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

The DC Circuit held that the members of the House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Reform who requested agency information under 5 U.S.C. 2954 have standing under Article III to enforce their statutorily conferred right to information. In this case, members requested information from the General Service Administration related to property owned by the government.The court explained that informational injuries have long satisfied the injury requirement of Article III where a rebuffed request for information to which the requester is statutorily entitled is a concrete, particularized, and individualized personal injury, within the meaning of Article III. The court distinguished that traditional form of injury from the non-cognizable, generalized injuries claimed by legislators that are tied broadly to the law-making process and that affect all legislators equally. Furthermore, nothing in Article III erects a categorical bar against legislators suing to enforce statutorily created informational rights against federal agencies, whether under the Freedom of Information Act or under Section 2954. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's dismissal of the case and remanded for further proceedings. View "Maloney v. Murphy" on Justia Law

The FCC’s Lifeline program offers low-income consumers discounts on telephone and broadband Internet access services. Qualified consumers receive service from eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs), which receive a monthly federal support payment for each Lifeline subscriber. The FCC allows wireless resellers to provide Lifeline services. Many subscribers pay the ETC a recurring, discounted monthly fee. Some reseller ETCs offer prepaid wireless plans for which ETCs receive monthly Lifeline payments. ETCs must initiate the de-enrollment of Lifeline subscribers on prepaid plans who have not used their Lifeline service within the preceding 30 days; such subscribers are notified and enter a 15-day “cure period,” during which, ETCs must continue to provide Lifeline service.A group composed primarily of Lifeline service providers filed a Petition for Declaratory Ruling requesting that the FCC permit Lifeline ETCs to seek reimbursement for all Lifeline subscribers served on the first day of the month, including those receiving free-to-the-end-user Lifeline service who are in the 15-day cure period. The petition cited 47 C.F.R. 54.407(a), which states that ETCs will receive payments for each actual qualifying low-income customer the ETC serves directly as of the first of the month. The FCC denied the petition, citing section 54.407(c)(2), which states that for prepaid Lifeline plans, an ETC “shall only continue to receive [support payments] for . . . subscribers who have used the service within the last 30 days, or who have cured their nonusage.”The D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC’s determination. A statutory argument – that the FCC’s interpretation of its rules violated 47 U.S.C. 214(e) – is foreclosed because it was not raised with the FCC. The FCC position is compelled by the unambiguous terms of the rules. View "National Lifeline Association v. Federal Communications Commission" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit upheld the FCC's order significantly narrowing a frequency band dedicated to fixed satellite transmissions in order to make room for the emerging fifth generation of mobile cellular technology. At issue in this case is whether this change permissibly modified the existing station licenses of three small satellite operators (SSO) and PSSI, a company that broadcasts live events through satellites. The SSOs and PSSI each filed an appeal for review of the FCC's order under 47 U.S.C. 402(b) and a petition under 47 U.S.C. 402(a).In this case, the SSOs and PSSI principally argue that the order exceeds the FCC's statutory authority to modify existing station licenses. The court concluded that, although the governing statutes by their terms speak only of licenses, the FCC gives market access grants the same protection that it gives to full Commission licenses. The court rejected the SSO's claims that the change to their market access grants was too fundamental to qualify as a modification under section 316(a)(1) of the Communications Act of 1934; that the FCC arbitrarily restricted their future business opportunities and excluded them from receiving compensation from the future 5G providers; and that the FCC impermissibly sanctioned them without prior notice. The court also rejected PSSI's claim that its licenses to transmit within the C-band uplink have been fundamentally changed. Rather, substantial evidence supported the FCC's conclusion that earth stations—including PSSI's mobile ones—will be able to "provide the same services" to their customers after the license modification. Finally, the court concluded that the parties' remaining challenges to the order lack merit. View "PSSI Global Services, LLC v. Federal Communications Commission" on Justia Law

