Justia U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiffs, two non-profit organizations, sought injunctive and declaratory relief to remedy the delays in the provision of mental health care and adjudication of service-connected death and disability compensation claims by the Department of Veterans Affairs ("VA"). At issue was whether these delays violated veterans' due process rights to receive the care and benefits they were guaranteed by statute for harms and injuries sustained while serving our country. While the court affirmed the district court's ruling, with respect to various claims for specific forms of relief under the Administrative Procedures Act ("APA"), 5 U.S.C. 500 et. seq., that the APA prevented the court from granting veterans the statutory relief they sought, the court reversed the district court's ruling on plaintiffs' constitutional claims and held that the VA's failure to provide adequate procedures for veterans facing prejudicial delays in the delivery of mental health care violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The court further held that the district court erred in concluding that it lacked jurisdiction to review plaintiffs' due process challenge to delays and procedural deficiencies in the compensation claims adjudication system and that it erroneously denied plaintiffs' the relief to which they were entitled under the Due Process Clause.

Defendant appealed a restitution order directing him to pay the victim's mother to cover costs that she incurred in making a series of trips between her home and the victim's boarding school 150 miles away after defendant pleaded guilty to one count of abusive sexual contact and was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment. At issue was whether the mother's travel expenses were "incurred by the victim" and subject to restitution under the applicable statute. Also at issue was whether the restitution award was issued in violation of the procedural and evidentiary requirements of 18 U.S.C. 3664. The court initially held that defendant's waiver of appeal was ineffective as to the restitution order and so would consider his challenges to that order on the merits. The court then held that the mother's travel expenses could have been "incurred by the victim" within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. 2248(b)(3) where the mother could have made trips in her capacity as a loved family member but she incurred the costs of the trips in her capacity as legal guardian, on behalf of her daughter. The court also held that the district court's restitution order violated the requirements of section 3664 where the district court set forth no explanation of its reasoning and where a spreadsheet was an inadequate evidentiary basis to support the restitution award.

Petitioner, convicted of first degree murder, filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Central District of California more than three years after his conviction for first-degree murder became final and five days after the California Supreme Court denied his final state habeas petition. At issue was whether the one-year statute of limitations for filing a federal habeas corpus petition pursuant to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA"), 28 U.S.C. 2244(d)(1), was tolled during petitioner's delays between his state-court petitions for collateral review. The court held that petitioner's state petitions were untimely and that he was not entitled to statutory tolling under AEDPA where he showed no adequate justification for the eighty- and ninety-one day filing delays and there was no indication from the California courts to the contrary. The court also held that the district court did not err in denying petitioner's request for equitable tolling where he failed to demonstrate extraordinary circumstances that warranted tolling of AEDPA's one year deadline.

Petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder in the guilt phase of his trial but the jury deadlocked over his sentence in the penalty phase of his case. At issue was whether the trial court violated petitioner's constitutional right to be free from double jeopardy where the trial court failed to ask the jury if it had unanimously rejected the death penalty, and instead was deadlocked over a lesser sentence, before discharging the jury. The court held that the trial judge did not abuse her discretion or subject petitioner to double jeopardy by declining to poll the jury where the jurors were clearly deadlocked, appeared frustrated after lengthy proceedings, could have been inclined to treat preliminary compromise as a final verdict, and never indicated that they had reached a final finding acquitting petitioner. The court also held that in the retrial of the penalty phase the Double Jeopardy Clause did not preclude the state from including the death penalty as a sentencing option.

Plaintiffs sued the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in their official capacities under 28 U.S.C. 2201, alleging that the so-called "parsonage exemption" violated the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. Plaintiffs also sued the Executive Office of the California Franchise Tax Board in his official capacity under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that California's parsonage exemption violated the Establishment Clause of both the United States and California Constitutions. Six days after plaintiffs filed their complaint, a minister of the gospel in the Sacramento area, who regularly claimed both the federal and state parsonage exemptions, moved to intervene as a defendant. At issue was whether an individual who claimed certain federal and state tax exemptions could intervene in an unrelated action challenging the constitutionality of those exemptions. The court held that the minister was not entitled to intervene as of right where the federal defendants adequately represented the minister's interest. The court also clarified that the independent jurisdictional grounds requirement did not apply to proposed intervenors in federal-question cases when the proposed intervenor was not raising new claims. Therefore, the court also held that the minister was not required to make any further showing that his intervention was supported by independent jurisdictional grounds where the district court's denial of permissive intervention was not an appropriate exercise in discretion because the district court did not apply the correct legal rule. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded that portion of the district court's order so that the district court could reassess the request for permissive intervention.

