Deference to government powerSkepticism of government power
Enforces Fourth Amendment limits on vehicle searches incident to arrest, reflecting skepticism toward expansive government search authority. United States v. Gonzalez ↗
Matthew Silva, a Washington prisoner, filed a pro se civil rights suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against prison officials, a private corrections company, and a state attorney, alleging they violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment right of access to the courts, retaliated against him, and committed state-law conversion and fraud; he also asserted a RICO claim. The district court dismissed the action sua sponte, ruling that Silva’s prior dismissals triggered the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s three-strikes bar and prevented him from proceeding in forma pauperis. The Ninth Circuit reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded: it held that a dismissal does not count as a strike under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g) until the time to appeal has expired or any appeal is resolved, so the district court improperly applied the bar; the panel therefore reinstated the access-to-courts, retaliation, and conversion claims while upholding dismissal of the RICO claim.
The case involved Winnie Viridiana, an Indonesian citizen of Chinese descent, who petitioned for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals' order affirming denial of her asylum and withholding of removal claims. The Immigration Judge found her asylum application untimely because it was filed more than one year after her arrival in the United States and determined that she had not shown an exception to the filing deadline. The Ninth Circuit held that fraudulent deceit by an immigration consultant can constitute an extraordinary circumstance excusing an untimely asylum application under the relevant statute and regulations, and it remanded for the agency to consider whether that exception applied here and whether the application was filed within a reasonable time thereafter. The court also remanded the withholding of removal claim for reconsideration in light of intervening precedent on claims involving membership in a disfavored group.
Alaimalo, a federal prisoner convicted in 1997 of importing methamphetamine, filed a habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 after prior unsuccessful challenges. The Ninth Circuit addressed whether it had jurisdiction to consider the petition without a certificate of appealability and whether doctrines of law of the case or abuse of the writ barred review of an earlier denial on the merits. The court held that it had jurisdiction because Alaimalo showed actual innocence that was unavailable on direct appeal or in his first § 2255 motion. It further held that neither procedural doctrine barred consideration of the petition and reversed the district court's dismissal with instructions to issue the writ and vacate the importation convictions.
This case involves a class action lawsuit by approximately 2,000 unlicensed junior accountants against PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), alleging failure to pay mandatory overtime under California law. The district court granted partial summary judgment to the plaintiffs, ruling that PwC could not claim exemptions from overtime requirements. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that unlicensed accountants are not categorically ineligible for the professional and administrative exemptions under California regulations. The court reasoned that whether the plaintiffs' work qualifies for these exemptions involves factual disputes that must be resolved at trial, rather than as a matter of law.
The case involved Northern California River Watch and an individual plaintiff suing private landowners and state officials under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for allegedly removing endangered Sebastopol meadowfoam plants during development activities on private land containing wetlands. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. The court held that the ESA's prohibition on taking listed plants in "areas under Federal jurisdiction" does not extend to all "waters of the United States" subject to Clean Water Act regulatory jurisdiction, as the statutory term is ambiguous and the Fish and Wildlife Service has not interpreted it to include such wetlands. The opinion reasoned that federal jurisdiction under the ESA requires more than adjacency to navigable waters or regulatory authority, such as actual federal ownership or control, and declined to adopt a broad reading without agency guidance.
The case involved Winnie Viridiana, an Indonesian citizen of Chinese descent, who petitioned for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals' decision affirming an Immigration Judge's denial of her asylum and withholding of removal claims based on alleged persecution due to her ethnicity. Viridiana had filed her asylum application more than one year after arriving in the United States, and the agency found no exception to the one-year filing deadline. The Ninth Circuit concluded that the delay was caused by extraordinary circumstances from fraudulent deceit by an immigration consultant, excusing the untimeliness, and granted the petition to remand for merits consideration of the asylum claim. The court also remanded the withholding of removal claim for further review under its intervening decision in Wakkary v. Holder.
