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

Plaintiff brought an action against the State of Washington, the Review Board, and its members (State Defendants). Plaintiff specifically sought review of the district court’s decision that the Review Board’s actions relating to Plaintiff’s release determination hearing fall squarely within the quasi-judicial nature of the Review Board’s functions, and that Defendants are entitled to quasi-judicial immunity.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of an action alleging false imprisonment, negligence and civil rights violations arising from actions taken by the Washington Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board in scheduling Plaintiff’s hearing.   The Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board is a parole board created by the Washington State Legislature that is tasked with reviewing the sentences of convicted sex offenders to determine whether the offenders should be released on parole. The court held that under the facts of this case and in the context of the proceedings as a whole, the Review Board’s setting of hearings pursuant to Wash. Rev. Code Section 9.95.420 was “part and parcel of the decision process,” thereby warranting quasi-judicial immunity. The court rejected Plaintiff’s contention that the scheduling of the hearing was an administrative task not entitled to quasi-judicial immunity. Because the court agreed with the district court that the Review Board was entitled to quasi-judicial immunity, Plaintiff was unable to state a plausible claim for relief against the state Defendants. View "DALLIN FORT V. STATE OF WASHINGTON" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs brought this action against the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan (the “Plan”) and the Plan’s Board of Directors under Section 502(a)(1)(B) and § 502(a)(3) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”). Plaintiff is a participant in the Plan. The remaining co-Plaintiffs are covered dependents of Norman.   Plaintiff was a participant in the Plan. After his daughter, a covered dependent, was injured in a car accident, the Plan paid benefits to cover a portion of her medical expenses. Under the Plan’s terms, Plaintiff was liable to the Plan for the reimbursement of these benefits if the daughter recovered the money from the third party who caused her injuries. Although the daughter obtained such a recovery, she dissipated her settlement funds without reimbursing the Plan, and Plaintiff did not pay the reimbursement amount himself.   The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of Plaintiffs in an action against the Motion Picture Industry Health Plan and the Plan’s Board of Directors, alleging violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, and remanded with instructions for the district court to enter summary judgment in favor of the Plan.   Reversing, the court concluded that contractual defenses could not defeat the clear and unambiguous terms setting forth the Plan’s self-help remedy. Assuming without deciding that plaintiffs could invoke the equitable doctrines of illegality, impossibility of performance, and unconscionability, the panel concluded that these defenses could not override the terms of the Plan under the facts in this case. View "LENAI MULL V. MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY HEALTH" on Justia Law

Defendant determined that Plaintiff’s renovation of property violated local ordinances. Although he conceded the ordinance violation, Yoshikawa alleged that the enforcement action against him was motivated by racial animus, in violation of Section 1981. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order denying the building inspector Defendant’s motion to dismiss, on the basis of qualified immunity.   The court held that, in addressing a qualified immunity claim in an action against an officer for an alleged violation of a constitutional right, the court first asks whether, taken in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, the facts alleged show that the officer’s conduct violated a constitutional right. If not, the complaint must be dismissed for failure to state a claim. Second, the court asks whether the constitutional or statutory right was clearly established, such that the officer had fair notice that his conduct was unlawful.   The court held that Plaintiff stated a Section 1981 damages claim against Defendant a state actor. Under Comcast Corp. v. Nat’l Ass’n Afr. Am.-Owned Media, 140 S. Ct. 1009 (2020), an allegation of discrimination on the basis of race is a but-for element of a claim brought under Section 1981. The court further held that Defendant’s alleged actions violated clearly established law because he was accused of intentional racial discrimination. The court found irrelevant to qualified immunity, at the motion to dismiss stage, the issue of the applicability of the McDonnell Douglas test, an evidentiary standard, for analyzing Section 1981 claims in non-employment cases. View "HITOSHI YOSHIKAWA V. TROY SEGUIRANT" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit denied on behalf of the court a petition for rehearing en banc in a case in which the court’s opinion, which vacated convictions on two counts of encouraging or inducing an alien to reside in the United States for private financial gain in violation of 8 U.S.C. Section 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv), held that subsection (iv) is overbroad and unconstitutional because its narrow legitimate sweep pales in comparison to the amount of First Amendment protected expression it encompasses.   Judge Gould concurred in the order denying rehearing en banc. He wrote that Judge Bumatay’s dissent seeks to rewrite subsection (iv) by conducting a so-called textual analysis that fails to analyze the text of subsection (iv) itself; analyzes additional words not in that section, such as “aiding,” “abetting,” and “solicitation,” to support the conclusion it advocates; misreads the opinion, the record, Section 1324 itself, and precedent; conjures up parades of horribles belied by its own citations; introduces arguments the Government’s Petition for Rehearing did not make; and asks this court improperly to disregard Supreme Court precedent regarding the applicability of the facial overbreadth doctrine.   Dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, Judge Collins concluded that (1) under the canon of constitutional avoidance, the court can and should interpret the statute as being limited to soliciting and facilitating the unlawful entry of, or the unlawful taking up of residence by, specific aliens; and (2) so construed, the statute is not facially unconstitutional. View "USA V. HELAMAN HANSEN" on Justia Law

