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

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's denial of habeas relief to petitioner, holding that the state trial court's admission of opinion testimony from a law enforcement expert on street gangs, who described for the jury the potential benefits that a street gang might receive when a member commits a robbery by himself, did not deny petitioner a fundamentally fair trial and due process. The panel held that the district court's judgment was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, Supreme Court precedent.However, the panel explained that the expert testimony was insufficient to support a ten-year gang enhancement and that the state court's decision was an unreasonable application of Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979). Furthermore, no rational trier of fact could have found this expert testimony by itself sufficient to prove the elements of the 2001 robbery gang enhancement beyond a reasonable doubt. View "Maquiz MacDonald v. Hedgpeth" on Justia Law

A grant of regulatory employment authorization under 8 C.F.R. 274a.12(b)(20) does not confer lawful immigration status for purposes of establishing eligibility for status adjustment under 8 U.S.C. 1255(k)(2). The Ninth Circuit denied a petition for review of the BIA's decision finding petitioner, the beneficiary of an H-1B visa, ineligible for status adjustment. In this case, petitioner's employer filed for an extension of his H-1B visa, but it was denied, and his employer failed to file an application for status adjustment within 180 days of the expiration of his H-1B visa. Although petitioner was legally authorized to work in the country during the months between the expiration of his H-1B visa and the denial of his application for an H-1B extension pursuant to 8 C.F.R. 274a.12(b)(20), the BIA correctly concluded that petitioner was ineligible for status of adjustment. View "Xiao Ma v. Sessions" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit vacated defendant's conviction for sex trafficking of a minor or by force, fraud, or coercion, and for transportation of a minor in interstate commerce to engage in prostitution. The panel held that defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him was violated when one of the victims was permitted to testify against defendant remotely by two-way video because she was seven months pregnant and unable to travel.The panel held that, criminal defendants have a right to physical, face-to-face confrontation at trial, and that right cannot be compromised by the use of a remote video procedure unless it is necessary to do so and the reliability of the testimony is otherwise assured. In this case, alternatives were available for obtaining the testimony that would preserve defendant's right to physical confrontation. The court remanded for resentencing on the remaining five counts. View "United States v. Carter" on Justia Law

After county social workers removed four children under the age of six from their family home under a suspicion of child abuse, took them to a temporary shelter, and subjected them to invasive medical examinations, without their parents' knowledge or consent and without a court order authorizing the examinations, the family filed suit against the county for violations of the parents' Fourteenth Amendment rights and the children's Fourth Amendment rights.The Ninth Circuit held that the county violates parents' Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process rights when it performs the Polinsky Children's Center medical examinations without notifying the parents about the examinations and without obtaining either the parents' consent or judicial authorization. The panel assumed, without deciding, that the special needs doctrine applied to the Polinksy medical examinations, but held that the searches were unconstitutional under the special needs balancing test if performed without the necessary notice and consent. In this case, the county violated the children's Fourth Amendment rights by failing to obtain a warrant or to provide these constitutional safeguards before subjecting the children to these invasive medical examinations. View "Mann v. County of San Diego" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a preliminary injunction and its bench trial judgment in an action facially challenging HB 2023, Arizona's 2016 election law prohibiting certain persons from collecting voters' early mail ballots. A person who knowingly collects voted or unvoted early ballots from another person is guilty of a class 6 felony under HB 2023.The panel held that H.B. 2023 was not preempted by federal laws regulating the United States Postal Service, did not violate the First Amendment's protection of speech by implicating the First Amendment rights of ballot collectors, and was not an unconstitutionally vague criminal statute where it did not violate either the fair notice or the arbitrary enforcement requirements. View "Knox v. Brnovich" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of a state patrol officer in a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action, alleging that the officer's entry into plaintiff's home without a warrant and under false pretenses violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The panel held that, although the officer's entry in plaintiff's home during the course of a civil fraud investigation was an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment, the officer was entitled to qualified immunity because the right to be free from a search in the context of a civil or administrative investigation related to a determination of benefits was not clearly established at the time. View "Whalen v. McMullen" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's convictions for assault on a federal officer, use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of a firearm by an illegal alien. However, the court reversed defendant's convictions for attempted robbery of the officer's gun and attempted robbery of the officer's truck, and remanded.The panel held that the district court erred by instructing the jury on the elements of attempted robbery under 18 U.S.C. 2112 by failing to instruct that defendant must have possessed the specific intent to steal. The obvious instructional error affected defendant's substantial rights and seriously undermined the fairness and integrity of the proceedings. However, the district court did not plainly err by failing to instruct that defendant must have formed such intent by the time he used force, not just by the time he tried to take the property in question. The panel rejected defendant's remaining claims of error regarding the jury instructions and defendant's contention that the district abused its discretion by excluding expert testimony he belatedly sought to introduce at trial. View "United States v. Moreno Ornelas" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit withdrew its prior opinion filed December 12, 2017, and substituted the following opinion.In National Mining Association v. Zinke, 877 F.3d 845 (9th Cir. 2017), the panel upheld the decision of the Secretary of the Interior to withdraw, for twenty years, more than one million acres of public lands around Grand Canyon National Park from new mining claims. The panel held that that withdrawal did not extinguish "valid existing rights."The panel affirmed, with one exception, the district court's judgment in an action filed by the Tribe and three environmental groups challenging the Forest Service's determination that Energy Fuels had a valid existing right to operate a uranium mine on land within the withdrawal area. The panel held that the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, and not the Mining Act, formed the legal basis of plaintiffs' claim that Canyon Mine should not be exempt from the withdrawal because the valid existing right determination was in error. The panel vacated as to this claim and remanded for reconsideration on the merits. View "Havasupai Tribe v. Provencio" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress evidence. Defendant conditionally pleaded guilty to receipt of child pornography and moved to suppress evidence including evidence seized pursuant to a Network Investigative Technique (NIT) warrant issued by a magistrate judge.The panel held that, although the NIT warrant violated Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(b) because it authorized a search outside of the issuing magistrate judge's territorial authority, the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applied to bar suppression of the evidence. The panel reasoned that there was no evidence that the officers executing the NIT warrant acted in bad faith. Furthermore, suppression of the evidence against defendant was unlikely to deter future violations of this specific kind because the conduct at issue was, after a December 2016 amendment, authorized by Rule 41(b)(6). View "United States v. Henderson" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of plaintiffs' class action against cocoa bean companies, alleging the aiding and abetting of child slave labor that took place in the United States under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). Plaintiffs are former child slaves who were forced to work on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast. The district court dismissed the complaint based on its conclusion that the complaint sought an impermissible extraterritorial application of the ATS.In light of Jesner v. Arab Bank, 138 S. Ct. 1386 (2018), which changed the legal landscape on which plaintiffs constructed their case, the panel remanded to allow plaintiffs to amend their complaint to specify whether aiding and abetting conduct that took place in the United States is attributable to the domestic corporations. The panel held that the aiding and abetting conduct comes within the focus of the ATS and the ATS’s focus on torts committed in violation of the law of nations. The panel also held that a narrow set of specific domestic conduct was relevant to the ATS's focus. In this case, plaintiffs have alleged that defendants funded child slavery practices in the Ivory Coast. Specifically, plaintiffs alleged that defendants provided personal spending money outside the ordinary business contract and the money was given with the purpose of maintaining ongoing relations with the farms so that defendants could continue receiving cocoa at a price that would not be obtainable without child slave labor. Furthermore, defendants had employees from their United States headquarters regularly inspect operations in the Ivory Coast and report back to the United States offices, where these financing decisions or arrangements originated. View "Doe v. Nestle, S.A." on Justia Law