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

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court “heed[ed] the Constitution and returned the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” After Dobbs, Idaho, exercised that prerogative to enact abortion restrictions. In response, the federal government sued Idaho, claiming that a federal law unrelated to abortion preempts the will of the people of that state, through their elected representatives, to “protect fetal life,” as Dobbs described it.   The Ninth Circuit granted Idaho’s motion for a stay pending appeal. The court held that there is no preemption and the traditional stay factors favor granting the Legislature’s motion. The court explained that Dobbs triggered section 622, after which the federal government challenged Idaho’s law, arguing that it is preempted by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, 42 U.S.C. Section 1395dd (EMTALA).  The court reasoned that each of the four Nken factors favors issuing a stay here. The Legislature has made a strong showing that EMTALA does not preempt section 622. EMTALA does not require abortions, and even if it did in some circumstances, that requirement would not directly conflict with section 622. The federal government will not be injured by the stay of an order preliminarily enjoining enforcement of a state law that does not conflict with its own. Idaho, on the other hand, will be irreparably injured absent a stay because the preliminary injunction directly harms its sovereignty. The balance of the equities and the public interest also favors judicial action ensuring Idaho’s right to enforce its legitimately enacted laws during the pendency of the State’s appeal. View "USA V. STATE OF IDAHO" on Justia Law

The district court appointed a receiver to claw back profits received by investors in a Ponzi scheme that was the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement action. The receiver filed suit against certain investors, alleging fraudulent transfers from the receivership entities to the investors. The district court concluded that the receiver was bound by arbitration agreements signed by the receivership company, which was the instrument of the Ponzi scheme. The district court relied on Kirkland v. Rune.   The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s order denying a motion to compel arbitration. The panel held that EPD did not control because it addressed whether a bankruptcy trustee, not a receiver, was bound by an arbitration agreement. Unlike under bankruptcy law, there was no explicit statute here establishing that the receiver was acting on behalf of the receivership entity’s creditors. The panel held that a receiver acts on behalf of the receivership entity, not defrauded creditors, and thus can be bound by an agreement signed by that entity. But here, even applying that rule, it was unclear whether the receiver was bound by the agreements at issue. The panel remanded for the district court to consider whether the defendant investors met their burden of establishing that the fraudulent transfer claims arose out of agreements with the receivership entity, whether the investors were parties to the agreements and any other remaining arbitrability issues. View "GEOFF WINKLER V. THOMAS MCCLOSKEY, JR., ET AL" on Justia Law

=O.B. who was attending the University on a football scholarship, repeatedly and violently assaulted Plaintiff, his fellow student, in an off-campus house where O.B. was living with other university football players. At the time of the assault, university officials knew that O.B. had repeatedly and violently assaulted two other female undergraduates the previous year. Plaintiff sued the University under Title IX. The district court granted summary judgment to the University.   The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment. The en banc court held that to obtain damages under Title IX for student-on-student harassment, a plaintiff must show (1) that the educational institution had substantial control over both the harasser and the context in which the known harassment occurs; (2) that the harassment was so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denied its victims the equal access to education that Title IX is designed to protect; (3) that a school official with authority to address the alleged discrimination and to institute corrective measures has actual knowledge of the discrimination; (4) that the school acted with deliberate indifference to the harassment; and (5) that the school’s deliberate indifference must cause students to undergo harassment. The en banc court held that evidence in the record would support a conclusion by a reasonable factfinder that University officials had actual knowledge or notice of O.B.’s violent assaults and that Erika Barnes, the University’s Title IX liaison within the Athletics Department, was an official who had authority to address O.B.’s assaults and to institute corrective measures. View "MACKENZIE BROWN, ET AL V. STATE OF ARIZONA, ET AL" on Justia Law

