Justia U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The Second Circuit denied a motion brought by unions representing uniformed New York City officers to stay, pending appeal the district court's July 29, 2020 order modifying the district court's July 22, 2020 order such that the order no longer applies to non-party NYCLU. This dispute arose out of the action of the New York legislature repealing section 50-a of the State's Civil Rights Law, which had shielded from public disclosure personnel records of various uniformed officers including police officers. The court stated that the effect of the modification is to permit the NYCLU publicly to disclose information concerning disciplinary records of approximately 81,000 New York City police officers, records alleged to contain unsubstantiated and nonfinal allegations.The court held that the district court properly excluded the NYCLU from the disclosure prohibition under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(d)(2)(C) because it was not "in active concert" with a party bound by a TRO or a preliminary injunction. The court explained that the NYCLU could not be "in active concert" with such a party because it lawfully gained access to the information at issue before the July 22 disclosure prohibition was issued against it and obviously could not have known of a prohibition that did not then exist. Therefore, because appellants had no probability of success on the appeal from the July 29 order, the court denied the motion for a stay pending appeal, thereby terminating the emergency stay that a judge of this court had entered pending consideration of the stay motion by a three-judge panel. View "Uniformed Fire Officers Ass'n v. DeBlasio" on Justia Law

The Department of State cannot revoke a citizen's United States passport on the ground that he concealed his identity in applying for the passport, where the citizen makes a statement that prior to his naturalization he was known by another name but he applied for, and was issued, his passport using his uncontested legal name.Plaintiff appealed the dismissal of his Administrative Procedure Act (APA) suit challenging the Department's revocation of his passport. The district court dismissed the complaint after determining that the revocation of plaintiff's passport was neither arbitrary nor capricious, and did not violate Due Process.The Second Circuit reversed the district court's judgment and found that plaintiff could not have fraudulently obtained his passport when he used the name and birthdate denoted on his unchallenged immigration and citizenship documents, including his certificate of naturalization. The court reversed the Department's final decision upholding the passport revocation and ordered the Department to return plaintiff's expired passport so that he may apply for a new United States passport if he so chooses. View "Alzokari v. Pompeo" on Justia Law

Defendant, who is serving a 24 month sentence for possession of child pornography, challenges three conditions of his supervised release, including a verification testing condition that permits the use of a computerized voice stress analyzer to assess his compliance with the terms of his supervised release.The Second Circuit dismissed defendant's challenge to the computerized voice stress analyzer, holding that the challenge is not ripe for review because the efficacy of computerized voice stress analyzers in promoting sentencing goals is subject to change with technological advances. Furthermore, the notification of risk condition is also not ripe because any allegedly improper delegation is conditioned on the district court finding, during defendant's term of supervised release, that he poses a risk of committing further crimes against another person -- a contingency that may never occur. The court held that defendant's challenges to the remaining conditions of supervised release are foreclosed by court precedent and affirmed as to the remainder of the district court's sentence and judgment. View "United States v. Birkedahl" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for eight counts related to his possession of child pornography. The court held that the district court properly denied defendant's motion to suppress fruits of the Network Investigative Technique (NIT) warrant based on the court's opinion in United States v. Eldred, 933 F.3d 110, 111 (2d Cir. 2019), where the court concluded that suppression of the evidence derived from an NIT warrant was not required; the warrant at issue was supported by probable cause; even assuming that the government had improperly suggested that the Playpen site was a "hidden" website and could not be accessed without prior knowledge, multiple additional pieces of evidence supported the issuance of the warrant; and the description of the site's logo was support for the probable cause determination, not the triggering event.The court also held that the district court properly denied defendant's motion to dismiss the indictment and rejected defendant's contention that the government's operation of the Playpen site was outrageous government conduct. Finally, the court held that defendant's below-Guidelines sentence of 90 months in prison and 20 year term of supervised release was not substantively unreasonable. View "United States v. Caraher" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for one count of racketeering conspiracy (RICO conspiracy count) and two counts of murder in aid of racketeering (VCAR murder counts) based on his involvement with the 10th Street Gang in Buffalo, New York and his role in the 2006 murders of two individuals. The jury also found that defendant was guilty of two special factors that, as part of the RICO conspiracy count, charged defendant with intentionally causing the deaths of the two individuals in violation of New York Penal Law 125.25(1) and 20.00.The Second Circuit held that the evidence was insufficient to convict defendant of aiding and abetting the two murders. However, the court held that the government adequately proved defendant's knowing agreement to participate in a racketeering enterprise; there was no error in the district court's Batson ruling; and there was no abuse of discretion in the district court's denial of defendant's motion to sever his trial from that of his co-defendants. Accordingly, the court affirmed defendant's RICO conspiracy count; reversed the VCAR murder counts and the murder enhancements of the RICO conspiracy count; and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Anastasio" on Justia Law