E-cigarette manufacturers and retailers, as well as a nonprofit organization, challenged the FDA's Deeming Rule, which deemed e-cigarettes to be "tobacco products" subject to the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act's requirements, under the Appointments Clause and the First Amendment of the Constitution.The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the FDA and held that appellants' Appointments Clause challenge lacks merit and their First Amendment challenge is foreclosed. In this case, even assuming for purposes of argument, that Associate Commissioner for Policy Kux's issuance of the Deeming Rule violated the Appointments Clause and that FDA Commissioner Califf's general ratification of prior actions by the FDA as part of an agency reorganization was invalid, FDA Commissioner Gottlieb's ratification cured any Appointments Clause defect. Furthermore, appellants' challenge to the Act's preclearance pathway for modified risk tobacco products as violative of the First Amendment is foreclosed by Nicopure Labs, LLC v. FDA, 944 F.3d 267, 271 (D.C. Cir. 2019). In Nicopure Labs, the court found unpersuasive the objection that appellants make now, namely that the Deeming Rule violates the First Amendment because it places the burden on manufacturers to show that certain of their marketing claims are truthful and not misleading before they make them. View "Moose Jooce v. Food & Drug Administration" on Justia Law

Hospitals, in calculating their Medicaid fractions -- the proportion of treatment a hospital provided to Medicaid patients -- sought to include days of care funded by Florida's Low Income Pool, an approved Medicaid demonstration project. The Secretary refused to allow the Hospitals to include these patients in their Medicaid fraction, on the ground that the patients were treated out of charity rather than as designated beneficiaries of a demonstration project.The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment in favor of the Hospitals, and agreed with the district court that the Secretary's own regulation states that, for the purposes of calculating the Medicaid fraction, "hospitals may include all days attributable to populations eligible for [Medicaid] matching payments through a [demonstration project]" so long as the services provided under the demonstration project include "inpatient hospital services." In this case, it was "obvious to the [c]ourt that uninsured and underinsured patients received inpatient hospital services" through the Low Income Pool, because (1) the Secretary authorized federal matching funds to reimburse hospitals for these services, and (2) the hospitals rigorously documented the services provided using funds from the Pool. Furthermore, the Fifth Circuit's opinion in Forrest Gen. Hosp. v. Azar, 926 F.3d 221 (2019), supported this conclusion. View "Bethesda Health, Inc. v. Azar" on Justia Law

Statewide filed three actions alleging that certain aspects of DHS's current administration of the immigration-bond system violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and Statewide's right to due process under the United States Constitution. The district court dismissed Statewide I for failure to state a claim and lack of jurisdiction, Statewide II on DHS's motion for judgment on the pleadings, and Statewide III for failure to state a claim.In Statewide I, plaintiffs sued DHS to prevent its collection on breached immigration bonds before the resolution of Statewide's pending untimely appeals; in Statewide II, plaintiffs sued DHS to prevent collection on breached immigration bonds because DHS provided allegedly defective Notices to Appear and Notices to Produce Alien before issuing bond breach determinations; and in Statewide III, plaintiffs sued DHS for rejecting appeals of bond breach determinations that Statewide alleges were timely filed.The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the APA claims in Statewide I and III because the challenged DHS actions are consistent with the pertinent regulations. The court also affirmed the district court's dismissal of the due process claims in Statewide I, II, and III because the multiple means DHS provides to contest final bond breach determinations afford Statewide constitutionally sufficient process. View "Statewide Bonding, Inc. v. Department of Homeland Security" on Justia Law

After the FCC determined that incumbents no longer dominated the telecommunications market because of the plethora of competitor modes of voice transmission, the FCC exercised its statutory authority to forbear from enforcing the wholesale pricing requirement and one element of the unbundling requirement.The DC Circuit denied petitions for review challenging the propriety of the FCC's forbearance of the wholesale price requirements and challenging the forbearance of the unbundling requirement. The court concluded that the Commission looked reasonably at the whole national market for voice transmission and how the incumbents' share of that market is declining rapidly; the Commission was reasonable to focus on the national market when making national policy; and, while the Commission's order did not explicitly address the availability of broadband in rural areas, it clearly stated that it only granted forbearance as to "price cap" incumbents. The court noted that the Commission justified its forbearance policy by stating that it would induce incumbents and insurgents to develop more advanced networks. In regard to the forbearance of the unbundling requirement, the Commission's reasoning largely coincides with its justification for forbearing from enforcing the wholesale requirement. Given that CPUC effectively conceded that greater consideration of public safety would not change the outcome, the court did not think that a remand on this issue was necessary. Finally, the court rejected the remaining administrative law challenges. View "COMPTEL v. Federal Communications Commission" on Justia Law

