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

The Polm Family Foundation ("Foundation") filed a suit in district court for a declaratory judgment that it was exempt from federal income taxes under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code ("IRC"). At issue was whether the Foundation qualified as a public charity under section 509(a)(3) of the IRC. The court held that, in light of the broad purposes mentioned in the Foundation's articles of incorporation, the court agreed with the government that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether the Foundation would receive oversight from a readily identifiable class of publicly supported organizations. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's conclusion that the Foundation did not qualify as a public charity under section 509(a)(3).

Petitioner applied for a first-class airman medical certificate pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 44703 and, after a period of evaluation, a Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA") Federal Air Surgeon issued a denial based on the conclusion that petitioner did not meet the medical standards set out in the relevant regulations. At issue was whether the National Transportation Safety Board's ("NTSB") affirmance of the denial of petitioner's medical certificate was supported by substantial evidence. The court affirmed the NTSB's decision and held that the petition for review was denied where there was no doubt that the FAA's submissions provided substantial evidence for the denial and where petitioner failed to show that it was unreasonable for the NTSB to credit the FAA's evidence over his own.

The Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians ("Buena Vista") entered into a compact with California to engage in gaming on its tribal land and then petitioned the Secretary of the Interior ("Secretary") for approval of the compact. Amador County, in which Buena Vista's land was located, challenged the Secretary's "no-action" approval claiming that the land at issue failed to qualify as "Indian land." At issue was whether Amador County lacked constitutional standing to maintain the suit and whether a compact, that was deemed approved where he failed to act within the 45 day limit, was reviewable. The court held that Amador County had standing where its allegations were more than sufficient to establish concrete and particularized harm and where Amador County could easily satisfy the requirements of causation and redressability. The court also held that where, as here, a plaintiff alleged that a compact violated the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act ("IGRA"), 25 U.S.C. 2710(d)(8)(C), and required the Secretary to disapprove the compact, nothing in the Administrative Procedures Act, 5 U.S.C. 701(a)(2), precluded judicial review of a subsection (d)(8)(C) no-action approval. Accordingly, the court remanded to give the district court the opportunity to assess the merits of the suit.

The Alcoa Power Generating Company ("Alcoa") petitioned for review of two orders of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("Commission") with respect to the relicensing of its Yadkin Project facilities in North Carolina. At issue was whether the petition for review was ripe in light of on-going state administrative review and stay of certification and whether the certifying agency waived its authority by not issuing a certification that was effective and complete within one year under section 401 of the Clean Water Act ("Act"), 33 U.S.C. 1341(a)(1). The court held that the petition was ripe for review where the waiver issue was fit for review and the legally cognizable hardship that Alcoa would suffer from delay sufficed to outweigh the slight judicial interest in the unlikely possibility that the court may never need to decide the waiver issue. The court also held that there was no waiver issue where the "effective" clause would not operate to delay or block the federal licensing proceeding beyond section 401's one-year period.

Appellants appealed jury convictions of numerous crimes that arose from appellants' bank-robberies including subduing innocent bystanders with gratuitous gunplay, pistol whipping a victim, and peppering a pursuing police car with bullets. At issue was whether the admission of "other crimes" evidence was in error where the evidence was offered for an impermissible purpose and where its probative value outweighed its prejudicial effect. Also at issue was whether there was sufficient evidence to support one appellant's conviction under 18 U.S.C. 924(c)(1)(B)(ii) that he carried the AK-47 with two handles and even if the government satisfied its burden of proof as to this issue, the government failed to show he knew the gun was capable of firing automatically. The court held that there was no error in admitting evidence of appellants' commission of three carjackings, theft of forty cars, and use of false names, as well as marijuana cultivation and distribution, where the evidence was relevant to prove appellants' association and the probative value outweighed the potential for prejudice. The court also held that evidence of the "Silver Spring" carjacking did not amount to grave error and that the prejudice resulting from the carjacking was slight when compared to the evidence of the violence acts for which appellants were indicated. The court further held that it was reasonable for the jury to conclude that appellant carried a machinegun and that section 924(c) did not require proof that appellant knew the weapon was a machinegun. The court finally held that appellants' numerous other claims were without merit.

Plaintiffs, two scientists, brought a suit to enjoin the National Institutes of Health ("NIH") from funding research using human embryonic stem cells ("ESCs") pursuant to the NIH's 2009 Guidelines ("Guidelines"). At issue was whether the preliminary injunction was properly granted where the district court concluded that plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing that the Guidelines violated the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, an appropriations rider that barred federal funding for research in which a human embryo was destroyed. The court vacated the preliminary injunction and held that plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker was ambiguous and the NIH seemed reasonably to have concluded that, although Dickey-Wicker barred funding for the destructive act of deriving an ESC from an embryo, it did not prohibit funding a research project in which an ESC would be used.

The Chamber of Commerce and the National Automobile Dealers Association petitioned for review of a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") granting California a waiver from federal preemption under the Clean Air Act ("CAA"), 42 U.S.C. 7543(a). At issue was whether Article III of the Constitution granted the court jurisdiction to decide the case. The court dismissed the petition for review without reaching its merits and held that even if the EPA's decision to grant California a waiver for its emissions standards once posed an imminent threat of injury to petitioners, the agency's subsequent adoption of federal standards eliminated any independent threat that may have existed.

The Pacific Regional Director of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service ("Director") caused four oil and gas leases off the coast of California, for which appellants had originally paid the United States over $140 million, to expire. The Director later testified that he based his decision solely on political considerations and that absent such considerations, he would have extended the leases instead. At issue was whether the Interior Board of Land Appeals ("IBLA") should have adopted the decision the Director said he would have made absent political influence in order to cure the Director's original decision of political taint. The court affirmed the district court's decision and held that the IBLA fulfilled its role and appellants received all they were entitled to, i.e., an agency decision on the merits without regard to extrastatutory, political factors.

Appellant was convicted and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment and ordered to pay $160,000 in restitution to the Naval Research Laboratory ("Research Laboratory") when he stole computer equipment over the course of ten years as an employee of the Research Laboratory. At issue was whether the costs of the Research Laboratory's internal investigation constituted necessary expenses that were incurred during participation in the investigation and prosecution of the offense under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act ("Act"), 18 U.S.C. 3663A(b)(4). The court reversed the district court's judgment ordering restitution and held that the text of the Act did not authorize restitution for the costs of an organization's internal investigation at least when the internal investigation was neither required nor requested by the criminal investigators or prosecutors.

Appellee filed an action against appellants, sisters who were traveling together aboard Pan Am Airways Flight 73 when Libyan terrorists hijacked the plane and held it for sixteen hours on the tarmac in Pakistan, seeking to compel arbitration under the Federal Arbitrarion Act ("Arbitration Act"), 9 U.S.C. 4. While the suit was pending, the United States and Libya reached a diplomatic settlement where Libya agreed to deposit $1.5 billion into a settlement fund and Congress provided for the implementation of the settlement fund for all terrorism-related litigation against Libya in American courts. At issue was whether the district court properly granted a motion to compel arbitration under section 4 of the Arbitration Act. The court affirmed the district court's grant of the motion to compel and held that the Libyan Claims Resolution Act, 28 U.S.C. 1605A, did not prevent the district court from ordering arbitration of the underlying dispute.