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

Plaintiff filed suit against CoreCivil under the Wiretap Act, alleging that CoreCivic unlawfully recorded privileged telephone calls between herself and her clients who were detained in CoreCivic's detention facility in Nevada.The Ninth Circuit held that the only reasonable interpretation based on both the text and context of the Act is that "the violation" refers to each separate interception, whether the interception is a singular event or part of a larger pattern of conduct. Therefore, each interception of plaintiff's privileged telephone calls is a separate violation of the Act, and the statute of limitations is triggered anew for each call that CoreCivic recorded. The panel held that the district court correctly determined that the Act's two-year statute of limitations was first triggered when plaintiff received discovery in June 2016 that contained recordings of her privileged telephone calls. In this case, the undisputed facts establish that plaintiff had such notice of recordings made before June 27, 2016, when she received discovery from the government on that date that included recorded calls. Accordingly, the panel affirmed the district court's holding that plaintiff's claims are untimely to the extent they are based on interceptions that occurred before June 27, 2016. However, to the extent her claims are based on calls that were recorded after this date, the timeliness of such claims depends on when she first had a reasonable opportunity to discover that such calls were recorded. The panel remanded to the district court for further analysis. View "Bliss v. CoreCivic, Inc." on Justia Law

Andrade, the mother of Omar’s children, called 911 and reported that Omar had hit Andrade and his mother, Ventura, and had smashed Andrade’s vehicle’s window. Officer Rutledge responded to the call, which was classified as a violent domestic disturbance. When Rutledge arrived at the home, Omar was not present. While Rutledge interviewed Andrade, Omar started walking toward the home. Andrade pointed and exclaimed, “that’s him.” Andrade moved behind trash cans in the driveway as Omar approached. Officer Rutledge issued several orders for Omar to “stop.” Omar continued to advance toward Andrade and displayed a knife, asking: “Is this what you wanted?” Rutledge shouted, “[s]top or I’ll shoot.” When Omar did not stop, Rutledge fired two shots, killing Omar. Omar got within 10–15 feet of Andrade before Rutledge fired.In Ventura's suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, the Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of Rutledge, on the basis of qualified immunity. No controlling precedent clearly established that Omar’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from the excessive use of deadly force by police would be violated when he was shot and killed as he advanced toward an individual he had earlier that day assaulted, while carrying a drawn knife and while defying specific police orders to stop. View "Ventura v. Rutledge" on Justia Law

Washington ballot initiative 1501 prohibits public access to certain government-controlled information, including the personal information of in-home care providers, but permits that information to be disclosed to the providers’ certified exclusive bargaining representatives. The law was challenged under 42 U.S.C. 1983 by in-home providers, required by Washington law to participate in statewide collective bargaining, who are not members of their respective unions and do not pay agency fees. They wanted to inform other individual in-home providers of their right to not pay union agency fees and were unable to obtain the necessary contact information.The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of the defendants. The First Amendment does not guarantee a general right of access to government-controlled information. Whether to disclose government-controlled information is generally left to the political processes but the First Amendment forbids a state from discriminating invidiously among viewpoints. A state does not engage in viewpoint discrimination by disclosing the personal information of public or quasi-public employees to the employees’ certified bargaining representative while denying equal access to the public. Initiative 1501 does not implicate the plaintiffs’ associational freedom; the plaintiffs lack standing to assert the rights of other in-home care providers. Initiative 1501 does not violate the Equal Protection Clause; the challenged provisions satisfy rational-basis review. The state has a legitimate interest in protecting seniors and other vulnerable individuals from identity theft and other financial crimes. There was no evidence that those who voted in favor of Initiative 1501 were motivated by an irrational prejudice or desire to harm the plaintiffs or their message. View "Boardman v. Inslee" on Justia Law

