "Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA" on Justia Law