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

In 2016, California voters passed Proposition 57, which amended the California Constitution by granting eligibility for early parole consideration to state prison inmates convicted of nonviolent felonies who had completed the full term for their primary offense. Section 32 authorized the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to adopt implementing regulations. CDCR adopted regulations, which excluded from early parole consideration nonviolent felony offenders sentenced to indeterminate sentences under California’s Three Strikes Law. In 2018, the California Court of Appeal found that the Regulations’ exclusion of these offenders was inconsistent with Section 32. CDCR amended the Regulations to include, for early parole consideration, state prisoners serving indeterminate sentences for nonviolent third-strike offenses and set a deadline of December 31, 2021, by which to schedule parole consideration hearings for previously-excluded offenders.The previously-excluded offenders filed a putative class action under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the suit, The CDCR defendants acted within the legislative sphere when they participated in the adoption of the Regulations. That the Regulations were later found to violate the California Constitution did not diminish their authority to adopt the Regulations in the first place. They were performing a legislative function when they adopted the Regulations and are entitled to legislative immunity. View "Jones v. Allison" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal based on failure to exhaust administrative remedies of plaintiffs' action under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Plaintiffs claim that the district court is failing its responsibilities to students under the IDEA by not timely identifying and evaluating students with disabilities, and, after identifying them, by providing them with insufficiently individualized, "cookie-cutter" accommodations and services. Although plaintiffs argue that exhaustion was not required because they are challenging district-wide policies that only a court can remedy, plaintiffs are unable to identify such policies. The panel agreed with the district court that plaintiffs have not satisfied any of the limited exceptions recognized by caselaw to the exhaustion requirement contained in 20 U.S.C. 1415(l). In this case, plaintiffs challenged what amounted to failures in practice by the school district, rather than policies or practices of general applicability. View "Student A v. San Francisco Unified School District" on Justia Law

Herring launched the conservative One American News Network (OAN) in 2013. While employed by OAN, Rouz also wrote articles as a freelancer for Sputnik, a Russian state-financed news organization. Herring alleges that Rouz’s work for Sputnik “had no relation to his work for OAN.” In 2019, The Daily Beast published an article entitled “Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs KremlinPaid Journalist,” asserting that “Kremlin propaganda sometimes sneaks into” Rouz’s OAN segments. On the day the article was published, Maddow, host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, ran a segment entitled “Staffer on Trump-Favored Network Is on Propaganda Kremlin Payroll.” The segment ran three and a half minutes.Herring sued Maddow and others for defamation. Herring did not sue The Daily Beast or its reporter but focused on Maddow’s comment that OAN “really literally is paid Russian propaganda.” Maddow moved to strike the complaint, citing California’s anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) law. The district court granted the motion. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. Maddow’s “statement is an opinion that cannot serve as the basis for a defamation claim” and Herring failed to show “a probability of succeeding on its defamation claims.” The challenged statement was an obvious exaggeration, cushioned within an undisputed news story; it could not reasonably be understood to imply an assertion of objective fact. View "Herring Networks, Inc. v, Maddow" on Justia Law

Yañez was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent while on the border fence, which is in the United States. After being shot, Yañez fell and landed across the international border. Yañez’s family filed civil claims against the government and individual federal agents.The Ninth Circuit affirmed the rejection of claims under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), and a “Bivens” claim. The court rejected an argument that the shooting and Border Patrol’s Rocking Policy, authorizing deadly force in response to rock-throwing, violated an international jus cogens norm against extrajudicial killing and was actionable under the ATS; the ATS does not waive sovereign immunity, even for jus cogens violations. Claims under the FTCA were time-barred. Plaintiff initially did not pursue an FTCA claim because she believed that, under Ninth Circuit precedent, judgment on an FTCA claim would have foreclosed her Bivens claims. Plaintiff amended the complaint to assert FTCA claims after the Supreme Court abrogated that precedent in 2016. The FTCA’s judgment bar did not foreclose a contemporaneously filed Bivens claim when the government had prevailed on the FTCA claim, so the Supreme Court’s decision was irrelevant to this situation. That mistake of law was not outside of plaintiff's control and did not qualify as an extraordinary circumstance supporting equitable tolling. Special factor counseled against extending a Bivens remedy; doing so would challenge a high-level executive policy and implicated national security. View "Quintero-Perez v. United States" on Justia Law

Decker employed Pehringer at its Montana open-pit surface mine, 1977-1999. There were periods when Pehringer did not work, including a roughly three-year-long strike. For most of his mining career, Pehringer was regularly exposed to coal dust while working primarily as a heavy equipment operator. After being laid off in 1999, Pehringer was awarded Social Security total disability benefits. He never worked again. In 2014 a month before his sixty-fifth birthday, Pehringer sought black lung benefits, citing his severe COPD, 30 U.S.C. 923(b). A physician determined that “Pehringer is 100% impaired from his COPD” and that coal “dust exposure and smoking are significant contributors to his COPD impairment.”The Benefits Review Board affirmed a Department of Labor (DOL) ALJ’s award of benefits. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, first rejecting a constitutional challenge to 5 U.S.C. 7521(a), which permits removal of an ALJ only for good cause determined by the Merits Systems Protection Board. DOL ALJ decisions are subject to vacatur by people without tenure protection; properly appointed, they can adjudicate cases without infringing the President’s executive power. The ALJ did not err in adjudicating Pehringer’s claim nor in rejecting untimely evidentiary submissions. Decker did not rebut the presumption of entitlement to benefits after a claimant established legal pneumoconiosis and causation, having worked for at least 15 years in substantially similar conditions to underground coal mines. View "Decker Coal Co. v. Pehringer" on Justia Law

