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

Continental extracts gas from leased federal land and pays royalties to the Interior Department. An agency within the Interior Department began an administrative proceeding against Continental by issuing an order demanding more than $1.7 million in additional royalties. The district court subsequently dismissed Continental's suit for judicial review of the Department's decision. At issue is whether Continental filed its action more than 180 days after its “receipt of notice” of Interior’s “final decision” pursuant to 30 U.S.C. 1724(j) & (h)(2)(B). The court held that because Continental could not have known the date of final agency action until July 29, 2013, receipt of notice could not have occurred before then. Therefore, the court concluded that Continental's complaint was timely. The court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Continental Resources, Inc. v. Jewell" on Justia Law

Defendant plead guilty to violating 18 U.S.C. 1546(a), which penalizes the knowing possession of an altered document prescribed by statute or regulation for entry into the United States. The court concluded that defendant failed to show that his counsel’s conduct at the time of his plea fell below the standard of reasonable competence under the first prong of Strickland v. Washington; under the rule of contemporary assessment, counsel had reason to conclude that section 1546(a) encompasses foreign passports; reasonably competent counsel could have understood section 1546(a), in view of its statutory and regulatory predicates, to criminalize the knowing possession of an altered foreign passport that had expired; and by advising a guilty plea counsel ensured that defendant avoided a mandatory two-year sentence on the count that the government agreed to dismiss in exchange for defendant's plea to a count with fourteen months' maximum imprisonment under the Sentencing Guidelines. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Vyner" on Justia Law

Woodcrest seeks to set aside the Board's order requiring it to bargain with the Union and to remand for a new election. The court rejected Woodcrest's claims that the denial of its request to subpoena six individuals irreparably prejudiced its case; that the Hearing Officer abused his discretion when he refused to permit eight, already-subpoenaed witnesses to testify; and that the Hearing Officer abused his discretion by refusing to allow Woodcrest to treat Vergel de Dios as a hostile witness. Therefore, the court held that the Board did not abuse its discretion and denied Woodcrest's request to set aside the Board's order and to remand with direction for a new election. The court granted the Board's cross-application for enforcement of the same order. View "800 River Road Operating Co. v. NLRB" on Justia Law

Defendant was sentenced to 30 months in prison after revocation of his supervised release based on drug charges in Maryland. Defendant appealed. The court held that defendant failed to show clear or obvious error that affected his substantial rights based on a likelihood that the sentencing court's obvious errors affected his sentence. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Kenny" on Justia Law

Two nonprofit organizations, ANSWER and MASF, challenge the District's sign-posting rule that requires removal of signs relating to an event within 30 days of the event, whether the 180-day period for signs on public lampposts had expired or not. The court concluded that the regulation does not impose a content-based distinction because it regulates how long people may maintain event-related signs on public lampposts, not the content of the signs’ messages; the "event-related" category itself is not content based; and therefore, under the intermediate First Amendment scrutiny that is applicable, the rule is a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction. The court explained that the regulation is narrowly tailored to further a well-established, admittedly significant governmental interest in avoiding visual clutter, and the regulation’s definition of event-based signs also guides officials’ enforcement discretion sufficiently to avoid facial invalidation on due process grounds. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment for MASF and remanded for entry of summary judgment in favor of the District. However, the court affirmed the district court’s dismissal of ANSWER’s 42 U.S.C. 1983 damages claim that the District retaliated against it in violation of the First Amendment, and MASF’s claim that the District’s regulation imposes a system of strict liability the First Amendment does not allow. Finally, the court vacated the district court’s imposition of discovery sanctions against the District for seeking discovery without leave of court. View "Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition v. District of Columbia" on Justia Law

Defendants Butler and Jones, serving lengthy prison sentences for drug offenses, challenge the district court's denial of sentence reductions under 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). The district court agreed that it could reduce defendants' sentences, but declined to do so after considering the 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) factors. Determining that it has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1291, the court concluded that the district court did not substantively err in considering the section 3553(a) factors at length. In this case, the district court attached great weight to the fact that each defendant was a key player in one of the largest drug conspiracies in the history of the city. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Jones" on Justia Law

In 2013, the Department of Justice issued a guidance memorandum, the Cole Memorandum, that addresses enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), 21 U.S.C. 801 et seq., in cases involving marijuana. Plaintiff filed a pro se suit against state officials claiming that the Cole Memorandum unconstitutionally commandeers state officials and institutions, and claiming that all defendants violated the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq., by failing to prepare an environmental impact statement before publishing the memorandum. The court agreed with the district court's dismissal of the complaint based on plaintiff's lack of standing because he has not sufficiently alleged that setting aside the Cole Memorandum would redress his alleged injuries from the wider availability of recreational marijuana and new restrictions on medical marijuana, and that any adverse environmental effects of recreational marijuana on his own particularized interests are traceable to the memorandum. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "West v. Lynch" on Justia Law

The ANSWER Coalition challenges a 2008 Park Service regulation authorizing a priority permit setting aside a fraction of those spaces for identified Presidential Inaugural Committee uses on Inauguration Day. The Coalition contends that authorizing Freedom Plaza bleachers in the priority permit violates the Coalition's First Amendment right to instead use the same space for a mass demonstration. The court concluded that the regulation authorizing the priority permit, including the space on Freedom Plaza for the bleachers, is not a content- or viewpoint-based speech restriction, but a reasonable time, place, and manner regulation of the use of a public forum. The court explained that the regulation sets aside bleacher areas, including on Freedom Plaza, for the Inaugural Committee’s use as part of the package the rule reserves to the Committee as event organizer. However, the First Amendment does not support the Coalition's claim of a right to displace spectator bleachers with its own demonstration at Freedom Plaza. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the Park Service. View "A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition v. Basham" on Justia Law

This appeal stems from the United States' attempt to extradite Nizar Trabelsi from Belgium based on a grand jury indictment for various conspiracy and terrorism offenses. The district court denied Trabelsi's motion to dismiss the indictment. The court explained that its review is limited and requires deference to Belgium's decision to extradite Trabelsi. The court concluded that this deference creates a rebuttable presumption that Trabelsi’s extradition, and Belgium’s analysis in deciding to extradite him, comports with the terms of the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Belgium, Apr. 27, 1987, S. TREATY DOC. NO. 104-7. The court concluded that, although Trabelsi is correct that a Blockburger v. United States analysis is not required under the terms of the Treaty, his argument that the Treaty requires a conduct-oriented test is not supported by the text of the Treaty, which refers to “offenses.” Therefore, the court need not reach defendant's remaining arguments and affirmed the district court's order. View "United States v. Trabelsi" on Justia Law

After petitioner was convicted of conspiracy, selling unregistered securities, and mail fraud, the SEC barred petitioner from associating with six classes of securities market participants. The court agreed with petitioner's argument that the Commissioner's imposition of Dodd-Frank’s collateral ban constitutes an impermissibly retroactive penalty because it is premised on pre-Dodd-Frank misconduct. See Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank), Pub. L. No. 111–203, 124 Stat. 1376 (2010). Therefore, the Commission abused its discretion in barring petitioner from associating with the investment adviser, municipal securities dealer and transfer agent classes because those bars are impermissibly retroactive, and the court granted that portion of the petition. The court rejected petitioner's "unclean hands" argument and denied the remainder of the petition. View "Bartko v. SEC" on Justia Law