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

Friends petitioned the Service to list certain species of sturgeon as endangered or threatened. The Service went more than 12 months without making any determinations – initial or final – on Friends’ petition. The district court held that Friends did not give the Service adequate notice before suing and dismissed the complaint. Because Friends did not wait until after the issuance of the positive initial determinations to provide 60 days’ notice of the allegedly overdue final determinations, its suit seeking to compel the final determinations is barred. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Friends of Animals v. Ashe" on Justia Law

After DHS did not grant asylum to appellant, he appealed, and his case is now before the immigration court. While his case was pending in the immigration court, appellant filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq., request for the Department's “Assessment to Refer” regarding his asylum application. DHS concluded that its Assessment to Refer regarding appellant was exempt from FOIA under the deliberative process privilege encompassed within FOIA Exemption 5. The court agreed, finding that the Assessment to Refer was both predecisional and deliberative. The court rejected appellant's objections to that straightforward analysis and affirmed the judgment. View "Abtew v. DHS" on Justia Law

On September 16, 2013, the Commission issued an Order Conditionally Accepting Tariff Revisions filed by ISO New England. In the same order, the Commission rejected the tariff proposal to allocate costs to transmission owners as inconsistent with cost-causation principles and directed ISO New England to submit a compliance filing that would allocate the costs of the Program to Real-Time Load Obligation. On April 8, 2014, FERC issued orders denying requests for rehearing of the Orders issued in Docket ER13-1851 and Docket ER13-2266. TransCanada and the Retail Energy Supply Association filed petitions for review challenging the Orders issued by FERC approving the Winter 2013-14 Reliability Program. The court declined to assess FERC’s conditional approval of the Program in Docket ER13-1851 because FERC made it clear that its decision was only tentative. The court concluded that the Commission’s decision regarding the allocation of the costs of the Program to Load-Serving Entities was a final action in Docket ER13-1851 and is ripe for review; the court found no merit in petitioners' challenges to the cost-allocation decision; and therefore, the court denied the petitions for review of the cost-allocation decision in Docket ER13-1851. The court granted in part the petition for review of Docket ER13-2266 because FERC could not properly assess whether the Program’s rates were just and reasonable. View "TransCanada Power Marketing v. FERC" on Justia Law

In this 42 U.S.C. Medicaid class action, the District appealed two separate awards of attorneys’ fees and expenses for work performed from 2010 to 2012. The court concluded that the district court acted within its discretion with respect to its determinations about the reasonableness of the attorneys' hours in the fee applications; the court rejected plaintiffs' threshold contention that the District waived its challenge to the LSI Laffey rates and determined that the district court did not abuse its discretion in selection of LSI Laffey rates in light of this court's intervening decision in Eley v. District of Columbia; and the court affirmed the award of fees requiring the District to pay for the time plaintiffs’ counsel spent responding to an appeal involving an effort to obtain information used by one of the District’s contractors because the information was necessary for plaintiffs' counsel to litigate some of the claims underlying the Settlement Order. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Salazar v. District of Columbia" on Justia Law

Flytenow developed a web-based service through which private pilots can offer their planned itineraries to passengers willing to share the pilots’ expenses. The FAA issued a Letter of Interpretation, concluding that pilots offering flight-sharing services on Flytenow’s website would be operating as “common carriers,” which would require them to have commercial pilot licenses. Flytenow’s members, licensed only as private pilots, thus would violate FAA regulations if they offered their services via Flytenow.com. The court concluded that the FAA's Interpretation is consistent with the relevant statutory and regulatory provisions and does not violate Flytenow’s constitutional rights under the First Amendment and Equal Protection Clause, and is not unconstitutionally vague. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review. View "Flytenow, Inc. v. FAA" on Justia Law

