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

Petitioner Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE) announced plans to list futures contracts based on the Cboe Volatility Index, more commonly known as the “VIX Index.” The following year, the SEC and the CFTC issued a joint order “excluding certain indexes comprised of options on broad-based security indexes”—including the VIX—“from the definition of the term narrow-based security index.” The petition, in this case, challenged the SEC’s 2020 order treating SPIKES futures as futures.   The DC Circuit granted the petition. The court explained that the SEC did not adequately explain why SPIKES futures must be regulated as futures to promote competition with VIX futures. However, the court wrote that while it vacates the Commission’s order, it will withhold issuance of our mandate for three calendar months to allow market participants sufficient time to wind down existing SPIKES futures transactions with offsetting transactions. The court explained that the Exemptive Order never mentions the futures disclosures. And at any rate, those disclosures only partially fill the void left by the absence of the Disclosure Statement. As with the Exemptive Order’s exceptions and conditions, the futures disclosures do not address any number of matters covered by the Disclosure Statement. And even when the two sets of disclosures overlap, the Disclosure Statement tends to provide much greater detail than the futures disclosures. View "Cboe Futures Exchange, LLC v. SEC" on Justia Law

Every five years, the Copyright Royalty Board (the “Board”) issues a statutory license that establishes the terms and rates under which certain entities that stream copyrighted songs over the internet make royalty payments to the songs’ copyright owners. The “webcasters” that are subject to the license are “noninteractive” — i.e., they stream music without letting their listeners choose songs on demand. This appeal challenges on various grounds the Board’s most recent noninteractive webcaster license Final Determination, covering calendar years 2021 through 2025.   The DC Circuit sustained Board’s Final Determination in all respects. The court held that the Board’s decision to set a royalty rate that was slightly below the Willig model’s flawed opportunity-cost measure is neither here nor there. And thus, the court explained, it has no occasion to decide, as SoundExchange urges, whether it would, as a matter of law, violate the willing buyer/willing seller standard for the Board to set a royalty rate below some definitive measure of opportunity cost. View "National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee v. CRB" on Justia Law

Appellant brought an action against the Army in district court, challenging the Secretary’s assignment of a 20% disability rating. According to Appellant the Secretary should have given him a 30% rating, consistent with the rating he had received from the Department of Veterans Affairs in a separate assessment conducted by the VA to determine his eligibility for veterans’ disability benefits. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Army.   The DC Circuit vacated the grant of summary judgment to the Army and remanded. The court concluded that the Secretary’s approach when determining Appellant’s disability rating was inconsistent with the applicable statute and regulations. The court explained that to the extent the Physical Disability Board of Review (PDBR) concluded that Appellant’s leg condition rendered him collectively unfit when considered together with his back condition, it was obligated to assign a rating to the leg condition. By extension, the Secretary, in accepting the PDBR’s recommendation to give no rating to Appellant’s leg condition, acted contrary to law insofar as the PDBR concluded that his leg condition was collectively unfitting together with his back condition. The court further explained that the fact that a condition contributes to a soldier’s unfitness is enough, and the Secretary’s apparent addition of a “significantly” criterion naturally raises questions about what degree and manner of contribution is thought to suffice, questions that the terms of the statute and regulations do not make salient. Any assumption that a medical condition, to receive a rating, must contribute “significantly” to unfitness thus is contrary to law. View "Jason Sissel v. Christine Wormuth" on Justia Law

Petitioner Green Development, LLC (Green Development) sought interconnection with the distribution system of Narragansett Electric Company (Narragansett), a public utility. Accommodation of the increased flows of electricity required certain upgrades to the transmission system owned by Respondent-Intervenor New England Power Company d/b/a National Grid (NE Power). NE Power assigned the costs of the transmission system upgrades directly to Narragansett. The newly assigned costs were reflected in a revised transmission service agreement (TSA) that NE Power and Narragansett filed for approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission or FERC). Green Development protested the revised TSA. The Commission denied Green Development’s protest.  Green Development petitions for review contending that the Commission (1) erroneously concluded that Green Development’s arguments in the underlying section 205 proceeding operated as a “collateral attack” on the Complaint Order; (2) improperly applied the governing seven-factor test; (3) misinterpreted the Tariff’s definition of “direct assignment facilities”; and (4) erroneously failed to apply the filing procedures of Schedule 21-Local Service of the Tariff.   The DC Circuit denied the petitions. First, the court held that Commission has cured any purportedly erroneous ruling that Green Development’s section 205 protest constituted a collateral attack on the Complaint Order. The court rejected Green Development’s fourth claim. The court wrote that the issue with Green Development’s contention is that it presumes that the procedures in Schedule 21-Local Service are “mandatory processes” that applied to the filing of the TSA. But, the SIS and associated technical arrangements “pertain to initiating transmission service” and “do not demonstrate that Narragansett as an existing transmission customer was required to request new transmission service” under the Tariff. View "Green Development, LLC v. FERC" on Justia Law

Appellant applied for Supplemental Security Income based on disability. While her application was pending, the Social Security Administration promulgated rules with new criteria for demonstrating disability and made them applicable to pending claims like Appellant’s. An Administrative Law Judge subsequently found Appellant ineligible for benefits under those updated criteria. Appellant then filed suit in federal district court, and the court overturned the agency’s decision on the ground that application of the new criteria was impermissibly retroactive. The court ordered the agency to reconsider Appellant’s case under the criteria in place when she first filed her claim. The district court rejected all of Appellant’s other challenges to the agency’s decision. Both parties appealed.   The DC Circuit reversed the district court’s decision and remand for further proceedings. The court held that hat application of the new criteria to Appellant’s pending claim was not retroactive, but that the Administrative Law Judge erred in his analysis of evidence from Appellant’s treating physician. The court remanded with instructions to the district court to remand the matter to the Administration to reconsider Appellant’s claim while either according controlling deference to her treating physician’s opinion or offering a substantively reasonable explanation for not doing so. View "Angela Cox v. Kilolo Kijakazi" on Justia Law

