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

The Ninth Circuit reversed defendant's conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm. In United States v. Du Bo, 186 F.3d 1177, 1179 (9th Cir. 1999), an indictment missing an essential element that is properly challenged before trial must be dismissed. At issue in this appeal was whether defendant properly challenged his indictment pre-trial, thereby triggering the Du Bo rule.The panel followed its well-established obligation to construe pro se filings liberally and held that defendant properly challenged his indictment under Du Bo's automatic-dismissal rule. In this case, defendant's indictment neither tracked the language of 18 U.S.C. 922(g) nor set forth the elements of the offense, because it did not allege that he had knowledge of his felon status pursuant to Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019). Therefore, the panel directed the district court to dismiss his indictment. View "United States v. Qazi" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit denied a petition for review of the BIA's denial of immigration relief to petitioner. The panel held that Matter of Wu, 27 I. & N. Dec. 8 (BIA 2017), which held that California Penal Code section 245(a)(1), which proscribes certain aggravated forms of assault, is categorically a "crime involving moral turpitude" for purposes of the immigration laws, is consistent with Ceron v. Holder, 747 F.3d 773 (9th Cir. 2014) (en banc) and entitled to deference. Therefore, the panel held that the BIA correctly determined that petitioner's conviction under section 245(a)(1) was for a crime involving moral turpitude and that he was therefore inadmissible under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The panel lacked jurisdiction to consider petitioner's challenges to the denial of his waiver under section 212(h) of the INA, because he failed to raise a cognizable legal or constitutional question concerning that determination. View "Safaryan v. Barr" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit denied a petition for review of the BIA's decision, holding that petitioner has adequately exhausted his particularly serious crime argument but that the BIA and IJ did not err in concluding that petitioner's conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm or ammunition, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1) and 924(A)(2), constitutes a particularly serious crime barring withholding of removal.The panel also held that the termination of petitioner's grant of asylum by reopening his asylum-only proceeding was not error, and the IJ did not have jurisdiction to consider his request for an adjustment of status because of the limited scope of such proceedings. The panel stated that petitioner's request for an adjustment of status should have been made to the USCIS, not the IJ. View "Bare v. Barr" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of a putative class action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1983 alleging that deduction of union dues from plaintiffs' paychecks violated the First Amendment. The Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018), held that compelling nonmembers to subsidize union speech is offensive to the First Amendment.The panel held that plaintiffs' claims against the union fails under section 1983 for lack of state action, a threshold requirement. The panel also held that plaintiffs' First Amendment claim for prospective relief against Washington state also fails because employees affirmatively consented to deduction of union dues. The panel stated that Janus did not extend a First Amendment right to avoid paying union dues, and in no way created a new First Amendment waiver requirement for union members before dues are deducted pursuant to a voluntary agreement. The panel further held that neither state law nor the collective bargaining agreement compels involuntary dues deduction and neither violates the First Amendment. Therefore, in the face of their voluntary agreement to pay union dues and in the absence of any legitimate claim of compulsion, the district court appropriately dismissed the First Amendment claim against Washington. View "Belgau v. Inslee" on Justia Law

