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

After the U.S. Consulate in El Salvador denied the immigrant visa application of Plaintiff, he and his U.S.-citizen spouse (collectively "Plaintiffs") sought judicial review of the government’s visa decision. Relying on the doctrine of consular nonreviewability, the district court granted summary judgment to the government.   Vacating the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the government, and remanding, the panel held that (1) where the adjudication of a non-citizen’s visa application implicates the constitutional rights of a citizen, due process requires that the government provide the citizen with timely and adequate notice of a decision that will deprive the citizen of that interest; and (2) because the government failed to provide timely notice in this case, the government was not entitled to summary judgment based on the doctrine of consular nonreviewability. The panel explained that, as set forth in Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753 (1972), and Kerry v. Din, 576 U.S. 86 (2015), the doctrine of consular nonreviewability admits an exception in certain circumstances where the denial of a visa affects the fundamental rights of a U.S. citizen. View "SANDRA MUNOZ, ET AL V. DOS, ET AL" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of possession with intent to distribute ecstasy after Government officers discovered large quantities of illegal drugs in two packages falsely labeled as containing documents from a German law firm. Defendant unsuccessfully challenged the admissibility of the evidence in a pre-trial motion to suppress. The Ninth Circuit held that, even if the evidence was seized in violation of Defendant's constitutional rights, admission was justified under the independent source doctrine. The court also rejected Defendant's challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence. View "USA V. TONY SAELEE" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Mobilize the Message provides political campaigns with doorknockers and signature gatherers, which it purports to hire as independent contractors. Plaintiff Moving Oxnard Forward is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making the government of Oxnard, California, more efficient and transparent and in the past have hired signature gatherers as independent contractors. Plaintiffs claimed that the California law violates the First Amendment because it discriminates against speech based on its content by classifying their doorknockers and signature gatherers as employees or independent contractors under the ABC test while classifying direct sales salespersons, newspaper distributors, and newspaper carriers under Borello.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction which sought to restrain the California Attorney General from applying California’s “ABC test,” codified in California Labor Code Section 2775(b)(1) to classify Plaintiffs’ doorknockers and signature gatherers as either employees or independent contractors. The panel accepted that classification of their doorknockers and signature gatherers as employees might impose greater costs on plaintiffs than if these individuals had been classified as independent contractors, and that as a result they might not retain as many doorknockers and signature gatherers. Such an indirect impact on speech, however, does not violate the First Amendment. Section 2783 does not target certain types of speech. Unless an occupational exemption exists, the ABC test applies across California’s economy. Thus, Plaintiffs were not unfairly burdened by application of the ABC test to their doorknockers and signature gatherers. View "MOBILIZE THE MESSAGE LLC, ET AL V. ROB BONTA" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs appeal the district court’s dismissal of their claims challenging the constitutionality of Oregon’s since repealed system of suspending, without an inquiry into ability to pay, the driver’s licenses of persons who fail to pay the fines imposed on them in connection with traffic violations. The district court dismissed the operative complaint for failure to state a claim.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel first considered Plaintiffs contention that Defendants’ suspension of her driver’s license based on her failure to pay traffic fines, without first determining that she had the ability to pay and had willfully refused to make a monetary payment, violated the due process and equal protection principles recognized in Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660 (1983), and Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956). The panel concluded that suspension of Plaintiff’s license for failure to pay her traffic fines was rationally related to a legitimate government interest in punishing and deterring traffic violations, even if her failure to pay was a result of indigency. The panel rejected Plaintiff’s contention that the State’s distinction between traffic debt and non-traffic debt violated the equal protection principles set forth in James v. Strange, 407 U.S. 128 (1972). Finally, the panel rejected Plaintiff’s contention that Defendants violated her procedural due process rights by suspending her license without affording either a “presuspension hearing” or a “post-suspension hearing” concerning her ability to pay her traffic debt. View "CINDY MENDOZA, ET AL V. KRIS STRICKLER, ET AL" on Justia Law

Defendants were indicted on many charges related to their participation in the Canta Ranas gang in Whittier, California. Defendants were ultimately convicted on RICO conspiracy. On appeal, Defendants raise multiple challenges to the admissibility of the government's expert witness's testimony.The Ninth Circuit affirmed Defendant's convictions, finding that the district court had broad latitude when determining reliability and that, in this case, the district court did not commit an abuse of discretion in failing to hold a hearing. The district court erred in failing to put its credibility findings on the record; however, any error was harmless. View "USA V. ENRIQUE HOLGUIN" on Justia Law

Appellants are individuals who bought or leased a vehicle with an emissions defeat device, and they filed individual suits that were consolidated before the same judge who presided over the multidistrict litigation and class action settlements. The jury awarded four of Appellants various amounts in compensatory damages and $25,000 each in punitive damages. The district court reduced the punitive damages award to exactly four times the amount of the compensatory damages suffered by each Plaintiff.   The Ninth Circuit vacated punitive damages awards to appellants (who are Plaintiffs who opted out of the class action) and remanded with instructions that the district court recalculate punitive damages. The panel held that the district court erred by holding that a punitive damages ratio calculation of four times the value of the compensatory damages award was the maximum punitive damages award permitted by the Constitution’s Due Process Clause. Because the panel concluded that the district court erred in applying the Gore factors, the panel next considered what award of punitive damages comported with due process for each party. The panel also concluded that it would be arbitrary and incorrect to set a different ratio between punitive damages and actual compensatory damages as to each of the Plaintiffs under the circumstances of this case. The panel, therefore, vacated the punitive damages awards to each appellant and remanded with instructions that the district court recalculate punitive damages in an amount equal to eight times the actual compensatory damages determination. View "TIMOTHY RILEY V. VOLKSWAGEN GROUP OF AMERICA, I" on Justia Law

