Cambranis v. Blinken

• Decision Date: 07 April 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20-50399,20-50399
• Citation: 994 F.3d 457
• Parties: David Jonaton CAMBRANIS, Plaintiff—Appellant, v. Antony BLINKEN, secretary, U.S. Department of State; Attorney General of the United States, Defendants—Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

994 F.3d 457

David Jonaton CAMBRANIS, Plaintiff—Appellant,

v.Antony BLINKEN, secretary, U.S. Department of State; Attorney General of the United States, Defendants—Appellees.

No. 20-50399

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

FILED April 7, 2021

Javier N. Maldonado, Law Office of Javier N. Maldonado, P.C., San Antonio, TX, for Plaintiff - Appellant.

Thomas Benton York, Theo Nickerson, Lacy L. McAndrew, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Washington, DC, for Defendants - Appellees.

Before Stewart, Higginson, and Wilson, Circuit Judges.

Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge:

Appellant David Cambranis appeals the district court's dismissal of his amended complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. We AFFIRM.

I. BACKGROUND

According to his amended complaint, Cambranis was born on January 4, 1979, in Del Rio, Texas, when his mother went into labor while attending a colleague's birthday party. His mother, Eva Lopez Escobar, is a Mexican citizen who was living at the time in Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico.

Cambranis alleges that on January 22, 1979, his mother registered his birth in Mexico and wrongly reported that he was born in Ciudad Acuña. On July 27, 1981, Ms. Escobar filed a delayed birth certificate for Cambranis with the Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, recording that he was born in Texas. The Texas birth certificate included an attestation from a witness who claimed to have attended Cambranis's birth in Del Rio.

More recently, Cambranis has filed six passport applications with the United States Department of State ("DOS"), based on his purported status as a national of the United States. Each has been denied. In its denial letters, DOS describes that Cambranis has not met his burden to prove his U.S. citizenship or nationality and notes the existence of the Mexican birth record as contradicting his claim of having been born in the United States. Cambranis filed his first application on May 15, 2009, which was denied on September 22, 2010. His most recent application was filed on March 17, 2017 and was denied on December 6, 2018.

On March 11, 2019, Cambranis filed his initial complaint in this case, which challenged DOS's denial of his passport applications and sought a declaration of U.S. citizenship pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1503(a).¹

The Government moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Government argued that the five-year statute of limitations for Cambranis's § 1503(a) claim had expired because it began to run upon the denial of Cambranis's first passport application on September 22, 2010. In support, the Government cited this court's decision in Gonzalez v. Limon , which held that the statute of limitations in § 1503(a) begins to run from the first final administrative denial of a right, notwithstanding subsequent administrative denials of the same right. 926 F.3d 186, 189-90 (5th Cir. 2019). The Government attached to its motion the denial letters from DOS corresponding to each passport application.

In lieu of responding to the Government's motion, Cambranis filed his amended complaint, which is the subject of this appeal. In the amended complaint, Cambranis continues to assert a claim under § 1503(a), alleging that DOS "den[ied] him a United States passport on the ground that he is not a national of the United States." Although he maintains his § 1503(a) claim, Cambranis expressly acknowledges, in the amended complaint itself, that the claim is foreclosed by Gonzalez and that he includes the claim "to preserve the issue for appeal."

In addition to his § 1503(a) claim, the amended complaint adds two further causes of action: (1) a claim under the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA") for judicial review pursuant to 5 U.S.C. §§ 701 - 706, asserting that DOS's decision to deny him a passport was arbitrary and capricious; and (2) a Fifth Amendment claim, asserting the denial of the rights and privileges of citizenship as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, including the right to travel internationally. All three claims—the § 1503(a) claim, the statutory APA claim, and the constitutional claim—seek a declaration that Cambranis is a U.S. citizen.

Again, the Government moved to dismiss the amended complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Government reasserted that the § 1503(a) claim is barred by the statute of limitations, and also argued that the statutory APA claim is barred by 5 U.S.C. § 704 because § 1503(a) is an "other adequate remedy" for the challenged agency action.² The Government further sought to dismiss Cambranis's constitutional claim on the ground that it had not waived its sovereign immunity pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 702.³

Cambranis filed an opposition to the motion to dismiss. Therein, he made two concessions.

First, as he had done in the amended complaint itself, he conceded that under Gonzalez , his § 1503(a) claim was barred by the statute of limitations. Although Cambranis stated that he "does not concede that Gonzalez v. Limon was correctly decided," he acknowledged that "this Court is bound by Fifth Circuit precedent and so all that [he] can do at this time is preserve the issue for appeal, that is that Gonzalez v. Limon was wrongly decided."

