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

LSP Transmission Holdings II, LLC, Cardinal Point Electric, LLC, and LS Power Midcontinent, LLC are transmission development companies. They petition for review of a set of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) orders that approve modifications to the criteria used by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (MISO), a regional transmission grid operator, to determine whether opportunities to develop proposed transmission upgrades to the interstate power grid are open to competitive bids from companies like petitioners. Petitioners challenge two aspects of the orders: (1) FERC’s decision to accept MISO’s proposal to use 230 kilovolts (kV) as the minimum voltage threshold for a project to qualify as a Market Efficiency Project (a category of projects subject to competitive bidding) rather than requiring a lower 100 kV threshold; and (2) FERC’s approval of an exception from competitive bidding for certain reliability projects needed soon. FERC defends its orders on their merits, but it first contests Petitioners’ standing to challenge the orders and whether the petitions are ripe for review.   The DC Circuit denied the petitions for review. The court explained that at least one petitioner—LS Power Midcontinent—has standing to raise these claims and that the petitions are ripe. But the petitions fail on their merits: FERC’s decision to accept 230 kV as the new voltage threshold was not arbitrary and capricious, and FERC reasonably approved MISO’s Immediate Need Reliability Exception. View "LSP Transmission Holdings II, LLC v. FERC" on Justia Law

The Comprehensive Merit Personnel Act (CMPA) governs collective bargaining by employees of the District of Columbia government. It allows officers of the Metropolitan Police Department, like other D.C. government employees, to unionize and engage in collective bargaining. They have done so and are represented by the plaintiff in this case, the Fraternal Order of Police, Metropolitan Police Department Labor Committee, D.C. Police Union (FOP). The police union contends that the statute violates equal protection principles, the Bill of Attainder Clause, the Contract Clause, and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause.   The DC Circuit rejected all the challenges concluding that the district court correctly concluded that the FOP’s constitutional claims lack merit. The FOP disputes that police accountability motivated the Council. The court explained that the legislature’s actual motive is “entirely irrelevant”; all that matters is whether there are “plausible reasons” to conclude that the statutory classification furthers a legitimate government interest.   The FOP next contends that section 116 violates the Bill of Attainder Clause. However, the court found that the union makes no serious effort to show that the Council acted beyond its discretion. And the court could discern no express or hidden intent to punish. Further, FOP contends that section 116 violates the Contract Clause. The court explained that retrospective laws violate the Contract Clause only if they “substantially” impair existing contract rights. Here, the union could not have reasonably expected to insulate itself from legal changes after the 2017 Agreement had expired by its terms. View "Fraternal Order of Police, Metropolitan Police Department Labor Committee, D.C. Police Union v. DC" on Justia Law

Upon completing his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivered a two-volume, 448-page report documenting his findings to Attorney General William Barr. Attorney General Barr sent a letter to Congress providing his overview of it. Plaintiff Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act seeking disclosure of the memorandum and related records. The Department sought to withhold nearly all of the memorandum based on the deliberative-process privilege, which protects records documenting an agency’s internal deliberations en route to a governmental decision. The district court rejected the Department’s reliance on the deliberative-process privilege and ordered the Department to disclose the memorandum in full.   The DC Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the Department’s submissions in the district court gave no indication that the memorandum related to Attorney General Barr’s decision about making a public statement on the Mueller Report. Because the Department did not tie the memorandum to deliberations about the relevant decision, the Department failed to justify its reliance on the deliberative-process privilege. The court reiterated that its decision is narrow. The court held only that, in the unique circumstances of this case, in which a charging decision concededly was off the table and the agency failed to invoke an alternative rationale that might well have justified its invocation of the privilege, the district court did not err in granting judgment against the agency. View "CREW v. DOJ" on Justia Law