The district court revoked Defendant’s supervised release for violating 18 U.S.C. Section 1001(a) by submitting a monthly supervision report with false statements to his probation officer. Section 1001(a) bars lying “in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States.” Defendant argued that because the report was eventually forwarded to a judge, he’s entitled to the exemption in 18 U.S.C. Section 1001(b) for statements “submitted to a judge or magistrate” in a judicial proceeding.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment revoking supervised release based on the Defendant committing a new crime, and the sentence imposed upon revocation. The court wrote that the judicial proceeding exception only protects statements made “by [the] party . . . to the judge or magistrate”—not statements made to others in the judicial branch. The court emphasized that taking an expansive view of “submission” would threaten to swallow the rule, and would undermine the will of Congress, which broadly proscribed false statements made in “any matter” of the “judicial branch.”   Relying on United States v. Haymond, 139 S. Ct. 2369 (2019), Defendant argued that the district court violated his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights when it decided by the preponderance of the evidence that he violated Section 1001. The court wrote that because a sentence for a supervised release violation is generally part of the penalty for the original offense, it is not a new and additional punishment requiring jury findings beyond a reasonable doubt. View "USA V. JONATHAN OLIVER" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, who has paraplegia and uses a wheelchair for mobility, tried to book a room at the downtown Marriott Marquis using the hotel’s online reservation website. According to Plaintiff the website lacked sufficient information about the hotel’s accessibility features, which prompted him to sue Marriott Hotel Services Inc. (“Marriott”) under the ADA. Plaintiff takes issue with the website’s description of “Accessible Hotel Features,” and its list of accessible features in some guestrooms.   The district court granted Marriott’s motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), finding that the website complied with the DOJ Guidance and satisfied the Reservations Rule. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal, for failure to state a claim.   Addressing “Auer deference” to an agency’s construction of its own regulation, the court concluded that the Reservations Rule was ambiguous in its directive that hotels "[i]dentify and describe accessible features” in “enough detail to reasonably permit individuals with disabilities to assess independently” whether the hotel’s offerings suit their needs. To resolve that ambiguity, the court deferred to the Department of Justice’s sound and reasonable interpretation of that rule (the “DOJ Guidance”), published in an appendix to the Code of Federal Regulations. The court concluded that Defendant’s website satisfied the DOJ Guidance and thus the Reservations Rule, which contains different requirements depending on the age of a building. The court concluded that this distinction did not matter here because Defendant’s website passed muster under either set of requirements. View "SAMUEL LOVE V. MARRIOTT HOTEL SERVICES, INC." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs appealed the district court’s dismissal of their claims against Rio Properties, LLC (“Rio”), which owns and operates the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. During this time, Plaintiffs claim Defendant knew that its water system was infected with Legionella bacteria, which causes Legionnaires’ Disease. After learning of the contamination, Plaintiffs brought a putative class action against Defendant. They sought the return of the resort fee on the theory that they would not have gone to the hotel, and would not have paid the resort fee if Defendant had told them about the presence of the Legionella.   In a prior decision, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of Plaintiffs’ claims for negligence, “declaratory relief,” violation of Nevada Revised Statutes (“NRS”) Section 205.377(1), and consumer fraud, and reversed the dismissal of Plaintiffs’ unjust enrichment claim. However, the court reserved judgment on Plaintiffs’ claims for fraudulent concealment and statutory consumer fraud, based on NRS Section 598.0923(2), because a controlling question of state law existed.   In response to a certified question, the Nevada State Supreme Court answered “that a plaintiff who receives the true value of the goods or services purchased has not suffered damages under theories of common-law fraudulent concealment or N.R.S. 41.600.”  Thus, the Ninth Circuit affirmed, finding that applying Nevada state law as declared by the Nevada State Supreme Court, Plaintiffs failed to allege recoverable damages as to their fraudulent concealment and consumer fraud claims. View "AARON LEIGH-PINK V. RIO PROPERTIES, LLC" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and felon in possession of a firearm, but reserved the right to appeal the denial of the motions. An officer stopped the vehicle after learning that the vehicle— whose registered owner had an outstanding arrest warrant—was in the parking lot of a gas station.   In his motion to suppress, Defendant argued that the officer unconstitutionally prolonged the vehicle stop when he asked Defendantto provide his license, registration, and proof of insurance because the suspicion that motivated the stop had evaporated once the officer determined that Ross was not in the vehicle. The government countered that the stop was supported by independent reasonable suspicion because the officer began to suspect that Defendant was intoxicated shortly after initiating contact.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Defendant’s motions to suppress. The panel wrote that the circumstances of the officer’s encounter with Defendant’s implicate the same vehicle safety purpose discussed in Rodriguez v. United States, 575 U.S. 348 (2015), under which a routine document check would remain part of the officer’s mission even when the suspicion that justified a stop was based on an outstanding warrant rather than a traffic violation.   The court wrote that Defendant failed to make a substantial preliminary showing that any statement or omission in the affidavit was intentionally or recklessly false or misleading, where an expert report provided by Defendant at most establishes that the canine’s alert was unreliable on a single unrelated occasion. View "USA V. SHANE NAULT" on Justia Law

