Since 2011. An occasional commonplacing of the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal.
Neither an authoritative statement of the law nor legal advice. Quick work.
Substantial evidence for the agency's determination that women who refuse to be victimized by local gangs are not a cognizable social group, since they are not perceived by the society as a distinct group separate from the fact of their persecution.
Agency was not required to recite each of the IJ's factual findings in its opinion, where circumstances indicated that the record was comprehensively reviewed.
State workers compensation award calculated based on the percentage of disability and awarded as a lump sum, minus attorneys fees, with payments then disbursed as pro rata as monthly payments is a state award that statutorily offsets the subsequent federal indemnification of the federal award against the bankrupt employer where the pro rata state award weeks are within the federal benefit period.
As the side effects of the medications are relevant to the administrative hearing only to the degree that they affect performance of work, absent a showing that the work was actually affected, the ALJ was not required to make findings on the effects of the medications.
State environmental approval rulemaking wan't arbitrary and capricious; the standards are set out in a parallel section of the Code dealing with reservoir protection, and the delay of the approval for the challenged section until the central pipeline had attained the necessary approvals was akin to moving a pipeline to avoid a stream -- a temporal rather than spatial accommodation.
As the state's clean water laws flow from the federal laws, state agency's consideration of function and use did not displace federal review.
Explanation that didn't cite the relevant standard sufficed, because it tracked the language of the relevant standard.
On remand, state must explain incongruities in finding and why the department opted for a temporary denial rather than a provisional approval.
As the information in the government database is open to the public by the terms of the relevant statute, the unavailability of portions of it is an injury sufficient for Article III standing.
When an agency removed all internal hearing records from public access after the discovery of personally identifiable information contrary to statute, the decision was not a final agency determination of rights and obligations susceptible to APA challenge; the present challenge is a programmatic attack on the pace of record restoration.
Disaster support agreement between federal agency and state was an enforceable contract, not a gratuitous provision of resources.
Nonfrivolous assertion of contractual breach by the government sufficed for Claims Court jurisdiction.
Request for assistance and project worksheets did not constitute an express contract; as there was no mutual intent to contract, there was not an implied in fact contract.
As a component of local government, hospital's claim to be a third party beneficiary of a contract between the state and the federal agency is sufficient to state a claim, since the contract named the locality.
As the funds were provided to the hospital contingently, and subject to express conditions, the recoupment of the funds was not an illegal exaction.
Although the requested recovery of funds is equitable it is materially indistinguishable from a claim for reimbursement, and the claim is essentially contractual in nature, giving clear jurisdiction to the Claims Court, an adequate non-APA judicial remedy preferred by statute.
Agency had an obligation to establish by substantial evidence that the employee's performance was subpar both after the notice of potential dismissal and before the notice of potential dismissal. Upon sufficient showing, the burden would then shift to the employee to establish discriminatory motive.
When the employee asserted that the performance report was due to protected military service commitments, administrative review had an obligation to assess the relevant factors, rather than just saying that the case hadn't been made.
Court's order prohibiting a released detainee's subsequent detention, since it was enforcing an earlier magistrate's holding that the detainee be released, is not within the general immigration removal of jurisdiction.
The bail reform statute does not preclude the pre-removal detention of an alien subsequent to the alien's release under the statute.
Administrative regulations prohibiting a criminal defendant from leaving the country refer to voluntary departures.
The detention does not violate the separation of powers.
Court below did not make formal findings about how the distance that lawyers had to travel related to the Sixth Amendment rights of the deft.
Species mortality limit was not arbitrary and capricious, since the additional discussions mentioned in the agreement are superfluous to the hard take limits.
Agency's determination of the several effects of other projects and the cumulative effects of all projects in the designated region was not arbitrary and capricious.
Although the claim sounds in contract, the requested relief requires reversal of agency determinations under the APA; the proper forum is therefore District Court, not the Court of Federal Claims.
Administrative remedy for unfavorable employment action must consider the penalty imposed, not because it has the power to mitigate it, but because it forms part of the substance of the decision.
Error for the agency to remove an employee under the non-retroactive statute for conduct occurring before the statute became law.
By considering the information provided and holding a hearing on the matter, the immigration judge took care in determining the competency of the pro se alien defendant sufficient to assure fundamental rights of Due Process; although the alien reported that the voices that he was hearing in his head disturbed his thought processes, his demeanor appeared sufficiently lucid and responsive.
