The D.C. Circuit releases opinions on Tuesdays and Fridays. We read them all so you don’t have to. On Tuesday (July 17), the court issued eight opinions:
Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The conservative activist group Judicial Watch was forced to file five lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain records from the Secret Service. Now, in a sixth lawsuit, it alleges that the Secret Service routinely violates FOIA by failing to properly respond to requests on time. The district judge denied the Secret Service’s motion to dismiss, and Judge Rogers (joined by Judge Pillard) affirmed. Rogers said Judicial Watch adequately alleged that the Secret Service has a “policy or practice” of ignoring FOIA requirements. Pillard wrote a concurrence in which she emphasized the alleged FOIA violations. Judge Srinivasan dissented, worrying that the court’s decision will open the floodgates for more FOIA litigation. More on this case here.
American Society for Testing and Materials v. Public.Resource.Org., Inc. Federal and state laws commonly incorporate safety codes and other technical standards written by private industry groups, and the laws often refer to those external standards but do not quote them directly. Public.Resource.Org, a nonprofit group dedicated to making government materials more widely available, wanted to publish the text of the standards along with the statutory text that incorporates them. The private groups that wrote the standards objected, asserting copyright protection over them. The district judge issued an injunction to stop the publication of the standards. In an opinion by Judge Tatel (joined by Judges Wilkins and Katsas), the court vacated that injunction, saying the district judge did not properly consider the “fair use” exception to copyright law. It may be fair use and thus legal, Tatel said, “to reproduce part or all of a technical standard in order to inform the public about the law.” The court sent the case back to the district judge for further proceedings. Judge Katsas concurred, saying that “access to the law cannot be conditioned on the consent of a private party.”
American Hospital Association v. Azar. Under a controversial Medicare program known as 340B, drug companies are required to provide discounts on certain drugs to hospitals that serve low-income patients. The Trump administration reduced Medicare reimbursement rates to hospitals in the program, resulting in $1.6 billion in cuts to the hospitals. The hospitals sued to stop the cuts, but in an opinion by Judge Katsas (joined by Judges Srivivasan and Millett), the court found that the suit had been filed prematurely. Because the cuts had not yet taken effect when the hospitals sued, the hospitals did not satisfy a technical requirement that they present claims to the federal government before filing suit. The hospitals, however, may re-file the litigation with the technical problem cured, and they have already vowed to do so.
United States v. Mattea. In 2016, Michael Mattea pleaded guilty to distribution of child pornography after his arrest in connection with soliciting sexual activity with a 10-year-old girl from an undercover FBI agent acting as a parent. He agreed to an estimated sentencing range, received the lowest end of the range (151 months), and then challenged the sentence on appeal. In an opinion by Judge Griffith (joined by Judges Pillard and Millett), the court followed its two-step procedure for assessing a sentence’s reasonableness—asking first if there was a procedural error, like a miscalculation of the range, and second if there was a substantive error, which is rare. The court said a sentence within the properly calculated range was reasonable and affirmed the district judge.
Peck v. SELEX Systems Integration, Inc. In 2012, the CEO of SELEX Systems fired Ronald Peck after he refused to relocate from the company’s Washington, D.C. office. Peck then filed claims to receive benefits under the company’s deferred compensation plan and severance policy, but the company rejected his requests. Peck sued, and the district judge ruled in favor of SELEX. In an opinion by Judge Srinivasan (joined by Judges Henderson and Edwards), the court agreed with the district judge regarding SELEX’s denial of severance payments, but it found that Peck was eligible for deferred compensation payments because his termination lacked cause under the company’s policies.
Big Bend Conservation Alliance v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. A Texas natural gas company constructed an intrastate pipeline to get natural gas produced in Texas to an export facility on the U.S. border with Mexico. Big Bend challenged the setup on three fronts and lost on all of them—both before FERC in 2016 and now in the D.C. Circuit. In an opinion by Judge Katsas (joined by Judges Tatel and Millett), the court denied the first challenge as improperly preserved below and deferred to the agency under the “arbitrary and capricious” standard on the final two.
Matson Navigation Company, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Transportation. APL Marine Services participates in the Maritime Security Program, which maintains a fleet of privately-owned commercial ships that would become available for military cargo in a war. Shipping companies earn government subsidies for contributing ships to the program. The Department of Transportation allowed APL to replace two of the ships it had contributed to the program. A competitor, Matson Navigation, challenged those approvals. In an opinion by Judge Rogers (joined by Judges Griffith and Millett), the court dismissed Matson’s petition for lack of jurisdiction. The court cited several reasons, including timeliness issues and limitations in the relevant jurisdictional statute.
Noble v. Dunn. David Noble is a former postal worker who, for more than two decades, has been pressing a lawsuit against the leadership of his postal workers union, the National Association of Letter Carriers. The district judge dismissed Noble’s two remaining claims: that union leaders improperly withheld documents and that they violated their fiduciary duty to union members by not properly documenting expense reimbursements. In an opinion by Judge Henderson (joined by Judges Katsas and Randolph), the court affirmed the dismissal of both claims. Henderson likened the long litigation saga to the Odyssey, but given the apparently fanciful nature of his claims, Noble is perhaps less like Odysseus and more like Don Quixote.
Circuit Breaker contributor Jake Goldberg assisted with this story.
- Judicial Watch, Inc. v. DHS
- American Society for Testing a, et al v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc.
- American Hospital Association, et al v. Alex M. Azar II, et al
- USA v. Michael Mattea
- Ronald Peck v. Selex Systems Integration, In, et al
- Big Bend Conservation Alliance v. FERC
- Matson Navigation Company, Inc v. DOT, et al
- David Noble, Jr. v. William Dunn, Jr., et al