International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers v. Haas , 599 F. App'x 477 ( 2014 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 13-2123
INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF PROFESSIONAL & TECHNICAL
ENGINEERS; TIMOTHY PERSONS; DENNIS ROTH; NINA SERAFINO;
NANCY KINGSBURY,
Plaintiffs – Appellees,
v.
KAREN L. HAAS, Clerk, United States House of
Representatives,
Defendant – Appellant,
and
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; NANCY ERICKSON, Secretary, United
States Senate; TERRANCE W. GAINER, Sergeant at Arms, United
States Senate,
Defendants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Greenbelt. Alexander Williams, Jr., District
Judge. (8:12-cv-03448-AW)
Argued: October 29, 2014 Decided: December 24, 2014
Before TRAXLER, Chief Judge, and WILKINSON and DUNCAN, Circuit
Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished opinion. Judge Duncan wrote the
opinion, in which Chief Judge Traxler and Judge Wilkinson
joined.
ARGUED: William Bullock Pittard, IV, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Arthur B.
Spitzer, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, Washington, D.C., for
Appellees. ON BRIEF: Kerry W. Kircher, General Counsel,
Christine Davenport, Sr. Assistant Counsel, Todd B. Tatelman,
Assistant Counsel, Mary Beth Walker, Assistant Counsel, Eleni M.
Roumel, Assistant Counsel, Thomas M. Sundlof, Staff Attorney,
Office of General Counsel, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Jack McKay,
Kristen E. Baker, Benjamin J. Cote, PILLSBURY WINTHROP SHAW
PITTMAN LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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DUNCAN, Circuit Judge:
Defendant-Appellant Karen L. Haas, Clerk of the U.S. House
of Representatives (the “Clerk”), appeals the district court’s
order denying her motion to vacate the portions of the court’s
memorandum opinion ruling that sovereign immunity did not bar
Plaintiffs-Appellees’ claims against her. The Clerk argues that
the district court abused its discretion by finding that the
public interest favored denying her motion, and by denying her
motion on that basis. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
I.
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012
(STOCK Act) became law in April 2012. The Act directed the
Clerk to publish online the financial disclosure forms of
various legislative branch employees. In November 2012,
Plaintiffs-Appellees--several legislative employees obligated to
make financial disclosures and a union representing such
employees (collectively, the “Employees”)--sued the Clerk in her
official capacity. 1 The Employees argued that the STOCK Act
required the Clerk to violate their constitutional right to
1
The Employees also named as defendants the United States
of America, the Secretary of the Senate, and the Senate Sergeant
at Arms. None of these Defendants is a party to this appeal.
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privacy; they sought, among other forms of relief, an order
enjoining the Clerk from publishing their disclosure forms.
In February 2013, the Clerk moved to dismiss the Employees’
claims against her. She argued that she enjoyed sovereign
immunity from those claims and that venue did not lie in the
District of Maryland. On March 20, 2013, the district court
entered an order granting in part the Clerk’s motion and
dismissing without prejudice the Employees’ claims against her.
The district court explained in a memorandum opinion
accompanying its order that sovereign immunity did not shield
the Clerk from an action seeking to enjoin her from implementing
an allegedly unconstitutional statute. Nonetheless, it
dismissed those claims without prejudice because “venue [was]
not proper.” J.A. 210. The Clerk then had 60 days, or until
May 20, 2013, to file a timely notice of appeal. See Fed. R.
App. P. 4(a)(1)(B), 26(a)(1)(C).
On April 15, 2013--after the district court dismissed the
Employees’ claims but before the appeal window closed--Congress
mooted the Employees’ claims by striking the relevant provisions
from the STOCK Act. Roughly a month later, the Clerk moved the
district court under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) to
“vacate [its opinion] insofar as [the opinion] discusses the
application of sovereign immunity to defendants other than the
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United States.” J.A. 321. The district court denied that
motion, and the Clerk timely appealed. 2
II.
We review “the district court’s ruling on a [Rule] 60(b)
motion for abuse of discretion.” Aikens v. Ingram, 652 F.3d
496, 501 (4th Cir. 2011) (en banc). “A district court abuses
its discretion by resting its decision on a clearly erroneous
finding of a material fact, or by misapprehending the law with
respect to underlying issues in litigation.” In re Naranjo, 768
F.3d 332, 347 (4th Cir. 2014) (quoting Scott v. Family Dollar
Stores, Inc., 733 F.3d 105, 112 (4th Cir. 2013)) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
III.