Second, he conceded that § 704 barred the district court's review of his statutory APA claim because this court held in Flores v. Pompeo that § 1503(a) provides an "adequate alternative remedy" to the APA for challenging the denial of a passport application. 936 F.3d 273, 277 (5th Cir. 2019). However, he maintained that Flores did not apply to his constitutional claim.

In short, Cambranis conceded in district court that the district court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to consider his first two claims (his § 1503(a) claim and his statutory APA claim). That left only his constitutional claim, which he maintained that the district court had jurisdiction to consider.

The district court granted the Government's motion to dismiss in full. The district court agreed that Gonzalez and Flores foreclosed Cambranis's § 1503(a) and statutory APA claims, respectively. It then held that his remaining constitutional claim was also barred by § 704 ’s "other adequate remedy" provision, extending the logic of Flores to apply to constitutional claims challenging the denial of a passport application. Because it concluded § 704 posed an independent jurisdictional bar to Cambranis's constitutional claim, the district court did not reach whether the Government retained its sovereign immunity via the operation of § 702.

Cambranis filed a timely notice of appeal.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

This Court reviews questions of subject-matter jurisdiction, including whether the United States is entitled to sovereign immunity, de novo. Wagner v. United States , 545 F.3d 298, 300 (5th Cir. 2008) ; Koehler v. United States , 153 F.3d 263, 265, 267 (5th Cir. 1998).

III. DISCUSSION

Cambranis challenges only the district court's conclusion that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to consider his constitutional claim. He argues that, for purposes of his constitutional claim, the United States waived its sovereign immunity via 5 U.S.C. § 702, and that—contrary to the district court's ruling— 5 U.S.C. § 704 does not pose an independent jurisdictional bar. Although we affirm the district court, we do so because we hold that the United States has not waived its sovereign immunity under the terms of § 702. As a result, we do not reach whether § 704 serves as an independent jurisdictional bar to Cambranis's constitutional claim.

This case turns on the nature of—and the relationship between—two statutes: 5 U.S.C. § 702 and 8 U.S.C. § 1503(a).

Section 702 of the APA waives the United States’ sovereign immunity for actions seeking non-monetary relief against federal government agencies. Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Tex. v. United States , 757 F.3d 484, 488 (5th Cir. 2014).⁴ The waiver applies both to statutory claims and to "non-statutory causes of action against federal agencies arising under 28 U.S.C. § 1331." Id. (citing Sheehan v. Army & Air Force Exch. Serv. , 619 F.2d 1132, 1139 (5th Cir. 1980), rev'd on other grounds , 456 U.S. 728, 102 S.Ct. 2118, 72 L.Ed.2d 520 (1982) ). Cambranis thus relies on the sovereign immunity waiver contained in § 702 in order to bring his constitutional claim, seeking declaratory relief, against a department of the United States.

There are two requirements to establish waiver under § 702. "First, the plaintiff must identify some ‘agency action’ affecting him in a specific way, which is the basis of his entitlement for judicial review." Id. at 489. "Second, the plaintiff must show that he has ‘suffered legal wrong because of the challenged agency action, or is adversely affected or aggrieved by that action within the meaning of a relevant statute.’ " Id. (quoting Lujan v. Nat'l Wildlife Fed'n , 497 U.S. 871, 883, 110 S.Ct. 3177, 111 L.Ed.2d 695 (1990) ). There is no dispute that Cambranis's constitutional claim satisfies these two requirements.

However, separate from these two affirmative requirements, § 702 also contains enumerated exceptions that limit the reach of its general waiver. Relevant here, § 702 states that "[n]othing herein ... confers authority to grant relief if any other statute that grants consent to suit expressly or impliedly forbids the relief which is sought." 5 U.S.C. § 702. According to the Supreme Court, "[t]hat provision prevents plaintiffs from exploiting the APA's waiver to evade limitations on suit contained in other statutes." Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians v. Patchak , 567 U.S. 209, 215, 132 S.Ct. 2199, 183 L.Ed.2d 211 (2012). We will refer to this provision as the "any other statute" proviso.

The Supreme Court has described how to determine whether a particular statute triggers the "any other statute" proviso. As the Court stated in Patchak , " ‘when Congress has dealt in particularity with a claim and [has] intended a specified...