Justia Government & Administrative Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff, a historian, appealed the district court's order denying his petition to release grand jury records from the 1957 indictment of a former FBI agent. The court held that the district court has no authority outside Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) to disclose grand jury matter. In this case, plaintiff pointed to nothing in Rule 6(e)(3) that suggested that a district court has authority to order disclosure of grand jury matter outside the enumerated exceptions. Because the court held that the district court has no such authority, the court need not determine whether the district court abused its discretion denying plaintiff's petition as overbroad. View "McKeever v. Barr" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs challenge the ATF's rule classifying bump-stock devices as machine guns under the National Firearms Act. The ATF promulgated the rule after a mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas in October 2017.The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of plaintiffs' motions for a preliminary injunction to halt the rule's effective date, holding that plaintiffs failed to establish a likelihood of success both for their challenge to Acting Attorney General Whitaker's appointment and for their objections to the substantive validity of the rule. In this case, Plaintiff Codrea failed to show a likelihood of success on his appointment-based challenges due to Attorney General Barr's independent and unchallenged ratification of the Bump-Stock Rule; the Bump-Stock rule was a legislative rule that sets forth a permissible interpretation of the statute's ambiguous definition of "machinegun" and therefore merited the court's deference; the rule was not arbitrary in applying the definition of "machinegun" to bump stocks and the ATF has articulated a satisfactory explanation for the rule; and Codrea forfeited his claim that the rule was impermissibly retroactive. View "Guedes v. ATF" on Justia Law

Under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, candidates for certain offices, including the Presidency, must file financial disclosures with the Federal Election Commission, 5 U.S.C. 103(e). A presidential candidate’s financial disclosure must include the “identity and category of the total liabilities owed to any creditor.” Reviewing officials determined that then-candidate Trump’s disclosures were “in apparent compliance.” Lovitky alleged that the disclosure included both personal and business liabilities, in violation of the Act, which “requires disclosure of only those liabilities for which candidates are themselves liable . . . or for which the spouse or dependent child of the candidate are liable.” Candidate Trump, Lovitky argued, “obscured his liabilities by commingling them with the liabilities of business entities.” Lovitky sought an order requiring amendment of the report.The D.C. Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The only possible basis of jurisdiction, the Mandamus Act, 28 U.S.C. 1361, refers to actions “to compel an officer of the United States to perform his duty.” The Ethics Act obligation is not a “duty” under the Mandamus Act, which includes only those obligations that pertain to a defendant’s public office. Detaching the duty from the office could lead to serious incongruities. For example, where an officer is sued in his official capacity, FRCP 25(d) automatically substitutes as defendant the official’s successor in office, so that, under the Ethics Act, a public official could be compelled to perform the personal financial disclosure duties of his predecessor. View "Lovitky v. Trump" on Justia Law

