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

Petitioner is a former employee of International Business Machines Corporation (“IBM”) who signed a separation agreement requiring confidential arbitration of any claims arising from her termination. Petitioner arbitrated an age-discrimination claim against IBM and won. She then filed a petition in federal court under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) to confirm the award, attaching it to the petition under seal but simultaneously moving to unseal it. Shortly after she filed the petition, IBM paid the award in full. The district court granted Petitioner’s petition to confirm the award and her motion to unseal. On appeal, IBM argued that (1) the petition to confirm became moot once IBM paid the award, and (2) the district court erred in unsealing the confidential award.   The Second Circuit vacated the district court’s confirmation of the award and remanded with instructions to dismiss the petition as moot. The court reversed the district court’s grant of the motion to unseal. The court explained that Petitioner’s petition to confirm her purely monetary award became moot when IBM paid the award in full because there remained no “concrete” interest in enforcement of the award to maintain a case or controversy under Article III. Second, any presumption of public access to judicial documents is outweighed by the importance of confidentiality under the FAA and the impropriety of Petitioner’s effort to evade the confidentiality provision in her arbitration agreement. View "Stafford v. Int'l Bus. Machs. Corp." on Justia Law

Petitioner appealed the denial of his habeas petition to vacate his 2006 guilty plea, conviction, and sentence. Defendant asserted that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his lawyer did not warn him of the risks of denaturalization and possible subsequent deportation arising from his guilty plea.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the effective assistance of counsel during plea negotiations. Effective assistance includes warning defendants of the “direct” consequences of pleading guilty, such as the offense’s maximum prison term and the likely sentence as set forth in a plea agreement. However, the court explained that it has long held that an attorney need not warn of every possible “collateral consequence of conviction. And such collateral consequences are “categorically removed from the scope of the Sixth Amendment.” Thus, a defendant can only establish an ineffective assistance claim as to a collateral consequence if his attorney affirmatively misadvises him. Failing to warn of the collateral risk alone is not enough. The court explained that the instant appeal is resolved by the straightforward application of this direct/collateral framework. Accordingly, the court held that the distinction remains valid, that it applies to civil denaturalization, and that such denaturalization is a collateral consequence of the conviction, and so is not covered by the Sixth Amendment’s right to effective assistance of counsel. View "Farhane v. United States" on Justia Law

Appellants, American victims of terror attacks in Israel, appealed from the district court’s judgment dismissing their complaint for lack of in personam jurisdiction over Appellee Bank Saderat PLC, a bank associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Appellants challenged the district court’s conclusion that the Appellee’s default, which occurred just after the venue was transferred from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to the Eastern District of New York, did not forfeit its objection to personal jurisdiction in New York.   The Second Circuit concluded that the district court’s judgment relied on the erroneous factual finding that the Appellee had successfully challenged personal jurisdiction in the District of Columbia before the case was transferred to New York. The court explained that the district court premised its legal conclusion – that this case was distinguishable from Mickalis Pawn Shop – on the incorrect factual finding that BSPLC’s pre-transfer, pre-default personal jurisdiction challenge in the District of Columbia was successful. The record demonstrates that BSPLC achieved no such victory. It was, therefore clear error for the district court to find otherwise and to rely on that fact for the purpose of distinguishing BSPLC’s conduct from that of the defendants in Mickalis Pawn Shop. View "Kaplan v. Bank Saderat PLC" on Justia Law