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services denied the U-visa petition based on its regulation limiting derivative U-visa status to spouses married at the time the principal petition is filed. Plaintiffs challenged that denial in the district court, which granted summary judgment to the government.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Plaintiffs’ application for attorneys’ fees and costs under the Equal Access to Justice Act (“EAJA”). The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion, explaining that the factors identified by the district court provided strong support for its determination that the government’s position was substantially justified. Specifically, the court observed that the government’s position was found persuasive by no fewer than six federal judges in the course of the case, and as many judges were persuaded by the government’s position as were persuaded by the Plaintiffs’ position. The court explained that these circumstances supported the district court’s conclusion that the government’s position was not unreasonable. In addition, the court concluded that the district court properly considered the fact that this case involved an issue of first impression. View "MARIA MEDINA TOVAR V. LAURA ZUCHOWSKI" on Justia Law

In a prior appeal, the Ninth Circuit vacated a prior dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction and remanded with instructions that Plaintiff be permitted to undertake jurisdictional discovery. On remand, the district court granted defendant VNG Corporation’s renewed motion to dismiss, finding that there was no specific personal jurisdiction in California over VNG, a Vietnamese corporation that released the Zing MP3 mobile music application in the Apple App Store and the Google Play store.   The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal, for lack of personal jurisdiction, of a copyright infringement suit and remanded for further proceedings. In assessing whether Plaintiff established a prima facie case of jurisdiction, the court analyzed jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(2), which provides for jurisdiction over foreign defendants that have ample contact with the United States as a whole, but whose contacts are so scattered among states that none of them would have jurisdiction. Under Rule 4(k)(2), the plaintiff must prove: (1) the claim at issue arises from federal law; (2) the defendant is not subject to any state’s courts of general jurisdiction; and (3) invoking jurisdiction upholds due process. The plaintiff has the burden to show the first two prongs, and the burden then shifts to the defendant to show that the application of jurisdiction would be unreasonable. The court concluded that VNG purposefully targeted American companies and their intellectual property. Rejecting VNG’s argument regarding forum non conveniens, the court concluded that venue, in this case, was not proper in Vietnam. View "LANG VAN, INC. V. VNG CORPORATION" on Justia Law