These consolidated cases, on appeal from a judgment of the district court, present competing claims to a blocked electronic funds transfer. The parties are the United States, which blocked the transaction because terrorists initiated it. On the other side are victims of Iran-sponsored terrorism who have obtained multimillion-dollar judgments against the Iranian government.   After learning of the government’s forfeiture action, attorneys for two groups of victims of Iranian terrorism and their relatives, holding judgments against Iran, filed separate writs of attachment. Plaintiffs sought to attach the funds at Wells Fargo pursuant to two federal statutes. The first, 28 U.S.C. Section 1610(g) of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”). The second is Section 201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (“TRIA”).   The district court ruled that Iran lacked any property interest in the blocked funds held by Wells Fargo. The court, therefore, quashed Plaintiffs’ writs of attachment. The DC Circuit court reversed and remanded. The court explained that tracing resolves this case in Plaintiffs’ favor. The government admits that the $9.98 million blocked funds at Wells Fargo “are traceable to Taif” and thus to Iran. The premise of the government’s forfeiture action is that the funds are traceable to Iran. The district court, therefore, erred in concluding that Plaintiffs had failed to show that the blocked funds were, under Section 201(a) of the TRIA, the blocked assets of [a] terrorist party. View "Estate of Jeremy I. Levin v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A." on Justia Law

Petitioner Bloomberg L.P. (“Bloomberg”) seeks review of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (the “Commission” or “SEC”) decision to approve new reporting requirements proposed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (“FINRA”), Intervenorfor-Respondent, affecting underwriter members in the corporate bond market. The Commission ultimately concluded that FINRA’s proposal would impose a limited burden on competition and enable market participants to obtain broad, uniform access to corporate bond reference data before the first transaction in a new-issue bond. Accordingly, the Commission approved FINRA’s proposal.   The DC Circuit granted Bloomberg’s petition for review in part and denied in part. The court held that the Commission’s approval of FINRA’s proposed reference data service was arbitrary and capricious in one respect: the Commission failed to respond adequately to Bloomberg’s concerns about the cost of building and maintaining the program and the extent to which those costs—which could conceivably amount to millions, or tens of millions, of dollars—will be borne by market participants. As such, the Commission violated the Administrative Procedure Act and failed to engage in reasoned decision-making. However, the court wrote, that Bloomberg’s remaining arguments lack merit. Therefore, Bloomberg’s petition for review is otherwise denied. View "Bloomberg L.P. v. SEC" on Justia Law

The government seeks the forfeiture of a trust established by Pavel Lazarenko, a former Prime Minister of Ukraine, located abroad on the island of Guernsey. Since 2004, a Guernsey court order has prohibited Lazarenko from accessing the trust, and a federal district court order has prohibited him from challenging the Guernsey order abroad. Lazarenko contends that the district court lacked statutory authority to issue the latter order and that, in any event, the order violated principles of international comity.   The DC Circuit rejected both challenges on procedural grounds. The daughters claim an interest in being able to litigate in Guernsey themselves, which might be impaired by a decision in favor of the government in this appeal. But Lazarenko himself adequately represents that interest. A would-be intervenor is adequately represented when she “offer[s] no argument not also pressed by” an existing party. Here, the daughters seek to raise precisely the same arguments as their father. Moreover, the daughters have revealed by their conduct that they find his representation adequate. In their cross-motion below, they adopted his arguments wholesale. And in this appeal, they declined the court’s invitation to appear at oral argument. The court, therefore, denied the daughters’ motion to intervene.   Further, the court wrote that Lazarenko could have pressed his current objections more than a decade and a half ago, and excusing his delay would risk wasting the considerable time and resources that the parties have invested in the district court proceedings. Under these circumstances, the district court reasonably denied his motion to modify the restraining order. View "USA v. All Assets Held at Credit Suisse" on Justia Law

Appellees work at the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. When they are away from work, they want to express support for their preferred candidates in partisan elections. AO employees could do that for the first 79 years of the agency’s history. But since 2018, the AO has forbidden it. That prohibition violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.The DC Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Appellees but limited its injunction against the first seven restrictions to apply only to Appellees. The court reversed its grant of summary judgment to the AO on the other two restrictions, and the court remanded for it to enjoin their application to Appellees as well. The court explained that absent the belief that precedent directs it, there is no reason to treat driving voters to the polls and organizing political events differently from the other seven prohibited modes of political expression. They all implicate core First Amendment rights. And the AO has failed to show that they present any non-speculative threat to its operations.Further, the court wrote, that the AO is a government entity with an independent duty to uphold the Constitution. The court explained that it trusted that upon receipt of our judgment, it will reconsider the contested restrictions for employees whose work is comparable to (or less sensitive than) the work Appellees do. View "Lisa Guffey v. Roslynn Mauskopf" on Justia Law

