OPINION WALLACE , Circuit Judge : The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the regulations implementing it require group health plans to cover contraceptive care without cost sharing. Federal agencies issued two interim final rules (IFRs) exempting employers with religious and moral objections from this requirement. Several states sued to enjoin the enforcement of the IFRs, and the district court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1292, and we...
OPINION TASHIMA , Circuit Judge : INTRODUCTION Defendant-Appellant Evelyn Sineneng-Smith was convicted on two counts of encouraging and inducing an alien to remain in the United States for the purposes of financial gain, in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) & 1324(a)(1)(B)(i). 1 Section 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) ("Subsection (iv)") permits a felony prosecution of any person who "encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States" if the encourager knew, or...
OPINION N.R. SMITH , Circuit Judge . The filing date of a bankruptcy petition determines the law governing exemptions and freezes the value of the exemptions that the debtor may claim. Because Debra Wilson's amended bankruptcy schedules sought to claim more than Washington law permitted her to claim as of the petition date, we affirm the district court's decision, limiting her claimed exemption to the amount she was entitled to under Washington law as of the petition date. I. Wilson...
OPINION CALLAHAN , Circuit Judge : We must decide whether an Alaska law regulating campaign contributions violates the First Amendment. At issue are Alaska's limit on contributions made by individuals to candidates, its limit on contributions made by individuals to election-related groups, its limit on political party-to-candidate contributions, and its limit on the total funds a candidate may receive from out-of-state residents. The district court upheld all four provisions against a...
ORDER The opinion filed on August 24, 2018, and published at 901 F.3d 1124 , is amended by the opinion filed concurrently with this order, as follows: On slip opinion page 10, begin the first full paragraph with: "As relevant here, the falsity requirement can be satisfied in one of two ways." With this amendment, Judges Graber and Zipps have voted to deny Appellant's petition for panel rehearing, and Judge Smith has voted to grant it. Judge Graber has voted to deny Appellant's petition for...
ORDER In Jennings v. Rodriguez, ___ U.S. ___, 138 S.Ct. 830 , 200 L.Ed.2d 122 (2018), the Supreme Court held that we misapplied the canon of constitutional avoidance to hold that certain immigration detention statutes, namely 8 U.S.C. 1225(b), 1226(a), and 1226(c), implicitly contain a reasonableness determination after which due process concerns require that persons in prolonged mandatory detention are entitled to individualized bond hearings and possibly, conditional release. Although...
OPINION WARDLAW , Circuit Judge : It is no hyperbole to say that Dulce Garcia embodies the American dream. Born into poverty, Garcia and her parents shared a San Diego house with other families to save money on rent; she was even homeless for a time as a child. But she studied hard and excelled academically in high school. When her family could not afford to send her to the top university where she had been accepted, Garcia enrolled in a local community college and ultimately put...
ORDER The Opinion filed August 20, 2018, and reported at 900 F.3d 1113 , is hereby amended. The amended opinion will be filed concurrently with this order. The panel has unanimously voted to deny Appellees' petition for panel rehearing. Judge Berzon and Judge Watford have voted to deny the petition for rehearing en banc. Judge Linn recommends denial of the petition for rehearing en banc. The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing en banc, and no judge has requested a vote...
OPINION BYBEE , Circuit Judge : Appellant Charles W. Daff, the trustee for the bankruptcy estate of Richard J. Swintek ("the debtor"), appeals from the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel's ("BAP") decision reversing the bankruptcy court's grant of summary judgment in the trustee's favor. Appellee Karen M. Good is a judgment creditor who, before the debtor filed for bankruptcy, obtained an "ORAP" lien encumbering the debtor's personal property under California law. Due to the bankruptcy code's...
OPINION FRIEDLAND , Circuit Judge : In this appeal, an objecting class member challenges the district court's approval of a class action settlement resolving claims that Provide Commerce, Inc. and Regent Group, Inc. (collectively, "Defendants") enrolled consumers in a membership rewards program without their consent and then mishandled their billing information. The settlement makes available $3.5 million to pay settlement administration costs and refund class members' enrollment fees,...
