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

Plaintiff sued defendant, alleging that defendant had unlawfully discriminated against her in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq. Plaintiff, a medical student who was diagnosed with dyslexia and a mild processing-speed disorder, contended on remand that the district court erred by failing to apply the 2008 amendments to the ADA and in relying on her prior academic achievement in assessing whether she suffered from a disability under the ADA. The court held that because plaintiff failed to show legal or clear factual error by the district court, the judgment was affirmed. View "Singh v. GW Univ. School of Medicine, et al." on Justia Law

Appellant and a co-defendant were extradited from Panama following their indictment on one count of conspiracy to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine, intending or knowing that it would be imported into the United States from Columbia, Panama, Nicaragua, and elsewhere outside of the United States. Appellant challenged his conviction and sentence. The court held that the district court had jurisdiction over the charged conspiracy because appellant's extradition conformed with the governing treaty between the United States and Panama, and appellant waived his venue challenge by not raising it in the district court. Appellant identified no plain error affecting his substantial rights in the district court's acceptance of his guilty plea. Further, appellant failed to show he was denied effective assistance of counsel as would entitle him to reversal of his conviction. Because appellant presented no grounds for setting aside the judgment based on his guilty plea, the waiver of his right to appeal a below-Guidelines sentence set forth in the plea agreement was valid. Accordingly, the court dismissed the appeal of his sentence and affirmed the judgment of conviction View "In Re: Sealed Case" on Justia Law

Appellants appealed the dismissal of their lawsuit challenging the determination by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA (collectively, Agencies) that two reaches of the Santa Cruz River in southern Arizona constituted traditional navigable waters (TNW) so as to come within the Agencies' regulatory authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA), 33 U.S.C. 1311(a), 1362(12). Appellants challenged the TNW determination as both procedurally and substantively defective. The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction on the ground that the CWA precluded a pre-enforcement challenge to a TNW determination. The court affirmed the dismissal on the alternative jurisdictional ground that appellants lacked Article III standing. View "Natl' Assoc. of Home Builders, et al. v. EPA, et al." on Justia Law

This case stemmed from the EPA's enactment of twin rules in 2010, pursuant to the Clean Air Act (CAA), setting emissions standards for portland cement facilities - one under a section called National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), 42 U.S.C. 7412(a)(4), the second under a section called New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), 42 U.S.C. 7411. PCA aruged that both rules violated the CAA and were arbitrary and capricious. Environmental Petitioners filed their own petition, arguing that the EPA abused its discretion by declining to include greenhouse gas emissions standards in its NSPS rule. The court agreed that the EPA acted arbitrarily when it promulgated the final NESHAP rule and therefore granted PCA's petition for review with respect to the EPA's denial of reconsideration on that issue. The court also stayed the NESHAP standards for clinker storage piles pending reconsideration by the EPA. The court denied PCA's petitions with respect to all other issues relating to NESHAP and NSPS, and dismissed Environmental Petitioners' petition for lack of jurisdiction. View "Portland Cement Assoc. v. EPA" on Justia Law

Defendant sought reversal of his conviction by a jury for unlawful possession with intent to distribute cocaine and aiding and abetting, claiming trial evidentiary errors. Because defendant elicited testimony concerning the officer's law enforcement experience with drug trafficking in an attempt to demonstrate he was conditioned to see the benign items seized from defendant's bedroom as drug paraphernalia, and elicited his opinion regarding one of those items, defendant failed to show prejudice even assuming the testimony was improperly admitted. Circuit precedent confirmed defendant's other contentions were without merit. The district court neither abused its discretion in excluding expert evidence on the ultimate question in the case, nor erred in allowing the prosecutor to ask guilt-assuming hypothetical questions of a character witness testifying about her personal opinion. Accordingly, the court affirmed the conviction. View "United States v. Guerrero" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of conspiring with a male accomplice to extort money from an ex-lover, a doctor, by threatening to expose their brief extramarital affair to his wife and the medical licensing board. Defendant appealed her conviction on the grounds that the district court improperly denied her a duress instruction and improperly instructed the jury on venue. The court held that the district court correctly declined to instruct the jury on the affirmative defense of duress where no reasonable juror could have found defendant lacked a legal alternative to committing the crime. Further, the conspiracy instruction given by the district court did not require the jury to find that any overt act occurred in Washington, D.C., and defendant did not ask the district court to have the jury determine venue. Therefore, the district court did not commit plain error of any kind. Accordingly, the conviction was affirmed. View "United States v. Nwoye" on Justia Law

This case stemmed from the United States' prosecution of Walter A. Forbes for securities fraud. Appellant, Forbes' defense counsel, sent out Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, requests to the SEC, seeking, among other things, the notes of SEC staff members taken during their conversations with certain government witnesses and their attorneys. On appeal, appellant argued that the Department of Justice's disclosure of 11 of the requested set of notes waived work product protection, not only for the documents that were released, but also for the remaining 103 sets of SEC notes. The court held that the controversy was moot with respect to the 11 documents because they had been disclosed by the Justice Department. As to the remaining 103 sets of notes, the court did not believe the SEC waived work product protection or that the Justice Department's action in the criminal trial had that effect. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed. View "Williams & Connolly v. SEC" on Justia Law

American Airlines (American) petitioned for review of the TSA's denial of a request for reimbursement of American's expenditures on an "in-line" baggage-screening system in its new terminal at JFK International Airport. American argued that the TSA failed to comply with Congress's requirements for the agency's reimbursement determinations. Because the TSA either failed to base its reimbursement decision on the prioritization list mandated in 49 U.S.C. 44923 or failed to create a suitable prioritization list in the first place, the court granted American's petition and remanded to the TSA for further proceedings. View "American Airlines, Inc. v. TSA, et al." on Justia Law

The District of Columbia appealed the denial of its motion to vacate a preliminary injunction pursuant to Rule 60(b)(5) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The injunction was issued in 1995 in response to a class action complaint alleging that the District of Columbia was violating the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 20 U.S.C. 1400 et seq., by failing to timely pay private providers of special education services and thereby jeopardizing students' special education placements. The district court denied the motion on two grounds: (1) dissolving the injunction and subsequent payment orders "would be disruptive to the status quo" and "counter-productive to the goal" of settling the case "in short order," and (2) the District of Columbia had "overstated both the relevance and the significance" of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Horne v. Flores. The court held that the district court failed to address changed circumstances, as Flores instructed, and reversed and remanded the case to the district court to determine whether, in view of changed circumstances, the District of Columbia's Rule 60(b)(5) motion should be granted. View "Petties, et al. v. District of Columbia, et al." on Justia Law