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

Following the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, Los Angeles imposed an eviction moratorium during a “Local Emergency Period” with the stated purposes of ensuring housing security and promoting public health during the pandemic. Related provisions delay applicable tenants’ rent payment obligations and prohibit landlords from charging late fees and interest. A trade association of Los Angeles landlords, sued, alleging violations of the Constitution’s Contracts Clause.The Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of the plaintiff’s request for preliminary injunctive relief, noting that other courts, including the Supreme Court, have recently considered various constitutional and statutory challenges to COVID-19 eviction moratoria. Under modern Contracts Clause doctrine, even if the eviction moratorium was a substantial impairment of contractual relations, the moratorium’s provisions were likely “reasonable” and “appropriate” given the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. The city fairly tied the moratorium to its stated goals. The court noted that contemporary Supreme Court case law has severely limited the Contracts Clause’s potency. View "Apartment Association of Los Angeles County, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles." on Justia Law

A loaded gun issued by the Bureau of Land Management to a ranger was stolen from the ranger’s parked personal car while the ranger was traveling with his family. Four days later, Steinle was shot and killed while walking on Pier 41 in San Francisco when Lopez found the pistol and fired it. It is not known who stole the pistol, how many people possessed it after it was stolen, or how the pistol came to be near the bench where Lopez found it. Steinle’s family filed suit under the Federal Tort Claims Act, alleging that the ranger’s negligence in failing to store or secure his firearm properly and in leaving it loaded, in an unattended vehicle in an urban location where the firearm could be stolen readily. The district court entered summary judgment on the ground that the ranger’s conduct was not the proximate cause of Steinle’s death.The Ninth Circuit affirmed. Applying California law, the court concluded that the connection between the ranger’s storage of the pistol in his vehicle and Steinle’s death was so remote that, as a matter of law, the ranger’s acts were not the proximate or legal cause of the fatal incident. View "Steinle v. United States" on Justia Law

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published the 2012 Integrated Action Plan/Environmental Impact Statement (IAP/EIS) for the Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. In 2014, BLM granted ConocoPhillips permission to construct a drill pad in the Greater Moose Tooth (GMT) Unit within the Reserve and issued a GMT supplemental EIS, relying on the 2012 IAP/EIS. In 2018, BLM granted ConocoPhillips permission to construct another GMT drill pad, issuing a second GMT supplemental EIS. In 2018, ConocoPhillips applied to drill in another Unit. BLM published an environmental assessment that purportedly incorporated the 2012 IAP/EIS and the two GMT supplemental EISs. BLM did not issue an EIS but found no new significant impact. ConocoPhillips completed the program in April 2019. In March 2019, objectors sued, citing the National Environmental Policy Act.The Ninth Circuit concluded that the case was moot because neither court could grant any relief. The only lasting physical features of the drilling were capped wells; there was no indication that ConocoPhillips could undo the drilling of those wells. The “capable of repetition, yet evading review” exception to mootness did not apply. Although a case generally will not be moot when the environmental report at issue will be used by the agency in approving a future project, the legal landscape has changed. The Council of Environmental Quality has issued new NEPA regulations. BLM issued a 2020 IAP/EIS for the Reserve, Plaintiffs have not shown a “reasonable expectation” that they will be subjected to an EA tiering to the 2012 IAP/EIS again. View "Native Village of Nuiqsut v. Bureau of Land Management" on Justia Law

Blind students, Payan and Mason, took classes at LACC, a Southern California community college. Upon their enrollment, each registered for disability accommodations through the college’s Office of Special Services (OSS). Their approved accommodations included tape-recorded lectures, preferential seating, receiving materials in electronic text, and test-taking accommodations. Mason also received weekly tutoring. Each uses a screen reading software to read electronic text. Despite these accommodations, each encountered accessibility problems at LACC, relating to in-class materials, textbooks, educational technology, websites and computer applications, and research databases in the LACC library.Plaintiffs filed suit, alleging that individual and systemic failures to remedy accessibility barriers violated Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The district court granted partial summary judgment for Plaintiffs, after instructing them to reframe their disability discrimination arguments through a disparate impact framework only. A jury found the discrimination against Payan was deliberately indifferent and awarded Payan $40,000 in compensatory damages but no damages to Mason.The Ninth Circuit vacated. Despite acknowledging the individual accommodations to which OSS determined the Plaintiffs were entitled, the district court erroneously rejected these claims as failure to accommodate claims because it found that the Plaintiffs did not adequately put LACC on notice that they required specific accommodations. On remand, the court must reconsider Plaintiffs’ individual claims under either the disparate impact framework or the individual failure to accommodate framework, depending on the nature of the claim. View "Payan v. Los Angeles Community College District" on Justia Law

