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

The Estate appealed the Tax Court's decision that it owed additional estate taxes. At issue was whether gift taxes paid by the donee trustees of a Qualifying Terminable Interest in Property (QTIP) trust, based on a 26 U.S.C. 2519 deemed inter vivos transfer of the QTIP property within three years of the donor's death, must be included in the transferor's gross estate under the so-called "gross-up rule" of section 2035(b). The court held that it did. Therefore, the court held that the decedent paid the gift tax on the section 2519 transfers of the Residual Trusts and her estate should be increased under the gross-up rule by the value of the gifts paid.

After the September 11, 2011 attacks, the government detained plaintiff, an American citizen, as an enemy combatant. Plaintiff alleged that he was held incommunicado in military detention, subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and detained under harsh conditions of confinement, all in violation of his constitutional and statutory rights. Plaintiff and his mother sued John Yoo, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 2001 to 2003, alleging that they suffered from plaintiff's unlawful detention. The court held that, under recent Supreme Court law, Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, the court was compelled to conclude that, regardless of the legality of plaintiff's detention and the wisdom of Yoo's judgments, at the time he acted the law was not "sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he [wa]s doing violated[d]" plaintiff's rights. Therefore, the court held that Yoo must be granted qualified immunity and accordingly reversed the decision of the district court.

Plaintiff appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the Commissioner in its review of the Commissioner's denial of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Social Security Income (SSI) benefits. Based on the rarity of the surveillance system monitor jobs, and considering plaintiff's physical and mental limitations, the court was compelled to find that the ALJ's decision was not supported by substantial evidence. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment and remanded for further proceedings.

Defendant pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to traffic in motor vehicles or motor vehicle parts, two counts of operating a chop shop, and seventeen counts of trafficking in motor vehicles. The jury then convicted defendant of two related crimes: one count of witness tampering and one count of discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence. Defendant subsequently appealed from the judgment and sentence on all counts. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the two witness' testimony about seeing defendant with a Glock or similar gun before the shooting; the prosecutor did not improperly vouch for a witness' credibility; because the detective's remark, though improper, did not prejudice defendant, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant's motions for mistrial and new trial; and because the sentencing range of defendant's 18 U.S.C. 924(c)(1)(A) conviction was ten years to life, the district court permissibly sentenced him to an 18-year term of imprisonment on Count 22. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed.

This case arose when defendants contended that they were engaged in bona fide mining activities on National Forest System lands, which justified full-time residency on their respective claim sites. The court held that the Forest Service could regulate residential occupancy of bona fide mining claims within the national forests, and that 36 C.F.R. 261.10(b) was consistent with the mining laws and not unconstitutionally vague. The court further held that in a criminal proceeding predicated on the Forest Service's administrative determination, a defendant could obtain judicial review of the agency action under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 500 et seq., so long as defendant complied with the procedural requirements for direct review and the APA's statute of limitations has not expired. Thus, defendant Everist was not entitled to judicial review of the Forest Service's determination that his residency was not reasonably incident to mining, because he did not exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the APA. Defendant Backlund, on the other had, did administratively exhaust his claim that the Forest Service's denial of his proposed plan of operations was not in accordance with law. Therefore, Backlund was entitled to judicial review of the agency decision in the context of his criminal prosecution.

Plaintiff appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants. Plaintiff alleged that defendants violated the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), 42 U.S.C. 15301-15545, by failing to conduct a general election recount, in which plaintiff lost, in accordance with HAVA provisions. Because HAVA section 301 was not intended to benefit voters and candidates in local elections with respect to recounts, such individuals did not have a private right of action under 42 U.S.C. 1983. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's claims for failure to state a claim.

Plaintiff appealed the district court's dismissal of claims he brought against Board Members, in their individual capacities, under 42 U.S.C. 1983. Plaintiff alleged that the Board Members deprived him of his constitutional rights when, in an ex parte emergency proceeding, they summarily suspended his authority to prescribe medication. The court held that the Board Members were absolutely immune from plaintiff's claims for money damages where they were functionally comparable to judges and their summary suspension authority was comparable to a judicial act. The court also held that Younger abstention barred plaintiff's claims for equitable relief. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.

The Government appealed from an award of attorneys' fees to a plaintiff conservation group in a long-running dispute involving federal grazing permits in Idaho. At issue was whether the district court properly awarded fees to plaintiff for legal work done in the administrative proceedings conducted before the civil litigation in which the district court held that the IBLA had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in upholding the Government's award of some of the grazing permits. The court vacated the district court's award of fees and remanded for it to enter an award that excluded the representing fees for the administrative proceedings pursuant to the court's interpretation of Sullivan v. Hudson and 28 U.S.C. 2412(d)(1)(A).

Plaintiff and his daughter appealed the district court's order granting defendants' motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Plaintiff submitted an application for an immigrant visa based on an approved I-130 petition filed by his daughter. The United States Consulate in Mexico denied the application. The district court found that the doctrine of consular nonreviewability deprived the court of subject matter jurisdiction to review the consular official's discretionary decisions. The district court also found that it had no jurisdiction under the Mandamus Act, 28 U.S.C. 1361, the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. 551 et seq., or the Declaratory Judgment Act, 5 U.S.C. 702. The court affirmed the district court's order dismissing plaintiff's claims as to Form I-160 and vacated that part of the district court's order dismissing plaintiff's claims as to his request for reconsideration. The court remanded for the district court to consider whether it had jurisdiction under the Mandamus Act, the APA, and the Declaratory Judgment Act. The court remanded to the district court for further proceedings.

Petitioner, a lawful permanent resident of the United States, petitioned for review of the BIA's decision holding that his conviction for misprision of a felony was categorically a crime involving moral turpitude. The court held that misprision of a felony was not categorically a crime involving moral turpitude where the BIA relied on a flawed rationale. That an offense contravenes "societal duties" was not enough to make it a crime involving moral turpitude; otherwise, every crime would involve moral turpitude. The court remanded to allow the BIA to conduct a modified categorical analysis of petitioner's conviction and to consider whether he was alternatively removable as an alien who "has been an illicit trafficker in any controlled substance."