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

Defendant kidnapped Doe, then age twelve, and drove her from California to Nevada knowing that she would engage in prostitution. The defendant entered into a written plea agreement pursuant to which, in exchange for the government’s promise to drop five serious criminal charges, he would plead guilty to two lesser crimes (interstate travel in aid of unlawful activity, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1952(a)(3)(A)) and would pay Doe restitution. The district court nonetheless concluded that it lacked statutory authority to order Defendant to pay restitution to Doe.   The panel filed (1) an order amending its opinion, denying a petition for panel rehearing, and denying on behalf of the court a petition for rehearing en banc; and (2) an amended opinion granting Jane Doe’s petition for a writ of mandamus pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 3771(d)(3), a provision of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The panel published the opinion to reiterate what this court held in two cases decided three decades ago: 18 U.S.C. Section 3663(a)(3) grants statutory authority to district courts to award restitution whenever a defendant agrees in a plea agreement to pay restitution.   The panel held that the district court’s holding that it lacked statutory authority to order restitution was legal error. The panel granted the mandamus petition and instructed the district court to address, in the first instance, Defendant’s evidentiary challenges and other arguments concerning the appropriate amount of restitution. View "JANE DOE V. USDC-NVL" on Justia Law

Plaintiff was terminated from her employment as a Revenue Officer at the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for assessed Unauthorized Access of Taxpayer Data (“UNAX”) offenses. After unsuccessfully pursuing an internal Equal Employment Opportunity (“EEO”) complaint, Plaintiff brought suit against the Treasury Secretary in the United States District Court for the Central District of California alleging that her termination was based on impermissible criteria of age and national origin in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, respectively. The district court granted summary judgment to the Treasury Secretary on the grounds that Plainitff: (1) failed to establish a prima facie case of age discrimination; and (2) failed to show that the IRS Management’s proffered reasons for terminating her were pretext for age or national origin discrimination.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel wrote that at step one of the legal framework for a discrimination action, the district court found that none of Plaintiff’s evidence established a prima facie case of age discrimination. The panel agreed with the district court that most of Plaintiff’s evidence comprised “circumstantial evidence”—her superior’s alleged exaggeration of her offenses, assignment of menial tasks, selection of draconian penalties. The panel held, however, that the record was not devoid of direct evidence of age discrimination. The panel was satisfied that the record taken as a whole supported Plaintiff’s prima facie case of age discrimination. The panel held that the Secretary’s proffered reasons for its action was sufficient. View "JOAN OPARA V. JANET YELLEN" on Justia Law

A Huntington Beach City Councilperson appointed Plaintiff to the city’s Citizen Participation Advisory Board (“CPAB”). Each councilperson appoints one member to the seven-person CPAB and may remove that member without cause. After being appointed to the CPAB, Plaintiff was photographed at an immigrants’ rights rally standing near individuals whom the councilperson believed to be “Antifa.” After determining that Plaintiff’s public denouncement of Antifa was insufficient, the councilperson removed Plaintiff from the CPAB, citing lack of shared values.   Plaintiff sued the City of Huntington Beach, claiming retaliation for exercising her First Amendment rights to free speech, association, and assembly and alleging the councilperson’s demand for a public statement amounted to unconstitutionally compelled speech. The district court dismissed the complaint.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of a complaint for failure to state a claim, the panel held that the First Amendment does not protect a volunteer member of a municipal advisory board from dismissal by the city councilperson who appointed her and who is authorized under a city ordinance to remove her. The panel held that given the statutory structure and duties of the CPAB, the public could readily infer that a CPAB member’s actions and statements while serving in the role reflected the current views and goals of the appointing councilperson. Like each of her fellow board members, Plaintiff was the “public face” of her appointor. She could therefore be dismissed for lack of political compatibility. The panel further rejected Plaintiff’s compelled speech claim. View "SHAYNA LATHUS V. CITY OF HUNTINGTON BEACH" on Justia Law