Plaintiff Curtis James Jackson III, the hip-hop recording artist known as 50 Cent, appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment for Defendant William Leonard Roberts II, the hip-hop recording artist known as Rick Ross, on the grounds that Jackson's claim of violation of the Connecticut common law right of publicity is preempted by the Copyright Act. The complaint alleged that, on the mixtape entitled Renzel Remixes, Roberts' use of Jackson's voice performing "In Da Club," as well as of Jackson's stage name in the track title identifying that song, violated Jackson's right of publicity under Connecticut common law.The Second Circuit affirmed, holding that Jackson's claim is preempted under the doctrine of implied preemption. In this case, Jackson's Connecticut right of publicity claim does not seek to vindicate any substantial state interests distinct from those furthered by the copyright law, and the policy considerations justifying the doctrine of implied preemption prevail.In the alternative, the court held that Jackson's claim as to the use of his voice on the mixtape is preempted by the express terms of section 301 of the Copyright Act. The court explained that the gravamen of Jackson's right of publicity claim, to the extent it is based on the use of the "In Da Club" sample, is not the use of his identity but rather the use of the copyrighted work itself, and that the focus of his claim therefore comes within the subject matter of copyright. Furthermore, to the extent that Jackson's right of publicity claim is based on the reproduction of a copyrighted work embodying Jackson's voice, that claim is preempted by section 301 because (1) its focus is Roberts' use of a work that falls within the "subject matter of copyright" and (2) it asserts rights that are sufficiently equivalent to the rights protected by federal copyright law. View "Jackson v. Roberts" on Justia Law

After a jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff on her claim of intentional discrimination on the basis of race or national origin by her former employer, Rockefeller University, both plaintiff and the University appealed the final judgment of $250,000 in back pay and $200,000 in remitted emotional distress damages.The Second Circuit affirmed and rejected both parties' claims of error. The court held that, at bottom, any evidence in the trial record that could even arguably justify punitive damages is sparse, and the failure to instruct the jury on such damages accordingly did not cut to the core of plaintiff's case; plaintiff cannot demonstrate that the failure to instruct the jury on punitive damages constituted an error so serious and flagrant that it goes to the very integrity of the trial; the requirement of intentional discrimination was clearly expressed in the jury instructions and thus the court rejected the University's contention to the contrary; there was no prejudicial error in the formulation of the verdict form necessitating a new trial; the district court had the power to rescind its discharge order and, in the circumstances of this case, its decision to do so was a proper exercise of discretion; and the court rejected the University's challenge to the second verdict form. View "Emamian v. Rockefeller University" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit granted a petition for review of the BIA's decision finding petitioner removable as an aggravated felon for having been convicted of fraud involving a loss to the victims exceeding $10,000 pursuant to 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), 1101(a)(43)(M)(i). Defendant was convicted of insurance fraud and grand larceny, and was ordered to pay $77,199 in restitution without any indication as to whether the restitution order was for the benefit of victims of the insurance fraud, the grand larceny, or both.The court held that the BIA relied on inadequate analysis in concluding that the $77,199 restitution order, on its own, showed that petitioner's insurance fraud caused more than $10,000 in victim losses. In this case, where petitioner was convicted of two separate crimes and ordered to pay an overarching restitution amount without indication of what part, if any, was for the insurance fraud, the court held that the restitution order, without more, is insufficient to demonstrate that more than $10,000 in losses were caused by the insurance fraud count as distinct from the larceny count. Furthermore, the BIA gave no explanation why it concluded that more than $10,000 of the restitution award was attributable to losses caused by the insurance fraud. Accordingly, the court vacated the BIA's decision and remanded for further proceedings. View "Rampersaud v. Barr" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), as well as narcotics-conspiracy and firearm-possession charges related to his membership in the 10th Street Gang of Buffalo, New York. Defendant, who was seventeen years old at the time, participated in a double murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment.The Second Circuit rejected defendant's challenges to the introduction into evidence of a gun seized from his home; the denial of his motion for a mistrial based on a Bruton violation; the denial of his Batson challenges, and the denial of his requests for certain jury charges. However, the court held that the district court imposed defendant's sentence without explicitly considering his age at the time of the double murders, and thus violated the principle recognized in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 471 (2012), that children are constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing. Miller stated that those under the age of eighteen are different because the distinctive attributes of youth diminish the penological justifications for imposing the harshest sentences on juvenile offenders, even when they commit terrible crimes. Therefore, the court affirmed defendant's conviction but vacated his sentence, remanding for resentencing in light of Miller. View "United States v. Delgado" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's third amended complaint for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), alleging that defendants violated the Copyright Act by copying creative aspects from his unreleased science fiction videogame, including his use of a tardigrade -- a microscopic animal -- traveling in space, in their television series Star Trek: Discovery.Even assuming that actual copying occurred, the court agreed with the district court that plaintiff failed to plausibly allege substantial similarity between protectible elements of his videogame and elements from Discovery. The court explained that, overall, the presence of Ripper the tardigrade in Discovery is minimal, as it only appears in three episodes. Therefore, after extracting the unprotectible elements from plaintiff's videogame -- the scientific facts, general ideas, science fiction themes constituting scènes à faire, and generalized character traits -- the court held that the videogame and Discovery are not substantially similar because the protectible elements are markedly different. View "Anas Osama Ibrahim Abdin v. CBS Broadcasting Inc." on Justia Law