Matias, a native of El Salvador, unlawfully entered the U.S. in 2014. El Salvadoran authorities considered him a member of MS-13, a violent gang. In Maryland, Matias pleaded guilty to assault in the first degree after being involved in a shooting that authorities determined was retaliation for MS-13 gang activity, and identified Matias as an MS-13 “affiliate.” ICE detained Matias in 2018. Matias requested to be housed with a gang aligned with MS-13. An IJ denied him bond and later denied Matias relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and ordered him removed. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed his appeal. The Ninth Circuit denied his petition for review in 2021.Matias moved the BIA to reopen his case so that it could consider “new developments” regarding his request for CAT relief: claimed political changes in El Salvador and an alleged text from an MS-13 gang member labeling him a “snitch” and saying he will be killed if he returns to El Salvador. The BIA denied his request for an emergency stay. Matias filed a habeas petition, asking the court to enjoin the government from removing him until the BIA ruled on his motion to reopen. The district court denied his motion. The Ninth Circuit agreed with the district court, which denied Matias’s motion for a temporary restraining order, determining that 8 U.S.C. 1252(g)’s jurisdictional limits barred his claims. View "Rauda v. Jennings" on Justia Law

In 1995, Jones was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend’s mother. After the California Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence and denied his state habeas petition, Jones filed a federal habeas petition, raising multiple challenges to both the guilt and penalty phases of his trial. The district court granted relief on Jones’s claim that the state trial court violated his right to present a complete defense; Jones should have been permitted to testify during the guilt phase about events from his childhood and his mental health history, and the trial court erred by conditioning such testimony on the presentation of a psychiatric expert who would explain the testimony’s relevance to Jones’s mental state during the murder.The Ninth Circuit reversed. The condition the trial court imposed on Jones’s testimony was neither arbitrary nor disproportionate to the valid purposes served by its ruling. The court remanded for the district court to consider Jones’s remaining claims. View "Jones v. Davis" on Justia Law

In 1982, a court-martial convicted Hubbard of murder and sentenced him to life in prison. He previously filed unsuccessful federal habeas petitions and, in 2019, sought DNA testing under the Innocence Protection Act (IPA), 18 U.S.C. 3600(a), to prove his innocence.The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the petition for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The district court was not the court that entered the judgment of conviction; Hubbard’s conviction was entered by a general court-martial, which has since dissolved, not in federal court. The court rejected Hubbard’s contentions that the district court had the power to grant his petition for DNA testing under the IPA or that the IPA should nonetheless be construed to allow him to petition for DNA testing in the district court because he would otherwise have no forum in which to seek his relief. The IPA, unlike the federal habeas statutes, does not provide a procedural mechanism for prisoners convicted by courts-martial to seek collateral relief in federal court. View "Hubbard v. United States" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of a 28 U.S.C. 2241 petition in which petitioner challenged two sentencing enhancements—one under 18 U.S.C. 2251(e), another under 18 U.S.C. 3559(e)(1)—applied after his conviction on multiple counts of federal sex offenses.The panel held that petitioner's claim is foreclosed because the legal basis for his claim arose before he had exhausted his section 2255 motion, so he cannot show that he did not have an unobstructed procedural shot at presenting his challenge to the section 3559(e)(1) sentencing enhancement. The panel rejected petitioner's request for an extension of Martinez v. Ryan, 566 U.S. 1 (2012), concluding that an extension of Martinez would make little sense. The panel explained that it would open the door for every unsuccessful pro se petitioner under section 2255 to argue that his lack of counsel in his original section 2255 petition meant that he did not have an unobstructed procedural shot at presenting his claim and is therefore entitled to bring an escape hatch petition under section 2241. The panel noted that other circuits have similarly held that prisoners may not utilize Martinez to bring a section 2241 petition. Because petitioner cannot show that he lacked an unobstructed procedural shot with respect to the section 3559(e)(1) mandatory life sentencing enhancement, the panel did not need to reach the actual innocence prong for that enhancement or either prong for the section 2251(e) enhancement. View "Pavulak v. von Blanckensee" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit previously affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiffs' claim for failure to state a claim under either the Fifth or Fourth Amendments. After plaintiffs petitioned for certiorari, the Supreme Court held that the access regulation, California Code of Regulations, Title 8, 20900(e), appropriates a right to invade the growers' property and therefore constitutes a per se physical taking, and that plaintiffs' complaint thus states a claim for an uncompensated taking in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.In light of the Supreme Court's decision, the panel reversed the district court's judgment relating to the Fifth Amendment claim. For the reasons stated in Cedar Point Nursery v. Shiroma, 923 F.3d at 534–36, the judgment of the district court dismissing the Fourth Amendment claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) is affirmed. The panel remanded for further proceedings. View "Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid" on Justia Law