Plaintiffs, manufactures of a bear-resistant container called the Ursack S29 model and three individual users of the Ursack, sued the Sierra Interagency Black Bear Group ("SIBBG"), as well as national and forest park services (collectively, "defendants"), where defendants withdrew conditional approval of the S29 model and refused to permit backpackers to use the S29 in the container-only areas of defendants' national parks and forests. At issue was whether SIBBG's decision to revoke conditional approval of the S29 model was arbitrary and capricious. The court held that SIBBG's decision to revoke conditional approval of the S29 model was not arbitrary or capricious where the court could not conclude that the SIBBG, although it did not mention overflow food problems in the course of its debate, ignored this aspect of the problem; where the distinctions the SIBBG made between the BearVault and the Ursack were rational; and where SIBBG's tree-damage rationale, prohibiting users from tying the S29 model to trees, was not arbitrary or capricious.

Petitioner, a native and citizen of China, petitioned for review of two final orders of the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA") where the BIA denied him relief under former section 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA"), 8 U.S.C. 1182(c), and denied him protection under the Convention Against Torture ("CAT"); and where the BIA denied petitioner's motion to reopen his CAT claim based on alleged changed country conditions and refused to sua sponte reopen his application for section 212(c) relief to consider his newly acquired equities. At issue was whether the BIA should have considered petitioner's value and service to the community in assessing all of the relevant concerns bearing on his eligibility under section 212(c) relief. Also at issue was whether the BIA abused its discretion in denying petitioner's motion to reopen his application for CAT relief based on changed country conditions. The court granted the petition for review with respect to petitioner's application of section 212(c) relief and remanded for consideration of all relevant factors where the BIA did not indicate that it had considered petitioner's value and service to the community. The court also held that the BIA did not abuse its discretion in denying petitioner's motion to reopen where the BIA diligently listed all the materials petitioner submitted in support of his application and discussed why the evidence was not persuasive, was speculative, or was of limited relevance.

Appellant appealed an order of summary judgment in favor of the United States Bureau of Customs and Border Protection ("CBP") in his eight Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), 5 U.S.C. 552, requests for 19 C.F.R. 133.21(c) Notices of Seizures of Infringing Merchandise ("Notices") from certain United States ports. Appellant raised several issues of error on appeal. The court held that the district court's findings that the Notices contained plainly commercial information, which disclosed intimate aspects of an importers business such as supply chains and fluctuations of demand for merchandise, was well supported. The court also held that the district court was not clearly erroneous in its finding that the information at issue was confidential and privileged where the trade secret exemption of FOIA ("Exemption 4") was applicable. The court further held that when an agency freely disclosed to a third party confidential information covered by a FOIA exemption without limiting the third-party's ability to further disseminate the information then the agency waived the ability to claim an exemption to a FOIA request for the disclosed information. Therefore, the district court's ruling was affirmed in regards to FOIA Exemption 4 but the district court's conclusion as to the fees charged to appellant was reversed where CBP must follow the FOIA fee provisions under 19 C.F.R. 103.

Defendant appealed his conviction for possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(8) where defendant was indicted and convicted for possession of a firearm while he was subjected to a Tucson City Court order directing him to have no contact with his former girlfriend and her family. At issue was whether the district court properly denied defendant's motion for acquittal where the no-contact order did not satisfy the requirements of section 922(g)(8). The court held that the district court erred when it denied defendant's motion for acquittal where, even viewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the government, the charge failed as a matter of law when it failed to contain explicit terms substantially similar in meaning to the language of section 992(g)(8)(C)(ii).

Defendants appealed a denial of qualified immunity from plaintiff's 42 U.S.C. 1983 Fourth Amendment claims against them where plaintiff's claims arose out of his arrest on suspicion of smuggling methamphetamine into the Merced County Jail and out of a subsequent search of plaintiff's law office. At issue was whether defendants qualified for immunity for arresting plaintiff after receiving information about the drug smuggling from a jailhouse informant. The court held that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity where they did not violate plaintiff's constitutional rights when, after developing probable cause to arrest plaintiff, they forthrightly applied to the same judge, acting as a neutral magistrate, for a search warrant; where they executed the warrant under the supervision of a court-appointed master to ensure the integrity of plaintiff's law office and his client's files; and where defendants did not "knowingly violate the law" and they were not "plainly incompetent."