The City of Costa Mesa (“City”) began amending its zoning code to reduce the number and concentration of sober living homes in its residential neighborhoods. Two of its new ordinances—Ordinances 14-13 and 15-11 (“Ordinances”)—made it unlawful to operate sober living homes without a permit. Appellants SoCal Recovery, LLC (“SoCal”) and RAW Recovery, LLC (“RAW”) (together, “Appellants”) operate sober living homes in Costa Mesa, California, for persons recovering from drug and alcohol addiction. Appellants alleged that two new City ordinances and the City’s enforcement practices discriminated against them on the basis of disability under the Fair Housing Act (FHA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). Granting the City’s motions for summary judgment, the district court found that Appellants did not establish that residents in their sober living homes were actually disabled, or that the City regarded their residents as disabled.   The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment. The panel held that Appellants and other sober living home operators can satisfy the “actual disability” prong of the ADA, FHA, or FEHA on a collective basis by demonstrating that they serve or intend to serve individuals with actual disabilities; they need not provide individualized evidence of the actual disability of their residents. Rather, they can meet their burden by proffering admissible evidence that they have policies and procedures to ensure that they serve or will serve those with actual disabilities and that they adhere or will adhere to such policies and procedures. prong of the disability definition. View "SOCAL RECOVERY, LLC, ET AL V. CITY OF COSTA MESA, ET AL" on Justia Law

A police officer (Officer) in Los Angeles, shot and killed a man during a failed arrest in the men’s locker room of a gym. Before the district court, the Officer maintained that he killed the man because the man was pummeling the Officer’s partner, and the Officer feared the man’s next blow would kill her. The Officer also claimed that he yelled “stop” before shooting, but no such warning can be heard on the officers’ body-cam recordings. The man’s mother sued the Officer for his allegedly unreasonable use of deadly force. The district court denied the Officers’ motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds, and the Officer timely appealed.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order denying, on summary judgment, qualified immunity to the Officer. The court held that the district court properly denied the Officer’s request for qualified immunity for two reasons. First, the district court recognized that a reasonable jury could reject the police officer’s account of the shooting because there were significant discrepancies between their versions of events and other evidence in the record. Second, the court wrote that it has long held that the Fourth Amendment requires officers to warn before using deadly force when practicable. The defense cannot argue that it was not possible for the Officer to give the man a deadly force warning because the Officer’s sworn statements show that he had time to tell Dorsey to “stop.” Therefore, the district court correctly ruled that a jury could decide that the Officer’s use of deadly force violated clearly established law. View "PAULETTE SMITH V. EDWARD AGDEPPA, ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiff was a long-time teacher in the Evergreen School District #114 (District) in Vancouver, Washington. Before the 2019–2020 school year began, he attended two days of teacher training and brought with him a MAGA hat. The question, in this case, is whether the First Amendment was violated when a principal told Plaintiff he could not bring his Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat with him to teacher-only trainings on threat of disciplinary action and when the school board affirmed the denial of the teacher’s harassment complaint filed against the principal.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s summary judgment in favor of Defendants in Plaintiff’s 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 action. The panel first concluded that Plaintiff was engaged in speech protected by the First Amendment because the undisputed facts demonstrated that his MAGA hat conveyed a message of public concern, and he was acting as a private citizen in expressing that message. The record failed to establish, however, that the school district’s Chief Human Resource Officer, took any adverse employment action against Plaintiff, and for this reason, Plaintiff’s First Amendment retaliation claim against that defendant failed as a matter of law.   Further, any violation of Plaintiff’s First Amendment rights by the principal was clearly established where longstanding precedent held that concern over the reaction to controversial or disfavored speech itself does not justify restricting such speech. For these reasons, the panel reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the principal. View "ERIC DODGE V. EVERGREEN SCHOOL DISTRICT #114, ET AL" on Justia Law

This case concerns a public high school’s ability under the First Amendment to discipline students for assertedly “private” off-campus social media posts that, once they predictably made their way onto campus, amounted to “severe bullying or harassment targeting particular” classmates.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment rejecting First Amendment claims brought by students against Albany High School and school officials after the students were disciplined for assertedly “private” off-campus social media posts that amounted to severe bullying or harassment targeting particular classmates. The panel held that, under the circumstances of the case, the school properly disciplined two of the involved students for bullying. The court explained that some of the posts used violent imagery that, even if subjectively intended only as immature attempts at malign comedy, would reasonably be viewed as alarming, both to the students targeted in such violently-themed posts and to the school community more generally. Nothing in the First Amendment would even remotely require schools to tolerate such behavior or speech that occurred under its auspices.   The panel concluded, taking into account the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Mahoney Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L. ex rel. Levy, 141 S. Ct. 2038 (2021), that the speech bore a sufficient nexus to Albany High School and its students to be susceptible to regulation by the school. Finally, the panel concluded that the discipline did not independently violate the California Constitution or the California Education Code. Because California follows federal law for free expression claims arising in a school setting, Plaintiffs’ reliance on the California Constitution failed for the same reasons discussed above. View "KEVIN CHEN, ET AL V. ALBANY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, ET AL" on Justia Law

