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

CFF, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting adoption, filed suit against the DMV after the DMV rejected CFF's application for a "Choose Life" custom license plate. The district court concluded that DMV violated CFF's First Amendment rights and, in the alternative, that the entire license plate program was unconstitutional on its face because it afforded the DMV Commissioner unbridled discretion over which custom plates to approve. The court concluded, however, that the content of New York’s custom license plates constitutes private speech and that the plates themselves are a nonpublic forum; CFF’s facial challenge fails because New York’s custom plate program did not impermissibly vest the DMV Commissioner with unbridled discretion in approving custom plate designs; and that program, as applied in this case, was reasonable and viewpoint neutral, which is all that the First Amendment requires of restrictions on expression in a nonpublic forum. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Rex v. Martinez" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a putative class action alleging that defendants violated the Fair Debt Practices Act (FDCPA), 15 U.S.C. 1692e, 1692f, by charging and attempting to collect interest at a rate higher than permitted under the law of her home state and that defendants violated New York's usury law, N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law 349; N.Y. Gen. Oblig. Law 5-501; N.Y. Penal Law 190.40. The district court entered judgment in favor of defendants. The court reversed the district court's holding that the National Bank Act (NBA), 12 U.S.C. 85, preempts plaintiff's claims because neither defendant is a national bank nor a subsidiary or agent of a national bank, or is otherwise acting on behalf of a national bank, and because application of the state law on which plaintiff's claim relies would not significantly interfere with any national bank’s ability to exercise its powers under the NBA. Accordingly, the court vacated the judgment and remanded to the court to address in the first instance whether the Delaware choice-of-law precludes plaintiff's claims. Finally, the court also vacated the district court's denial of class certification. View "Madden v. Midland Funding, LLC" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a Polish man of Jewish descent, filed suit against his employer, Mangia, and other individuals, alleging discrimination on the basis of religion and national origin, retaliation, conspiracy, wrongful termination, and violation of various New York State and City laws. A jury found Mangia liable and awarded nominal damages of $1 and punitive damages in the amount of $900,000. After the verdict, plaintiff applied for an award of attorneys' fees and costs and Mangia moved for remittitur of the punitive damages award. The district court vacated the jury's liability verdict, conditionally granted Mangia's motion for a new trial on the issue of punitive damages, and denied plaintiff's application for fees and costs. The court reversed the district court's ruling insofar as it vacates the liability verdict and award of nominal damages in the amount of $1 where, inter alia, the district court's rejection of the jury's conclusion that plaintiff was subject to a hostile work environment was essentially grounded in the type of evidence weighing and credibility determinations that are not permitted by Rule 50(b). The court affirmed the district court's ruling to the extent it vacated the award of punitive damages where no reasonable jury could conclude that Mangia's conduct was driven by an evil motive or intent, or that it involved a reckless or callous indifference to plaintiff's federally protected rights. The court remanded to the district court to determine what fees and costs, if any, plaintiff may recover given the highly unusual facts of this case. View "Wiercinski v. Mangia 57, Inc." on Justia Law

