Justia U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The Fifth Circuit held that the Bankruptcy Court had the equitable power emanating from 11 U.S.C. 105(a) to correct any error it may have committed in changing the date of the first creditors' meeting after the case was transferred out of the Eastern District. In this case, the Objectors reasonably relied on the issuance by the Northern District Bankruptcy Court's Clerk of a second, later date for the section 341(a) initial creditors' meeting and a corresponding new, later deadline for filing objections to discharge. The court also held that the Bankruptcy Court correctly denied debtor's discharge under section 727(a)(4)(A), and that the Bankruptcy Court was correct in finding that debtors' discharge could also be denied under section 727(a)(5). View "Yaquinto v. Ward" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, two brothers and their parents, filed suit seeking injunction relief under the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act to prevent Mathis Independent School District from excluding them from extracurricular activities based on their religiously motivated hairstyles. After the district court granted preliminary injunctions to both brothers, the school district appealed.The Fifth Circuit upheld the district court's grant of a preliminary injunction as to one brother and vacated as to the other. In regard to one brother, C.G., the court held that the district court's conclusion that there was no time to reasonably provide 60-day pre-suit notice was plausible in light of the record as a whole. Therefore, C.G. satisfied the statutory exception to the Act's pre-suit notice requirement and thus the school district's governmental immunity is waived and there is no jurisdictional defect in C.G.'s claim. As to the other brother, D.G., the court held that his noncompliance with the Act's pre-suit notice requirement requires that the court vacate the district court's preliminary injunction as to him. View "Gonzales v. Mathis Independent School District" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action against defendant, an investigator for the Texas Medical Board (TMB), alleging that defendant searched his medical office and seized documents without a warrant.The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of defendant's motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The court held that defendant violated plaintiff's constitutional rights when she copied documents in plaintiff's office without any precompliance review of the administrative subpoena. However, at the time, it was not clearly established that defendant's search per Texas Occupations Code 153.007(a) and 168.052, and 22 Texas Administrative Code 179.4(a) and 195.3 was unconstitutional. Therefore, defendant's right to a precompliance review was not clearly established at the time of the search. In this case, the TMB had received a complaint that plaintiff was operating an unregistered pain management clinic (PMC); even though plaintiff's license had been revoked at the time of the search, the Board still had the power to take disciplinary action against him, to issue administrative penalties, and to seek injunctions; and thus defendant's search served an administrative purpose, even if the TMB ultimately declined to take further administrative action against plaintiff. View "Cotropia v. Chapman" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit granted the petition for panel rehearing, withdrew its prior opinion, and substituted the following opinion.The court held that when a court order disposes of a habeas claim on procedural and, in the alternative, substantive grounds, a Rule 60(b) motion contesting this order inherently presents a successive habeas petition. The court affirmed the district court's conclusion that it lacked jurisdiction over petitioner's Rule 60(b) motion -- facially challenging a procedural ruling and implicitly challenging a merits determination -- because it was a successive habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. 2254. The court also affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner's inherent prejudice claim, because petitioner failed to overcome the arduous standard of review in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). In this case, petitioner identifies no clearly established law that the CCA misapplied, nor any unreasonable factual determinations on which the court based its holding. View "Will v. Lumpkin" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal without prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction of plaintiff's pro se complaint against Toyota and Diversity, alleging claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and Mississippi state law.In this case, the amended complaint alleged that plaintiff and Diversity are citizens of the same state. Therefore, the district court was correct in holding that there is no diversity jurisdiction and thus no subject matter jurisdiction. The court stated that plaintiff's altering of the jurisdictional facts she alleges on appeal—omitting any mention of Diversity's citizenship in her appellate brief and alleging only that Diversity is "located" in Indiana in her appellate reply brief—does not alter the court's decision. Even assuming the altered jurisdictional facts are true, plaintiff has not met her burden of establishing complete diversity of the parties. View "Smith v. Toyota Motor Corp." on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a petition for habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2254. Petitioner argues, under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), that the prosecution unlawfully withheld impeachment evidence concerning an eyewitness's prior federal conviction for lying on a firearms application. The court concluded that the undisclosed evidence of the eyewitness's conviction for lying does not "directly contradict" or undermine his assertions at trial; fairminded jurists could disagree as to whether the eyewitness's testimony was sufficiently corroborated to sustain confidence in the verdict; and the eyewitness's undisclosed conviction was cumulative of other evidence disclosed to the defense—including the assault and battery conviction that was revealed to the jury during the eyewitness's cross-examination. Therefore, the court found that the state court's Brady determination did not involve an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law. The court also rejected petitioner's argument that the state court's decision was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts under section 2254(d)(2). View "Reeder v. Vannoy" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of two counts of theft of public funds, based on two fraudulent tax refunds (Count I and II), as well as aggravated identity theft (Count III). The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment with respect to Counts I and II and held that the district court did not err in failing to give a unanimity of theory instruction as to the location of the crime. In this case, the Government does not dispute that defendant's conduct in Dallas and his conduct in Kenya could have theoretically constituted two separate violations of 18 U.S.C. 641, but the Government maintains that it sought to convict defendant on Count I based only on his conduct in Dallas. Therefore, the two offenses are based solely on the one Dallas transaction.However, the court held that the evidence was insufficient to support defendant's conviction on Count III because the Government presented no conclusive evidence showing that defendant had ever used the 139 IP address, much less that he used it to file (or help file) the Eipper tax refund. Accordingly, the court vacated as to Count III and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Sila" on Justia Law

