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

The DC Circuit granted a petition for review of the differential treatment by Galveston Port to petitioners, who operate shuttle buses, as compared to taxis and limos. The court held that the FMC's decision accepting that shuttle buses were treated differently than taxis and limos was not sustainable. In this case, petitioners were plainly injured when they were charged more than the other commercial passenger vehicles and the FMC never determined whether the Port justified the differential treatment based on legitimate transportation factors. The court vacated FMC's orders and remanded for further proceedings. View "Santa Fe Discount Cruise Parking v. FMC" on Justia Law

Appellee, a United States citizen who has been detained by the United States military in Iraq for several months, sought release from military custody in a habeas corpus action. While the habeas petition remained pending, appellee argued that the government could not forcibly -- and irrevocably -- transfer him to the custody of another country. The DC Circuit sustained the district court's two orders: the first requiring the government to give 72 hours' notice before transferring appellee to the custody of another country; and the second enjoining the government from effecting a transfer to another country after the government reached an agreement with that country to transfer appellee to its custody. The court held that the government did not possess the authority to forcibly transfer a U.S. citizen to a different foreign country than the one in which she is already present nor to forcibly transfer as long as the receiving country has some legitimate sovereign interest in her (whether or not related to criminal prosecution). View "Doe v. James Mattis" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of a complaint seeking an injunction and declaratory relief to block the Department from pursuing administrative actions to determine whether Arch was obligated to pay benefits to certain of its former employees under the Black Lung Benefits Act, 30 U.S.C. 901–45 (2012). The court held that Congress intended the Act's statutory scheme to be exclusive with respect to the claims to which the statute applied. In this case, Arch's claims were of the type that Congress intended to be reviewed within the Act's statutory structure. Therefore, the court agreed with the district court's dismissal of the complaint for want of jurisdiction because the Act assigned exclusive jurisdiction over Arch's challenges to the Department's administrative process and then the relevant federal court of appeals. View "Arch Coal, Inc. v. Acosta" on Justia Law

SBA filed suit seeking to enjoin rescission of an informal opinion letter issued by the FTC (the 2016 Letter). The 2016 Letter stated that it was the FTC staff's opinion that telemarketing technology used by SBA's members was subject to the FTC's regulation of so-called "robocalls," and it announced the rescission of a 2009 FTC staff letter that had reached the opposite conclusion. The DC Circuit dismissed the complaint for failure to state claim and held that because the 2016 staff opinion letter did not constitute the consummation of the Commission's decisionmaking process by its own terms and under the FTC's regulations, it was not final agency action. Finally, SBA's speech claims were pleaded as Administrative Procedure claims under 5 U.S.C. 706(2)(B) and could not proceed without final agency action. View "Soundboard Association v. FTC" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit granted a petition for review of FERC's assertion of Natural Gas Act (NGA) jurisdiction over the transportation and sale of natural gas for resale from the City of Clarksville, Tennessee to the City of Guthrie, Kentucky. As a preliminary matter, the court rejected FERC's standing and ripeness challenges to the court's authority to hear the petition for review. On the merits, the court saw no reason to deviate from the clear and unambiguous language of the statute, as well as FERC precedent, and held that Clarksville was a municipality that was exempt from regulation under NGA Section 7. The court also rejected FERC's alternative argument and held that the articulation of the scope of FERC's jurisdiction did not mean that Congress gave FERC jurisdiction over everything within the three areas listed by FERC. Therefore, the court vacated FERC's order. View "City of Clarksville, Tennessee v. FERC" on Justia Law

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act allows a federally-recognized Indian tribe to conduct gaming on lands held in trust by the Secretary of the Interior for the tribe’s benefit, 25 U.S.C. 2710(b)(1), 2703(4)(B) if the lands had been taken into trust as of the Act’s effective date of October 17, 1988. The Act permits gaming on lands that are taken into trust after that date “as part of . . . the restoration of lands for an Indian tribe that is restored to Federal recognition” to ensure “that tribes lacking reservations when [the Act] was enacted are not disadvantaged relative to more established ones.” In 1992, the Mechoopda Tribe regained its federal recognition; 12 years later, the Tribe asked the Secretary to take into trust a 645-acre Chico, California parcel, so that the Tribe could operate a casino, arguing that the parcel qualified as “restored lands.” The Secretary agreed. Butte County, where the parcel is located, sued. The district court and D.C. Circuit upheld the Secretary’s decision, rejecting an argument that the Secretary erred by reopening the administrative record on remand. The court noted the Secretary’s findings concerning the Tribe’s historical connection to the land and whether current Tribe members were descendants of the historical Tribe and concluded that the Secretary’s substantive decision survives arbitrary-and-capricious review. View "Butte County, California v. Chaudhuri" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit granted the Postal Service's petition for review of the Commission's orders ruling that a mail preparation change constitutes a change in rates if it results "in the deletion of a rate cell" or "in the redefinition of a rate cell if the mail preparation change causes a significant change to a basic characteristic of a mailing." The Commission reaffirmed its earlier decision and held that the Postal Service's mail preparation change constituted a change in rates. The court held that the Commission's new analysis added no discernible clarity to its reasoning and it rested on an unreasonable interpretation of "changes in rates" that "goes beyond the meaning that the statue can bear." The court explained that its 2015 decision found that the Commission may have authority to treat some Postal Service changes in mail preparation requirements as changes in rates, but that such potential authority depended on its articulating and applying a test consistent with the statute. In this case, the Commission's present orders failed to do this and thus the court vacated the orders. View "USPS v. PRC" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit granted the Postal Service's petition for review of the Commission's orders holding that the discontinuation of a service on the Postal Service's authorized list of market dominant products also amounted to a rate increase subject to the statutory rate cap. The court held that the Commission lacked statutory authority to conduct such overlapping review, subjecting discontinuation of a product to multi-factored review under Section 3642 of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act and simultaneously treating it as a rate change under Section 3622 of the Act. View "USPS v. PRC" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, parents of two State Department employees that died during the September 11, 2012 attacks on United States facilities in Benghazi, Libya, filed suit against former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for common-law torts based on her use of a private email server in conducting State Department affairs while Secretary of State and public statements about the cause of the attacks she made in her personal capacity while a presidential candidate. The DC Circuit affirmed the substitution of the United States as the defendant on the claims involving the email server and the dismissal of the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim. The court held that any harm allegedly caused by Clinton's email communications was within the scope of her employment and thus the United States was properly substituted; the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act (Westfall Act), 28 U.S.C. 2679, covered claims because plaintiffs failed to exhaust their administrative remedies under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. 2675(a); and even assuming the truth of the alleged falsity of Clinton's statements, the district court did not err in dismissing the remaining tort claims for defamation, false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress (in relevant part) for failure to state a claim. View "Smith v. Clinton" on Justia Law

Georgetown University and others petitioned for review of the FAA's approval of new flight paths that would bring planes closer to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Petitioners alleged that the FAA failed to comply with environmental and historic preservation laws when assessing the noise impacts of the new departure procedures. The DC Circuit dismissed the petition as time-barred, because the FAA's December 2013 approval of the new routes, not its later publication of the route charts, qualified as the agency's final action, and because petitioners failed to challenge it within the sixty-day statutory time limit and had no "reasonable grounds" for the delay. View "Citizens Association of Georgetown v. FAA" on Justia Law