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

Air Excursions, LLC provides air transportation services in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. It claims that the United States Department of Treasury (Treasury) erroneously disbursed pandemic relief funds to a competitor airline and challenges that disbursement as unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).   The DC Circuit vacated the district court’s order dismissing the complaint on the merits and remanded with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. The court reasoned that the competitor standing doctrine supplies the link between increased competition and tangible injury but does not, by itself, supply the link between the challenged conduct and increased competition. The latter must be apparent from the nature of the challenged action itself—as in U.S. Telecom Association—or from the well-pleaded allegations of Plaintiff’s complaint. The court concluded that the complaint failed to establish that Air Excursions has suffered a competitive injury satisfying Article III’s injury in fact requirement. View "Air Excursions LLC v. Janet Yellen" on Justia Law

Plaintiff sought the services of the customized postage program to print copies of an adaptation of his drawing of Uncle Sam being strangled by a snake labeled “Citizens United” and configured as a dollar sign. However, acting through Zazzle, Inc., a third-party vendor, USPS rejected Plaintiff’s proposed design due to its partisan message, even as it accepted other customers’ postage designs with obvious political content. Plaintiff filed a complaint in the District Court against the Postal Service, contending that USPS’s customized postage program violated the prohibition against viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment. In 2018, while Plaintiff’s case was pending in district court, the Postal Service amended the guidelines of its customized postage program to prohibit, inter alia, all “political” stamps. Plaintiff filed a Supplemental Complaint incorporating by reference every allegation from his First Amended Complaint and further alleging that the 2018 Guidelines were unconstitutional on its face. The district court granted summary judgment and declaratory relief to Plaintiff but declined to award injunctive relief.   The DC Circuit affirmed. The court first noted that Plaintiff has standing to seek injunctive and declaratory relief. The Postal Service rejected his customized stamp design due to its partisan message, even as USPS accepted other customers’ postage designs with obvious political content. As a result, Plaintiff suffered viewpoint discrimination, and his continuing inability to speak through custom stamps while others can is sufficient to support standing. However, the fact that Plaintiff has suffered injury sufficient to confer standing to seek injunctive relief does not necessarily make such relief appropriate on the merits. View "Anatol Zukerman v. USPS" on Justia Law

Appellant challenged the basis of his detention at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. Detained in 2004, Mr. al-Hela filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in 2005 pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Section 2241. The district court denied Appellant’s petition. On appeal, he argued that the length of his detention without trial violated the Due Process Clause. He also argued that the District Court’s procedural decisions and evidentiary rulings deprived him of his right under the Suspension Clause to meaningful review of, and a meaningful opportunity to challenge, the basis for his detention, as well as his rights under the Due Process Clause.   The DC Circuit affirmed. The court explained that it rejects Appellant’s claim that his procedural due process rights were violated. The court held that it need not decide whether due process protections apply to Guantanamo detainees because even assuming the Due Process Clause applies, the court found that the procedures employed by the district court to adjudicate Appellant’s habeas petition satisfy procedural due process. The court further rejected Appellant’s claims that his detention violates substantive due process because there is insufficient evidence that he was an enemy combatant or solely because of the lengthy duration of the military conflict. The court concluded that even assuming the Due Process Clause applies to Appellant, these claims fail on the merits. The court remanded as to Appellant’s claim that his continued detention violates substantive due process because he no longer poses a significant threat to the United States. View "Abdulsalam Ali Al-Hela v. Joseph Biden (REISSUED)" on Justia Law

After a jury convicted Defendant of drug trafficking and unlawful firearm possession, the district court sentenced him to 420 months imprisonment. Defendant challenged that sentence, arguing that the district court procedurally erred by miscalculating his Sentencing Guidelines range in three ways: overestimating the quantity of phencyclidine (“PCP”) he possessed, finding that he made credible threats of violence, and determining that he acted as a manager or supervisor.   The DC Circuit affirmed on the first two points, reversed the role enhancement, and remanded for resentencing. The court explained that the district court found that Defendant’s offense involved 3 to 10 kilograms of PCP, which amounts to a base offense level of 32. This finding was not clearly erroneous. Record evidence demonstrates that Defendant bought a 1-gallon shipment from the West Coast and sold another 24 fluid ounces to the buyer. Together, these amounts surpass the 3-kilogram threshold. Further, the court found that the district court committed no error by finding that Defendant made a credible threat.   In imposing the role enhancement, the district court also referenced another dealer and a would-be buyer, but nothing in the record demonstrates Defendant’s control over either. Defendant preferred not to interact with the other dealer, and his only known contact with the potential buyer was to warn him against texting in uncoded language. The court explained that here, the facts simply do not support the district court’s conclusion. View "USA v. Lamont Johnson" on Justia Law

The Mine Safety and Health Administration (“MSHA”) is an agency within the Department of Labor whose mission is to administer the provisions of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act (“Mine Act”). The Mine Act authorizes the Secretary of Labor (“Secretary”), acting through MSHA, to promulgate mandatory safety and health standards, inspect mines, issue citations and orders for violations of the Act or mandatory standards, and propose penalties for those violations. An inspector for MSHA discovered a crane at Westfall operating on-site with no working service brakes. Eight years after the sentence was deemed a final order, and only after MSHA had begun enforcement proceedings against the operator for failing to pay its delinquent penalties, Westfall filed a motion to reopen the matter. A two-member majority of the Commission granted the motion. The DC Circuit granted the Secretary’s petition for review, reversed the Commission’s decision dismissing Westfall’s motion to reopen as moot, and remanded the case for a prompt disposition. The court explained that the Commission’s decision relies on a ground not raised or addressed by the parties, lacks substantial evidence to support its principal findings, and ignores the potential applicability of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) covering motions to reopen. View "Secretary of Labor v. Westfall Aggregate & Materials, Inc." on Justia Law