The Clerk argues that the district court abused its
discretion by “applying the wrong vacatur factors, . . .
affording them inappropriate weight,” and “reaching an
2
We have appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
See United States v. Holland, 214 F.3d 523, 525 n.4 (4th Cir.
2000) (“[T]he denial of a Rule 60(b) motion is appealable as a
separate final order.”). Our review is limited to the denial of
the Rule 60(b)(6) motion; “an appeal from denial of Rule 60(b)
relief does not bring up the underlying judgment for review.”
Aikens v. Ingram, 652 F.3d 496, 501 (4th Cir. 2011) (en banc)
(quoting Browder v. Dir., Dep’t of Corr. of Ill., 434 U.S. 257,
263 n.7 (1978)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
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objectively unreasonable conclusion as to the ‘public
interest.’” Appellant’s Br. at 11. The Employees respond that
the district court considered the proper factors and its “well-
reasoned opinion denying [the Clerk]’s motion deserves this
Court’s deference.” Appellees’ Br. at 39. 3
We address the Clerk’s arguments in three steps. We begin
by summarizing the relevant law, then recount the district
court’s analysis, and finally explain why the district court did
not abuse its discretion in denying the Clerk’s motion.
A.
Rule 60(b) authorizes a court, “[o]n motion and just
terms,” to “relieve a party or its legal representative from a
final judgment, order, or proceeding,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b),
for five enumerated reasons or “any other reason that justifies
relief,” id. at 60(b)(6). The catchall provision “provides
courts with authority ‘adequate to enable them to vacate
judgments whenever such action is appropriate to accomplish
justice.’” Liljeberg v. Health Servs. Acquisition Corp., 486
3
The Employees also argue that the Clerk’s Rule 60(b)(6)
motion was improper because it asked the district court to
“‘vacate’ only the statements in the opinion that displeased
[the Clerk].” Appellees’ Br. at 21. We do not address this
argument because we affirm the district court’s denial of that
motion on other grounds.
6
U.S. 847, 863–64 (1988) (quoting Klapprott v. United States, 335
U.S. 601, 615 (1949)).
In Valero Terrestrial Corp. v. Paige, 211 F.3d 112 (4th
Cir. 2000), we set forth a two-step process that is “largely
determinative of a district court’s decision whether to vacate
its own judgment due to mootness under . . . Rule 60(b)(6).”
Id. at 118. First, the district court must determine whether
the party seeking relief “caused the mootness by voluntary
action.” Id. at 117 (quoting U.S. Bancorp Mortgage Co. v.
Bonner Mall P’ship, 513 U.S. 18, 24 (1994) (discussing appellate
vacatur of appellate decisions)) (internal quotation mark
omitted). A movant who caused her case to become moot is at
fault for that mootness and therefore entitled to vacatur only
in exceptional circumstances. See id. at 118.
Second, if the movant is not at fault for the mootness, the
district court must consider whether vacatur would be in the
public interest. See id. (“[When] appellate review of the
adverse ruling was prevented by ‘the vagaries of circumstance’
or the ‘unilateral action of the party who prevailed below,’
. . . vacatur remains available, subject, as always, to
considerations of the public interest.” (quoting Bancorp, 513
U.S. at 25)). We explained in Valero that “there is a
substantial public interest in judicial judgments,” id., because
those judgments are “not merely the property of private
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litigant” but rather “valuable to the legal community as a
whole.” Id. (quoting Bancorp, 513 U.S. at 26). Applying this
principle to the facts then before us, “we s[aw] the public
interest as no bar to vacatur” because the district court’s
judgment declaring invalid several provisions of the West
Virginia Code addressed “statutory provisions that . . . either
no longer exist[ed] or ha[d] been substantially revised.” Id.
Thus, Valero establishes that the public’s interest in judicial
judgments is diminished where the district court’s holding is
unlikely to have prospective application.
B.
The district court adopted our “analytical framework from
Valero.” J.A. 359. It considered “whether ‘the twin
considerations of fault and public interest’ favor[ed] granting
the Clerk’s Motion to Vacate, or alternatively whether
‘exceptional circumstances’ exist[ed] such that vacatur [was]
justified.” J.A. 361 (quoting Valero, 211 F.3d at 118, 121).