National Butterfly Center, a 100-acre wildlife sanctuary and botanical garden owned by the nonprofit North American Butterfly Association, lies along the border with Mexico. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) planned to build a segment of the border wall through the Center. The Association sued, citing the Fourth and Fifth Amendments and two environmental statutes. DHS has not analyzed the environmental impact of border wall-related activities at the Center (42 U.S.C. 4332(2)(C)), nor consulted with other federal agencies about how to minimize the impact of those activities on endangered species. An appropriation act subsequently prohibited funding for border fencing at the Center.The district court dismissed all claims, citing the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, 8 U.S.C. 1103, as stripping jurisdiction over the statutory claims because the DHS Secretary waived the application of environmental laws with respect to the construction of roads and physical barriers at the Center.The D.C. Circuit affirmed in part, first holding that the claims were not moot and that jurisdiction over the statutory claims was not stripped by IIRIRA, nor was review channeled directly to the Supreme Court. The court held that DHS’s waiver determination defeats the statutory claims, that the Association failed to state a Fourth Amendment claim of unreasonable seizure of property it acknowledges to be “open fields,” but that the Association stated a procedural due process claim under the Fifth Amendment. View "North American Butterfly Association v. Wolf" on Justia Law

The union represents teachers and other professional employees at schools on U.S. military bases in Puerto Rico. In 2015, the federal agency and the union began negotiating a successor to an expired collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The union sought to continue workday provisions from the 2011 agreement. The agency sought to eliminate the dedicated hour for preparatory and professional tasks and to require teachers to be at school for that hour. The agency argued that these terms implicated its right to assign work (5 U.S.C. 7106(a)(2)(B) and were nonnegotiable. The Federal Service Impasses Panel factfinder concluded that the workday provisions were negotiable and recommended that the successor agreement maintain them; recommended terms to resolve other disputes, including new compensation terms; and recommended that the successor agreement incorporate all provisions on which the parties had already tentatively agreed. The Panel ordered the parties to adopt an entire CBA according to those recommendations.The Federal Labor Relations Authority held that the Panel lacked authority to impose the workday and agreed-to provisions. The Panel is authorized to resolve bargaining impasses but not to resolve antecedent legal questions about whether disputed provisions are negotiable. Those questions turn on the scope of the duty to bargain in good faith, which the Authority must determine. The D.C. Circuit affirmed those rulings but set aside a ruling that the workday provision imposed by the Panel infringed the agency’s statutory right to assign work. View "Antilles Consolidated Education Association v. Federal Labor Relations Authority" on Justia Law

Under the terms of a 2008 injunction, the Secretary must make various Federal Reserve Notes distinguishable to the visually impaired no later than the next scheduled redesign of each denomination. The Council challenged the district court's most recent denial of the Council's Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) motion to impose a firm deadline on the Secretary.The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment and held that the district court violated neither the letter nor spirit of the court's mandate in American Council of the Blind v. Mnuchin, 878 F.3d 360 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (ACB II). In this case, the district court's security rationale is a management consideration, not a budgetary one. The court explained that ACB II does not require the district court to quantify its security rationale in dollar-denominated terms. The district court's feasibility rationale also comports with ACB II's mandate. The court also held that the district court's rationales for denying the Council's Rule 60(b) motion are sufficiently supported by the record where the district court cited the Secretary's estimate that adding the RTF to the $10 note by the end of 2020 would likely push back the security redesign of each denomination by at least two years—possibly more. The district court's feasibility rationale is also well supported by the record. View "American Council of the Blind v. Mnuchin" on Justia Law