This diversity suit involves personal injury and wrongful death claims arising from a collision between a sedan and a tour bus on a U.S. highway within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation reservation. Before trial, the district court held that Arizona law applies to the accident, and it therefore dismissed all claims based on Navajo law. At trial, the jury rejected all remaining claims asserted by the sedan’s surviving passengers and by the estate of the sedan’s driver, and the district court entered judgment in favor of the tour bus driver, the tour organizer, and other related corporations.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment in favor of Defendants to the extent that it dismissed all claims that had been asserted solely under Navajo law; reversed the district court’s judgment on the claims that were submitted for trial because the district court erroneously allowed the introduction of hearsay opinions of a non-testifying putative expert; and remanded for a new trial. The panel held that the district court abused its discretion in allowing, under the guise of impeachment evidence against Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses, Defendants’ counsel to elicit the opinions expressed in a police report prepared by the Arizona Department of Public Safety as to the cause of the accident. Next, the panel affirmed the district court’s conclusion that Arizona law applied and its resulting dismissal of all claims that were asserted only under Navajo law. View "JAMIEN JENSEN, ET AL V. EXC INCORPORATED, ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, members of a certified class, are former California employees of Hyatt Corporation who were laid off after the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020. Plaintiffs were laid off in March 2020 and then terminated in June 2020. Plaintiffs contend that Hyatt violated California law by failing to pay them immediately for their accrued vacation time and by failing to compensate them for the value of free hotel rooms employees received each year. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Hyatt and dismissed the case with prejudice.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s summary judgment. The panel concluded that the prompt payment provisions of the California Labor Code required Hyatt to pay Plaintiffs their accrued vacation pay in March 2020. The California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (“DLSE”) opinion letter and its Policies and Interpretations Manual establish that a temporary layoff without a specific return date within the normal pay period is a discharge that triggers the prompt payment provisions of Cal. Labor Code Section 201. Hyatt, thus, should have paid the accrued vacation pay at the initial layoff in March 2020 because the temporary layoff was longer than the normal pay period, and there was no specific return date. The panel reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Hyatt as to the vacation pay claim and remanded for the district court to consider whether Hyatt acted willfully in failing to comply with the prompt payment provisions. View "KAREN HARTSTEIN V. HYATT CORPORATION" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs’ neighbor petitioned for a civil harassment restraining order against Plaintiffs and was granted a temporary restraining order. As a result of the TRO, Plaintiff was ordered to surrender his firearms to a California licensed firearms dealer. Certain California laws make it unlawful for any person subject to a “civil restraining order” issued by a California state court (including temporary restraining orders) to possess firearms or ammunition. Plaintiffs claim these laws violate the Second Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution as applied to them. Though Plaintiffs were subject to civil restraining orders when they filed their suit, the orders against them have expired, and in January 2023, a California court denied the latest request to extend them.   The Ninth Circuit dismissed Plaintiffs’ action as moot. The panel rejected Plaintiffs’ argument that, although they were no longer subject to any firearm restrictions, the case fell within the “capable of repetition, yet evading review” exception to mootness. The panel noted that this doctrine is to be used sparingly, in exceptional situations, and generally only where (1) the challenged action is in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to cessation or expiration, and (2) there is a reasonable expectation that the same complaining party will be subject to the same action again. The panel held that this case was moot because the relevant restraining orders have expired, a three-year-long restraining order is not too brief to be litigated on the merits, and there was no reasonable expectation that Plaintiffs will be subject to the same action again View "MIRANDA WALLINGFORD, ET AL V. ROBERT BONTA, ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiff asserted that ZoomInfo did not obtain her permission or compensate her when it used her name and likeness in its online directory to promote its product, in violation of California’s Right of Publicity statute and her common-law privacy and intellectual property rights. ZoomInfo moved to strike the complaint under the California anti-SLAPP statute. In the district court, ZoomInfo moved to dismiss the complaint and to cut off the claims at the pleading stage. The district court denied the motion to dismiss and rejected ZoomInfo’s special motion to strike the complaint under California anti-SLAPP statute.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel held that it had appellate jurisdiction under the collateral order doctrine to review the denial of ZoomInfo’s anti-SLAPP motion. The panel also held that, at this stage, Martinez has plausibly pleaded that she suffered sufficient injury to establish constitutional standing to sue. The panel wrote that although the district court did not address the exemptions, Plaintiff’s case fell within the public interest exemption to the anti-SLAPP law. Plaintiff met the three conditions for the public interest exemption: Plaintiff requests all relief on behalf of the alleged class of which she is a member and does not seek any additional relief for herself; Plaintiff’s lawsuit seeks to enforce the public interest of the right to control one’s name and likeness; and private enforcement is necessary and disproportionately burdensome. View "KIM MARTINEZ V. ZOOMINFO TECHNOLOGIES, INC." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed from his conviction under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (“FDCA”) for shipping misbranded drugs in interstate commerce. Along with other challenges, Defendant contended that the district court erred in concluding that the charged offense did not require proof that Defendant knew that the drugs he shipped were misbranded. Defendant moved to dismiss the indictment, and the district court denied that motion.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed Defendant’s conviction. The panel first held that the text of the various provisions of the FDCA at issue does not contain any language that imposes a scienter requirement of the sort that Defendant advocates. The panel then addressed whether there are convincing reasons to depart from the presumption that Congress intended to require a defendant to possess a culpable mental state regarding each of the statutory elements that criminalize otherwise innocent conduct, even when Congress does not specify any scienter in the statutory text. The panel concluded that such convincing reasons are present here. The panel wrote that this is the unusual case in which a public welfare offense lacks a scienter element even though it is a felony with moderately severe potential penalties, given the confluence of circumstances: (1) Congress augmented, into a felony, a predicate misdemeanor offense that concededly lacks a scienter requirement; (2) it did so by adding, not a scienter requirement, but a prior conviction requirement; (3) this action contrasts with Congress’s explicit addition of a scienter requirement in the other clause of Section 333(a)(2); and (4) the prior conviction requirement largely serves the same purposes as an express scienter requirement. View "USA V. RICHARD MARSCHALL" on Justia Law