Shareholders of Defendant-Appellant Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. brought this class action lawsuit against Goldman and several of its former executives, claiming defendants committed securities fraud in violation of Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b–5 promulgated thereunder by misrepresenting Goldman’s ability to manage conflicts of interest in its business practices. After a number of appeals and subsequent remand, including an appeal to the Supreme Court, the district court once again certified a shareholder class under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3).   The Second Circuit reversed the district court’s class certification decision with instructions to decertify the class. The court held that the district court clearly erred in finding that Goldman failed to rebut the Basic presumption by a preponderance of the evidence and, therefore, abused its discretion by certifying the shareholder class. The court explained that there is an insufficient link between the corrective disclosures and the alleged misrepresentations. Defendants have demonstrated, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the misrepresentations did not impact Goldman’s stock price and, by doing so, rebutted Basic’s presumption of reliance. Thus, the district court clearly erred in concluding otherwise and therefore abused its discretion in certifying the shareholder class. View "Ark. Tchr. Ret. Sys. v. Goldman Sachs Grp., Inc." on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court’s judgment revoking his original, three-year term of supervised release and sentencing him to three months imprisonment followed by a new, one-year term of supervised release for violating certain conditions of his supervised release. Defendant contends that the district court erred in finding that he violated a condition of his supervised release by possessing marijuana on January 27, 2021, in violation of New York Penal Law Section 221.05. First, Defendant argued that the offense defined by Section 221.05 was simply a state “violation,” not a state “crime,” and therefore, his offense did not violate the mandatory condition of supervised release that he “not commit another federal, state or local crime.” Second, Defendant argued that even if the offense, as defined by Section 221.05, constituted a “crime” for purposes of a violation of supervised release, New York’s March 31, 2021 repeal of the statute operated retroactively, such that his pre-repeal conduct in contravention of it cannot serve as the basis for a violation of supervised release.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court agreed with the district court’s conclusion that Defendant violated a condition of his supervised release based on his possession of marijuana. The court explained that irrespective of New York’s classification of the offense, Defendant’s underlying conduct constituted a “crime” under federal law. Because this holding disposes of Defendant’s appeal in its entirety, the court did not reach Defendant’s retroactivity argument. View "United States v. Francis" on Justia Law

Plaintiff appealed the district court’s judgment dismissing her claims of age, race, and gender discrimination and retaliation under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. Section 621 et seq., Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. Section 2000e et seq., and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. Section 1981. On appeal, Plaintiff argued that the district court applied an incorrect legal standard to her retaliation claim and that it erroneously concluded that she had failed to demonstrate that Defendants’ race-neutral explanations for not selecting her for two internal promotions were pretextual.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court held that Plaintiff has not demonstrated that Defendants’ explanations for her non-promotions were pretextual. Second, the court held that although the district court applied an incorrect standard to her retaliatory hostile work environment claim, Plaintiff has nevertheless failed to make out a prima facie case of retaliation and did not demonstrate that her employer’s non-retaliatory explanations were pretextual. The court explained that Defendant’s evidence supporting summary judgment established that Plaintiff received negative performance evaluations because she was not adequately or timely completing her duties and had become increasingly challenging to work with. The court wrote that Plaintiff has not rebutted this showing with evidence demonstrating that the reasons the NYCTA provided for the poor performance reviews were pretextual. Instead, she argues that the performance reviews must have been retaliatory due to their temporal proximity to her complaints. But she offers nothing more to establish causation. View "Carr v. New York City Transit Authority" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs appealed the district court’s judgment dismissing claims against Defendants, challenging Public Act 21-6, which revised the Connecticut General Statutes to repeal religious exemptions from state immunization requirements for schoolchildren, college and university students, and childcare participants. Plaintiffs are two organizations and three individuals who allege that the Act violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and other federal constitutional and statutory guarantees. The district court granted the motions of Defendants to dismiss certain of Plaintiffs’ claims against the state agencies as barred by the Eleventh Amendment, to dismiss the organizational Plaintiffs' claims for lack of standing, and to dismiss all counts of the complaint for failure to state a claim.   The Second Circuit affirmed in part and vacated and remanded in part. The court explained the district court's distinction between "special services" and "special education" was overly strict. The IDEA and its associated regulations do not use the phrase "special services." A reasonable inference from the allegation that Plaintiff’s son suffers from "a speech and learning disorder for which he now receives special services," combined with the allegation that he "is disabled within the meaning of the IDEA," is that the "special services" the complaint mentions constitute "special education" rather than "related services." Therefore, the court concluded that because the district court parsed the complaint too restrictively, failing to draw reasonable inferences in Plaintiff’s favor, the court erred when it found Plaintiff had not stated a plausible claim for relief under the IDEA. The court, therefore, vacated this portion of the judgment. View "We The Patriots USA, Inc. et al. v. Conn. Office of Early Childhood Dev." on Justia Law

