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

Paul Hudson and the Flyers Rights group petitioned the FAA to promulgate rules governing size limitations for aircraft seats to ensure, among other things, that passengers can safely and quickly evacuate a plane in an emergency. The Administration denied the petition, asserting that seat spacing did not affect the safety or speed of passenger evacuations. The DC Circuit granted the petition for review in part and agreed with Flyers Rights that the Administration failed to provide a plausible evidentiary basis for concluding that decreased seat sizes combined with increased passenger sizes have no effect on emergency egress. However, the court disagreed with Flyers Rights' challenge to the Administration's declination to regulate matters of physical comfort and routine health. In this case, the Administration decided that it should not address those issues at this time, making the very type of regulatory-effort and resource-allocation judgments that fell squarely within the agency's province. The court remanded to the Administration for a properly reasoned disposition of the petition's safety concerns about the adverse impact of decreased seat dimensions and increased passenger size on aircraft emergency egress. View "Flyers Rights Education Fund v. FAA" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the District, alleging both procedural and substantive due process claims after he was sentenced to three consecutive weekends in the D.C. jail for a marijuana possession conviction in 2011 and remained in the jail for two years so that he could complete a prior sentence. The D.C. Superior Court denied his petition for habeas relief in 2012 and when plaintiff appealed, the D.C. Court of Appeals failed to act for another year and a half. The D.C. Circuit held that the Superior Court's 2012 decision lacked the preclusive effect the district court perceived. In this case, because plaintiff was unable to obtain a decision on his habeas appeal once he was no longer in custody, and because section 1983 claims cannot be joined in a habeas proceeding, the Superior Court's unreviewed bench ruling was not the result of a full and fair opportunity to litigate. On the merits, the court held that plaintiff's complaint stated a legally actionable procedural due process claim where his liberty interest sufficed to require that he be afforded some kind of process before he was locked up again. In regard to the substantive due process claim, the district court erred in dismissing that claim based on material beyond the complaint, and not incorporated by reference in it, without converting the motion to dismiss into one for summary judgment as contemplated by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(d) and 56. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded. View "Hurd v. District of Columbia" on Justia Law

Petitioners filed suit challenging EPA's promulgation of a Final Rule setting several renewable fuel requirements for the years 2014 through 2017. The D.C. Circuit rejected all challenges except for one: the court agreed with Americans for Clean Energy that EPA erred in how it interpreted the "inadequate domestic supply" waiver provision. The court held that the "inadequate domestic supply" provision authorizes EPA to consider supply-side factors affecting the volume of renewable fuel that is available to refiners, blenders, and importers to meet the statutory volume requirements. It does not allow EPA to consider the volume of renewable fuel that is available to ultimate consumers or the demand-side constraints that affect the consumption of renewable fuel by consumers. Accordingly, the court granted Americans for Clean Energy's petition for review of the Final Rule, vacated EPA's decisions to reduce the total renewable fuel volume requirements for 2016 through use of its "inadequate domestic supply" waiver authority, and remanded for further consideration. View "Americans for Clean Energy v. EPA" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit challenging D.C. Code provisions directing the District's police chief to promulgate regulations limiting licenses for the concealed carry of handguns (the only sort of carrying the Code allows) to those showing a good reason to fear injury to their person or property or any other proper reason for carrying a pistol (the "good-reason" law). The D.C. Circuit held that, at the core of the Second Amendment lies the right of responsible citizens to carry firearms for personal self-defense beyond the home, subject to longstanding restrictions. These traditional limits include, for instance, licensing requirements, but not bans on carrying in urban areas like D.C. or bans on carrying absent a special need for self-defense. In this case, the District's good-reason law is necessarily a total ban on most D.C. residents' right to carry a gun in the face of ordinary self-defense needs, where these residents are no more dangerous with a gun than the next law-abiding citizen. Therefore, the court could strike down the law apart from any particular balancing test. The court vacated the district courts' orders and remanded with instructions to enter permanent injunctions against enforcement of the good-reason law. View "Wrenn v. District of Columbia" on Justia Law