PETA appealed the district court's dismissal of their claims under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), seeking records relating to animal welfare laws and regulations from the USDA. In regard to reposted records featuring new redactions, the DC Circuit held that the complaint was most plausibly read as requesting that the USDA repost all information that those records contained before their takedown. Therefore, the district court should proceed to the merits on remand. In regard to "voluntary cessation," the court affirmed the mootness dismissal as to the research reports but remanded for further elucidation as to the inspection reports and the entity lists. The panel explained that, if the agency unambiguously commits to continued posting of those documents, plaintiffs' claims should be dismissed as moot, without discovery, even if the USDA continues to regard its postings as voluntary. View "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. US Department of Agriculture" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit denied a petition for review of FERC's decision upholding charges assessed by the Southwest Power Pool. The court held that FERC's decision was not arbitrary and capricious and rejected Missouri River's argument that the tariff unambiguously confers carve-out eligibility on its transmission reservation under the 1977 Contract; rejected Missouri River's argument that FERC improperly changed course by relying on extrinsic evidence in this case; and rejected Missouri River's undue discrimination claim. The court also held that there was no reason to reject FERC's conclusion that the congestion and marginal loss charges paid for new services not provided for in the 1977 Contract. Finally, the court rejected Missouri River's argument, to the extent it was not forfeited, that the Pool should be equitably estopped from imposing congestion and marginal loss charges against Missouri River. View "Missouri River Energy Services v. FERC" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit denied a petition for review of the FAA's decision to revoke petitioner's pilot certification for knowingly operating an aircraft with narcotics on board. After petitioner's plane crash-landed due to an engine malfunction, a trooper doing a routine inventory of the aircraft's contents discovered three chocolate bars infused with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the psychoactive agent in marijuana) in petitioner's briefcase.The court held that the sanction of revocation of petitioner's pilot certificate was not imposed arbitrarily, capriciously, nor in conflict with the law. The court held that the Board explicitly considered petitioner's mitigating factors and simply determined that they did not warrant a lighter sanction. The Board reasoned that knowingly transporting illegal narcotics on an aircraft, regardless of quantity or purpose, fell within the scope of 14 C.F.R. 91.19 and was grounds for a certificate revocation. Likewise, the fact that the marijuana was purchased in Colorado did not change the fact that marijuana was illegal under federal law and in federal airspace. Finally, the passage of 49 U.S.C. 44710 did not limit the FAA's authority to revoke certificates under 49 U.S.C. 44709. View "Siegel v. Administrator of the FAA" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, 26 individuals who resided in Texas and whose home suffered damage during major natural disasters, and a non-profit filed suit seeking Stafford Act economic relief from the Federal Emergency Management Act (FEMA). The DC Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the action based on jurisdictional grounds, holding that the court did not have authority to challenge FEMA's regulations under the discretionary function exception to judicial review. The court held that the statutory requirements for regulations relied on the discretionary judgment of FEMA and the range of choice that FEMA could employ was quite wide. Therefore, the court rejected plaintiffs' claims to the contrary. View "Barbosa v. DHS" on Justia Law

The DC Circuit held that the Corps' grant of a permit allowing a utility company to build a series of electrical transmission towers across the historic James River was arbitrary and capricious. In this case, the Corps granted the permit without preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS), based on its finding that the project had "no significant impact" on historic treasures along the river.The court reversed and held that important questions about the Corps' chosen methodology and the scope of the project's impact remained unanswered. The court also held that federal and state agencies with relevant expertise had serious misgivings about locating a project of this magnitude in a region of such singular importance to the nation's history. Therefore, the court remanded with instructions to vacate the permit and directed the Corps to prepare an EIS. View "National Parks Conservation Assoc. v. Semonite" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, a group of tax return preparers, filed a class action challenging the IRS's requirement that preparers pay a fee to obtain and renew their Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN). The DC Circuit held that the IRS acted within its authority under the Independent Offices Appropriations Act in charging tax return preparers a fee to obtain and renew PTINs. The court also held that the IRS's decision to charge the fee was not arbitrary and capricious, because the IRS sufficiently rooted its decision to assess a PTIN fee in justifications independent of those rejected in Loving v. IRS, 742 F.3d 1013 (D.C. Cir. 2014). In this case, the IRS explained that the fee was based on direct costs of the PTIN program. Therefore, the court vacated the judgment of the district court and remanded for further proceedings. View "Montrois v. United States" on Justia Law

In an action filed by the government to enjoin the vertical merger between AT&T and Time Warner under Section 7 of the Clayton Act, the DC Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of the government's request for a permanent injunction. At issue on appeal was the district court's findings on its increased leverage theory whereby costs for Turner Broadcasting System's content would increase after the merger, principally through threats of long-term "blackouts" during affiliate negotiations.The court held that the government failed to clear the first hurdle in meeting its burden of showing that the proposed merger was likely to increase Turner Broadcasting's bargaining leverage. Furthermore, the government's objections that the district court misunderstood and misapplied economic principles and clearly erred in rejecting the quantitative model were unpersuasive. In this case, the government offered no comparable analysis of data for prior vertical mergers in the industry that showed "no statistically significant effect on content prices" as defendants had. Additionally, the government's expert opinion and modeling predicting such increases failed to take into account Turner Broadcasting System's post-litigation irrevocable offers of no-blackout arbitration agreements, which a government expert acknowledged would require a new model. The court also held that the evidence indicated that the industry had become dynamic in recent years with the emergence of distributors of only on-demand content, such as Netflix and Hulu. View "United States v. AT&T, Inc." on Justia Law