Police officers seized just over $8,000 in a search of Appellant’s home carried out as part of a drug trafficking investigation into her then-boyfriend, K.B. The local police turned over the funds to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which initiated an administrative forfeiture procedure to claim the funds as proceeds from drug sales. Acting pro se, Appellant filed a claim to the assets, forcing the government to terminate its administrative seizure and open a judicial forfeiture proceeding in district court.  She failed to timely oppose the ensuing judicial proceeding, and the clerk of court entered default against the funds. Appellant, still acting pro se, then sent several letters to the district court and the U.S. Attorney’s Office seeking leave to file a belated claim to the seized assets. The district court held that Appellant had not shown excusable neglect, denied her an extension of time to file a claim, and entered final default judgment against the seized assets.
The Second Circuit vacated the grant of the motion to strike and the entry of default judgment and remanded for further proceedings. The court held that the district court erred in granting default judgment to the government. Appellant’s letters are properly viewed as seeking both to lift the entry of default and to be granted leave to file an untimely claim to the assets. So understood, Appellant’s motion should have been assessed under the more permissive good cause standard, as is any other motion to lift entry of default in a civil suit. View "U.S. v. Starling" on Justia Law

Defendant was twice sentenced for violating conditions of supervised release. The first time, he was sentenced to six months in prison plus four years of supervised release. The second time, he was sentenced to three years in prison plus five years of supervised release. The parties agreed that this most recent sentence of supervised release was longer than allowed by statute. The district court was authorized to impose a term of supervised release of no more than the statutory maximum of five years for the underlying offense, minus the aggregate amount of prison time imposed for violations of supervised release. The parties disagree on the remedy. Defendant sought de novo resentencing, but the government seeks only a limited remand to reduce the term of supervised release to eighteen months.   The Second Circuit remanded for resentencing. The court concluded that the district court should be afforded the opportunity to exercise its discretion as to how much time Defendant should spend in prison and how much time on supervised release. The court explained that under Section 3583(h), the maximum allowable term of supervised release upon revocation decreased in direct proportion to the term of imprisonment imposed. With a three-year prison sentence, Defendant faced at most eighteen months of supervised release. For every month above an eighteen-month term of supervised release, the court would have needed to shave a month off the three-year prison term. The court concluded that the sentencing calculation is best left to the informed discretion of the district court, so that it may decide in the first instance how to strike the right balance. View "United States v. Gaye" on Justia Law

In 2005, a federal district court entered a permanent injunction against several pro-life advocates enjoining them from entering the public sidewalk within fifteen feet of the entrance of any abortion clinic in the Western District of New York. Twelve years later, in 2017, Plaintiff, who was not a named party to the 2005 permanent injunction, started sidewalk counseling near the Planned Parenthood facility in Rochester, New York. After Defendants, the New York Attorney General and the City of Rochester decided that Plaintiff was bound by the 2005 permanent injunction, he sued, seeking a declaratory judgment that he was not bound by the injunction. He also moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent Defendants from applying the injunction to his counseling activities. The district court dismissed his suit for failure to state a claim and denied his motion for a preliminary injunction.   The Second Circuit reversed the judgment of the district court insofar as it dismissed Plaintiff’s complaint and vacated the judgment insofar as it denied Plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction. The court remanded for further proceedings. The court held that a person who is not a named party to an injunction or legally identified with a named party is bound by the injunction only from acting for the benefit of, or to assist, an enjoined party in violating the injunction. The allegations in Plaintiff’s complaint do not establish that he so acted and therefore state a claim for declaratory relief. View "Havens v. James" on Justia Law