The district court first found that the “Clerk did not
cause [the] controversy to become moot.” J.A. 361. It
explained that the case became moot “due to the actions of
Congress and the President,” whose behavior is not attributable
to the Clerk because she “is responsible for administrative
functions within the Legislative Branch and has no
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constitutional role in the enactment of legislation.” J.A. 361
n.5.
Turning to the public interest, the district court found
that, on balance, this interest favored denying the Clerk’s
motion. It quoted Valero for the proposition that “[j]udicial
precedents are presumptively correct and valuable to the legal
community as a whole.” J.A. 362 (quoting Valero, 211 F.3d at
118) (internal quotation marks omitted). The district court
then found that the public’s interest in maintaining access to
the court’s sovereign immunity ruling, which addressed “a
broader question of law” than the holding at issue in Valero,
outweighed the Clerk’s “interest in vacating adverse legal
precedent.” J.A. 362. Finally, after concluding that no
exceptional circumstances justified vacatur, the court denied
the Clerk’s motion. Id.
C.
Upon consideration of the Clerk’s arguments and the record
before us, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its
discretion in denying the Clerk’s motion to vacate. Rather, the
district court faithfully applied our holding in Valero to the
facts before it.
Valero teaches that, where the movant is not at fault for
the mootness, the district court must consider whether the
public interest operates as a “bar to vacatur.” 211 F.3d at
9
121. The district court was therefore right--indeed, compelled-
-to consider this factor. But cf. Appellant’s Br. at 10 (“Where
a party seeks vacatur of a moot district court decision, vacatur
is required so long as the requesting party did not cause the
mootness.”). 4 And the district court’s public interest finding
is neither inconsistent with Valero nor clearly erroneous. The
trial court correctly noted that, unlike the holding at issue in
Valero, its ruling addressed a “broad[] question of law that has
value to the legal community as a whole.” J.A. 362. In Valero,
the district court’s judgment addressed statutory provisions
that no longer existed; here, by contrast, the district court’s
sovereign immunity ruling could be implicated whenever a
plaintiff seeks to enjoin a legislative branch official from
implementing an allegedly unconstitutional law. Finally, the
district court’s finding that the public’s interest in the
court’s ruling outweighed the “Clerk’s interest in vacating
4
The Clerk cites Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit cases
that have “dispense[d] entirely with consideration of the so-
called ‘public interest’ factor in the vacatur-for-mootness
context.” See Appellant’s Br. at 14–16. These cases are all
inapposite because none discusses a district court’s authority
to vacate for mootness. Cf. Valero, 211 F.3d at 117 (“The
appellate vacatur power derives from 28 U.S.C. § 2106, whereas
the district court power derives from Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 60(b).”). Moreover, the fact that appellate courts
have vacated for mootness without explicitly considering the
public interest does not establish that a district court abuses
its discretion by considering that interest--particularly where
we have directed district courts to account for it.
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adverse legal precedent,” J.A. 362, does not leave us with “the
definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.”
United States v. Perez, 752 F.3d 398, 407 (4th Cir. 2014)
(quoting United States v. Hall, 664 F.3d 456, 462 (4th Cir.
2012)) (internal quotation mark omitted). The public has a
“substantial” interest in the district court’s judgment, Valero,
211 F.3d at 118, but the Clerk suffers little prejudice from the
continuing existence of non-binding precedent that, in her view,
is adverse to her interests.
At bottom, Rule 60(b)(6) vacatur is an “equitable remedy,”
Valero, 211 F.3d at 120, that a district court “may” employ on
“just terms,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b). Cf. Henness v. Bagley,
766 F.3d 550, 554 (6th Cir. 2014) (“[T]he district court’s
discretion in deciding a Rule 60(b)(6) motion is especially
broad due to the underlying equitable principles involved.”);
Khodara Envtl., Inc. ex rel. Eagle Envtl. L.P. v. Beckman, 237
F.3d 186, 194 (3d Cir. 2001) (“[V]acatur is an equitable remedy
rather than an automatic right.”). The district court did not
abuse its discretion by declining to grant equitable relief
that, under its findings, was contrary to the public interest.
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IV.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district
court is
AFFIRMED.
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