9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has rejected the argument of the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity and the Thomas More Law Society that their First Amendment rights were violated by a California law requiring them to turn over their list of donors to the California attorney general, Election Law Blog's Rick Hasen reports. The groups said they should be exempted from the law because disclosure of their donors could cause them to be harassed.

The Ninth Circuit reversed the injunction that had been put in place by the district court. The Attorney General is not disclosing the information to the public.

Here is some interesting legal news from last month:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rebuked a Nevada district court judge for denying pro hac vice admission to Department of Justice lawyers based in Washington, D.C., The National Law Journal's Zoe Tillman reports.

Tillman reports that U.S. District Judge Robert Jones had concerns about the "'ethical commitments'" of out-of-state government lawyers, but the Ninth Circuit opined that "'generalized doubts about all government attorneys’ ethical commitments are not valid grounds for denying an individual attorney’s application for pro hac vice admission."'

Even though Jones reversed his previous order denying the the U.S. attorney permission to appear in USA V. USDC-NVR, the panel held that this did not render the controversy moot because it was reasonable to expect that Jones might issue such an order again.

The case was one of first impression.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the federal government must continue to provide medical care to veterans exposed to chemical and biological-weapons experiments as well as any new information that may affect their health, Metropolitan News-Enterprise's Kenneth Ofgang reports. The experiments took place between 1942 and 1975.

The panel said the fact that care is available through the Department of Veterans Affairs is insufficient basis to not compel the government to provide care to the entire class of test subjects.

The panel also found a basis for compelling medical care in a 1988 military regulation finding that test subjects have a duty to be warned even if their participation in the research is now over. The military had argued that the regulation only apply prospectively.

Even though a medical marijuana dispensary violates federal law, it still has the right to recover money stolen from it by an attorney, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko reports that the now-defunct Northbay Wellness Group of Santa Rose can seek to reclaim its $25,000 stolen by now-disbarred attorney Michael Beyries. Beyries has declared bankruptcy, and the former lawyer argued that Northbay had "unclean hands" and couldn't assert its rights to recovery against Beyries' bankruptcy estate.

The unanimous panel of the Ninth Circuit disagreed. According to Egelko, the court opined that, “'Allowing Beyries to avoid through bankruptcy his responsibility for misappropriating his client’s money would undermine the public interest in holding attorneys to high ethical standards.'”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has refused to reconsider a class action by 33,000 Arizona prison inmates over a strong dissent, Courthouse News' Tim Hull reports. The dissent said that inmates failed to demonstrate that their class has commonality and typicality: "'First, before certifying a class, a court must ensure that all members of the potential class have the same sort of claim, and that the claim is susceptible to classwide resolution. Second, a prisoner does not have an Eighth Amendment claim merely because the prisoner is incarcerated in a prison with a defective medical system,'" Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote.

The plaintiffs allege that inadequate healthcare in Arizona's prisons has violated their Eighth Amendment rights. For example, prison officials allegedly made it difficult for inmates to get medications, medical devices and dental care beyond having their teeth pulled.

The case has now settled, and the dissent said class certification should be vacated despite the mootness issues.

The Ninth Circuit has ruled that the First Amendment rights of a video-game maker don't trump the rights former NFL players have to be compensated for the use of their avatars in the Madden NFL series, the Associated Press' Sudhin Thanawala reports. Courthouse News' Maria Dinzeo reports that the panel ruled that Electronic Arts can't "use incidental use as a defense for its depictions of football players in video games, ... rejecting the company's claims that the athletes' images add little commercial value." The panel also upheld a lower court ruling rejecting Electronic Arts' motion to strike the lawsuit under California's anti-SLAPP law.

Several judges on the Ninth Circuit, sitting during en banc arguments yesterday, expressed skepticism about whether an actress has a copyright interest in an anti-Muslim video and can show enough "irreparable harm" from the video to force its takedown from YouTube, Bloomberg's Edvard Pettersson reports. A three-judge panel gave Cindy Lee Garcia a copyright interest in her performance in "Innocence of Muslims," which sparked riots in Muslim countries and was originally linked to the attack on the American consulate in Libya. 

U.S. Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, writing for the 2-1 panel, said the case was the rare one in which a filmmaker exceeded the bounds of an actor's implied license.

Several judges on the en banc panel questioned "whether Garcia, who alleges the maker of the YouTube clip lied to her about how he would use her performance, should be pursuing a remedy under a fraud or publicity rights claim instead of copyright law," Bloomberg further reports.

Google was forced to take down the video on YouTube and other sites.

The Ninth Circuit heard oral argument yesterday on whether it violates the First Amendment for the FBI to gag tech and telecommunications firms from revealing that they have received "national security letters" for customer records, Reuters reports. Tech companies, including Google, Microsoft Corp and Facebook Inc said in court papers "the government may not 'foist a gag order upon the involuntary recipient of an NSL, let alone prohibit the recipient from even reporting periodically the aggregate number of such demands that it receives,'" Reuters further reports.

SCOTUSBlog's Lyle Denniston reports on the details of the Ninth Circuit's ruling that ended bans on same-sex marriage in Idaho and Nevada and will likely control the fate of the bans in Alaska, Arizona, and Montana: "First, all three judges on the panel joined in an opinion by Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt finding that the Idaho and Nevada bans violate the constitutional guarantee of same-sex couples to be treated the same legally as opposite-sex couples.  Second, Judge Reinhardt issued a separate opinion, for himself only, saying he would also strike down those bans under the Constitution’s Due Process Clause, arguing that the right to marry is a fundamental guarantee and that gays and lesbians have a right to share in that right. Third, Circuit Judge Marsha S. Berzon, in a separate opinion only for herself, said she would have also struck down the bans on the premise that they discriminate on the basis of gender."

The Ninth Circuit has ruled that past criminal convictions in American Indian courts can't count as proof of a defendant's criminal history if defendants weren't guaranteed the right to an attorney, The Guardian reports. Michael Bryant Jr. was convicted of domestic assault in Northern Cheyenne Tribal Court but didn't have an attorney. While the Eighth and Tenth Circuits have found that tribal convictions aren't governed by the American Constitution, the Ninth Circuit has ruled that Bryant's conviction wasn't legal because the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to an attorney.