This case involves challenges by IT consulting firms and related plaintiffs against the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) regarding its handling of H-1B nonimmigrant visa petitions for foreign specialty workers. The court addressed issues including CIS's authority to approve visas for periods shorter than three years, requirements for demonstrating an employer-employee relationship when workers are placed at third-party sites, and the need for specific job details. The court determined that certain CIS policies, such as those in the 2018 Policy Memo requiring proof of non-speculative work assignments for the full visa duration, were inconsistent with existing regulations, issued without proper rulemaking, and arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. As a result, the court partially granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs and remanded the petitions for reconsideration consistent with the opinion.
The case involves Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi national held at Guantanamo Bay for 18 years as an enemy combatant after capture under the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force, who petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus seeking release and moved for examination by a mixed medical commission under Army Regulation 190-8 to determine eligibility for repatriation based on his pre-existing mental illnesses and health deterioration. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the motion to compel the examination over government opposition. The court reasoned that D.C. Circuit precedent establishes the regulation as domestic law applicable to Guantanamo detainees, that al-Qahtani demonstrated irreparable harm and a likelihood of success if the commission finds him eligible, and that the public interest in enforcing the regulation and exercising habeas jurisdiction outweighs the asserted burdens on the government.
Wanda Smith Battle, an African-American woman employed as a Program Management Analyst by the District of Columbia Department of Transportation, sued the agency and supervisors under Title VII alleging race and sex discrimination. Her claims centered on a temporary denial of approval to attend one training seminar, where a supervisor questioned whether she would comprehend the material because attendees would be engineers and professors, as well as her subsequent transfer to another non-compliant program without credit or promotion for prior work. The district court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss all claims. It reasoned that the training denial did not constitute an adverse employment action because Battle ultimately attended the seminar after an appeal, the denial lasted only about a month, and she alleged no facts showing a material effect on her pay, hours, title, responsibilities, or promotional opportunities.
In United States v. Williamson, Jeffrey Henry Williamson was convicted by a jury of threatening to assault and murder an FBI agent in retaliation for the agent's official duties, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 115(a)(1)(B). After his conviction was affirmed on appeal with a remand for access to jury records, Williamson filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence, along with related motions for discovery, expansion of the record, and a hearing, raising claims including ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial misconduct. The District Court for the District of Columbia denied the § 2255 motion and all accompanying requests, concluding that the claims lacked merit or that the court lacked jurisdiction over certain claims regarding Bureau of Prisons treatment, which must be pursued in the district of confinement.
This case involved a challenge by UnitedHealthcare and other Medicare Advantage insurers to a 2014 CMS rule that eliminated a fee-for-service adjuster in Risk Adjustment Data Validation (RADV) audits, requiring insurers to repay extrapolated overpayments without accounting for error rates in unaudited traditional Medicare data. The court had previously vacated the Overpayment Rule for failing to ensure actuarial equivalence between Medicare Advantage payments and traditional Medicare reimbursements, as required by statute. The government then moved for partial reconsideration, seeking to narrow the ruling based on new empirical analysis of error rates. The court denied the motion, finding that the underlying data had been in CMS's possession for years but was not litigated earlier and that the new analysis was unpersuasive. The decision emphasized that the prior ruling provided practical relief and that post-judgment agency proposals did not justify revisiting the outcome.
This case involved disputes over multiple lease agreements for office copiers entered into by Africare, a nonprofit, with CDS, CIT, and DLL between 2013 and 2015. Africare alleged that CDS used misleading tactics to induce the leases and failed to fulfill promises to cover prior obligations, leading to defaults after reduced funding; the leasing companies sued for breach, and Africare counterclaimed. The court consolidated the cases and granted summary judgment to CDS, CIT, and DLL on all claims, while denying Africare's counterclaim against DLL. It awarded DLL over $287,000 in damages plus interest and fees based on the explicit terms of the 2013 and 2015 lease agreements, which provided for accelerated payments, late fees, and other charges upon default, with no material facts in dispute regarding liability or the damage calculations.