The Government appealed the district court's grant of defendant's motion to suppress evidence. Law enforcement officers were pursuing a robbery suspect when they mistakenly identified defendant as the suspect. A frisk of defendant produced a gun and 27 bags of crack cocaine. The district court found that the suspect and defendant have different facial features, skin tones, heights, ages, and so forth. These material differences would have been apparent to any reasonable officer, especially on who had had previous contact with the suspect, and would have been further corroborated by defendant's production of his identification. The court concluded that the district court's effective legal conclusion - that a reasonable officer, once he had had a chance to view defendant close up, could not have reasonably believed he was the suspect - is fully supported by the factual findings and is not clearly erroneous. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Watson" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a software engineer, filed suit under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12112, and the New York State Human Rights Law, N.Y. Exec. Law 296, against his employer for disability discrimination, alleging that the employer did not accommodate his deafness by arranging that all video files stored on its corporate intranet be captioned when posted and that all audio files be posted with transcripts. The court concluded that the employer provided plaintiff with reasonable accommodations by providing an American Sign Language interpreter. There is no evidence that the interpreters the employer provided were unqualified or that the use of interpreters was somehow inconsistent with plaintiff’s position as a software engineer. Plaintiff's objection - that he had to look back and forth between an interpreter and his screen - did not, without more, make that accommodation unreasonable. The court held that the ADA imposes no liability for an employer’s failure to explore alternative accommodations when the accommodations provided to the employee were plainly reasonable. In this case, because the employer provided reasonable accommodation to plaintiff, any failure to engage in an interactive process - even if supported by the record - did not give rise to a discrimination claim. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the employer. View "Noll v. Int'l Bus. Mach. Corp." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his sentence after he violated a condition of supervised release. Defendant argued that, because the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), Pub. L. No. 111-220, 124 Stat. 2372, had since amended the statute under which he had been convicted, the district court should have determined the maximum term of incarceration by reference to the post-FSA classification of his offense conduct. The court concluded that defendant's challenge is foreclosed by its recent decision in United States v. Ortiz, where the court held that the penalties applicable when a defendant violates the conditions of supervised release are "determined by reference to the law in effect at the time of the defendant's underlying offense." Finally, the court concluded that the Supreme Court's decision in Dorsey v. United States does not compel a different outcome when the underlying sentence was imposed pre-FSA but revocation proceedings are held subsequent to the FSA's effective date. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Johnson" on Justia Law

Beck filed suit against its franchisor, GM, for claims arising under the Motor Vehicle Dealer Act, N.Y. Vehicle & Traffic Law 460-473, and state contract law. The court certified the following questions to the New York Court of Appeals: (1) Is a performance standard that requires ʺaverageʺ performance based on statewide sales data in order for an automobile dealer to retain its dealership ʺunreasonable, arbitrary, or unfairʺ under New York Vehicle & Traffic Law section 463(2)(gg) because it does not account for local variations beyond adjusting for the local popularity of general vehicle types? and (2) Does a change to a franchiseeʹs Area of Primary Responsibility or AGSSA constitute a prohibited ʺmodificationʺ to the franchise under section 463(2)(ff), even though the standard terms of the Dealer Agreement reserve the franchisorʹs right to alter the Area of Primary Responsibility or AGSSA in its sole discretion?  Further, the court concluded that the district court did not err in dismissing plaintiffʹs vehicle allocation claim, denying plaintiffʹs request for attorneyʹs fees, or dismissing defendantʹs counterclaim for rescission. View "Beck Chevrolet v. General Motors" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a native and citizen of Ecuador, petitioned for review of the BIA's order determining that his receipt of a notice to appear failed to specify the date of his initial hearing sufficed to trigger the stop-time rule under 8 U.S.C. 1229b(d)(1). The court denied the petition for review because the BIA’s determination that a notice to appear need not include the date and time of the initial hearing to trigger the stop‐time rule is a permissible construction of the Immigration and Nationality Act entitled to Chevron deference from the court. In this case, DHS served petitioner with a notice to appear less than ten years after he entered the United States, that notice triggered the stop‐time rule on his period of continuance residence so as to preclude him from establishing his eligibility for cancellation of removal. View "Guaman-Yuqui v. Lynch" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for drug-related offenses, arguing that the district court abused its discretion by admitting highly prejudicial evidence of his alleged threats to kill a government informant. The district court admitted the evidence, concluding that it was harmless. The court concluded, however, that the district court failed to make the careful assessment required for death threat evidence; admission of this evidence was an abuse of discretion; and the error was not harmless. In this case, the testimony was highly charged, the letter read into the record was graphic and profane, and the proposed crime was unrelated to the charged offenses, and far more terrible. The evidence at trial was not so overwhelming as to alleviate the danger that the jury was influenced by the death threat evidence in a significant way. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded for a new trial. View "United States v. Morgan" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against FBI agents alleging that they violated Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. 2510‐2522, when they listened to her private calls with her husband. The agents had an authorized wiretap on the telephone of plaintiff's husband as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to commit securities fraud. The calls were intercepted during the authorized wiretap. The district court denied defendants' motion to dismiss. The court reversed and remanded, holding that the complaint does not plausibly state a claim because it recites only legal conclusions. The court also concluded that the district court, in its qualified immunity analysis, should have assessed the reasonableness of the agents' minimization efforts as they relate to each defendant. View "Drimal v. Makol" on Justia Law