Petitioner, a federal prisoner, sought postconviction review of his conviction for money laundering under 28 U.S.C. 2241, rather than 28 U.S.C. 2255. Petitioner acknowledged that he cannot successfully file a section 2255 motion because he has previously filed and lost several of them.The Fifth Circuit dismissed the petition as an abuse of the writ, holding that there are two circumstances where a section 2241 application should be dismissed as an abuse of the writ: first, a petitioner can abuse the writ by raising a claim in a subsequent petition that he could have raised in his first, regardless of whether the failure to raise it earlier stemmed from a deliberate choice; and second, it is an abuse of the writ for a prisoner to raise the same claim a second time. The court held that both circumstances apply to petitioner's section 2241 application. In this case, petitioner filed a section 2241 application in the Northern District of Ohio in 2012—almost four years after Cuellar v. United States, 553 U.S. 550 (2008)—but did not include a Cuellar claim. Furthermore, he raised his Cuellar claim in his second second 2241 application to the Northern District of Ohio. View "Beras v. Johnson" on Justia Law

After plaintiffs filed suit challenging Texas's absentee-ballot system in August 2019, the district court granted plaintiffs' summary judgment motion in part, issuing an injunction adopting many of plaintiffs' proposed changes to Texas's election procedures. The injunction included three main provisions regarding the 2020 election: first, the district court required the Secretary to issue an advisory, within ten days, notifying local election officials of the injunction, and the notification must inform them that rejecting ballots because of mismatching signatures is unconstitutional unless the officials take actions that go beyond those required by state law; second, the Secretary must either issue an advisory to local election officials requiring them to follow the district court's newly devised signature verification and voter-notification procedures, or else promulgate an advisory requiring that officials cease rejecting ballots with mismatched signatures altogether; and third, the district court mandated that the Secretary take action against any election officials who fail to comply with the district court's newly minted procedures.The Fifth Circuit considered the Nken factors and granted the Secretary's motion to stay the district court's injunction pending appeal, because the Secretary is likely to succeed in showing that Texas's signature-verification procedures are constitutional. The court held that the Secretary is likely to show that plaintiffs have alleged no cognizable liberty or property interest that could serve to make out a procedural due process claim. Given the failure of plaintiffs and the district court to assert that voting—or, for that matter, voting by mail—constitutes a liberty interest, along with the absence of circuit precedent supporting that position, the court stated that the Secretary is likely to prevail in showing that plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment on their due process claim should have been denied. The court rejected the district court's reasoning regarding any state-created liberty interest. Even if voting is a protected liberty or property interest, the court held that the Secretary is likely to show that the district court used the wrong test for the due process claim. The court held that the Anderson/Burdick framework provides the appropriate test for plaintiffs' due process claims and Texas's signature-verification procedures are reasonable and nondiscriminatory, and they survive scrutiny under the Anderson/Burdick framework. In this case, Texas's important interest in reducing voter fraud—and specifically in stymying mail-in ballot fraud—justifies its use of signature verification.The court also held that the Secretary is likely to prevail in her defense that sovereign immunity bars the district court's injunction requiring that she issue particular advisories and take specific potential enforcement action against noncomplying officials. Finally, the remaining Nken factors counsel in favor of granting a stay pending appeal where the Secretary will be irreparably injured absent a stay, public interest favors granting a stay, and the balance of harms weighs in favor of the Secretary. View "Richardson v. Texas Secretary of State" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, a certified class of minor children in the permanent managing conservatorship (PMC) of the Texas Department of Family Protective Services, filed 42 U.S.C. 1983 claims alleging that the Texas foster-care system violated their substantive due process right to be free from an unreasonable risk of harm. The district court issued a wide-ranging permanent injunction imposing sweeping changes on the Texas foster-care system. The Fifth Circuit vacated and remanded the injunction to the district court for modification; the district court made additional modifications to the injunction; and the state appealed again.The Fifth Circuit then instructed the district court to begin implementing, without further changes, the modified injunction with the alterations the court made. On remand, however, the district court expanded the injunction again by enjoining the state from moving any PMC child from their current placement as a result of enforcement of the court's requirement for 24-hour awake-night supervision unless application is made to the court prior to the proposed discharge. The Fifth Circuit reversed and held that it is black-letter law that a district court must comply with a mandate issued by an appellate court. The Fifth Circuit remanded to the district court to begin implementing, without further changes, the modified injunction with the alterations the court has made. View "M.D. v. Abbott" on Justia Law