In late August 2020, Yazzie initiated an action challenging Arizona's Receipt Deadline pursuant to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution, and the Arizona Constitution's election clause. The complaint alleges that Navajo Nation reservation residents face myriad challenges to voting by mail where many on-reservation members do not have home mail service. Rather, to receive or send mail, they must travel to a post office. Furthermore, socioeconomic factors, educational disadvantages, and language barriers make both the travel to the post office—which requires access to a car—and the completion of mail ballots difficult. Yazzie also claims that these mail ballots take disproportionately longer to reach the county recorder's office because of the slower mail service on the reservation. In late September 2020, the district court denied Yazzie's motion for preliminary injunction based on its finding that Yazzie did not demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits or raise serious questions going to the merits of Yazzie's VRA claim.The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of Yazzie's request for a preliminary injunction. The panel did not address the district court's analysis of the VRA claim because it concluded that Yazzie and the other plaintiffs lack standing. The panel stated that not only does Yazzie fail to make a clear showing of a concrete and particularized injury, noticeably absent in the record is any particularized allegation with respect to any of the six individual plaintiffs. The panel also stated that, importantly, this case is not a putative class action filed on behalf of the Navajo Nation members who reside on the reservation. In this case, Yazzie failed to establish injury-in-fact for at least one of the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The panel concluded that also missing is a clear showing that the alleged injury is redressable by a favorable decision by this court. View "Yazzie v. Hobbs" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit challenging the constitutionality of the City of Simi Valley's regulations prohibiting mobile billboards on public property unless they qualify as authorized emergency or construction-related vehicles. The district court dismissed plaintiff's claims on the pleadings.The Ninth Circuit held that the City's mobile billboard regulations favor certain speakers where allowing certain speakers to park mobile billboards on public property but not others reflects a content preference. On its face, the Authorized Vehicle Exemption is content neutral, but to execute its purpose, the City enacted an ordinance that prefers speakers likely to spread messages consistent with its purpose. The panel stated that this is a prudent preference, a reasonable rationale, and a content-based choice that triggers strict scrutiny. Therefore, the panel vacated the district court's order granting the City's motion to dismiss regarding plaintiff's First Amendment claims. Because the district court concluded the ordinances were content neutral, it evaluated the sufficiency of plaintiff's complaint against the wrong standard. The panel remanded plaintiff's claims for the district court to reconsider it under the strict scrutiny standard. Finally, the panel held that the district court did not err by declining plaintiff's request to remand his state law claims to state court. View "Boyer v. City of Simi Valley" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit granted a prospective stay of the district court's preliminary injunction enjoining the Secretary's enforcement of the October 5, 2020 deadline prescribed in Ariz. Rev. Stat. 16-120(A), where the district court held that it was unconstitutional as applied during the COVID-19 pandemic. The injunction extended the registration deadline by 18 days to October 23, 2020, and ordered that anyone registering by that date be allowed to vote in the November 3 election.The panel applied the Nken factors to determine whether to grant a stay pending appeal, holding that there is a sufficiently high likelihood of success on appeal where there has been no facial challenge to the statutory registration deadline; the statutory deadline does not impose a "severe burden" on plaintiffs' asserted rights and does not trigger strict scrutiny; the administrative burdens on the state imposed by an October 23 registration deadline are significant; and, even if the burden on voter registration were greater and the burden on the government less, plaintiffs' extremely late filing relative to the deadline is a factor supporting the government's likelihood of success on the merits. Finally, the remaining factors governing issuance of a stay also weigh in the Secretary's favor.The panel granted the Secretary's specific request for a prospective stay, with a two-day grace period. In this case, the Secretary maintains that a retroactive stay would be unfair and might cause irreparable harm to Arizona's voters and damage the public interest. Furthermore, a retroactive stay would replicate some of the injuries that the injunction itself produced, and a retrospective stay would be problematic given that early voting has begun; the Supreme Court has recently employed the remedy of a prospective stay in similar election law cases; and the Supreme Court's election law jurisprudence counsels for deference to politically accountable state officials charged with the responsibility for conducting elections. View "Mi Familia Vota v. Hobbs" on Justia Law

The emergency military construction authority provided by 10 U.S.C. 2808 does not authorize eleven border wall construction projects on the southern border of the United States.The Organizational Plaintiffs and the State Plaintiffs filed separate actions challenging the Federal Defendants' anticipated diversion of federal funds to fund border wall construction pursuant to various statutory authorities, including Section 2808. The Federal Defendants timely appealed the district court’s grant of summary judgment and declaratory relief to Sierra Club and the States and the grant of a permanent injunction to Sierra Club. The States timely cross-appealed the denial of their request for a permanent injunction.The Ninth Circuit held that the States and Sierra Club both have Article III standing and a cause of action to challenge the Federal Defendants' border wall construction projects; Section 2808 did not authorize the challenged construction where the projects are neither necessary to support the use of the armed forces nor are they military construction projects; and the district court did not abuse its discretion in either granting a permanent injunction to Sierra Club or in denying a separate permanent injunction to the States. Although the panel recognized that in times of national emergency the panel generally owes great deference to the decisions of the Executive, the particular circumstances of this case require it to take seriously the limitations of the text of Section 2808 and to hold the Executive to them. The panel stated that where, as here, Congress has clung to this power with both hands—by withholding funding for border wall construction at great effort and cost and by attempting to terminate the existence of a national emergency on the southern border on two separate occasions, with a majority vote by both houses—the panel can neither pry it from Congress's grasp. View "Sierra Club v. Trump" on Justia Law

