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

Intellistop, Inc. (Intellistop) invented and sells a module that fits into a commercial motor vehicle’s existing brake light system and pulses the brake lights with each application of the brakes. Because the module replaces the steady-burning lights with pulsing lights when installed, Intellistop applied for an exemption. The FMCSA denied Intellistop’s application, and Intellistop petitioned for review, arguing that the FMCSA’s decision was arbitrary and capricious.   The DC Circuit denied Intellistop’s petition. The court explained that the FMCSA sufficiently explained the difference between Intellistop’s application and the exemptions it had previously approved. The FMCSA explained that the “crucial distinction” between Intellistop and the previous exemption applicants was that only Intellistop’s technology modified “the functionality of original equipment manufacturers’ lamps, which are covered by an existing FMVSS.” The FMCSA adequately explained that it treated Intellistop’s application differently because Intellistop was the only exemption applicant that altered the vehicle’s brake light system to function in a way that would not maintain steady-burning brake lights.   Finally, the FMCSA’s concern that Intellistop’s exemption would alter original equipment manufacturer's lights covered by an FMVSS buttresses its conclusion that monitoring Intellistop’s module would be more difficult than monitoring other exemptions. Because previous exemptions used a supplemental pulsing light while maintaining steady-burning brake lights, they did not present the monitoring complication both the FMCSA and the NHTSA feared could result from Intellistop’s module. View "Intellistop Inc. v. DOT" on Justia Law

Jones Lang LaSalle Brokerage, Inc. (JLL) represented both parties to an agreement to lease property in northwest Washington, D.C. Because dual representations of that kind pose inherent conflicts of interest, the District of Columbia’s Brokerage Act required JLL to obtain the written consent of all clients on both sides. JLL’s client on the landlord side of the transaction, 1441 L Associates, LLC, declined to pay JLL’s commission. JLL then brought this action to recover the commission. In defending against the suit, 1441 L argued that JLL, when disclosing its dual representation, failed to adhere to certain formatting specifications set out in the Brokerage Act that aim to highlight such a disclosure. The district court granted summary judgment to 1441 L.   The DC Circuit vacated and remand for further proceedings. The court concluded that that the Act does not invariably require adherence to those formatting specifications. Rather, the specifications go to whether the broker can gain an optional presumption that it secured the required written consent for its dual representation. Even without the benefit of that presumption, a broker can still demonstrate that it obtained the requisite written consent. View "Jones Lang Lasalle Brokerage, Inc. v. 1441 L Associates, LLC" on Justia Law

The Sunshine Act’s “agency” definition only encompasses those with a majority of Board members whom the President appoints and the Senate confirms to such position. Government in the Sunshine Act (Sunshine Act). For years, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and the Center for International Environmental Law (collectively, CBD) enjoyed the benefits from the Sunshine Act’s application to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). By statute, it reorganized OPIC into the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).  Congress shrunk DFC’s Board of Directors (the Board) from fifteen members to nine. DFC’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) serves by virtue of their appointment to DFC instead of to the Board itself. Thus, DFC thought its Board majority was composed only of ex officio members. Accordingly, it promulgated a rule exempting itself from the Sunshine Act without notice-and-comment. CBD sued. The district court granted DFC’s motion to dismiss.   The DC Circuit affirmed. The court held that CBD clearly had informational standing because the information it statutorily sought is from the agency itself. Next, the court held that the Sunshine Act does not apply to DFC because a majority of its Board members serves ex officio by virtue of their appointments to other positions. Finally, the court held that CBD’s claim that DFC violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by not engaging in notice-and-comment rulemaking fails because CBD did not demonstrate any prejudice arising from the asserted APA violation distinct from the legal question of Sunshine Act compliance. View "Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Intl. Dev. Finance Corp" on Justia Law

