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

Petitioners challenged the Commission's order authorizing Nexus Gas to construct and operate an interstate natural gas pipeline and exercise the right of eminent domain to acquire any necessary rights-of-way. Although the DC Circuit rejected many of petitioners' arguments, the court agreed with petitioners that the Commission failed to adequately justify its determination that it was lawful to credit Nexus Gas's contracts with foreign shippers serving foreign customers as evidence of market demand for the interstate pipeline. Accordingly, the court remanded without vacatur to the Commission for further explanation of this determination. View "City of Oberlin v. FERC" on Justia Law

In these consolidated cases, petitioners challenged the EPA's final 2018 Rule, which established overall targets for the fuel market and imposed individual compliance obligations on fuel refineries and importers. The DC Circuit held that all these challenges lacked merit, except for one: that the EPA violated its obligations under the Endangered Species Act by failing to determine whether the 2018 Rule may affect endangered species or critical habitat. Therefore, the court granted the petition for review filed by the Gulf Restoration Network and Sierra Club and remanded without vacatur for the EPA to comply with the Act. The court denied all other petitions for review. View "American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers v. EPA" on Justia Law

First Student petitioned for review of a decision and order of the NLRB finding it was a "perfectly clear" successor employer and violated the National Labor Relations Act by changing the terms and conditions on which it would hire the incumbent employees without bargaining with their union.The DC Circuit denied the petition, holding that not only is the Board's finding that First Student was a perfectly clear successor consistent with Board precedent, it also rests on a reasonable interpretation of the perfectly clear successor doctrine. The court explained that the Board's interpretation was consistent with the Supreme Court's understanding that the doctrine applies where it is perfectly clear that the new employer plans to retain all the employees in the unit. Furthermore, the Board's interpretation also protects the incumbent employees. The court also rejected First Student's alternative claim that the general manager's statements at the March 2nd meeting gave unit employees adequate notice of its intent to impose new terms of employment. Accordingly, the court denied First Student's petition for review and granted the Board's cross-petition for enforcement of its order in full. View "First Student, Inc. v. NLRB" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit affirmed appellant's conviction for violating 21 U.S.C. 960a, which prohibits using the proceeds of drug trafficking to support foreign terrorist groups. The court held that Congress had the authority to criminalize appellant's conduct even though his actions occurred outside of the United States. In this case, appellant was a key leader of an extensive criminal enterprise that produced and transported drugs in a controlled territory. The court also held that appellant's plea agreement precludes his other arguments on appeal. View "In re: Sealed Case" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of class certification in a putative class action of over 16,000 shippers allegedly harmed by a price-fixing conspiracy among the nation's largest freight railroads. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by determining that plaintiffs' regression analysis—their evidence for proving causation, injury, and damages on a class-wide basis—measured negative damages for over 2,000 members of the proposed class. Therefore, common issues did not predominate where at least 2,037 individual determinations of injury and causation were needed. Furthermore, the district court did not abuse its discretion by holding that this analysis was essential to plaintiffs' case for certification. View "In re: Rail Freight Fuel Surcharge Antitrust Litigation" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit denied Alon Petitioners' petition for review of EPA's decision not to revise its 2010 point of obligation regulation requiring refineries and importers, but not blenders, to bear the direct compliance obligation of ensuring that transportation fuels sold or introduced into the U.S. market include the requisite percentages of renewables. The court also denied Coffeyville Petitioners' petition challenging EPA's refusal to reassess the appropriateness of the point of obligation in the context of its 2017 annual volumetric rule, which set the 2017 applicable percentages for all four categories of renewable fuel and the 2018 applicable volume for one subset of such fuel, biomass-based diesel. Furthermore, the court rejected Coffeyville Petitioners' claim that EPA arbitrarily set the 2017 percentage standards too high. Finally, the court rejected NBB's separate claim that EPA set the 2018 applicable volume for biomass-based diesel too low. View "Alon Refining Krotz Springs, Inc. v. EPA" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit alleging that the government unlawfully has permitted funds for promoting the pork industry to be used instead for lobbying on the industry's behalf. The DC Circuit held that plaintiffs offered no evidence that the Board's alleged misuse of checkoff funds caused them to suffer an injury in fact, and therefore the court vacated the district court's order and remanded with instructions to dismiss the case for lack of standing. In this case, a pork farmer's declaration failed to assert a diminish return on investment, a reduced bottom line, or any similar economic injury; nor did it provide evidence that the Board's alleged misadventures have reduced the price of pork. View "Humane Society of the United States v. Perdue" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit denied petitions for review of the EPA's 2015 revisions to the primary and secondary national ambient air quality standards for ozone, except with respect to the secondary ozone standard.The court held that petitioners' arguments, that the primary ozone standard is too lenient because it occasionally permits ozone levels to exceed 0.07 ppm and will allegedly tolerate adverse health effects, lacked merit. However, in regard to the secondary ozone standard, the court held that the EPA has not explained its decision to set a target level of protection against tree growth loss based on a three year average of cumulative, single-year ozone exposures, nor has it justified its decision not to specify any level of air quality requisite to protect against visible leaf injury. Furthermore, the EPA also impermissibly allowed sources that had completed applications for preconstruction permits before the 2015 Rule was adopted to demonstrate compliance with the previous national ambient air quality standards rather than the new, more stringent primary and secondary standards. Accordingly, the court granted those portions of the petition, vacated the grandfathering provision, and remanded for reconsideration. View "Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA" on Justia Law

Defendant and his export business, Wing-On LLC, appealed their convictions of conspiracy to violate the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), unlawful export in violation of the AECA, and conspiracy to launder money.The DC Circuit held that the district court erred in admitting the deposition testimony of a key witness because the government failed to make reasonable efforts before it deported the witness to procure his presence at trial; the jury instruction defining the "willfulness" element of unlawful exportation of defense articles was correct, but the court suggested clarification of the willfulness instruction to more squarely require a finding that defendants were aware of and knowingly violated their legal obligation not to commit the charged actus reus; and the district court did not err by admitting defendant's non-Mirandized statements because he was not in custody where, even assuming language proficiency is relevant to the custody inquiry, a reasonable officer would not have thought defendant's imperfect English meant a reasonable person in his position would have believed himself detained during the interview. Accordingly, the court vacated the judgment in light of the error in admitting the key witness's deposition testimony, because the error was not harmless. View "United States v. Burden" on Justia Law

Petitioners challenged the Wehrum Memo, which declares that the plain language of section 112 of the Clean Air Act compels the conclusion that a source of toxic emissions classified as "major" can reclassify to an "area source," and thereby ease its regulatory burden, at any time after it limits its potential to emit to below the major source threshold.The DC Circuit held that the Wehrum Memo was not final agency action and therefore dismissed the petitions for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the Act. The court emphasized that, when assessing the nature of an agency action (including whether it is final), courts should resist the temptation to define the action by comparing it to superficially similar actions in the caselaw. The court held, instead, that courts should take as their NorthStar the unique constellation of statutes and regulations that govern the action at issue. The court also emphasized that, although all legislative rules are final, not all final rules are legislative, and the finality analysis is therefore distinct from the test for whether an agency action is a legislative rule. View "California Communities Against Toxics v. EPA" on Justia Law