This case arose after the death of George Floyd and the resulting nationwide protests in support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The events at issue here stem from the BLM protests in Portland, Oregon where the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Marshals Service deployed federal law enforcement agents to the city.Plaintiffs' second amended complaint alleged that the Federal Defendants "intentionally targeted and used physical force and other forms of intimidation against journalists and authorized legal observers for the purpose of preventing or deterring them from observing and reporting on unreasonably aggressive treatment of lawful protestors." The district court entered a TRO against the Federal Defendants on July 23, 2020. On August 10, plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the Federal Defendants, and the district court entered a preliminary injunction with terms largely identical to the terms of the July 23 TRO. On August 25, the district court denied the Federal Defendants' motion for a stay of the preliminary injunction pending appeal. On appeal, a divided three-judge motions panel issued an order on August 27 granting the Federal Defendants' motion for an administrative stay of the injunction pending resolution of their emergency motion for a stay pending appeal.The Ninth Circuit denied the Federal Defendants' emergency motion for stay pending appeal and lifted the administrative stay entered August 27, 2020. The panel held that the Federal Defendants have not made a strong showing that their standing argument is likely to succeed. The panel also held that the Federal Defendants have not made a strong showing required by Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 433-434 (2009), that they are likely to succeed on the merits of plaintiffs' First Amendment retaliation claim and First Amendment right-of-access claim. The panel further held that the Federal Defendants have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable injury as a result of the district court's preliminary injunction. Finally, the panel held that a stay of the district court's injunction would substantially injure both the City and the plaintiffs. View "Index Newspapers LLC v. United States Marshals Service" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of a putative class action against CVS based on Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) preemption of California state law claims. Plaintiff alleged that the supplement he purchased, and five additional CVS glucosamine-based supplements, did not provide the advertised benefits. The FDCA distinguishes between "disease claims" and "structure/function claims" that manufacturers make about their products, applying different regulatory standards to each.The panel held that the district court erred in concluding that the FDCA preempts plaintiff's state law causes of action simply because CVS's glucosamine-based supplements present only structure/function claims. The panel explained that Dachauer v. NBTY, Inc., 913 F.3d 844 (9th Cir. 2019), was distinguishable from this case and the district court erred by applying it. Furthermore, the district court erred by greatly expanding the present state of federal preemption jurisprudence under the FDCA, contrary to public policy. The panel also held that the district court erred in dismissing the complaint without granting plaintiff leave to amend to add allegations regarding an implied disease claim. In this case, plaintiff may have been able to "bolster" his complaint with allegations of extra-label evidence showing that CVS's glucosamine-based supplements present implied disease claims. Accordingly, the panel remanded for further proceedings. View "Kroessler v. CVS Health Corp." on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit granted emergency motions for a stay pending appeal of the district court's injunction enjoining Ariz. Rev. Stat. 16-548(A), which requires early voters to have signed their ballots by 7:00 PM on Election Day in order to have their votes counted. On September 10, 2020, less than two months before the upcoming presidential election, the district court enjoined the law and ordered Arizona to create and to institute a new procedure that would grant voters who failed to sign their ballots up to five days after voting has ended to correct the error.The panel held that the Nken factors weigh in favor of a stay. In this case, the State has shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits where Arizona's Election Day signature deadline imposes, at most, a "minimal" burden on those who seek to exercise their right to vote. Under the Anderson-Burdick framework for evaluating ballot-access laws, the panel concluded that the State has made a strong showing that its ballot-signature deadline reasonably advances important regulatory interests. Even though plaintiffs contend that the changes to Arizona's law will likely affect only a small number of voters and create a relatively low administrative burden on the State, the panel explained that the State's probability of success on the merits is high. Furthermore, the public interest is well served by preserving Arizona's existing election laws and plaintiffs stand to face only a minimal burden. View "Arizona Democratic Party v. Hobbs" on Justia Law