GMS Mine Repair and Maintenance, Inc. (GMS) is a mining contractor that provides “specialized services” to mines in North America. GMS provided contract services at the Mountaineer II Mine in West Virginia on April 20 and 27, 2021, during which time the MSHA issued several citations against it. Although GMS stipulated the “findings of gravity and negligence,” it contested the $7,331 proposed penalty. Thereafter, GMS went before an ALJ to dispute the MSHA’s method of calculating the penalty. The Secretary, representing the MSHA, argued that all citations and orders that have become final during the 15-month look-back period are counted toward an operator’s history of violations, “regardless of when [the citations or orders] were issued.” The ALJ deferred to the Secretary’s reading, deeming the regulation ambiguous “on its face.” GMS petitioned the Commission to review the ALJ’s determination, and when the Commission did not act, the ALJ’s determination became the final decision.   The DC Circuit denied the petition. The court concluded that the regulation at issue is ambiguous, the Secretary’s interpretation is reasonable, and that interpretation is entitled to deference. The court explained that the Secretary’s interpretation reflects its official and steadfast practice (circa 1982) of including a violation in an operator’s history as of the date the violation becomes final. Second, the subject matter of the regulation is within the Secretary’s wheelhouse and implicates the Secretary’s expertise. View "GMS Mine Repair v. MSHR" on Justia Law

Last year, the court ordered the Department of Energy to address three different categories of comments raised during its informal rulemaking establishing more stringent energy efficiency standards for commercial packaged boilers ("Final Rule"). In response, the Department of Energy published a supplement to the Final Rule.Petitioners, trade associations and natural gas utilities that asserted they were negatively affected by a Final Rule issued by the Department of Energy, claim that the Department of Energy's Final Rule again failed to support its reasoning and did not provide notice and comment as required under the Administrative Procedure Act.The D.C. Circuit granted Petitioners' request to vacate a Final Rule and Supplement imposed by the Department of Energy, finding that the Department failed to offer a sufficient explanation in response to comments challenging a key assumption in its analysis. View "American Public Gas Association v. DOE" on Justia Law

Congress requires transmission operators to charge reasonable rates, which must be submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission through a tariff before the rates can be levied on generators. Here, a generator, Hectate Energy, accuses a transmission grid operator, the New York Independent System Operator, of charging a rate that it had not filed with FERC. Hecate argues that the System Operator’s filed tariff was not detailed enough and that Hectate was surprised when the System Operator charged it $10 million in grid-upgrade costs to connect its power plant to the grid.FERC rejected Hectate's argument, finding that the tariff imposed by the New York Independent System Operator put Hectate on notice of the cost of grid-update costs.The D.C. Circuit agreed with FERC, denying Hectates' Petition for Review, finding the tariff was detailed enough and gave notice that the System Operator would include non-jurisdictional projects in its interconnection study to determine responsibility for upgrade costs. FERC’s order pointed to three cross-referenced sections of the tariff to find sufficient notice that the interconnection study would include information about non-jurisdictional projects. View "Hecate Energy Greene County 3 LLC v. FERC" on Justia Law

On October 29, 2018, 189 people boarded a Boeing 737 MAX airplane in Jakarta, Indonesia. A few minutes after takeoff, the plane crashed. No one survived. Five months later, 157 people aboard a 737 MAX in Ethiopia suffered the same fate. The Federal Aviation Administration then grounded the 737 MAX, prompting modifications by Boeing that eventually led the agency to recertify the plane. In this Freedom of Information Act suit, Flyers Rights Education Fund and its president seek documents that the FAA relied upon during the recertification process. Congress exempted from FOIA’s reach “commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential,” and the district court determined that is precisely what the FAA withheld.   The DC Circuit affirmed. The court explained that when an agency incorporates exempt information into its own comments, it will often be able to release at least part of those comments without revealing the exempt information. Here, however, the FAA explained that these documents “contained FAA comments to Boeing’s project deliverables, which in themselves would reveal technical data and Boeing’s proprietary methods of compliance.” Notably, the FAA released two other documents containing its comments in redacted form. That fact, coupled with the FAA’s nonconclusory affidavits and Vaughn index, demonstrates that it understands the difference between comments that reveal Boeing’s confidential information and comments that do not. Accordingly, even as to these two withheld documents, the FAA has demonstrated that it complied with its segregability obligations. View "Flyers Rights Education Fund, Inc. v. FAA" on Justia Law