OPINION IKUTA , Circuit Judge : Jordan Marks appeals the grant of summary judgment to Crunch Fitness on his claim that three text messages he received from Crunch violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), 47 U.S.C. 227. The district court held that the automatic text messaging system that had sent the messages was not an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) under the TCPA, because it lacked the present or potential capacity "to store or produce telephone numbers to be...
ORDER AND AMENDED OPINION The opinion in the above-captioned matter filed on July 9, 2018, and published at 895 F.3d 619 , is amended as follows: At slip opinion page 21, replace the sentence with . The full court has been advised of Defendants-Appellees' Petition for Rehearing En Banc and no judge of the court has requested a vote on the Petition for Rehearing En Banc. Fed. R. App. P. 35. The Petition for Rehearing En Banc is denied. No future petitions for rehearing or rehearing en banc...
OPINION FISHER , Circuit Judge : We address the constitutionality of a California charitable registration requirement as applied to two nonprofit organizations that solicit tax-deductible contributions in the state. Americans for Prosperity Foundation (the Foundation) and Thomas More Law Center (the Law Center) qualify as tax-exempt charitable organizations under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. 501(c)(3). They challenge the Attorney General of California's collection...
OPINION THOMAS , Chief Judge : In this petition for review, we consider whether the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") acted arbitrarily and capriciously in denying a complaint brought by the Turlock and Modesto Irrigation Districts (collectively, the "Districts"). The complaint alleged that Pacific Gas & Electric Company ("PG&E") breached agreements between the Districts and PG&E. We conclude that FERC's orders denying the complaint and denying rehearing were arbitrary and...
OPINION BERZON , Circuit Judge : This is the fourth time we have been asked to consider whether the County of Orange ("the County") violated the vested rights of its retired employees when it restructured its health benefits program. This time, we are asked to consider whether two reforms adopted by the County in 2006 deprived the plaintiffs of vested employment benefits, in violation of the County's contractual obligations, and constituted age discrimination, in violation of California'...
OPINION BERZON , Circuit Judge . "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." ___ Anatole France, The Red Lily We consider whether the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment bars a city from prosecuting people criminally for sleeping out-side on public property when those people have no home or other shelter to go to. We conclude that it does. The plaintiffs-appellants...
OPINION BASHANT , District Judge : We must determine whether sovereign immunity precludes an award of emotional distress damages against the United States for willful violation of the Bankruptcy Code's automatic stay. The answer turns on the interplay between two Bankruptcy Code statutes: 11 U.S.C. 106(a) ("Section 106(a)") and 362(k) ("Section 362(k)"). In Section 106(a), Congress waived sovereign immunity for a "money recovery" under certain bankruptcy provisions, including Section...
OPINION PAEZ , Circuit Judge : Moris Alfredo Quiroz Parada fled his native El Salvador in 1991 at the age of seventeen after he and his family were the victims of threats, home invasions, beatings, and killings at the hands of Frente Farabundo Mart para la Liberaci n Nacional (FMLN) guerillas. Twenty-four years after he first applied for asylum, Quiroz Parada petitions for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirming the denial of his application for asylum,...
OPINION GRABER , Circuit Judge : This qui tam action, brought under the False Claims Act, comes to us on interlocutory appeal from the district court's denial of summary judgment so that we can settle questions of law posed in the wake of Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar, ___ U.S. ___, 136 S.Ct. 1989 , 195 L.Ed.2d 348 (2016). We affirm. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY 1 Defendant Stephens Institute, doing business as Academy of Art University, is an art...
OPINION NGUYEN , Circuit Judge : Vu Minh Nguyen, a citizen of Vietnam, immigrated to the United States as a lawful permanent resident in the year 2000, when he was eighteen years old. Fifteen years later, he was placed in removal proceedings and charged with removability due to three misdemeanor convictions. Nguyen, with the assistance of pro bono counsel, applied for cancellation of removal. This form of relief is a discretionary benefit that requires an immigration judge ("IJ") to...