Petitioner argued that application of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. Section 2254(d), is unconstitutionally retroactive—i.e., that the relevant event to which AEDPA’s legal consequences attached is the automatic appeal of his capital sentence in state court, which occurred before AEDPA’s effective date.   In a per curiam opinion addressing all issues except penalty phase prejudice, and a separate majority opinion addressing penalty phase prejudice, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment denying Petitioner’s habeas corpus petition challenging his California conviction and death sentence for murder.   The panel wrote that the California Supreme Court’s conclusion on direct appeal that Michaels did not unambiguously invoke either his right to counsel or his right to silence with respect to all questioning is fully supported by the record. The California Supreme Court did recognize that Petitioner selectively invoked his right not to answer a specific question as protected by Miranda, but the California Supreme Court neither determined precisely what question Petitioner had declared off-limits nor whether the ensuing interrogation impermissibly violated Petitioner's invocation of his right to silence with regard to the subject covered by that question. The panel held that the California Supreme Court’s decision to ignore a defendant's unambiguous and unequivocal selective invocation of his right to silence as to an area of inquiry during a custodial interrogation, requiring instead that the refusal be repeated in response to each question regarding the subject matter as to which the right was earlier invoked, was contrary to the law clearly established by Miranda and its progeny. View "KURT MICHAELS V. RON DAVIS, ET AL" on Justia Law

Five deputies responded to a 911 call reporting that P.M. was acting erratically and threatening someone with a firearm. The deputies asserted that P.M. ignored their warnings, picked up a gun, and began raising it toward them. Two of the deputies shot and killed P.M. His wife claimed that eyewitness testimony and ballistics analysis proved that P.M. was not moving toward the gun, never touched the gun, and did not pose an immediate threat to himself or others. Plaintiff brought this action asserting that the deputies violated P.M.’s Fourth Amendment rights and her own Fourteenth Amendment right to a familial relationship.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s denial of Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. On the excessive-force claim, the panel concluded that the deputies who shot P.M. were not entitled to qualified immunity. The panel concluded a jury could conclude that Defendants fired at an unarmed man who, although in the presence of a gun, never picked it up and in fact was moving away from it when he was shot. Officers may not kill suspects simply because they are behaving erratically, nor may they kill suspects who do not pose an immediate threat to their safety or to the safety of others simply because they are armed. Nevertheless, even under this court’s case law relating to familial-association claims asserted by parents and children, Plaintiff’s claim failed because no showing of a purpose to harm had been made or even attempted. View "SUSAN PECK, ET AL V. ANTHONY MONTOYA, ET AL" on Justia Law

Defendants used fake driver’s licenses and a false tissue procurement company as cover to infiltrate conferences that Planned Parenthood hosted or attended. Using the same strategy, defendants also arranged and attended lunch meetings with Planned Parenthood and visited Planned Parenthood health clinics. During these conferences, meetings, and visits, defendants secretly recorded Planned Parenthood staff without their consent. After secretly recording for roughly a year-and-a-half, Defendants released on the internet edited videos of the secretly recorded conversations. After a jury trial, the district court entered judgment in favor of Planned Parenthood and awarded it statutory, compensatory, and punitive damages as well as limited injunctive relief.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s judgment, after a jury trial, in favor of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., and other plaintiffs on claims of trespass, fraud, conspiracy, breach of contracts, unlawful and fraudulent business practices, violating civil RICO, and violating various federal and state wiretapping laws. Affirming in part, the panel held that the compensatory damages were not precluded by the First Amendment. The panel held that under Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663 (1991), and Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Wasden, 878 F.3d 1184 (9th Cir. 2018), facially constitutional statutes apply to everyone, including journalists. The panel reversed the jury’s verdict on the claim under the Federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 2511(2)(d), and vacated the related statutory damages for violating this statute. View "PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION, ET AL V. CENTER FOR MEDICAL PROGRESS, ET AL" on Justia Law

Users of Reddit, a social media platform, posted and circulated sexually explicit images and videos of minors online. The victims, or their parents, sued Reddit pursuant to Section 1595, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal. Rhe panel held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. Section 230(c)(1), shielded defendant Reddit, Inc., from liability. The panel held that Reddit, an “interactive computer services” provider, generally enjoys immunity from liability for user-posted content under Section 230(c)(1). However, pursuant to the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2018 (“FOSTA”), Section 230 immunity does not apply to child sex trafficking claims if the conduct underlying the claim also violates 18 U.S.C. Section 1591, the criminal child sex trafficking statute.   The panel held that the plain text of FOSTA, as well as precedent interpreting a similar immunity exception under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, established that the availability of FOSTA’s immunity exception is contingent upon a plaintiff proving that a defendant-website’s own conduct—rather than its users’ conduct—resulted in a violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1591. The panel held that FOSTA’s wider statutory context confirmed its reading. In Section II.C, the panel held that its reading was also supported by the legislative history of FOSTA. View "JANE DOES, ET AL V. REDDIT, INC." on Justia Law