Norfolk Southern Railway Company (Norfolk Southern) petitioned for review of a decision of the Surface Transportation Board (STB or Board), the successor agency to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) charged with authorizing certain rail carrier transactions under the Interstate Commerce Act. Norfolk Southern is a rail carrier that owns a 57.14 percent share of the Norfolk & Portsmouth Belt Line Railroad Company (Belt Line), the operator of a major switching terminal in Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk Southern’s majority interest goes back to 1982, when its corporate family acquired and consolidated various rail carriers with smaller ownership interests in the Belt Line. Norfolk Southern’s competitor, CSX Transportation, Inc. (CSX), owns the remainder of the Belt Line’s shares (42.86 percent). This case involves a different question raised before the Board for the first time:  whether the ICC/Board approvals of Norfolk Southern’s subsequent corporate-family consolidations in 1991 and 1998 authorized Norfolk Southern to control the Belt Line. The Board again answered no. Norfolk Southern petitioned for review.   The DC Circuit affirmed. The court concluded that the Board’s decision regarding the 1991 and 1998 transactions is neither arbitrary nor capricious. The Board reasonably sought to avoid an absurd interpretation of 49 C.F.R. Section 1180.2(d)(3)’s corporate-family exemption that would allow a carrier to gain control of a new entity without following the Board’s review requirements and then “cure that unauthorized acquisition by reorganizing the corporate family.” The Board reasonably rejected Norfolk Southern’s claim that, by reshuffling the pieces of its corporate family, it acquired control authority of the Belt Line sub silentio. View "Norfolk Southern Railway Company v. STB" on Justia Law

The Environmental Protection Agency designated northern Weld County, Colorado and El Paso County, Texas, as areas that had already attained a 2015 ozone pollution standard. But EPA reversed course after Clean Wisconsin v. EPA, 964 F.3d 1145 (D.C. Cir. 2020), remanded these designations. In November 2021, EPA folded northern Weld and El Paso Counties into areas previously designated as not having attained the standard. Weld County contends that EPA improperly relied on data available in 2018 rather than updated data and that the data do not support its adverse designation.   The DC Circuit denied Weld County’s petition for review, granted Texas’s petition for review, and reversed the Final Rule insofar as it designates El Paso County to be a marginal nonattainment area. The court held that EPA reasonably relied on the same data it had used to make the original designation and that the data support the revised one. The court explained that Texas argues that El Paso’s 2021 nonattainment designation was impermissibly retroactive because EPA made it effective as of the 2018 attainment designation. As a result, a statutory deadline for El Paso to attain the governing standard passed some three months before EPA made the nonattainment designation. And missing the deadline triggered adverse legal consequences. View "Board of County Commissioners of Weld County, CO v. EPA" on Justia Law

After finding that certain greenhouse gases endanger public health, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) regulated the emission of these pollutants from aircraft engines. The Aircraft Rule aligns domestic aircraft emissions standards with those recently promulgated by the International Civil Aviation Organization (“ICAO”). Petitioners challenge the Aircraft Rule, arguing the EPA should have promulgated more stringent standards than those set by ICAO. They contend the agency acted unlawfully as well as arbitrarily and capriciously by aligning domestic standards with ICAO’s technology-following standards rather than establishing technology-forcing standards.   The DC Circuit denied the petitions. The court held that the Aircraft Rule is within the EPA’s authority under section 231 of the Clean Air Act and that the agency reasonably explained its decision to harmonize domestic regulation with the ICAO standards. The court reasoned that the EPA possesses substantial discretion to regulate aircraft emissions under section 231 of the Clean Air Act. In aligning domestic regulation with standards promulgated by ICAO, the EPA acted lawfully, and petitioners have not shown the agency’s decision was arbitrary and capricious. View "State of California v. EPA" on Justia Law