After Gardens Regional filed for bankruptcy, the State deducted certain "fees"—which Gardens Regional had failed to pay to the State—from various payments that the State was obligated to make to Gardens Regional under its Medicaid program. The bankruptcy court and the Ninth Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) both agreed that the deductions were permissible recoupments rather than impermissible setoffs.Although the bankruptcy court and the BAP held that all of the State's withholdings of unpaid Hospital Quality Assurance Fee (HQAF) amounts constituted legitimate instances of equitable recoupment rather than setoff, the Ninth Circuit held that the bankruptcy court and BAP's holding rested on an overly generous conception of what qualifies as "the same transaction or occurrence" for purposes of recoupment. The test remains whether the relevant rights being asserted against the debtor are sufficiently logically connected to the debtor's countervailing obligations such that they may be fairly said to constitute part of the same transaction.The panel affirmed the judgment of the BAP insofar as it holds that California's deduction of unpaid HQAF assessments from the supplemental payments made to Gardens Regional was permissible under the doctrine of equitable recoupment, but the panel reversed its judgment as to the fee-for-service payments. The panel remanded to the BAP with instructions to remand to the bankruptcy court for further proceedings. View "Gardens Regional Hospital & Medical Center Liquidating Trust v. California" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal for lack of standing of a tribal health organization's action seeking declaratory relief regarding alleged violations of a federal law concerning the provision of health services to Alaska Natives. The panel held that SCF alleges an injury in fact sufficient to confer Article III standing in two distinct ways: first, that ANTHC infringed SCF's governance and participation rights under Section 325 of the Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 1998 by delegating the full authority of the fifteen-member Board to the five-person Executive Committee; and second, that ANTHC erected informational barriers in the Code of Conduct and Disclosure Policy that deprived SCF of its ability to exercise effectively its governance and participation rights. The panel remanded for further proceedings. View "Southcentral Foundation v. Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to AXIS in an action seeking reimbursement of an insurance payment that it made, as a secondary excess insurer, to Northrop. AXIS argued that underlying insurers paid an uncovered claim arising from Northrop's settlement of alleged Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) violations, thereby "improperly eroding" their policies' liability limits and prematurely triggering AXIS's excess coverage.The panel held that, consistent with the limited caselaw and secondary sources that have addressed excess insurer claims of "improper erosion," "improper exhaustion," "wrongful exhaustion," and similar challenges to the payment decisions of underlying insurers, an excess insurer may not challenge those decisions in order to argue that the underlying liability limits were not (or should not have been) exhausted absent a showing of fraud or bad faith, or the specific reservation of such a right in its contract with the insured.In this case, the panel held that no reasonable insured in Northrop's position would understand that it might have to justify its underlying insurers' payment decisions as a prerequisite to obtaining excess coverage from AXIS. The district court misapplied the panel's unpublished decision in Shy v. Insurance Company of the State of Pennsylvania, 528 F. App'x 752 (9th Cir. 2013), ignored the weight of authority rejecting "improper erosion" as a valid basis for denying coverage, and misconstrued the "covered loss" provision in AXIS's excess policy as a reservation of the right to second-guess other insurers' payments. Accordingly, the panel remanded for further proceedings. View "AXIS Reinsurance Co. v. Northrop Grumman" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction barring implementation of decisions to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations of Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, and El Salvador. The TPS program is a congressionally created humanitarian program administered by DHS that provides temporary relief to nationals of designated foreign countries that have been stricken by a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other "extraordinary and temporary conditions in the foreign state."The panel held that judicial review of plaintiffs' claim under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) is barred by 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(5)(A). Under the TPS statute, the Secretary possesses full and unreviewable discretion as to whether to consider intervening events in making a TPS determination. In this case, plaintiffs' attempt to rely on the APA to invoke justiciability over what would otherwise be an unreviewable challenge to specific TPS determinations, constitutes an impermissible circumvention of section 1254a(b)(5)(A).The panel also held that plaintiffs failed to show a likelihood of success, or even serious questions, on the merits of their Equal Protection claim. The district court found that the DHS Secretaries were influenced by President Trump and/or the White House in their TPS decisionmaking, and that President Trump had expressed animus against non-white, non-European immigrants. However, without any evidence linking them, the panel concluded that these two factual findings alone cannot support a finding of discriminatory purpose for the TPS terminations. View "Ramos v. Wolf" on Justia Law

After Asarco entered into a settlement agreement and consent decree with the government, it filed a contribution action under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) against Atlantic Richfield. The district court entered judgment in favor of Asarco, finding that Asarco had incurred $111.4 million in necessary response costs for the cleanup of a Superfund Site and that Atlantic Richfield was responsible for twenty-five percent of that sum.The Ninth Circuit held that the district court erred in its determination of the necessary response costs incurred by Asarco by including speculative future costs in its tabulation of necessary response costs eligible for contribution under CERCLA. However, the panel held that the district court did not err in allocating responsibility for twenty-five percent of the response costs to Atlantic Richfield. Accordingly, the panel vacated and remanded in part, and affirmed in part. View "ASARCO LLC v. Atlantic Richfield Company, LLC" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit withdrew a memorandum disposition filed January 9, 2020; filed a published opinion affirming the district court's denial of petitioner's habeas corpus petition; denied a petition for rehearing; and denied on behalf of the court a petition for rehearing en banc. During petitioner's trial, one of the jurors had a conversation with a neighbor who is a police officer about difficulties the juror was having in the case and the police officer neighbor responded something to the effect that a defendant in a criminal trial would not be there if he had not done something wrong.The panel held that the Nevada Supreme Court's test to evaluate juror misconduct—and the application of it in petitioner's case—is not contrary to, nor does it involve an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law. The panel stated that there was no decision of the Supreme Court that precludes the Nevada Supreme Court from requiring petitioner to show a reasonable probability or likelihood that the contact affected the verdict. View "Von Tobel v. Benedetti" on Justia Law