Several defendants were charged by indictment in separate cases with various offenses arising from their alleged participation in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Among other charges, the government also charged each Defendant with one count of Obstruction of an Official Proceeding under 18 U.S.C. Section 1512(c)(2). The district court granted each Defendant’s motion to dismiss. The government filed a motion to reconsider, which the district court denied. At issue on consolidated appeal is whether individuals who allegedly assaulted law enforcement officers while participating in the Capitol riot can be charged with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1512(c)(2). The DC Circuit reversed. The court held that the district court erred in dismissing the counts under 18 U.S.C. Section 1512(c)(2). The court wrote that Defendants’ alleged conduct falls comfortably within the plain meaning of “corruptly . . . obstruct[ing], influenc[ing], or imped[ing] [an] official proceeding, or attempt[ing] to do so.” The alternative interpretations of Section 1512(c)(2) proffered by the district court and Defendants failed to convince the court to depart from the natural reading of the statute’s unambiguous text. View "USA v. Joseph Fischer" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs sought class certification to pursue various claims against the Hilton Hotels Retirement Plan (“Hilton Plan”) for what they say are unlawfully denied vested retirement benefits. The district court ultimately denied certification on the ground that Plaintiffs had proposed an “impermissibly ‘fail-safe’” class—that is, a class definition for which membership can only be ascertained through “a determination of the merits of the case.”   The DC Circuit reversed and remanded the district court’s decision, finding that the district court, in this case, bypassed Rule 23’s requirements and based its denial of class certification entirely on the class’s “fail-safe” character. The court explained that the textual requirements of Rule 23 are fully capable of guarding against unwise uses of the class action mechanism. So the court rejected a rule against “fail-safe” classes as a freestanding bar to class certification ungrounded in Rule 23’s prescribed criteria. Instead, district courts should rely on the carefully calibrated requirements in Rule 23 to guide their class certification decisions and the authority the Rule gives them to deal with curable misarticulations of a proposed class definition. View "In re: Valerie White" on Justia Law

Defendant opened bank accounts for fictitious companies, deposited stolen checks into the accounts, and then withdrew the cash from the accounts. After he was arrested, Defendant pleaded guilty to two counts of bank fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, and two counts of conspiracy to launder money. The district court sentenced Defendant to 90 months in prison. However, prior to pleading guilty, Defendant met with prosecutors to discuss the crimes in hopes of obtaining a favorable plea agreement.Defendant and his attorney reviewed the Debriefing Agreement, which stated the prosecution could make derivative use of and may pursue any investigative leads, in this or any other investigation, suggested by any statements made by, or other information provided by Defendant. The agreement specifically stated that Defendant would not enjoy the protections outlined by the Supreme Court in Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441 (1972).On appeal, Defendant claimed that the government violated the Debriefing Agreement when it used the cell phone password he provided during discussions with prosecutors to obtain additional evidence against him, resulting in additional charges being brought through a superseding indictment.The D.C. Circuit disagreed, affirming Defendant's conviction. The court explained that Kastigar did not apply because the government did not compel him to provide any incriminating information; he did so voluntarily pursuant to the Debriefing Agreement. View "USA v. Kelvin Otunyo" on Justia Law

Two American Indian tribes – Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation – challenged as arbitrary and capricious the Secretary of the Treasury’s 2020 and 2021 Distributions of appropriations for relief from the COVID-19 pandemic. The district court granted summary judgment to the Secretary. The Tribes appealed only the 2021 Distribution.   The DC Circuit dismissed Miccosukee’s challenge as moot and reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the Secretary with instructions to remand Prairie Band’s challenge to the 2021 Distribution to the Secretary for further explanation. The court found that the Secretary has not explained why “substantial disparity” was measured by the degree the HUD data underestimated enrollment rather than the number of uncounted enrolled members, nor the Distribution methodology in relation to the statutory mandate to allocate funds “based on increased expenditures.” Further, the court wrote that on remand, the Secretary must explain the decision decided. To the extent the 2021 Distribution would treat some Tribes assigned HUD populations of zero differently, the Secretary corrected the error. Only Miccosukee had standing to challenge the error, and its claim is moot. View "Shawnee Tribe v. Janet Yellen" on Justia Law

On November 22, 2021—the day federal employees were required to be vaccinated—Appellant filed suit in District Court, challenging the mandate’s constitutionality. Characterizing Appellant’s suit as a “workplace dispute involving a covered federal employee,” the District Court found Appellant’s claims were precluded under the CSRA and dismissed the suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. On appeal, Appellant insisted that he challenges the vaccine mandate’s constitutionality, as opposed to contesting a workplace dispute under the CSRA. According to his complaint, however, he alleged that the vaccine mandate is unconstitutional—at least in part—because it requires that he obtain the vaccine to avoid adverse employment action.   The DC Circuit affirmed. The court explained that all attempts to characterize his argument as anything but a challenge to adverse employment action fail for jurisdictional purposes because Appellant himself admitted that his standing to challenge the vaccine mandate is rooted in the looming disciplinary action he now faces as a result of his continued noncompliance. In other words, Appellant challenges the vaccine mandate to maintain his employment while continuing to defy the mandate that he views as unlawful. And while his constitutional arguments are relevant to the merits, they do not change the fact that one of Appellant’s interests in this suit is to avoid the impending adverse employment action. Appellant’s claims are not wholly collateral because challenges to adverse employment actions are the type of claims that the MSPB regularly adjudicates. Thus, the court found that should Appellant choose to continue challenging the vaccine mandate, he must do so through the CSRA’s scheme. View "Jason Payne v. Joseph Biden, Jr." on Justia Law