Justia U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's 60-month sentence for conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. Although the court agreed with defendant that the district court committed a Jones error, the court concluded that the record is sufficient to permit appellate review of the sentencing issue he raises.On the merits, the court acknowledged that there is daylight between the standards under USSG 2D1.1(b)(1) and USSG 5C1.2(a)(2), and that application of a firearm enhancement does not necessarily preclude safety-valve relief. However, the court affirmed the sentence because, on this record, the district court's factual findings under section 2D1.1(b)(1) foreclosed relief under section 5C1.2(a)(2). The court remanded for the sole purpose of correcting a clerical error. View "United States v. Sanchez Carrasquillo" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against Sixt on behalf of a putative class of Sixt customers, alleging that Sixt breached its own contract with him and violated two state consumer-protection statutes. In this case, plaintiff had used Orbitz.com to book a rental car from Sixt. When plaintiff picked up the rental car from Sixt, he signed an entirely separate agreement with Sixt which did not contain an arbitration provision.The Eleventh Circuit explained that a customer making an airline, hotel, or car-rental reservation on Orbitz.com agrees to a contract that includes an arbitration provision, and that provision requires the customer to arbitrate disputes related to, among other things, "any services or products provided." At issue is whether that phrase refers to services and products provided by Orbitz or by anyone.Reading the "any services or products provided" clause in the light of neighboring provisions and the larger contractual context—and applying a dose of common sense—the court concluded that it refers only to services and products provided by Orbitz. The court affirmed the district court's denial of Sixt's motion to compel arbitration because the underlying dispute does not relate to services or products provided by Orbitz. Rather, it relates only to those provided by Sixt, a company that does business through Orbitz. View "Calderon v. Sixt Rent a Car, LLC" on Justia Law

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, Pub. L. No. 116-136, 134 Stat. 281 (2020) (CARES Act), among other things, imposed a 120-day moratorium on evictions for rental properties receiving federal assistance. The CDC then issued a temporary eviction moratorium on September 4, 2020, that suspended the execution of eviction orders for nonpayment of rent. Before the CDC's order was originally set to expire on December 31, 2020, Congress enacted the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which extended the CDC's order through January 31, 2021. The CDC's order was then extended again through March 31, 2021, and again through June 30, 2021, and again through July 31, 2021.Plaintiffs, several landlords seeking to evict their tenants for nonpayment of rent and a trade association for owners and managers of rental housing, filed suit alleging that the CDC's orders exceeds its statutory and regulatory authority, is arbitrary and capricious, and violates their constitutional right to access the courts.The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction based on plaintiffs' failure to show an irreparable injury. The court declined to find that the CDC's order is unconstitutional, and failed to see how the temporary inability to reclaim rental properties constitutes an irreparable harm. Furthermore, the court explained that, without any information about a tenant’s financial or employment picture, the court has no way to evaluate whether she will ever be able to repay her landlord; to decide otherwise based solely on the CDC declaration would be to conclude that no one who signed the declaration is likely to repay their debts after the moratorium expires. Given the lack of evidence and the availability of substantial collection tools, the court could not conclude that the landlords have met their burden of showing that an irreparable injury is likely. View "Brown v. Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services" on Justia Law