BNSF Railway sought a declaration that the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995 (ICCTA) preempts Clark County, Washington’s permitting process. Clark County asserted that BNSF needed to obtain a permit for a project to upgrade an existing track and construct a second track in the Columbia River Gorge.The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of BNSF. Under the ICCTA, the Surface Transportation Board has exclusive jurisdiction over rail carriers and track construction. If an apparent conflict exists between the ICCTA and a federal statute, then the courts must strive to harmonize the two laws, giving effect to both if possible. The court rejected an argument that the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act is such a federal statute. The Gorge Act does not establish national environmental standards but provides a framework for a commission of state-appointed officials to adopt a management plan and implement it through county land use ordinances. The Columbia River Gorge Commission retains final say over the approval and enforcement of the management plan and local county ordinances; enforcement actions may be brought in state court. The Gorge Act is not comparable to federal environmental laws and nothing in the Gorge Act indicates that the local ordinances otherwise have the force and effect of federal law. View "BNSF Railway Co. v. Friends of the Columbia River Gorge" on Justia Law

Aguirre made repeated attempts to obtain from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) records relating to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, specifically relating to a 2018 incident at the Station, invoking the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(3)(A). Aguirre did not address the agency’s requirement that he pay in advance and failed to clarify certain requests. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of all of Aguirre’s FOIA claims. Aguirre failed to constructively or actually exhaust his administrative remedies as to the four FOIA requests at issue and he failed to establish the futility of seeing the NRC’s administrative process through to its end. A requestor must exhaust his administrative remedies under FOIA so long as an agency properly responds before a lawsuit is filed, even if the agency initially missed a response deadline. View "Aguirre v. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission" on Justia Law

Maricopa Domestic Water Improvement District supplies water to about 300 households, including the public housing tenants of a Pinal County complex. Property owners like Pinal County are responsible for paying any past tenant’s delinquent water accounts. Pinal County acknowledged that responsibility but consistently refused to pay, contending it was immune to that policy based on its status as a public municipality. In response, the District imposed a new policy that increased to $180 the refundable security deposit required of new public housing customers before the District would provide water services. New non-public housing customers were subject to a $55 deposit.The Ninth Circuit rejected a challenge to the policy under the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA), 42 U.S.C. 3604 and 3617, which bars discriminatory housing policies and practices, including those that cause a disparate impact according to certain protected characteristics or traits—race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin. Although the District’s public housing customers are disproportionately African American, Native American, and single mothers, the District established by undisputed evidence that the policy served in a significant way its legitimate business interests; the plaintiffs failed to establish a triable issue of fact that there existed an equally effective, but less discriminatory, alternative. There was insufficient evidence that discriminatory animus was a motivating factor behind the District’s decision to implement its policy. View "Southwest Fair Housing Council, Inc. v. Maricopa Domestic Water Improvement District" on Justia Law

When an AM/FM radio station plays a song over the air, it does not pay public performance royalties to the owner of the original sound recording. Digital and satellite radio providers like Sirius, however, must pay public performance royalties whenever they broadcast post-1972 music. Before a 2018 amendment to the copyright law, 17 U.S.C. 1401(b), they did not have to pay royalties for playing pre-1972 music under federal law. State law was less clear.The district court held that California law, which grants copyright owners an “exclusive ownership” to the music, creates a right of public performance for owners of pre-1972 sound recordings and that Sirius must pay for playing pre-1972 music. The Ninth Circuit reversed, looking to the common law in the 19th century when California first used the phrase “exclusive ownership” in its copyright statute. At that time, no state had recognized a right of public performance for music, and California protected only unpublished works. Nothing suggests that California upended this deeply-rooted common-law understanding of copyright protection when it used the word “exclusive ownership” in its copyright statute in 1872, so “exclusive ownership” does not include the right of public performance. View "Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio, Inc." on Justia Law

Ohlson was a forensic scientist with the Arizona Department of Public Safety and analyzed blood samples for alcohol content, reported the findings, and testified about those findings in court proceedings. Ohlson advocated for changes in how the lab disclosed batched test results and, contrary to his superiors’ orders, communicated his opinions within the Department, with defense attorneys, and in court hearings. He was disciplined and eventually forced to retire.The district court rejected Ohlson’s allegations of First Amendment retaliation. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. Ohlson’s advocacy in the course of his employment duties could conceivably have adversely affected confidence in the accuracy of the Department’s test results, as well as in the Department. The defendants did not violate any clearly established law; where, as in this case, an employee, in the course of doing the job, has expressed views the employer regards as contrary to its interests, controlling legal principles remain particularly uncertain, so the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. View "Ohlson v. Brady" on Justia Law

Bartley was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4), based on his 2011 commitment to an Idaho state hospital after he was found incompetent to stand trial. Section 922(g)(4) prohibits the possession of a firearm by any person “who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution.” The Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of Bartley’s motion to dismiss.The court rejected Bartley’s contentions that the 2011 state proceedings to determine his competency to face criminal charges lacked due process and that because the state court did not find that he was both mentally ill and dangerous, the 2011 proceedings did not constitute an adjudication or commitment within the meaning of section 922(g)(4). Neither section 922(g)(4) nor 27 C.F.R. 478.11 requires a finding that the committed person was both mentally ill and dangerous nor a separate finding under Idaho law that Bartley was a person to whom section 922(g)(4) applies. Assuming without deciding that the application of section 922(g)(4) to Bartley burdened Second Amendment rights, the court applied intermediate scrutiny and found the government’s statutory objective to be “significant, substantial, or important,” and a “reasonable fit” between the challenged law and that objective. View "United States v. Bartley" on Justia Law