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

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

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

This case concerned SPP and MISO's, two regional transmission organizations (RTOs), dispute over the interpretation of a single contract provision. FERC resolved the conflict against SPP. The court applied both the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq., and the "Chevron-like analysis" that governs review of such an interpretation and found that the Commission failed to provide a reasoned explanation for its decision. Accordingly, the court concluded that the Commission's decision was arbitrary and capricious. The court vacated and remanded the orders. View "Southwest Power Pool, Inc. v. FERC" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit against the District and others, alleging that strip searching incoming detainees violated the Fourth Amendment and, where men were not similarly strip searched, the Fifth Amendment's equal protection guarantee. The court concluded, under Bame v. Dillard, that the Superior Court Marshal was entitled to qualified immunity because the Fourth Amendment right he was accused of violating was not clearly established at the time of any violation. The court agreed with the district court that there was no circumstantial evidence that the Marshal purposefully directed that women and men be searched differently at the Superior Court cellblock. According, the Marshal was entitled to qualified immunity because class members have failed to show that he violated their Fifth Amendment rights. The court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Johnson, et al. v. Government of the District of Columbia, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs and their companies filed suit alleging that the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, 42 U.S.C. 300gg-13(a)(4), violated their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq., the Free Exercise Clause, the Free Speech Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq. The court concluded that, even if the government had a compelling interest - from safeguarding the public health to protecting a woman's compelling interest in autonomy and promoting gender equality, the mandate was not the most restrictive means of furthering that interest. The court concluded that the district court erred in denying a preliminary injunction for plaintiffs on the grounds that their case was unlikely to succeed on the merits; the court reversed the district court's denial of a preliminary injunction for the individual owners; because the district court premised its decision entirely on a question of law, the court must remand for consideration of the other preliminary-injunction factors; and the court affirmed the district court's denial of preliminary injunction with respect to the companies. View "Gilardi, et al. v. HHS, et al." on Justia Law

Petitioner sought review of the Board's decision rejecting his application for a certificate authorizing the acquisition and operation of a small length of industrial railroad track because his application refused any obligation to transport "toxic inhalation hazard" products. While the court concluded that petitioner did not forfeit his argument on appeal, the court found petitioner's arguments unpersuasive on the merits. Because the Board had permissibly determined the scope of a freight railroad's common carrier obligation under 49 U.S.C. 11101(a), and the Board's rejection of petitioner's application was reasonable, the court denied the petition for review. View "Riffin v. Surface Transportation Board" on Justia Law

The EPA promulgated an interim final rule (IFR) authorizing it to issue certificates of conformity to diesel truck engines manufacturers for 2012 and 2013 model-year engines notwithstanding the engines did not conform to EPA's emission standard for nitrogen oxides promulgated under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act (CAA), 42 U.S.C. 7521(a) - provided the manufacturer paid the government a non-conformance penalty (NCP) as established in the IFR. After notice and comment, EPA replaced the IFR with a final NCP rule establishing new and higher NCPs. Daimler petitioned for review of the IFR on both procedural and substantive grounds, as well as EPA's issuance to manufacturer Navistar four 2012 model year certificates of conformity. The court concluded that, with the publication of the Final NCP Rule, Daimler's challenge to the certificates was moot and dismissed the petition for review. View "Daimler Trucks North America, et al. v. EPA" on Justia Law

This case arose when Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, request with the Secret Service, seeking records of every visitor to the White House Complex over a period of seven months. The district court ordered the agency to release the records or assert specific FOIA exemptions on a document-by-document basis. The court held that, both in the 1974 FOIA Amendments and the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA), 44 U.S.C. 2201 et seq., Congress made clear that it did not want documents like the appointment calendars of the President and his closest advisors to be subject to disclosure under FOIA. Granting Judicial Watch's request for certain visitor records would effectively disclose the contents of those calendars. Therefore, the court concluded that such records were not "agency records" within the meaning of FOIA. The White House Complex also housed components that Congress did intend to subject to FOIA. The court concluded that these records of visits were "agency records" subject to disclosure under FOIA. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part and reversed in part. View "Judicial Watch, Inc. v. United States Secret Service" on Justia Law

Petitioners challenged the EPA's final rule establishing emission standards for sewage sludge incinerators under section 129 of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7429. The court remanded to the EPA portions of the rule for further explanation without vacating the current maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards. Specifically, the court directed the EPA to clarify why its Clean Water Act Part 503, 40 C.F.R. pt. 503, regulations controlled for other non-technology factors; to clarify issues related to its upper prediction limit and variability analysis; and to elaborate on how it could use a statistical method to determine whether a limited dataset was representative of incinerators for which it had no data, and to explain why it chose the variables it did for that statistical analysis. In all other respects, the court upheld the EPA's rule against petitioners' challenges. View "Nat'l Assoc. of Clean Water Agencies v. EPA, et al." on Justia Law

Petitioners and intervenors petitioned for review of FERC's orders (1) approving PJM's method of disbursing a monetary surplus that resulted from the way it operated its markets, and (2) requiring PJM to recoup money refunded to the virtual marketers in connection with the administrative dispute over the surplus. The court held that FERC gave the virtual marketers reasonable notice that their refunds were under reconsideration, but that FERC's orders were arbitrary and capricious because they were insufficiently justified. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review of the Surplus Orders and granted the petition for review of the Recoupment Orders, remanding for further proceedings. View "Black Oak Energy, LLC v. FERC" on Justia Law