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

Flytenow developed a web-based service through which private pilots can offer their planned itineraries to passengers willing to share the pilots’ expenses. The FAA issued a Letter of Interpretation, concluding that pilots offering flight-sharing services on Flytenow’s website would be operating as “common carriers,” which would require them to have commercial pilot licenses. Flytenow’s members, licensed only as private pilots, thus would violate FAA regulations if they offered their services via Flytenow.com. The court concluded that the FAA's Interpretation is consistent with the relevant statutory and regulatory provisions and does not violate Flytenow’s constitutional rights under the First Amendment and Equal Protection Clause, and is not unconstitutionally vague. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review. View "Flytenow, Inc. v. FAA" on Justia Law

The Secretary issued regulations setting out reasonable cost limits (RCLs) for specified medical services and establishing certain exceptions to those limits. Canonsburg claimed that the Secretary has violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 551 et seq., because her method of calculation is inconsistent with governing regulations and was promulgated without notice and comment. In light of Canonsburg I, the district court granted the Secretary’s motion for summary judgment, concluding that issue preclusion barred Canonsburg’s suit. The court concluded that the Secretary did not waive her issue preclusion affirmative defense by not raising it at the administrative stage. Moreover, the Secretary asserted it, expressly and properly, in district court and the court is free to affirm the district court's application of the doctrine to Canonsburg's complaint. In light of the Supreme Court's plain language in SEC v. Chenery Corp. (Chenery I and II), the court's own construction of the Chenery doctrine and no persuasive case law to the contrary, the court concluded that the Chenery doctrine does not prohibit raising issue preclusion as an affirmative defense in district court even if the party raising the defense was not a party to the administrative proceeding or was otherwise unable to assert the defense at the administrative stage. Finally, the court rejected Canonsburg's claims of equitable considerations. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Canonsburg General Hosp. v. Burwell" on Justia Law

Appellant seeks information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, and the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a, relating principally to his detention in Yemen from four federal agencies. After filing suit to compel disclosure, the district court granted summary judgment to the agencies and denied appellant's motion for reconsideration. The court concluded that it has jurisdiction to consider appellant’s challenges to the district court’s grants of summary judgment in the FBI and the CIA cases. On the merits, the court concluded that the FBI had performed an adequate search in response to the FOIA request; the FBI and CIA did not waive their application of FOIA Exemption I; and the FBI properly classified certain responsive records after it received his FOIA request. The court rejected appellant's challenges under the Privacy Act where the FBI's declarations satisfied the requirements of Doe v. FBI and the documents withheld by the CIA were not housed in a “system of records” and therefore are beyond the reach of the Privacy Act. Finally, the court found unpersuasive appellant's contention that the district court abused its discretion when it twice declined to review in camera an FBI document, which he claims was improperly classified. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Mobley v. CIA" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit contending that the government's "bulk data program" collection constitutes an unlawful search under the Fourth Amendment. The program operates pursuant to the USA PATRIOT Act, Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 272, where section 215 of the Act empowered the FBI to request, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to enter, orders “requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation . . . to protect against international terrorism.” The district court issued a preliminary injunction barring the government from collecting plaintiffs’ call records, but stayed its order pending appeal. After the court determined that the case was not moot, Judge Brown and Judge Williams wrote separate opinions stating the reasons for reversal. Judge Brown wrote separately to emphasize that, while plaintiffs have demonstrated it is only possible - not substantially likely - that their own call records were collected as part of the bulk-telephony metadata program, plaintiffs have nonetheless met the bare requirements of standing. Having barely fulfilled the requirements for standing at this threshold stage, plaintiffs fall short of meeting the higher burden of proof required for a preliminary injunction. Judge Williams wrote that plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate a “substantial likelihood” that the government is collecting from Verizon Wireless or that they are otherwise suffering any cognizable injury. They thus cannot meet their burden to show a “likelihood of success on the merits” and are not entitled to a preliminary injunction. View "Klayman v. Obama" on Justia Law

Action, a nonprofit organization, filed a series of three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, requests with the Federal Trade Commission seeking records related to the Commission's guides for the use of product endorsements in advertising. At issue is who should pay the costs of satisfying those requests. The Commission and the district court rejected Action’s claims for fee waivers regarding its first and second FOIA requests, and then concluded that Action’s claims regarding its third request were moot. The court concluded, however, that Action's claims regarding its third request were not moot because the Commission has not produced without charge all the non-exempt documents Action sought in its third request. Therefore, Action's entitlement to a public-interest or news-media fee waiver must be reconsidered in light of the full agency record and the clarifications set out by the court. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Cause of Action v. FTC" on Justia Law

