Last Week in Federal Appeals (No. 17)
Last Week in Federal Appeals (No. 17)
Appellate decisions from the week of July 12-16, 2021
“Marshall and two other lawyers were in Columbia, Tenn., to try the case of two Black men who in self-defense had fired on a mob of white hooligans. As they left the city with the Judge at the wheel, the police pulled them over. Marshall was arrested and charged with drunken driving. They put him in the back seat of a police car. On each side was a deputy, gun drawn. The car took the turnoff for Duck River, where many a Black corpse had been hidden. Reliving that night, Marshall was solemn. He thought his time had come. He learned later that a white mob was indeed waiting for him at Duck River.
What saved his life was that the other lawyers, in a remarkable show of bravery, followed the police. Realizing that there was no way to spirit Marshall secretly to the end planned for him, the officers gave up and returned to the highway. Back in Columbia, he was hauled before a justice of the peace. (Sometimes Marshall said magistrate; other times, judge.)
At this point in the story, Marshall’s eyes would glow once more with their usual delight. The justice of the peace said Marshall would go free if he could pass one little test. The justice, a teetotaler, declared that he could smell alcohol miles away. He invited Marshall to breathe in his face — and immediately found him not guilty.
…
And whenever the Supreme Court heard a case involving the rights of criminal suspects, he’d remind us that he was the only Justice who’d ever been in handcuffs — or sat on the wrong side of an interrogation table.”
~ Stephen L. Carter, What Thurgood Marshall Taught Me (NY Times)
Second Circuit
Homaidan v. Sallie Mae, Inc.
The Second Circuit held that private student loans (as opposed to those from or guaranteed by the government) can be discharged in bankruptcy, at least in some circumstances.
Third Circuit
Valarezo-Tirado v. Attorney General
The Third Circuit vacated an Immigration Judge’s decision denying an immigrant relief under the Convention Against Torture. It held that, by using a bullet-point checklist and failing to point to the evidence it relied upon, the IJ decision failed to allow for meaningful appellate review.
Fourth Circuit
Hirschfeld v. ATF
The Fourth Circuit held that federal laws and regulations prohibiting federally-licensed gun dealers from selling handguns to those under the age of 20 violate the Second Amendment. Second Amendment rights vest at the age of 18, the panel explained, so “despite the weighty interest in reducing crime and violence” and statistics linking those age groups to gun crimes, Congress may not treat these citizens’ Second Amendment rights to “second-class status.”
Fifth Circuit
Franco v. Mabe Trucking Co.
The Fifth Circuit held that 28 U.S.C. Section 1631, which requires district courts to transfer certain cases filed in the wrong court to the correct federal court applies where the original court lacks personal jurisdiction. Because that section also says that the case will be treated as if it were filed in the correct court, the panel held that the district court erred in dismissing the plaintiff’s lawsuit as untimely.
Sixth Circuit
Taylor v. Buchanan
The Sixth Circuit held that Michigan laws and rules requiring attorneys to join a mandatory state bar association do not violate a lawyer’s First Amendment right to freedom of association. Likewise, the bar’s use of mandatory due to fund certain advocacy activities does not violate her freedom of speech.
Seventh Circuit
Chuluunbat v. Experian Information Solution
The Seventh Circuit held that the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not require consumer credit reporting agencies to guard against and investigate errors in the ownership of debts listed on a debtor’s credit report. The panel explained that debt ownership is primarily a legal issue outside the competence of the credit agencies.
United States v. Tuggle
The Seventh Circuit held that the government did not violate the Fourth Amendment when it posted three cameras in public areas outside a home for eighteen months without a warrant. The panel rejected the idea that a “mosaic” theory of the Fourth Amendment precluded this holding.
Gaetjens v. City of Loves Park
The Seventh Circuit held that the government did not violate the Fourth Amendment by entering her home, condemning it, and seizing her thirty-seven cats without a warrant. Because Caetjens had not been heard from and the house was so noxious it posed a public-safety risk, the panel ruled that the district court correctly granted summary judgment to various government officers.
Eighth Circuit
McReynolds v. Schmidli
The Eighth Circuit held that the district erred in granting summary judgment to officers accused of using excessive force when arresting a suspect. One of the officers, with a running start, drove a suspect to the ground, breaking his jaw in multiple places. The suspect had dropped to his knees when asked to get to the ground but asked a question when told to get on his stomach.
Intervarsity Christian Fellowship v. University of Iowa
The Eighth Circuit held upheld a district court’s finding that the University of Iowa violated a student organization’s First Amendment Rights by selectively enforcing a Human Rights Policy. The University had deregistered several organizations for denying leadership roles to students who refused to affirm the group’s belief that same-sex relationships are against the Bible. The Court noted that the University had not enforced the policy against groups (such as Greek organizations) that limit membership/leadership to a certain sex or a Muslim organization requiring members to be “Muslim, Shiea.”
Tenth Circuit
United States v. Maldonado-Passage
The Tenth Circuit vacated the murder for hire sentences of Netflix’s “Tiger King” based on his attempts to hire assassins to kill a prominent animal rights activist. The panel explained that the district court should have grouped the murder-for-hire convictions when calculating the proper guidelines range because they involved the same victim and a common criminal objective. The Court rejected arguments that the convictions themselves were invalid.
Fontenot v. Crow
The Tenth Circuit affirmed a district court’s decision granting habeas corpus relief to an Oklahoma prisoner nearly 30 years after his second conviction for kidnapping and murder. The panel agreed that new evidence suppressed by the prosecution before trial was sufficient to unlock the “actual innocence” gateway and allow his claims to be reviewed on the merits.
Eleventh Circuit
Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County
The Eleventh Circuit held that a school-district policy prohibiting a transgender student from using the boys’ restroom violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause because the district assigns students to specific bathrooms in an arbitrary manner. The panel applied intermediate scrutiny, holding that—while the district did have an interest in protecting student privacy—it could not assign students to bathrooms based solely on the documents it received at the time the student enrolled in school.
Judge William Pryor (an early favorite for the Supreme Court seat currently held by Justice Gorsuch) dissented.
In the News
A few highlights from recent appellate news coverage:
Last week, the New York Times published an article noting that 30 years had passed since Thurgood Marshall retired from the Supreme Court. The fascinating piece, written by one of the Justice’s clerks, retells a number of his favorite stories, including the one at the beginning of this post. It is well worth a read.
As SCOTUSBlog reports: The Supreme Court issued an order on Monday, July 19, rescinding a number of its COVID-19 protocols. The order restored the 90-day deadline to seek certiorari for all lower-court decisions issued after July 19—down from 150 days during the pandemic. The Court will also once again require paper and booklet-formatted filings (as opposed to only electronic format filings) beginning on September 1.
With the Supreme Court term wrapping up, it is the season for term recaps. I’ll highlight three:
The New York Times notes that, while most of the term was marked by “fluid and unpredictable” coalitions, the Court’s end-of-term voting rights and donor disclosure decisions “made clear that the conservative supermajority is still there, perhaps to emerge in a more assertive way” next term.
The Wall Street Journal sounds a similar theme: “[T]he court has entered a new phase—one characterized by modest conservative victories, unpredictable alignments of justices, and surprising unanimous judgments. The driving forces are doctrinal differences among the court’s six conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts’s preference for incremental rather than sweeping change, and the embrace across ideological lines of the principle that judges should follow the language of the law.”
And SCOTUSBlog highlights the splits developing among the Court’s more conservative members: “At the conclusion of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s first term, the Supreme Court’s six-justice conservative majority is grappling with its newfound control. A split developing among its members is complicating the conservative revolution some predicted after Barrett’s confirmation last October.”
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