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

Appellant sought review of orders and decisions issued by the Tax Court affirming the IRS's decision to impose a levy on his property to collect overdue income taxes. Appellant raised several challenges emanating from an IRS Office of Appeals Collection Due Process (CDP) hearing which resulted in the contested levy. The court denied the IRS's motion to transfer this case to the Eighth Circuit; the court had no occasion to decide in this case whether a taxpayer who is seeking review of a CDP decision on a collection method may file in a court of appeals other than the D.C. Circuit if the parties have not stipulated to venue in another circuit; nothing in the record indicated that the CDP hearing was tainted by ex parte communications between the Settlement Officer and other IRS employees; appellant failed to timely raise his claim regarding the senior Tax Court judge's recusal; the Tax Court's dismissal of appellant's tax liability for the year 2003 was moot; and appellant's challenge to the notice of determination imposing the levy was rejected where the court had no grounds to overturn the IRS's levy determination in this case. Accordingly, the court affirmed the decisions of the Tax Court. View "Byers v. Commissioner of IRS" on Justia Law

Oklahoma petitioned for review of the EPA's final rule establishing a federal implementation plan for the attainment of national air quality standards in "Indian country." The court held that a state has regulatory jurisdiction under the Clean Air Act (CAA), 42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq., over all land within its territory and outside the boundaries of an Indian reservation except insofar as an Indian tribe or the EPA has demonstrated a tribe has jurisdiction. In this instance, the EPA was without authority to displace Oklahoma's state implementation plan on non-reservation Indian country where the agency requires a tribe to show it has jurisdiction before regulating Indian country outside a reservation, yet made no demonstration of tribal jurisdiction before itself regulating those areas. Accordingly, the court granted the petition for review and vacated the Rule with respect to non-reservation lands. View "OK Dept. Environmetal Quality v. EPA" on Justia Law

Appellants, federally registered lobbyists, wishing appointment to one type of advisory committee, the Industry Trade Advisory Committees (ITACs), challenged the constitutionality of the presidential ban on federally registered lobbyists from serving on advisory committees. Appellants alleged that the government has conditioned their eligibility for the valuable benefit of ITAC membership on their willingness to limit their First Amendment right to petition government. The district court dismissed the complaint under Rule 12(b)(6). The court concluded, however, that appellants have pled a viable First Amendment unconstitutional conditions claim. The court remanded for the district court to develop the factual record and to undertake the Pickering v. Board of Education analysis in the first instance. The district court must determine whether the government's interest in excluding federally registered lobbyists from ITACs outweighed any impingement on appellants' constitutional rights. View "Autor, et al. v. Pritzker, et al." on Justia Law

Appellant was detained at Guantanamo Bay for seven years as an enemy combatant. After the Supreme Court decided that Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to challenge the basis of their detentions in Boumediene v. Bush, the district court granted appellant's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The United States released appellant and he filed a complaint a year later, seeking to recover injuries sustained during his detention. At issue was whether the district court has jurisdiction over appellant's claims. The court held that 28 U.S.C. 2241(e)(2) barred claims brought on behalf of aliens determined by Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) to have been properly detained. The court also concluded that the application of section 2241(e)(2) to appellant was constitutional. Accordingly, the court affirmed the dismissal of appellant's claims because Congress has denied the district court jurisdiction to entertain his claims under section 2241(e)(2). View "Janko v. Gates, et al." on Justia Law

Verizon challenged the FCC's Open Internet Order, which imposed disclosure, anti-blocking, and anti-discrimination requirements on broadband providers. The court concluded that the Commission has established that section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. 1302(a), (b), vests it with affirmative authority to enact measures encouraging the deployment of broadband infrastructure; the Commission reasonably interpreted section 706 to empower it to promulgate rules governing broadband providers' treatment of Internet traffic, and its justification for the specific rules at issue here - that they will preserve and facilitate the "virtuous circle" of innovation that has driven the explosive growth of the Internet - was reasonable and supported by substantial evidence; given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. 201 et seq., expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless regulating them as such; and because the Commission has failed to establish that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules did not impose per se common carrier obligations, the court vacated those portions of the Open Internet Order. View "Verizon v. FCC, et al." on Justia Law

Appellant sought attorneys' fees following his largely unsuccessful attempt to obtain documents from the FHFA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552 et seq. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that, even if appellant were eligible for attorneys' fees, he was not entitled to them. The court found no abuse of discretion in the district court's assessment of each of the factors of the entitlement inquiry and affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "McKinley v. FHFA" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against her former law firm alleging that decisions made by the firms' directors who administered the retirement plan breached their fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. 1001 et seq. The court concluded that ERISA's adoption of the common law's standard of fiduciary care in section 1104(a)(1)(B) permitted prudent fiduciaries making important decisions to rely on the advice of counsel in appropriate circumstances. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's conclusion that the directors rightfully relied upon the advice of the plan's lawyer. View "Clark v. Feder Semo and Bard, P.C., et al." on Justia Law

This case arose after the IRS Office of Chief Counsel and the National Treasury Employees Union renegotiated their collective bargaining agreement. At issue on appeal was the Authority's interpretation of section 7106 of the Federal Service Labor Management Relations Statute, 5 U.S.C. 7101 et seq. When an agency asserts that a contract provision falls outside section 7106(b)(3)'s exception to section 7106(a), whether the question concerns the agency's duty to bargain, or the provision's consistency with law, the underlying issue is precisely the same: does the provision represent a appropriate arrangement. In applying two different standards in these contexts, the court concluded that the Authority set forth two inconsistent interpretations of the very same statutory term. Therefore, the Authority acted arbitrarily and capriciously and, therefore, the court vacated and remanded for further proceedings. View "U.S. Dept. of the Treasury v. FLRA" on Justia Law

Plaintiff appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of defendant, concluding that plaintiff's whistleblower complaint did not qualify as a "mixed case" complaint capable of triggering the savings clause under 5 U.S.C. 7702(f). Plaintiff argued that even though he presented his Title VII claim in the wrong forum (the MSPB), because he did so along with a timely filed IRA as part of a "mixed case," his formal EEO complaint should be deemed timely with the correct forum (the DOL) under section 7702(f)'s savings clause. The court affirmed the judgment because plaintiff's formal Title VII claim - filed well after the expiration of the EEO route's 15-day deadline - was untimely where the savings clause excused errors only in the place, not time, of filing. View "Schlottman v. Perez" on Justia Law

EFF appealed the district court's denial of its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552 et seq., request for disclosure of a legal opinion prepared for the FBI by the OLC. The court held that the opinion, which was requested by the FBI in response to the OIG's investigation into its information-gathering techniques, was protected by the deliberative process privilege; the FBI did not adopt the opinion and thereby waive the deliberative process privilege; and because the entire opinion was exempt from disclosure under the deliberative process privilege, the court need not decide whether particular sections were properly withheld as classified or whether some material was reasonably segregable from the material properly withheld. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Electronic Frontier Found. v. Dept. of Justice" on Justia Law