The First Circuit denied Petitioner's petition for judicial review of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision affirming the judgment of the immigration judge (IJ) rejecting Petitioner's application for deferral of removal under the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT), holding that the BIA's denial of CAT protection was supported by substantial evidence.After Petitioner, a Haitian national, pleaded guilty in a Massachusetts state court with carrying a firearm without a license the Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings. An IJ denied Petitioner's application for deferral of removal under the CAT, and the BIA dismissed Petitioner's appeal. The First Circuit denied Petitioner's petition for judicial review, holding (1) the agency's finding that generalized danger and violence endemic in Haitian society will pose no particularized threat to Petitioner was supported by substantial evidence; (2) judicial venue was proper in the First Circuit; and (3) substantial evidence supported the agency's denial of CAT protection. View "Bazile v. Garland" on Justia Law

The First Circuit granted Petitioner's petition seeking to have her removal proceedings reopened and vacated the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals rejecting her motion to reopen her removal proceedings pursuant to the Board's sua sponte authority, holding that remand was required.At the age of nine, Petitioner entered the United States from El Salvador without inspection to join her mother, who entered without inspection four years earlier. An immigration judge found Petitioner deportable and granted her a five-month period of voluntary departure. The Board affirmed. Thereafter, Congress enacted the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA), Pub. L. No. 105-100. Petitioner later sought to have her removal proceedings reopened so that her request for suspension of deportation could be adjudicated according to the substantive NACARA standards. The Board ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to reopen the proceeding after construing Petitioner's filing as a motion seeking relief under NACARA. The First Circuit granted relief, holding (1) there is no reason why NACARA should not be read as implicitly divesting the Board of its discretion to sua sponte reopen a proceeding; and (2) Petitioner's petition was not time barred. View "Mancia v. Garland" on Justia Law

Over 20 years ago, a group of Florida wine consumers and an out-of-state winery (collectively, the “Plaintiffs”) sued the Director of the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, alleging that certain provisions of Florida’s beverage laws unconstitutionally discriminated against out-of-state wineries. After the United States Supreme Court ruled a virtually identical statutory scheme unconstitutional, the Division agreed to the entry of a judgment declaring Florida’s direct shipment laws unconstitutional as applied to out-of-state “wineries.” The Division also agreed to an injunction prohibiting it from enforcing its direct shipment laws “against out-of-state vendors and producers.” Significantly, these last five words were absent from the parties’ proposed injunction and were added sua sponte by the district court. No one objected to the court’s addition of this language. However, 16 years later, the Division filed a motion in district court to “clarify and modify” the injunction. Specifically, the Division asked the district court to confirm that the injunction applied only to out-of-state wineries rather than out-of-state wine retailers generally. The district court denied the Division’s motion.   The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The court explained that here, the district court expressly determined that the injunction the court entered “accurately reflects the intent of the parties and the Court.” Rule 60(a) does not allow a district court to rewrite its decision any time a party later contends that the language is ambiguous. Thus, the court held that the district court did not err by construing the Division’s motion as made under Rule 60(b)(1) instead of Rule 60(a). View "Jerry Bainbridge, et al. v. Director of the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Energy Policy Advocates challenged a trial court’s conclusion that certain communications between different state attorney general offices were protected from disclosure under a public-records request, and further, that the trial court erred in declining to grant in-camera review of these documents. Additionally, plaintiff argued the trial court improperly granted only half of its fees despite substantially prevailing. The Vermont Attorney General’s Office (AGO) cross-appealed the trial court decision granting plaintiff any fees, arguing plaintiff was not entitled to fees as it did not substantially prevail. After review, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed the trial court decision with respect to the withheld documents and reversed regarding the award of attorney’s fees. View "Energy Policy Advocates v. Attorney General’s Office" on Justia Law

Petitioner is a pilot and flight instructor. After she failed to produce her pilot logbooks and training records upon request by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the FAA suspended Petitioner’s pilot certificate. Petitioner appealed the suspension to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) but, days later, complied with the records request. The FAA then terminated her suspension, which lasted 14 days in total and reinstated her certificate. Nonetheless, an NTSB administrative law judge held a hearing on Petitioner’s appeal and concluded that the suspension was reasonable. Petitioner appealed the decision to the full NTSB, but it dismissed the matter as moot. Petitioner petitioned for a review of the NTSB’s final order under 49 U.S.C. Sections 44709(f) and 46110.   The Eighth Circuit concluded that Petitioner lacked Article III standing and dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction. The court explained that the first problem with Petitioner’s theory of future injury is that she has not shown with particularity how her brief suspension for noncompliance with a records request would harm her job prospects. Further, the court wrote that even assuming the 14-day suspension would be damaging to her job prospects, Petitioner’s claims are not y “real and immediate.” Moreover, the court explained that the record here lacks any facts showing that Petitioner’s suspension would harm her reputation in the estimation of the pilot community. Instead, Petitioner relied on vague, blanket statements of reputational harm. View "Amy McNaught v. Billy Nolen" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs appealed the district court’s judgment dismissing claims against Defendants, challenging Public Act 21-6, which revised the Connecticut General Statutes to repeal religious exemptions from state immunization requirements for schoolchildren, college and university students, and childcare participants. Plaintiffs are two organizations and three individuals who allege that the Act violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and other federal constitutional and statutory guarantees. The district court granted the motions of Defendants to dismiss certain of Plaintiffs’ claims against the state agencies as barred by the Eleventh Amendment, to dismiss the organizational Plaintiffs' claims for lack of standing, and to dismiss all counts of the complaint for failure to state a claim.   The Second Circuit affirmed in part and vacated and remanded in part. The court explained the district court's distinction between "special services" and "special education" was overly strict. The IDEA and its associated regulations do not use the phrase "special services." A reasonable inference from the allegation that Plaintiff’s son suffers from "a speech and learning disorder for which he now receives special services," combined with the allegation that he "is disabled within the meaning of the IDEA," is that the "special services" the complaint mentions constitute "special education" rather than "related services." Therefore, the court concluded that because the district court parsed the complaint too restrictively, failing to draw reasonable inferences in Plaintiff’s favor, the court erred when it found Plaintiff had not stated a plausible claim for relief under the IDEA. The court, therefore, vacated this portion of the judgment. View "We The Patriots USA, Inc. et al. v. Conn. Office of Early Childhood Dev." on Justia Law

