Justia Government & Administrative Law Opinion Summaries

Appellant challenged a judgment of the district court affirming the Social Security Administration's (SSA) denial of his application for disability benefits. Appellant contended that the ALJ did not properly apply the "treating physician rule" in evaluating his application and further argued that new evidence had come to light that warranted a remand to the agency. The court held that the ALJ did not, as required by the treating physician rule, explain his reasons for rejecting the opinion of appellant's treating physician. The court also held that a letter from the Board of Medicine validating appellant's complaint, as well as a judicial determination that a physician's report contained a false representation, qualified as new evidence within the meaning of 42. U.S.C. 405(g). Therefore, the court reversed the judgment of the district court and remanded for further proceedings.

Appellants challenged a plan to manage the elk and bison populations in the National Elk Refuge and Grand Teton National Park pursuant to the National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act (Improvement Act), 15 U.S.C. 668dd-668ee. At issue was whether the plan's failure to commit to a deadline for ending supplemental feeding was arbitrary and capricious under the Improvement Act. Also at issue was whether the plan unlawfully gave the Wyoming Fish and Game Department a veto over whether supplemental feeding would end. The court held that the record amply demonstrated that the agencies collected the relevant data, identified the dangers posed by supplemental feeding, and adopted a plan to mitigate those dangers. They also determined that the many objectives of the Improvement Act, including conservation, would be best met without implementation of a fixed deadline for stopping supplemental feeding was not arbitrary or capricious. The court took the Secretary at his word that Wyoming had no veto over the Secretary's duty to end a practice that was concededly at odds with the long-term health of the elk and bison in the refuge. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court was affirmed.

When the Kiewit Power Constructors Company warned its electricians that their morning and afternoon breaks were too long, two of them responded that things would "get ugly" if they were disciplined, and one said that the supervisor had "better bring [his] boxing gloves." Each was fired. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reinstated both workers, finding that in context their statements were not physical threats, but were merely figures of speech made in the course of a protected labor dispute. The court held that because the NLRB's finding were supported by substantial evidence, the court denied Kiewit's petition for review and granted the cross-application for enforcement.

Trade associations representing commercial ship owners and operators petitioned for review of a nationwide permit issued by the EPA for the discharge of pollutants incidental to the normal operation of vessels. Petitioners raised a number of procedural challenges, all related to the EPA's decision to incorporate into the permit conditions that states submitted to protect their own water quality. The court held that because petitioners had failed to establish that the EPA could alter or reject state certification conditions, the additional agency procedures they demanded would not have afforded them the relief they sought. Accordingly, the court denied the petition for review.

This case concerned the San Diego fairy shrimp, an aquatic animal found in southern California, that was designated as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, 16 U.S.C. 1533. Plaintiffs, companies that owned land along the California-Mexico border, sued to challenge the designation of 143 acres of their property as critical habitat for the San Diego fairy shrimp. The court held that because the Fish and Wildlife Services had not reasonably explained how one isolated observation, involving a single 2001 sighting of four ant-sized San Diego fairy shrimp on the property at issue, demonstrated that plaintiffs' property was "occupied" by the San Diego fairy shrimp in 1997 (the relevant statutory date), the court reversed the judgment of the district court and remanded. On remand, the court ordered the district court to vacate the designation of plaintiffs' property as critical habitat for the San Diego fairy shrimp.

After illegally collecting a three percent excise tax, the IRS created a refund procedure for taxpayers to recoup their money. Appellants argued that the procedure was unlawful. At issue was whether the court had jurisdiction and whether appellants stated a valid claim upon which relief could be granted. The court held that it had federal question jurisdiction and neither the Anti Injunction Act, 26 U.S.C. 7421(a), nor the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. 2201(a), provided a limitation on the court's exercise of its jurisdiction. Therefore, because appellants had no other adequate remedy at law, the district court should consider the merits of their Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 551 et seq., claim on remand.

This case stemmed from a challenge to the EPA's regulation of ozone under the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7409(a). At issue was an EPA "guidance document" addressing obligations of regions still in nonattainment of a now-revoked ozone air quality standard. The court held that the Guidance qualified as a legislative rule that the EPA was required to issue through notice and comment rulemaking and that one of its features, the so-called attainment alternative, violated the Clean Air Act's plain language. Therefore, the court granted the petition for review and vacated the Guidance.

This case stemmed from petitioner's rates filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for its Michigan oil pipeline where petitioner agreed with two of its three shippers to restrict rate increases for a three-year moratorium period. At issue was the initial rate petitioner must use to calculate its new annual ceiling levels. Petitioner argued that after the end of the moratorium period, its ceiling levels should be calculated as if its maximum rates had been set under FERC's indexing methodology all along. In contrast, FERC would simply pick up the rates where the settlement agreement left off, using the last rate under the agreement as the initial rate for the period after the agreement. The court held that neither the agreement nor the relevant regulations clearly laid out how to determine the rates petitioner could charge now that the three-year period had past. Therefore, finding both the agreement and the regulations ambiguous, the court deferred to the reasonable views of FERC and denied petitioner's petition for review.

A jury found for the District of Columbia government and a detective of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD)(collectively, the government), in this case alleging a 42 U.S.C. 1983 claim for the use of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment and common law claims for assault and battery. Appellant, as personal representative of her brother's estate, sued to recover damages for the shooting death of her brother by the detective, and she contended on appeal that she did not receive a fair trial. The principle issue concerned the district court's rulings on the inadmissibility of portions of an internal MPD report regarding an altercation between the detective and appellant's brother. A related issue involved a violation of the pretrial disclosure requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26. The court found no abuse of discretion by the district court where the record revealed that it properly excluded those parts of the report likely to confuse the jury and unfairly prejudiced the government. The court also held that the government failed to comply with Rule 26(a)(2)(E) by not supplementing the medical expert's disclosure to reflect an interview with the detective on which the expert intended to rely at trial, but in view of appellant's cross-examination of the expert, after receiving the expert's interview notes, that the violation was harmless and so the district court's refusal to strike the expert's testimony was not reversible error. Accordingly, because appellant's other claims of error and her bias claim were unpersuasive, the court affirmed the judgment.

Three state and local governmental units, along with individual citizens, petitioned the court for review of and other relief from two "determinations" made by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the other respondents: the DOE's attempt to withdraw the application it submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license to construct a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada; and the DOE's apparent decision to abandon development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository. The court concluded that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. 10101-270, set forth a process and schedule for the siting, construction, and operation of a federal repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. At this point in that process, the DOE had submitted a construction license application for the Yucca Mountain repository and the NRC maintained a statutory duty to review that application. Therefore, the court held that unless and until petitioners were able to demonstrate that one of the respondents had either violated a clear duty to act or otherwise affirmatively violated the law, petitioners' challenges to the ongoing administrative process was premature. Accordingly, the court held that it lacked jurisdiction over petitioners' claims and dismissed the petitions.