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

Wilson filed her voluntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in December 2013, electing to take the federal exemptions and listing the “wildcard” exemption. Wilson’s condominium was valued at $250,000 and was subject to a $246,440 mortgage. Wilson listed her exemption as $3,560, the equity in her home as of the petition date. The value of the property increased. In July 2016, Wilson amended her Schedule C, claiming “100% of fair market value, up to any applicable statutory limit,” stating the value of the property at $412,500, and listing Washington’s homestead exemption as the basis for the amended exemption. The bankruptcy court held that an amendment to update the value of an exemption in light of post-petition changes in value was not permitted. The district court and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Declining to decide whether the definition of the value of exemptions in 11 U.S.C. 522(a)(2) applies to state law exemptions as well as to federal ones, the court concluded that under section 541(a)(1) the debtor’s interests in property transfer to the bankruptcy estate as of the commencement of the bankruptcy action. Following this transfer, any appreciation enures to the bankruptcy estate. The debtor’s exemption was limited to her equity in the property as of the date of her bankruptcy petition. View "Wilson v. Rigby" on Justia Law

A 2006 Initiative, amending Alaska’s election laws, returned the individual-to-candidate and individual-to-group limits to their pre-2003 levels of $500 per year, Alaska Stat. 15.13.070(b)(1); capped the amount a non-political party group could contribute to a candidate at $1,000; restricted the amount candidates could receive from nonresidents to $3,000 per year, and limited the amount a political party, including its subdivisions, could contribute to a candidate. The voter information packet included a statement that "Corruption is not limited to one party or individual. Ethics should be not only bipartisan but also universal. From the Abramoff and Jefferson scandals in Washington D.C. to side deals in Juneau, special interests are becoming bolder every day. They used to try to buy elections. Now they are trying to buy the legislators themselves." In 2015, Plaintiffs brought a First Amendment challenge. The Ninth Circuit held that affirmance on the individual-to-candidate and individual-to-group limits was compelled by precedent and upheld the political party-to-candidate limit. Those restrictions were narrowly tailored to prevent quid pro quo corruption or its appearance and did not impermissibly infringe constitutional rights. The court held that the nonresident limit, which at most, targeted contributors’ influence over Alaska politics, did not target an “important state interest” and therefore violated the First Amendment. View "Thompson v. Hebdon" on Justia Law

In 2013, the Tydingco family traveled from their home in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) to China, Lili’s native country. Lili is a legal U.S. permanent resident through her marriage to Frank. In China, X.N.’s father asked them to take 10-year-old X.N., a Chinese national, to attend school. A friend told Lili that it was possible to bring X.N. to the U.S. The CNMI's “parole” program, designed to support its tourism industry, allows Chinese and Russian nationals to enter the CNMI without a visa and stay for up to 45 days. At Saipan immigration control, Lili presented a notarized letter from X.N.’s parents stating that the Tydingcos would be X.N.’s guardians during her studies. The officer told Lili to get the letter stamped at the local police station, but otherwise said nothing about X.N.’s attending school on Saipan. They showed proof that X.N. had a return flight to China on October 28, 2013. The officer stamped X.N.’s passport that X.N. had to leave the CNMI by November 4. The Tydingcos enrolled X.N. in public school. Lili did not apply for a student visa for X.N. because the school never requested one. X.N. left the Tydingcos in February 2015. Lili voluntarily spoke to a DHS agent and signed a written statement, acknowledging that she “had [X.N.]’s passport and saw the I-94 showing she was paroled in until November 2013.” The Ninth Circuit reversed their convictions for harboring an illegal alien, 8 U.S.C. 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii). The instruction defining “harbor” erroneously did not require the jury to find that they intended to violate the law. The instruction defining “reckless disregard” erroneously did not require the jury to find that Lili subjectively drew an inference that the alien was in the U.S. unlawfully and may have affected the outcome. View "United States v. Tydingco" on Justia Law