In this consolidated appeal of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) orders, two utility companies argue that Attachment Z2 plainly requires utilizing the N-1 Contingency Analysis (N-1) methodology. And they assert that FERC erred in concluding that the Tariff was ambiguous, relying on extrinsic evidence to interpret that the Reservation Stack Analysis (RSA) was the appropriate methodology. Second, they claim that the Regional Operator violated the filed rate doctrine because the filed rate was unclear about how much they would be charged. Finally, Petitioners contend that their charges offend Attachment Z1 because the Regional Operator neither identified the upgrade facilities that would accommodate their requests nor provided them with an estimate of the costs of such upgrades.   The DC Circuit dismiss in part the petitions for review related to the filed rate doctrine because that issue was not exhausted at the rehearing stage below. The court otherwise denied in part the petitions for review. The court explained that FERC appropriately noted that the purpose of Attachment Z1 is to identify new transmission facilities or new upgrades to existing facilities, while Attachment Z2 is designed to calculate a customer’s obligation to pay for its use of existing Creditable Upgrades funded by others. The court explained that because the difference between Attachment Z1 and Attachment Z2 arises out of their plain texts, and FERC’s orders acknowledged that difference, FERC “would clearly have acted on [this] ground even if the other [grounds] were unavailable.” Therefore, denying the petitions for review on this issue is consistent with precedents. View "Xcel Energy Services Inc. v. FERC" on Justia Law

Police officers seized just over $8,000 in a search of Appellant’s home carried out as part of a drug trafficking investigation into her then-boyfriend, K.B. The local police turned over the funds to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which initiated an administrative forfeiture procedure to claim the funds as proceeds from drug sales. Acting pro se, Appellant filed a claim to the assets, forcing the government to terminate its administrative seizure and open a judicial forfeiture proceeding in district court.  She failed to timely oppose the ensuing judicial proceeding, and the clerk of court entered default against the funds. Appellant, still acting pro se, then sent several letters to the district court and the U.S. Attorney’s Office seeking leave to file a belated claim to the seized assets. The district court held that Appellant had not shown excusable neglect, denied her an extension of time to file a claim, and entered final default judgment against the seized assets.
The Second Circuit vacated the grant of the motion to strike and the entry of default judgment and remanded for further proceedings. The court held that the district court erred in granting default judgment to the government. Appellant’s letters are properly viewed as seeking both to lift the entry of default and to be granted leave to file an untimely claim to the assets. So understood, Appellant’s motion should have been assessed under the more permissive good cause standard, as is any other motion to lift entry of default in a civil suit. View "U.S. v. Starling" on Justia Law

In 2005, a federal district court entered a permanent injunction against several pro-life advocates enjoining them from entering the public sidewalk within fifteen feet of the entrance of any abortion clinic in the Western District of New York. Twelve years later, in 2017, Plaintiff, who was not a named party to the 2005 permanent injunction, started sidewalk counseling near the Planned Parenthood facility in Rochester, New York. After Defendants, the New York Attorney General and the City of Rochester decided that Plaintiff was bound by the 2005 permanent injunction, he sued, seeking a declaratory judgment that he was not bound by the injunction. He also moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent Defendants from applying the injunction to his counseling activities. The district court dismissed his suit for failure to state a claim and denied his motion for a preliminary injunction.   The Second Circuit reversed the judgment of the district court insofar as it dismissed Plaintiff’s complaint and vacated the judgment insofar as it denied Plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction. The court remanded for further proceedings. The court held that a person who is not a named party to an injunction or legally identified with a named party is bound by the injunction only from acting for the benefit of, or to assist, an enjoined party in violating the injunction. The allegations in Plaintiff’s complaint do not establish that he so acted and therefore state a claim for declaratory relief. View "Havens v. James" on Justia Law

While responding to an emergency, City of Oxford Police Officer Matthew Brown collided with Patricia Phillips’s vehicle at an intersection. Phillips filed suit to recover for injuries suffered in the collision. After a bench trial, the circuit court found that Officer Brown did not act with reckless disregard in response to the emergency and determined that the City of Oxford was entitled to police-protection immunity under the Mississippi Tort Claims Act. Phillips appealed; the Court of Appeals reversed. The majority of the appellate court held that the trial court’s finding that Officer Brown’s actions did not rise to the level of reckless disregard is against the overwhelming weight of the evidence and that Oxford was not entitled to police-protection immunity. IThe dissent’s opinion said that the circuit court’s judgment was supported by substantial evidence and, therefore, the Court of Appeals lacked the power to disturb the trial judge’s findings. After its review, the Mississippi Supreme Court found the record contained substantial evidence to support the trial court’s decision. Accordingly, the Court reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals and reinstated and affirmed the decision of the trial court. View "Phillips v. City of Oxford" on Justia Law