This case concerns the property rights of two uniquely Alaskan entities. On one side is Flying Crown Subdivision Addition No. 1 and No. 2 Property Owners Association (“Flying Crown”), a homeowners’ association for the eponymous subdivision in Anchorage, Alaska. Flying Crown is one of many subdivisions nestled in South Anchorage. The homes in Flying Crown back up to a small airstrip. Some of Flying Crown’s homeowners selected the subdivision for that very reason. On the other side is the Alaska Railroad Corporation (“ARRC”), a state-owned corporation that owns and operates Alaska’s railroad system. ARRC filed this action seeking to quiet title in the right-of-way and to clarify that ARRC’s interest in the right-of-way includes an exclusive-use easement. The district court properly granted summary judgment to ARRC.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel held that the Alaska Railroad Act of 1914 authorized the creation of the Alaska Railroad, a federal railroad, and reserved railroad rights-of-way to the United States. The Alaska Railroad Transfer Act of 1982 authorized the federal government to transfer nearly all of the Alaska Railroad property rights to ARRC. The panel held that the 1914 Act did not reveal the scope of the right-of-way retained by the government. The panel concluded that, in the Sperstad Patent, the federal government intended to reserve an exclusive-use easement under the 1914 Act. The panel further held that the federal government transferred the exclusive-use easement it retained under the 1914 Act. View "ALASKA RAILROAD CORPORATION V. FLYING CROWN SUBDIVISION ADDITION NO. 1 & NO. 2, ET AL" on Justia Law

Appellee Gateway Hotel L.P. (“Gateway”) contends that the standard for awarding costs to ADA Defendants is governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1), which allows courts the discretion to award costs to prevailing parties “unless a federal statute . . . provides otherwise.” Appellant contends that the ADA’s fee- and cost-shifting statute “provides otherwise” because it permits ADA Defendants to receive their costs only where there is a showing that the action was frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless. Therefore, he contends that the district court should have granted his motion to retax costs, which would have, in effect, denied Gateway’s application for costs. The district court denied Appellant’s motion because it concluded that the decision in Brown was irreconcilable with the United States Supreme Court’s intervening opinion in Marx v. General Revenue Corp., 568 U.S. 371 (2013) and was therefore effectively overruled.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed. The panel held that Brown v. Lucky Stores was effectively overruled by Marx v. General Revenue Corp. The panel held that, accordingly, the fee- and cost-shifting provision of the ADA, 42 U.S.C. Section 12205, does not “provide otherwise” within the meaning of Rule 54(d)(1). Rule 54(d)(1), therefore, governs the award of costs to a prevailing ADA defendant and allows such an award in the court’s discretion, thereby keeping the court’s prior award of costs to the defendant intact. View "ORLANDO GARCIA V. GATEWAY HOTEL L.P." on Justia Law