This case arose from the Secretary’s decision in 2005 to change the boundaries of the geographic areas used to compute regional wage indices. A group of hospitals challenged the Secretary's decision to include wage data from Southcoast campuses outside the Boston-Quincy area in calculating the index for that area for fiscal years 2006 and 2007. The court concluded that the Secretary's treatment of Southcoast hewed to the existing administrative treatment of such multi-campus hospital groups; there were substantial informational and operational obstacles to implementing a different computational method quickly in 2006 or retroactively; appellants admit that the temporary effect of Southcoast’s multi-campus data on the wage index was a “one-off” occurrence arising from “unusual circumstances” that apparently did not affect any other multi-campus hospital group’s treatment; and nothing in the Medicare Act, 42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq., or established principles of administrative review mandate that the Secretary individually tailor one hospital’s reporting treatment to fit appellants' preferred computational outcome. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Anna Jacques Hospital v. Burwell" on Justia Law

PETA filed suit against the USDA, arguing that the USDA's failure to craft avian-specific animal welfare regulations pursuant to the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), 7 U.S.C. 2131 et seq., violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 706(1). The district court granted the USDA's motion to dismiss, concluding that the USDA’s enforcement decisions are committed by law to its discretion. As a preliminary matter, the court concluded that PETA has organizational standing. On the merits, the court concluded that, even if the USDA has adopted an interim policy of non-enforcement pending the adoption of bird-specific regulations, as PETA alleges, nothing in the AWA requires the USDA to apply the general animal welfare standards to birds before it has promulgated more appropriate bird-specific regulations. In this case, the USDA has not failed to take action where, even assuming that the USDA is compelled by law to act, the court has no power to say that it must do so before finalizing its bird-specific regulations, at least in light of PETA’s abandonment of its argument that the USDA “unreasonably delayed” enforcement. Further, the AWA's mandatory licensure requirement is not directed to the USDA. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "PETA v. USDA" on Justia Law

Grossmont and four other California hospitals sought reimbursement under the Medicare program for so-called “bad claims.” Payment was denied because the claims were submitted to Medicare without first being submitted to the State of California for a determination of any payment responsibility it may have for the claims. The court concluded that Grossmont has failed to preserve its challenge that the mandatory state determination policy violates the bad debt moratorium; Grossmont also failed to preserve its claim that the Secretary’s effort to limit the alternative documentation policy must be rejected because it is a change in policy that must be adopted in a notice and comment rule; and, as applied in this case, the Secretary’s state determination requirement was not arbitrary or capricious. The court need not decide whether the Secretary acts arbitrarily and capriciously if she refuses to allow claims as bad debt if a recalcitrant state refuses to issue state determinations of payment responsibility despite reasonably diligent efforts to obtain them. Finally, the Secretary's conclusion that the hold harmless provision, in Joint Signature Memorandum 370 (JSM 370), does not apply is supported by substantial evidence and is not arbitrary or capricious. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Grossmont Hosp. Corp. v. Burwell" on Justia Law

American Coal appealed the MSHA's citation and fine for a "fire" on one of its coal stockpiles when safety inspectors observed patches of smoldering, smoking coal without visible flames. American Coal argued that the citation and fine should be vacated because a "fire," for purposes of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act, 30 U.S.C. 801 et seq., exists only when there are visible flames and that, even if a fire could exist without visible flames, there was insufficient proof to show a fire of any kind. The court rejected these arguments and denied American Coal's petition for review, concluding that the statutory term “fire” is ambiguous, the Secretary of Labor reasonably determined that the term does not require the presence of flames, and substantial evidence supports the conclusion that the smoldering patches on American Coal’s stockpile satisfied the Secretary’s interpretation of a “fire.” View "The American Coal Co. v. MSHR" on Justia Law

In 1985, Carl Oglesby filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, with federal agencies seeking information on Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen was a former Nazi general through whom the United States engaged in clandestine espionage after World War II. In this appeal, Oglesby's daughter and her partner challenge the adequacy of the Army's and the CIA's justification for withholding certain information on national security grounds. The court affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the Army and CIA with respect to the Army’s transfer of documents to the National Archives, both agencies’ searches for responsive documents, and the CIA’s withholding of information under Exemptions 1 and 3. The court's remand is limited to issues arising from the Army’s release to plaintiff during the appeal of responsive but redacted Army documents that had been held by the National Archives. View "DiBacco v. United States Army" on Justia Law