The parents believe their son, D.R., should spend most of the school day being educated in a regular classroom with his non-disabled peers. School officials believed D.R. would be better served spending more of his school day in a special education classroom receiving instruction with other disabled students. As permitted under the IDEA, D.R.’s parents requested a due process hearing before the California Office of Administrative Hearings. The district agreed with the ALJ’s analysis and affirmed the decision denying relief.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s judgment affirming an administrative law judge’s decision denying relief. Reversing in part, the panel held that, given the IDEA’s strong preference for educating children with disabilities alongside their non-disabled peers, the law supported the parents’ position. The panel held that D.R.’s parents met their burden of proving that the school district’s proposed individualized education program (IEP) failed to comply with the IDEA’s requirement that children with disabilities be educated in the “least restrictive environment,” alongside their non-disabled peers to the maximum extent appropriate.   Affirming in part, the panel held that D.R.’s parents were not entitled to reimbursement for the expenses they incurred after unilaterally removing their son from school and hiring a private instructor to educate him in a one-on-one setting. The panel concluded that D.R.’s parents showed that the IEP offered by the school district violated the IDEA, but they did not show that the alternative private placement they chose was proper under the Act. View "D. R. V. RBUSD" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) inmate, is a validated member of a Security Threat Group (STG) and, pursuant to ADC’s policy, has been assigned to maximum custody confinement. Plaintiff first argued that ADC’s annual reviews of his maximum-security confinement are insufficient to satisfy the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Second, Defendant claimed that his removal from ADC’s Step-Down Program (SDP) violated his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court screened his complaint, dismissing his claim regarding ADC’s annual reviews for failure to state a claim. The district court later granted summary judgment to Defendants on Plaintiff’s claims regarding his removal from the SDP. Plaintiff appealed, challenging both orders.   The Ninth Circuit (1) affirmed the district court’s dismissal of Defendant’s claim ADC’s annual reviews of his maximum-security confinement were insufficient to satisfy the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and (2) reversed the district court’s summary judgment for defendants and remanded on Defendant’s claims that his removal from the Department’s Step-Down Program.   The panel held that Plaintiff has a liberty interest in avoiding assignment to maximum custody as a consequence of his STG validation. Nevertheless, Plaintiff failed to state a claim for a due process violation under the three-prong framework set forth in Mathews v. Eldridge. However, because Plaintiff was not given a meaningful opportunity to learn of the factual basis for his transfer from close custody to maximum custody or to prepare a defense to the accusations, Plaintiff was likely denied due process in the procedures that resulted in his return to maximum custody. View "RICHARD JOHNSON V. CHARLES RYAN, ET AL" on Justia Law

After the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Twitter banned President Donald Trump for life. Soon after Twitter announced the ban, the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) served Twitter with a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) asking it to produce various documents relating to its content moderation decisions. Twitter sued Paxton, in his official capacity, in the Northern District of California, arguing that the CID was government retaliation for speech protected by the First Amendment. Twitter asked the district court to enjoin Paxton from enforcing the CID and from continuing his investigation and to declare the investigation unconstitutional. The district court dismissed the case as not ripe.   The Ninth Circuit amended its opinion filed on March 2, 2022; denied a petition for panel rehearing; and denied a petition for rehearing en banc on behalf of the court. The panel held that Twitter is not really making a pre-enforcement challenge to a speech regulation; Twitter does not allege that its speech is being chilled by a statute of general and prospective applicability that may be enforced against it. The panel, therefore, concluded that a retaliatory framework rather than a pre-enforcement challenge inquiry was appropriate to evaluate Twitter’s standing. The panel held that Twitter’s allegations were not enough to establish constitutional standing and ripeness because Twitter failed to allege any chilling effect on its speech or any other legally cognizable injury that the requested injunction would redress. Finally, Twitter had not suffered any Article III injury because the CID is not self-enforcing. Preenforcement, Twitter never faced any penalties for its refusal to comply with the CID. View "TWITTER, INC. V. KEN PAXTON" on Justia Law