Dalton Trucking and ARTBA challenged the EPA's final decision authorizing California regulations intended to reduce emissions of particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen from in-use nonroad diesel engines. Dalton Truck sought review of the same EPA decision at the same time in the Ninth Circuit, where ARTBA intervened in Dalton Trucking's behalf. Before this court, Dalton Trucking and ARTBA argue that the Ninth Circuit is the proper venue for their challenges and seek dismissal or transfer of their petitions for review. The court agreed that, pursuant to section 307(b)(1) of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7607(b)(1), venue is not proper in this court because EPA’s decision does not satisfy either of the statutory avenues for filing in the D.C. Circuit. Accordingly, the court dismissed the petitions for review. View "Dalton Trucking, Inc. v. EPA" on Justia Law

The District and the Police Department appealed from the district court's grant of preliminary injunction restraining enforcement of a “good reason” standard in the D.C. Code provision governing the issuance of licenses for the carrying of concealed weapons, D.C. Law 20-279, 3(b). The court noted that the controlling fact in this case is the identity of the judge who decided it in the district court – The Honorable Senior United States District Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr., of the Northern District of New York. Although Judge Scullin served under a properly issued designation, that designation was limited to specific and enumerated cases. The court concluded that the present litigation is not one of those cases. The court concluded that, like the designated judge in Frad v. Kelly, Judge Scullin had a limited designation that did not extend beyond the specifications of that designation. Accordingly, the court vacated the order based on jurisdictional grounds. View "Wrenn v. District of Columbia" on Justia Law

The Coast Guard, after receiving whistleblower complaints, initiated an investigation against two foreign-flagged vessels. The Coast Guard subsequently ordered Customs to withhold departure clearance and the vessels were held for investigation for differing lengths of time, ranging from a couple of days to over a month. The vessels were released after appellants, the ship owners and operators, posted a bond and executed a security agreement. At issue in this appeal is whether the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security – acting through the Coast Guard – may impose certain conditions (nonfinancial in nature) upon the release of ships suspected of violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, 33 U.S.C. 1901(a)(4). Determining that the case is justiciable, the court concluded on the merits that the first sentence of section 1908(e) gives the Coast Guard the requisite authority. Section 1908(e) states that “[i]f any ship subject to the [Convention]…is liable for a fine or civil penalty...or if reasonable cause exists to believe that the ship...may be subject to a fine or civil penalty [Customs]...upon request of the Secretary [the Coast Guard]...shall refuse...clearance,” and as such it clearly provides authority in the Coast Guard to simply hold the ship in port until legal proceedings are completed. Therefore, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Watervale Marine Co. v. DHS" on Justia Law

Petitioner, owner and principal of MacBride Nigeria, seeks review of two of the Commissioner's decisions relating to the loss of concrete masonry equipment shipped from the United States to Nigeria in two separate shipping containers. BDP and Zim organized and carried out the transportation of the equipment. Petitioner alleged two identical complaints against Zim and BDP, contending that they engaged in unreasonable practices when handling the equipment, in violation of Section 10(d)(1) of the Shipping Act of 1984, 46 U.S.C. 41102(c). The court dismissed the portions of the petition relating to the first container because the petition for review of the Commission’s decision was untimely under the Hobbs Act, 28 U.S.C. 2342(3)(B), 2344. The court vacated the decision relating to the second container because the Commission improperly reduced petitioner's award for the loss of equipment. The court remanded for an award of the full amount supported by the record without mitigation and permitted under 46 C.F.R. 502.301(b). View "Adenariwo v. FMC" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to one count of distribution of pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(2) and subsequently appealed his 144 months of imprisonment followed by 240 months of supervised release. Because the court is unable to discern from the trial judge’s unparticularized in-court and written explanations why he found defendant’s conduct more harmful or egregious than that typically falling within the properly calculated Guidelines range of 97 to 121 months, the sentence violates 18 U.S.C. 3553(c)(2). Although defendant failed to preserve a section 3553(c)(2) challenge, the district court's clearly insufficient explanation of the sentence meets the four-part plain error test under the law of the circuit. Accordingly, the court exercised its discretion to notice the error and vacated the sentence, remanding for resentencing. View "United States v. Brown" on Justia Law