After the district court entered a preliminary injunction requiring Fulton County Jail officials to provide regular out-of-cell time to female inmates with psychiatric disabilities and to improve the sanitary conditions in their cells, the officials appealed. The officials argue that the district court abused its discretion in granting plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction because neither the traditional requirements for a preliminary injunction nor the Prison Litigation Reform Act's (PLRA) additional need-narrowness-intrusiveness requirements were satisfied. The Eleventh Circuit concluded that the preliminary injunction expired by operation of law under the terms of the PLRA and thus dismissed the appeal as moot and vacated the preliminary injunction order. View "Georgia Advocacy Office v. Jackson" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit vacated its previous opinion and substituted it with this opinion. This revised opinion does not reach the Title IX question and reaches only one ground under the Equal Protection Clause instead of the three Equal Protection rulings the court made in the August 7 opinion.Plaintiff, a recent high school graduate and a transgender young man, filed suit against the school board through his next friend and mother, alleging violations of his rights under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.The court affirmed the district court's entry of judgment in favor of plaintiff on the equal protection claim under the heightened intermediate scrutiny standard, concluding that the school district's policy barring plaintiff from the boys' restroom violates the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection, because the school district assigns students to sex-specific bathrooms in an arbitrary manner. In this case, the school board has not met its "demanding" constitutional burden by showing a substantial relationship between its policy for excluding transgender students from certain restrooms and student privacy. The court affirmed the district court's award of damages because plaintiff undoubtedly suffered harm as a result of this violation. Because plaintiff prevails on his equal protection claim, which fully entitles him to the relief granted by the district court, the court declined to reach his Title IX claim. View "Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction and 15 year sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm based on the district court's finding that he was a career criminal. The court concluded that defendant's prior drug convictions under Virginia Code 18.2-248 qualified as serious drug offenses under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). The court also concluded that there was no clear error in crediting the testimonies of law enforcement officers and thus in denying defendant's motion to suppress. Finally, the court concluded that defendant's remaining claims of error are foreclosed by Supreme Court and Circuit precedent. View "United States v. Stancil" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against the hotel alleging a violation of 42 U.S.C. 1981, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracting. Plaintiff claimed that one of the hotel's employees falsely accused him of engaging in inappropriate behavior at the pool, that the employee did so because she harbored animus against Arabs, and that employee's accusation led to his eviction.The Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court's dismissal of the complaint, concluding that, at this preliminary stage, plaintiff's allegations plausibly allege a circumstantial case of racial discrimination. The court explained that plaintiff adequately alleged that he was treated differently from comparators who were similarly situated to him in all material respects. In this case, he and his fiancée were hotel guests, sat by the pool, and behaved entirely appropriately; other, non-Arab hotel guests sat by the pool and acted similarly; and the towel attendant singled out him and his fiancée, fabricated a story about them, and caused them to be evicted. Furthermore, plaintiff has sufficiently alleged that the towel attendant intended to cause him a contractual injury based on the attendant's racial animus. The court noted that a cat's-paw theory of liability under section 1981 is not inconsistent with the stricter causal standard. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Ziyadat v. Diamondrock Hospitality Co." on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for knowingly possessing with intent to distribute a Schedule II controlled substance (approximately 2 kilograms of cocaine) in violation of 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1) and conspiring to distribute a Schedule II controlled substance (cocaine) in violation of 21 U.S.C. 846.The court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to allow a rational jury to infer that she knew the package contained a controlled substance. The court also concluded that the district court acted within its discretion by admitting text messages showing that defendant illegally sold prescription pills and by instructing the jury on a deliberate ignorance theory. The court explained that the district court admitted evidence of defendant's prior drug deals to show that her involvement in a different drug-related crime was not a mistake, and any error in instructing the jury on a deliberate ignorance theory was harmless because the jury heard sufficient evidence of actual knowledge. View "United States v. Colston" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed defendant's convictions for crimes related to sexual misconduct with a minor. For two months, defendant, who was 33 years old, pretended to be a 17 or 18 year old girl as he communicated online with a 14 year old boy. Defendant sent sexually explicit videos of women to the boy and requested sexually explicit videos of him in return. Defendant was convicted for charges that he: (1) did knowingly and intentionally use, persuade, induce, and entice a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2251(a) and (e); (2) did knowingly receive, and attempt to receive, material containing child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(2) and (b)(1); and (3) did knowingly possess, and attempt to possess, material containing child pornography, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2252A(a)(5)(B) and (b)(2).The court concluded that neither section 2251(a) nor the indictment required the government to prove that defendant knew the victim's age in order to convict on Count I. Because the jury instruction was both a correct statement of the law and a correct statement of the charge, the district court did not constructively amend his indictment. However, the district court erred in convicting defendant of both possession and receipt of child pornography because a defendant cannot be punished twice for the same crime. Accordingly, the court affirmed defendant's conviction for Count I and II, vacated his conviction on Count III, and remanded for resentencing. View "United States v. Phillips" on Justia Law

After falling during a dance competition on a cruise ship, plaintiff filed suit against NCL for negligence, alleging that her partner in the competition—a professional dancer and cruise ship employee—released her hands as she leaned away from him during a dance move, causing her to fall backward and hit her head on the deck. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of NCL because NCL did not have actual or constructive notice of a risk-creating condition on the ship.The Eleventh Circuit reversed, holding that when a passenger makes a maritime negligence claim against a shipowner based on an employee's negligence under a theory of vicarious liability, the passenger need not establish that the shipowner had actual or constructive notice of a risk-creating condition. The court concluded that the district court applied the wrong standard in this case. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Yusko v. NCL (Bahamas), Ltd." on Justia Law