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (“RCRA”) governs the treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste. In implementing the RCRA, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) promulgated a rule under which waste is deemed “hazardous” if it is “corrosive.” A scientist and a public interest group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (“PEER”), unsuccessfully petitioned the EPA to expand the definition of “corrosive” wastes so that more wastes would be subject to the RCRA’s most stringent requirements. The question presented in this case is whether the EPA properly declined to revise its corrosivity regulation.The DC Circuit denied the petition for review. The court held that PEER’s arguments concerning the EPA’s erroneous understanding of the ILO encyclopedia analysis and its allegedly improper protection of the commercial use of lime-treated sludge are untimely; the court wrote that, therefore it lacks jurisdiction to consider them. Moreover, the court said it was required to apply a highly deferential standard of review with respect to PEER’s remaining claims and found no basis to disturb the agency’s decisions. View "Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility v. EPA" on Justia Law

Petitioner served as the personal assistant and public-relations secretary to Usama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda and mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attack against the United States. Members of a military commission convicted Petitioner of conspiracy to commit war crimes, providing material support for terrorism, and solicitation of others to commit war crimes. The members sentenced Petitioner to imprisonment for life, and the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review (“CMCR”) affirmed. On Petitioner’s first appeal to the DC Circuit, the court upheld the conspiracy charge but vacated the other convictions as unconstitutional under the Ex Post Facto Clause. The CMCR subsequently reaffirmed Petitioner’s remaining conspiracy conviction and life sentence twice. Petitioner asked the court to vacate his conspiracy conviction or, alternatively, to remand his case for resentencing by military commission members.   The DC Circuit denied the petition. The court explained that Petitioner could have raised the change in law, or other similar objections, in his initial appeal to the CMCR or during the extensive proceedings since then. He did not. On the most recent remand to the CMCR, he questioned the admissibility of the statements in his opening brief but did not argue that Section 948r barred their admission until his reply. Accordingly, the court wrote that it declined to revisit its prior ruling that the convening authority is an inferior officer because the intervening Supreme Court case cited by Petitioner does not clearly dictate a departure from the circuit’s precedent. The court also upheld his sentence of life imprisonment. View "Ali Hamza Ahmad al Bahlul v. USA" on Justia Law

the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted Algonquin a certificate of public convenience and necessity that allowed it and the owner of the neighboring Maritimes & Northeast pipeline to undertake a series of upgrades. Those upgrades are known collectively as the Atlantic Bridge Project (“Project”). As part of the Project, Algonquin planned to build a new compressor station in Weymouth, Massachusetts. The compressor station would pressurize gas traveling north towards Maine. The Town of Weymouth, as well as several residents and environmental groups, petitioned this court to overturn the Commission’s certification decision for the Project. This court found no relevant error in the Commission’s decision and denied the petition. The entities sought review of two orders that followed the Commission’s issuance of the certificate of public convenience and necessity.   The DC Circuit dismissed the petitions. The court explained that to construe the Commission’s denial of rehearing as a reviewable new “order,” that would not change anything. That is because the statute strictly requires that every single “order” we review be accompanied by an “application to the Commission for rehearing.” The court further wrote that the denial of rehearing is not a reviewable order, so the Fore River Residents may not obtain judicial review under 15 U.S.C. Section 717r(b). And even if it were a reviewable order, their petition would be jurisdictionally deficient because they failed to request rehearing of it. View "Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station v. FERC" on Justia Law

Appellant appealed the denial of his motion for compassionate release made pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 3582(c)(1)(A). First Step Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-391, Section 602(b)(1), 132 Stat. 5194, 5239 (2018) (codified at 18 U.S.C. Section 3582(c)(1)(A)). He argued that intervening changes in law, in combination with other factors, warrant that his motion be granted.   The DC Circuit affirmed the denial of Appellant’s motion for compassionate release. The government maintains that Appellant failed to properly exhaust his administrative remedies as to these additional grounds such that the court may not consider Appellant’s contentions on the merits. The court held that Section 3582(c)(1)(A) is not jurisdictional because Congress did not use express language to make it so. The court explained that Appellant’s change in law arguments cannot constitute extraordinary and compelling reasons, whether alone or in combination with other factors. View "USA v. Louis Wilson" on Justia Law

This case concerns how PJM, the manager of a large, multi-state electrical grid, prices the flow of electricity to utilities in times of congestion. Such congestion arises when energy is scarce in a particular location on the grid due to, for example, extreme weather conditions or a fire at a transmission station. That scarcity causes the dispatch of more expensive generation and can trigger the Transmission Constraint Penalty Factor (“Penalty Factor”) when such alternative generation is unavailable. The Penalty Factor imposes an upper bound on the costs PJM will incur to control a transmission constraint, and it is designed to send transparent price signals to the market and incentivize investment that will resolve the congestion and prevent it from recurring. Petitioner Citadel FNGE Ltd. is an energy trading firm. It challenged the Commission’s suspension of the Penalty Factor as arbitrary and capricious.   The DC Circuit denied the petitions. The court explained that substantial evidence supported the Commission’s decision that the Penalty Factor, as applied to the unique Northern Neck circumstances, could not work as designed because it increased costs without incentivizing supply or demand responses. Because application of the Penalty Factor increased costs for consumers without a commensurate benefit, the Commission reasonably found that its application in this context was unjust and unreasonable. View "Citadel FNGE Ltd. v. FERC" on Justia Law