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

Plaintiff filed several requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after he was convicted of narcotics offenses. The DEA denied two of the requests, saying that software plaintiff identified was not an agency record and that copies of administrative subpoenas he wanted could not be located. The D.C. Circuit vacated the district court's grant of summary judgment to the DEA, holding that the government's declarations were insufficient to support summary judgment in its favor. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Aguiar v. DEA" on Justia Law

Oberthur sought review of the Board's orders and a certification decision where the Board found that Oberthur violated the National Labor Relations Act before the representation election by restricting employee speech and freezing employee wage benefits. The D.C. Circuit denied the petition for review, holding that substantial evidence supported the Board's finding that Oberthur violated section 8(a)(1) of the Act by imposing a discriminatory restriction on union-related speech. Furthermore, substantial evidence supported the Board's finding that Oberthur violated section 8(a)(1) and (3) by freezing wage benefits it had granted to its employees through two separate wage benefit programs. The court rejected Oberthur's objections to the disposition of the representation case. Finally, the court held that Oberthur violated sections 8(a)(1) and (5) by refusing to bargain with the union and denying its information requests following certification. View "Oberthur Technologies of America Corp. v. NLRB" on Justia Law

The government may not deny a criminal defendant's request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for records related to his case on the ground that he waived his right to seek that information as part of a plea agreement. The D.C. Circuit held that the government failed to identify any legitimate criminal justice interest served by the waiver. In this case, the district court should have declined to enforce defendant's FOIA waiver on public-policy grounds. The court did not address defendant's alternative argument that some of the records he requested fell outside the scope of his waiver. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's order and remanded. View "Price v. U.S. DOJ Attorney Office" on Justia Law

The Board applied for enforcement of its finding that CNN's replacement of its unionized contractor with a nonunion, in-house workforce violated the National Labor Relations Act. The D.C. Circuit held that the Board's determination that CNN and TVS were joint employers cannot stand because the Board applied a standard for determining whether companies were joint employers that appeared to be inconsistent with its precedents, without addressing those precedents or explaining why they do not govern. Therefore, the court reversed the Board's finding that CNN was a joint employer with TVS. The court affirmed the Board's remaining three unfair-labor-practice findings that did not depend on CNN's joint-employer status. The court affirmed the Board's application and denial of CNN's cross-petition for review in all other respects. View "NLRB v. CNN America, Inc." on Justia Law

Defendants Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard were contractors with Blackwater, which in 2007 was providing security services to the United States State Department in Iraq. Defendants were convicted of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and using and discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. Slatten was also convicted of first degree murder. Defendants' convictions stemmed from shootings in Baghdad that injured or killed at least 31 Iraqi civilians. The D.C. Circuit held that the court has jurisdiction pursuant to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), 18 U.S.C. 3261 et seq., and that venue in the District of Columbia was proper; the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendants' motion for a new trial based on post-trial statements of a government witness; the evidence was sufficient as to all except one of Liberty's attempted manslaughter convictions; the evidence was sufficient as to Slatten; Slatten's indictment charging first degree murder did not constitute vindictive prosecution; the district court abused its discretion in denying Slatten's motion to sever his trial from that of his co-defendants; and imposition of the mandatory thirty-year minimum under 18 U.S.C. 924(c), as applied here, violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded. View "United States v. Slatten" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit alleging that the Service's revamping of the territorial lines of the Devil's Garden Wild Horse Territory section of the Modoc National Forest violated numerous federal laws. The D.C. Circuit held that the Service's decision to eliminate the Middle Section of the Wild Horse Territory Plan was arbitrary and capricious in two respects: (1) the Service failed to acknowledge and adequately explain its change in policy regarding the management of wild horses in the Middle Section as part of a single, contiguous protected Wild Horse Territory, and (2) the Service failed to consider adequately whether an Environmental Impact Statement was required under the National Environmental Policy Act. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment in part and remanded for further consideration. View "American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign v. Perdue" on Justia Law

Petitioners challenged two related but more recent orders from the FCC adopting procedures for an auction designed to make more room on the electromagnetic spectrum for mobile broadband (wireless network) providers. The D.C. Circuit dismissed in part and denied in part the petition for review of the Commending Operations and Channel-Sharing orders. The court held that, insofar as petitioners challenge rules for the repacking process that originated with the Auction Order, their challenges were barred. In regard to the Channel-Sharing Order, the court held that this order was neither arbitrary nor unfounded. In this case, the order sets only modest goals and adopts means that common sense tells the court will advance those goals. Finally, the court lacked jurisdiction over petitioners' final claim against the Channel-Sharing Order: that it flouts the Regulatory Flexibility Act. View "Free Access & Broadcast Telemedia v. FCC" on Justia Law

The right of public access is a fundamental element of the rule of law, important to maintaining the integrity and legitimacy of an independent Judicial Branch. The Dodd-Frank Act does not abrogate the common-law right of public access to judicial records. The D.C. Circuit held that there is nothing in the language of Dodd-Frank to suggest that Congress intended to displace the long-standing balancing test that courts apply when ruling on motions to seal or unseal judicial records. Therefore, the court vacated and remanded because the district court did not apply that test to the motion to unseal the records at issue here, but instead ruled that they were categorically exempt from disclosure. View "MetLife, Inc. v. Financial Stability Oversight Council" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, a group of CareFirst customers, filed a putative class action after CareFirst suffered a cyber attack in which its customers' personal information was allegedly stolen. The D.C. Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of the complaint based on lack of standing. In this case, because the district court dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without expressly inviting plaintiffs to amend their complaint or giving some other equally clear signal that it intended the action to continue, the order under review ended the district court action, and was thus final and appealable. On the merits, the court held that plaintiffs have standing where the fact that plaintiffs have reasonably spent money to protect themselves against a substantial risk created the potential for them to be made whole by monetary damages. View "Attias v. CareFirst, Inc." on Justia Law

After USCIS discovered that an employee had illegally issued nearly 200 certificates of naturalization to individuals who had not satisfied the requirements to become U.S. citizens, the government canceled certificates of naturalization to individuals, including plaintiffs here, without seeking a court order. The State Department then administratively revoked or refused to renew their passports. The D.C. Circuit affirmed the dismissal of plaintiffs' claims that the government's revocations of their certificates of naturalization and their passports violated the Immigration and Nationality Act and due process because they took place through administrative rather than judicial process; affirmed the dismissal of their claims of ethnicity or national origin discrimination; and reversed insofar as the district court held that any plaintiff was barred by failure to exhaust administrative remedies from challenging under the Administrative Procedure Act the government's failure to afford plaintiffs the review the law requires, and pursuing 8 U.S.C. 1503 claims in the correct venues. Accordingly, the court remanded in part. View "Xia v. Tillerson" on Justia Law