Defendants Lovo, Sorto, and Eshetu were convicted of conspiracy, and Lovo and Sorto were also convicted of using, carrying or possessing a firearm during a crime of violence. The D.C. Circuit held that the district court properly denied the motions to suppress because officers had probable cause to conduct the search; the portion of the statutory crime of violence definition that affects Lovo and Sorto was not unconstitutionally vague; and, although the district court erred in admitting audio recordings without English-language transcripts, the error did not meet the plain-error standard. Because there was insufficient evidence on the record regarding defendants' claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, the court remanded as to this claim. The court affirmed in all other respects. View "United States v. Eshetu" on Justia Law

Hospitals filed suit challenging the formula used by the HHS for calculating certain Medicare reimbursement adjustments for fiscal year 2012. The D.C. Circuit held that HHS violated the Medicare Act when it changed its reimbursement adjustment formula without providing notice and opportunity for comment. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to HHS and remanded for further proceedings. View "Allina Health Services v. Price" on Justia Law

Relator filed two suits alleging that Verizon violated the False Claims Act by overbilling the government in its telecommunications contracts. The D.C. Circuit affirmed the district court's holding that relator's second qui tam action violated the first-to-file bar and that, to proceed, he must file a new action; upheld the dismissal of the second suit without prejudice under the first-to-file bar; rejected Verizon's claim that relator's action should be dismissed with prejudice under the public disclosure bar; and held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to dismiss relator's action with prejudice under Rules 8 and 9. View "Shea v. Cellco Partnership" on Justia Law

The Commission declined to review an ALJ's decision regarding plaintiff's complaint of unlawful interference with his rights as a miners' representative under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Amendments Act of 1977, 30 U.S.C. 815(c)(1). The DC Circuit denied the petition for review of the Commission's decision. Under the totality of the circumstances, upon applying the Secretary's test and viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff, the court held that the ALJ properly applied the summary decision standard in concluding that the conduct of a miner for Armstrong Coal did not rise to the level of Section 105(c) interference. Consequently, the court had no occasion to reach the miner's contention that the Mine Act does not provide for a private right of action against non-management miners. View "Wilson v. MSHR" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit upheld the Department's final rule defining e-cigarette use as "smoking" for purposes of airplane travel under 49 U.S.C. 41706. The Department rested its authority for the regulation on two sections authorizing past aircraft smoking regulations, 49 U.S.C. 41706 (prohibition on "smoking" on scheduled passenger flights within, to, or from the United States) and 49 U.S.C. 41702 ("air carrier shall provide safe and adequate interstate air transportation"). The court held that a "smoking prohibition" reasonably applies to products intended to enable users to inhale and exhale nicotine; the regulation was not arbitrary; the Department acknowledged petitioners' contrary evidence and explained why the regulation was still warranted; and the Department did not impermissibly rely on new studies in the final rule, but instead included new supplementary information that expands on and confirms data in the rulemaking record. Because the court upheld the regulation under section 41706, the court need not address section 41702. View "Competitive Enterprise Institute v. DOT" on Justia Law

The district court denied certification for a class consisting of African-American deputy U.S. Marshals alleging racial discrimination by the United States Marshals Service (USMS). The lead plaintiff, Herman Brewer, petitioned for interlocutory review, but while his petition was pending, he settled his individual claims with the Government. The parties then stipulated to dismissal of the action under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), which allowed the parties voluntarily to dismiss a suit without a court order by filing a jointly signed stipulation with the court. Four current and former deputy U.S. Marshals moved to intervene upon notice of the stipulation. The DC Circuit granted the motion to intervene but declined the petition for review as presenting no question that falls within the court's discretion to hear an interlocutory appeal under the framework announced in Lorazepam & Clorazepate Antitrust Litigation, 289 F.3d 98 (D.C. Cir. 2002). The court remanded for the district court to consider motions to substitute absent class members as plaintiffs and for further proceedings. View "In re: Herman Brewer" on Justia Law