Dropbox, an internet company providing data storage, submitted a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that child-pornography images had been uploaded to a specific account. The FBI linked the Dropbox and email accounts to IP addresses and to a cellphone number. Executing a search warrant, FBI agents seized a desktop computer tower, a loose hard drive, and another hard drive. Each contained videos or images of child pornography and was linked to the Dropbox account, so that all images were accessible from Dropbox on the other devices. Charged with child-pornography possession, 18 U.S.C. 2252(a)(4)(B), the defendant unsuccessfully moved to dismiss a four-count superseding indictment as multiplicitous. Chilaca was convicted on all four countst and was sentenced to four concurrent 66-month terms, a lifetime of supervised release, a special assessment, and $6,000 in restitution. The Ninth Circuit reversed in part and remanded. Section 2254(a)(4)(B) makes it a crime to knowingly possess “1 or more” matters containing any visual depiction of child pornography; simultaneous possession of different matters containing offending images at a single time and place constitutes a single violation. The four counts charging the defendant with possession of child-pornography images on separate media found at the same time and in the same place were multiplicitous and constituted double jeopardy. No new trial is warranted. The panel remanded for resentencing on the remaining count. View "United States v. Chilaca" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of plaintiffs' request for attorneys' fees after a settlement regarding California’s Assembly Bill X3 5. The panel held that the district court erroneously concluded that plaintiffs were not entitled to seek fees pursuant to California Civil Procedure Code 1021.5, and that the district court abused its discretion in denying Independent Living's motion to set aside fees from the retroactive monetary relief obtained in 2010. Therefore, the panel remanded for the district court to determine whether plaintiffs met the requirements to obtain attorneys' fees under section 1021.5 and Section III (C)(1)(a) and (b) of the Settlement Agreement, and whether it was possible and appropriate to recoup attorney's fees from Medicaid providers. View "Independent Living Center of Southern California v. Kent" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit against Officer Jeremy Hellawell under 42 U.S.C. 1983, after the officer fatally shot and killed Ernest Foster. The district court denied the officer's motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity.The Ninth Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction to consider questions of evidentiary sufficiency on interlocutory review, and thus dismissed the officer's appeal of the district court's order with respect to the claims that the shooting violated Foster's Fourth Amendment right and plaintiffs' Fourteenth Amendment rights. The panel reversed the district court's denial of qualified immunity on the Fourth Amendment claims, holding that the officer's actions during the investigative stop did not violate any clearly established law. In this case, the officer had reasonable suspicion to stop and investigate Foster after the 911 call warning of an armed man matching Foster's description, and unholstering a gun during the stop did not constitute a violation of Foster's right to be free from excessive force. View "Foster v. Hellawell" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit filed an order granting defendants' petition for panel rehearing, withdrawing the panel’s opinion, and ordering the filing of a superseding opinion. The panel also filed a superseding opinion reversing the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants in a trademark infringement suit over the "Honey Badger" catchphrases under the Lanham Act.The panel held that, under the test in Rogers v. Grimaldi, 875 F.2d 994 (2d Cir. 1989), the Lanham Act applies to expressive works only where the public interest in avoiding consumer confusion outweighs the public interest in free expression. In this case, defendants have not used plaintiff's mark in the creation of a song, photograph, video game, or television show, but have largely just pasted plaintiff's mark into their greeting cards. The panel held that a jury could determine that this use of plaintiff's mark was explicitly misleading as to the source or content of the cards. Therefore, the panel reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment and remanded for further proceedings. View "Gordon v. Drape Creative, Inc." on Justia Law

A plaintiff need not plead that racism was the but-for cause of a defendant's conduct, but only that racism was a factor in the decision not to contract such that the plaintiff was denied the same right as a white citizen. Mixed-motive claims are cognizable under 42 U.S.C. 1981.Entertainment Studios, along with NAAAOM, filed suit alleging that Charter's refusal to enter into a carriage contract was racially motivated and in violation of section 1981. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of Charter's motion to dismiss, holding that the complaint sufficiently alleged that discriminatory intent played at least some role in Charter's refusal to contract with Entertainment Studios and thus denied Entertainment Studios the same right to contract as a white-owned company. The panel also held that plaintiffs' 1981 claim was not barred by the First Amendment where section 1981 was a content-neutral regulation that would satisfy intermediate scrutiny. The panel noted that the fact that cable operators engage in expressive conduct when they select which networks to carry did not automatically require the application of strict scrutiny in this case. View "National Association of African American-Owned Media v. Charter Communications, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs have failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact on whether racial considerations predominated the City of Los Angeles's redistricting process. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's protective order and its order granting summary judgment for the City in an action alleging that race was the predominant motivator in drawing the boundaries of council districts in the Council District 10 redistricting ordinance.Viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, the panel held that the record failed to show that successive boundary amendments were driven predominantly by racial considerations. Rather, the Commission sought to rebalance the populations in each Council District, while preserving communities and unifying as many Neighborhood Councils as possible in a single Council District. The panel also held that the legislative privilege protected local officials from being deposed. View "Lee v. City of Los Angeles" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit amended a previous opinion and voted to deny the petition for panel rehearing.The panel denied the petition for review of the BIA's denial of petitioner's application for cancellation of removal on the ground that she was convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. The panel held that bribery under 18 U.S.C. 666(a)(2) is categorically a crime involving moral turpitude because it requires proof of a corrupt mind. The panel applied Jordan v. De George, 341 U.S. 223 (1951), and Tseung Chu v. Cornell, 247 F.2d 929 (9th Cir. 1957), and held that the crime involving moral turpitude statute, 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I), is not unconstitutionally vague. The panel also held that Jordan and Tseung Chu remain good law in light of the Supreme Court's decisions in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), and Sessions v. Dimaya, 138 S. Ct. 1204 (2018). View "Martinez-de Ryan v. Whitaker" on Justia Law