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

Defendant appealed his convictions for five counts of wire fraud and one count of theft. Defendant, while serving as former Senator Edward M. Kennedy's office manager, awarded himself unauthorized bonuses. The court rejected defendant's evidentiary arguments; remanded his colorable ineffective assistance claims; and vacated and remanded the restitution order because neither the jury nor the district court made factual findings sufficient to support the order. View "United States v. Pole" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit alleging that the International Plan denied him benefits to which he was entitled. The parties disputed whether plaintiff accrued enough credit under an earlier plan, the Local 963 Plan, which was later merged into the International Plan. On appeal, at issue was whether, because of the procedural irregularities in the administrator's handling of the claim, the district court should have applied a de novo standard of review. The court concluded that the district court applied the correct standard and affirmed the judgment, concluding that plaintiff had not alleged Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. 1001 et seq., violations that rose to a level requiring a more stringent standard of review. View "James v. Int'l Painters, et al." on Justia Law

Appellant challenged the district court's finding that he was not suffering from a severe mental illness when he represented himself at trial nearly six years ago. The court concluded, consistent with Indiana v. Edwards, that it had no reason to disturb the district court's fine-tuned judgment that appellant did not suffer from severe mental illness to the point where he was not competent to conduct trial proceedings by himself. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. McKinney" on Justia Law

The BOP challenged a decision and order of the Authority regarding United States Penitentiary I, a high security facility in Coleman, Florida. The Authority held that BOP was required to bargain with the Union over two proposals relating to BOP's installation of two metal detectors in the compound through which prisoners must pass to enter or exit the recreation yard. The court denied the BOP's motion to dismiss on grounds of mootness and its motion to vacate the Authority's decision and order. The court granted the Authority's cross-petition to enforce its decision and order regarding Proposal 1, and granted BOP's petition to vacate the Authority's decision and order regarding the third sentence in Proposal 2. The court remanded to the Authority to allow it to determine whether, in light of the changed circumstances occasioned by the changed use of the metal detectors, the order to bargain over Proposal 1 should be revised. View "U.S. DOJ v. FLRA" on Justia Law

Petitioners, owners and operators of electrical power generation facilities, challenged several of the Commission's orders relating to the creation of the 2011-2014 "demand curves." NYISO holds monthly auctions to set the price of electrical power capacity in New York utilizing administratively determined demand curves. The court concluded that the Commission reasonably imposed the maximum suspension period; the Commission did not act arbitrarily by ignoring petitioners' argument that the Compliance Curves would necessarily exceed the Proposed Curves; the Commission did not exceed its section 205(e) authority under the Federal Power Act, 16 U.S.C. 824d(e), by suspending the Proposed Rates for longer than the five-month statutory maximum when it accepted the NYISO's voluntarily decision to delay implementation of the new curves; and the court rejected petitioners' challenge to the Commission's approval of NYISO's March 28 filing. The court also rejected petitioners' challenge to several technical aspects of the proposed curves. Accordingly, the court denied the petitions for review. View "TC Ravenswood, LLC v. FERC" on Justia Law

Pursuant to the Library of Congress' policy, the Library recognizes certain employee organizations and gives them meeting space and other benefits. The Cook and Shaw Foundation is a non-profit organization composed of current and former employees of the Library. The Foundation and others filed suit after the Library denied recognition to the Foundation. The court concluded that the complaint failed to allege that the Library's denial of recognition constituted retaliation for statutorily protected activity by employees or applicants for employment. Absent such an allegation, the complaint failed to state a claim under Title VII, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal for failure to state a claim. View "Howard R.l. Cook & Tommy Shaw, et al. v. Billington" on Justia Law

The EPA promulgated a rule in 2001 requiring a 95% reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions by heavy-duty motor vehicles by 2010. Petitioners, competitors of Navistar, challenged the EPA's 2012 rulemaking establishing nonconformance penalties (NCPs) to protect technological laggards, such as Navistar, by allowing them to pay a penalty for engines temporarily unable to meet a new or revised emission standard. The court granted the petition for review because of the lack of adequate notice and opportunity to comment on the amendments to the "substantial work" regulation. In light of the EPA's counsel's statement during oral argument that due to the changed circumstances of Navistar, vacatur would cause no harm, the court vacated the 2012 Rule. View "Daimler Trucks North America LLC, et al. v. EPA" on Justia Law

Abdul Razak Ali was captured in 2002 by U.S. and Pakistani forces and detained as an enemy combatant. When captured at a guesthouse in Pakistan, Ali was with an al Qaeda-associated terrorist leader named Abu Zubaydah. Ali subsequently challenged the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Based on Ali's presence at the guesthouse with Abu Zubaydah, his participation in Abu Zubaydah's training program, his admission to traveling to Afghanistan to fight in the war against U.S. and Coalition forces, and other evidence connecting Ali to Abu Zubaydah fighters, the district court concluded that it was more probable than not that Ali was in fact a member of Abu Zubaydah's force. The court concluded that the facts justify the President's decision to detain Ali as an enemy combatant under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. Pub. L. No. 107-40, section 2(a), 115 Stat. 224. Therefore, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court denying Ali's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. View "Ali v. Obama, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant plead guilty to a charge related to his sexual involvement with a 14 year-old. At issue on appeal are the conditions of supervised release. On the merits, the court found that the district court's own statements, and the sweeping nature of several of the conditions, demonstrated that the court failed to weigh the burden of the conditions on defendant's liberty against their likely effectiveness, as required by 18 U.S.C. 3583(d). Accordingly, the court vacated all the challenged conditions and remanded to the district court to impose special conditions of supervised release in compliance with section 3583(d). View "United States v. Malenya" on Justia Law

Defendant pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. Defendant did not qualify for safety valve relief under 18 U.S.C. 3553(f) because his criminal history score under the Sentencing Guidelines was more than one point. Because of a prior driving-under-the-influence conviction in Georgia, for which he was on probation at the time of his arrest, his criminal history score was three points. Therefore, the district court found defendant ineligible for a sentence reduction. Defendant argued that at the time of his plea to the DUI charge he was not properly informed of his right to counsel and did not validly waive that right, so that the DUI charge was in violation of the Constitution. The court held that the government had the burden of persuasion, but only once the defendant produced objective evidence sufficient to support a reasonable inference that his right to counsel was not validly waived. Accordingly, the court remanded so that the district court could reexamine the evidence introduced by defendant. If defendant has produced objective evidence sufficient to support a reasonable inference that he did not validly waive the right to counsel, then the government must, by a preponderance of the evidence, persuade the court that the waiver was in fact valid. View "United States v. Martinez-Cruz" on Justia Law