Right to counsel claim under the Rehabilitation Act required administrative exhaustion.
For immigration law purposes, recklessly threatening substantial property damage with actual intent to interrupt public access to a portion of the building is a crime of moral turpitude. The specific intent of the state statute is a sufficiently aggravating factor under circuit precedent.
Although subjective ability to dissociate and reflect is relevant to determining whether two acts are divisible, a three day gap sufficed to establish the division as a matter of law.
Chevron deference to agency on the question of whether the agency should consider the insanity element of the criminal plea, as a prior apparently contradictory agency interpretation spoke to the evidentiary bounds of the agency's consideration, and the cited opinion addressed the appropriate substantive grounds for the agency's consideration.
Concur/dissent:
Agency shoudl have considered mental health element of plea in relevant conviction; arbitrary application of precedent dejustifies deference.
Statutory notice and comment provision in affordable housing rent increase procedures that places local approval prior to federal consideration do not create a procedural interest under the APA where a subsequent rulemaking reverses that order.
Statute of limitations begins to run, at a minimum, when a reasonably prudent person would have been able to determine the nature of the claim, not when the precise mechanism is explicitly identified. (Here, apparently, when one of two APA claims became apparent.)
Relevant statutory statute of limitations is a claims-processing rule, not a jurisdictional bar; the court can therefore consider a claim for equitable tolling.
As the agency actions were discrete instances, the continuing action doctrine does not save the claim against the S1983 statute of limitations.
Court has independent obligation to assure itself that parties have standing where the question is raised by an intervenor.
Although the Act contemplates state regulations and statutes that go further than its requirements, a state's claim that inadequate record-keeping demands will hamper enforcement is sufficient for standing, as the possibility of state action to remove the harm doesn't obviate the harm for purposes of standing, and additionally, and subsequent changes in state enforcement would have to be approved by the agency. Possibility of future harms from enforcement in other states is also sufficient for standing.
Rulemaking sufficiently explained its enforcement trigger levels and adequately addressed enforcement concerns.
Dissent:
Harm too attenuated for standing -- one theory requires an out of state polluter who applied under the permit scheme and pollutes undetetected, and the other theory relies on speculative noncompliance within the state.
As judicial review is limited to objections raised in proceedings before the Board, the Board's refusal to allow non-employee protected activity on the worksite by overruling of its own precedent on the solicitation exception stands, since the evidence of general animus wasn't introduced under that theory before the Board.
Given the intent of the statute and the possibility of resolving the question against the agency on non-constitutional grounds, the statutory post-enforcement judicial review provision strips subjects of agency civil procedings of general federal question right of intelocutory Article III review challenging the constitutionality of the appointment and removal scheme of the ALJ.
Dissent in part:
Case distinguished from precedent and from the type contemplated by the jurisdiction-strip statute; challenge to the ALJ appointment scheme doesn't implicate constitutional avoidance, outside agency expertise.
Administrative procedural challenge untimely, as the publication of the rule and subsequent change in policy started the clock, not the reply to the letter seeking administrative redress.
As the complaints to the agency were delayed and the agency offered little accommodations, there are no extraordinary circumstances justifying waiver of the time limit.
Government contractor did not waive statutorily mandated offsetting payments in contract terms that elected the governing administrative regulation that prohibited such offsets, since the government counterparty to the contract was required to follow the regulation that was contrary to law.
Government would have to at minimum identify a viable avenue of judicial redress available to contractor at formation.
Tucker Act jurisdiction for an illegal exaction claim requires nonfrivolous claim that the government, in obtaining the money, has violated federal constitution, statute, or regulation -- establishing that the claim is "money mandating" is not a jurisdictional threshhold.
Earlier administrative determination of employer's identity does not bind later adjudication under claim preclusion, since the earlier determination found no liability, and the determination of the employer's identity was therefore not essential to the decision.
Administrative regulation, state law, and equitable considerations of delay prevent an ex ante rescission of workers' compensation insurance contract, where that rescission would defeat the insurer's liability for adjudicated claims.
No 5A DP violation where the agency's administrative error was in a proceeding that eventually proved nondispositive.
Alien's appeal citing an exceptional situation justifying sua sponte reopening of the matter did not sufficiently exhaust a claim for a statutory reopening of the matter due to exceptional circumstances.