Appellant has been convicted of two child-sex crimes. After his second conviction, the district court revoked Appellant’s supervised release for his first conviction and sentenced him to three years in prison — to run consecutive to his Maryland sentence — followed by a new term of supervised release.First, Appellant says that the district court erred when it required GPS monitoring for the first two years of his new term. Because that requirement falls within the district court’s wide discretion to impose conditions on supervised release, we will not disturb it. Second, regarding the length of Appellant’s new term of supervised release, Russell sees a contradiction between the district court’s oral pronouncement and its written judgment.The DC Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision to require GPS monitoring for the first two years of Appellant’s new term of supervised release and remanded for the district court to clarify the length of that term. The court held that the district court did not abuse its wide discretion when it concluded that two years of GPS monitoring was “reasonably necessary.” The court explained that GPS monitoring’s potential to protect children — from a serial child-sex predator who will otherwise be better able to sexually assault children — outweighs the effect of that monitoring on Appellant’s liberty.However, the court remanded for clarification about Appellant’s new term, explaining that the district court’s oral pronouncement of a sentence controls over a written judgment, and the district court’s aside at the revocation hearing created ambiguity about the length of Appellant’s new term of supervised release. View "USA v. Mark Russell" on Justia Law

The District of Columbia’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) regulates childcare facilities, including by setting minimum qualifications for their workers. OSSE issued a rule requiring many childcare workers to obtain an associate’s degree or its equivalent in a field related to early childhood education. Two childcare workers and a parent filed a lawsuit to challenge the new college requirements. They allege violations of their substantive due process and equal protection rights, as well as of the nondelegation doctrine.On remand, the district court dismissed, this time on the merits. In rejecting Plaintiffs’ substantive due process and equal protection claims, the court concluded that the college requirements are rational, including in the distinctions they draw between different classes of daycare workers. And in rejecting Plaintiffs’ nondelegation doctrine claim, the court held that the statute granting regulatory authority to OSSE bears an intelligible principle to guide the agency’s work.The DC Circuit affirmed. The court explained that under rational-basis review, the policy choices of the political branches are “not subject to courtroom fact-finding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data. And here, as Plaintiffs acknowledge in their complaint, OSSE issued its regulations in part based on a report from the National Academies recommending a bachelor’s degree requirement for all educators of children ages zero to eight. Thus, the court found that a conceivably rational justification for the college requirements is readily apparent, and, in this context, that is all due process requires. View "Altagracia Sanchez v. Office of the State Superintendent of Education" on Justia Law

In implementing an Omnibus Amendment that establishes industry-funded monitoring programs in New England fishery management plans, the National Marine Fisheries Service (Service) promulgated a rule that required industry to fund at-sea monitoring programs. A group of commercial herring fishing companies contend that the statute does not specify that industry may be required to bear such costs and that the process by which the Service approved the Omnibus Amendment and promulgated the Final Rule was improper.On appeal, Appellants’ challenge to the Final Rule presents the question how clearly Congress must state an agency’s authority to adopt a course of action. The DC Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the Service based on its reasonable interpretation of its authority and its adoption of the Amendment and the Rule through a process that afforded the requisite notice and opportunity to comment. The court explained that when an agency establishes regulatory requirements, regulated parties generally bear the costs of complying with them.Here, the Act’s national standards for fishery management plans direct the Service to “minimize costs” of conservation and management measures and to minimize adverse economic impacts” of such measures on fishing communities. Those statutory admonitions to reduce costs seem to presume that the Service may impose some costs, as “minimize” does not mean eliminate entirely. View "Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc v. Gina Raimondo" on Justia Law