Garcia v. Roberts

• Decision Date: 31 December 2015
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 13–01963–NMG
• Citation: 180 F.Supp.3d 46
• Parties: National Association for the Advancement of MultiJurisdiction Practice, Jose Jehuda Garcia, Marinna L. Callaway and Herbert Howard Detrick, II, Plaintiffs, v. Richard W. Roberts, Emmet G. Sullivan, Collen Kollar–Kotelly, Ellen S. Huvelle, Reggie B. Walton, John D. Bates, Richard J. Leon, Rosemary M. Collyer, Beryl A. Howell, Robert L. Wilkins, James E. Boasberg, Amy Berman Jackson, Rudolph Contreras, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Eric H. Holder, Jr., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

180 F.Supp.3d 46

National Association for the Advancement of MultiJurisdiction Practice, Jose Jehuda Garcia, Marinna L. Callaway and Herbert Howard Detrick, II, Plaintiffs,

v.Richard W. Roberts, Emmet G. Sullivan, Collen Kollar–Kotelly, Ellen S. Huvelle, Reggie B. Walton, John D. Bates, Richard J. Leon, Rosemary M. Collyer, Beryl A. Howell, Robert L. Wilkins, James E. Boasberg, Amy Berman Jackson, Rudolph Contreras, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Eric H. Holder, Jr., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 13–01963–NMG

United States District Court, District of Columbia.

Signed December 31, 2015

Joseph Robert Giannini, Los Angeles, CA, Raymond Carignan, Raymond Carignan, Esq. LLC, Ellicott City, MD, for Plaintiffs.

Brian P. Hudak, Alan R. Burch, U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM & ORDER

GORTON, District Judge

This case involves allegations that Local Rule 83.8(a)(2) of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (“D.D.C.”) violates federal statutory and constitutional law in requiring certain attorneys, as a condition of bar admission and continuing membership, to be active members in good standing of the Bar of the states in which they maintain their principal law offices.

Pending before this Court are defendants' motion to dismiss the amended complaint and plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment. For the reasons that follow, defendants' motion to dismiss will be allowed and plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment will be denied.

I. Background

A. Challenged rule

Plaintiffs contest the statutory and constitutional validity of D.D.C. Local Rule 83.8(a) which provides that:

Admission to and continuing membership in the Bar of this Court are limited to:

(1) attorneys who are active members in good standing in the District of Columbia Bar; or

(2) attorneys who are active members in good standing of the Bar of any state in which they maintain their principal law office ; or

(3) in-house attorneys who are active members in good standing of the Bar of any state and who are authorized to provide legal advice in the state in which they are employed by their organization client.

D.D.C. R. 83.8(a)(emphasis added). Specifically, plaintiffs object to the “principal law office” provision in D.D.C. Rule 83.8(a)(2) and seek to have that restriction removed from the rule.

B. Parties

Plaintiff National Association for the Advancement of Multijurisdiction Practice (“NAAMJP”) is a California public benefit corporation that

engage[s] in interstate commerce and advocacy throughout the United States for the purpose of improving the legal profession, by petitioning for admission on motion in the dwindling minority of jurisdictions that have not yet adopted the [American Bar Association's] recommendations for reciprocal admission for all lawyers.

NAAMJP claims that the challenged rule prevents its members from joining the D.D.C. Bar.

Plaintiff Jose Jehuda Garcia (“Garcia”) is a member of NAAMJP and an attorney who is admitted to, and in good standing of, the Bar of the New Mexico Supreme Court. He asserts that he is injured by the “principal law office” provision of the rule.

Plaintiff Marinna L. Callaway (“Callaway”) is a member of NAAMJP and an attorney who practices in California. She contends that she is “categorically disqualified” from admission to the D.D.C. Bar under the rule because her principal law office is located in “California, a state which refuses her admission.” She submits that she would apply for admission to the D.D.C. Bar if defendants were to remove the “principal law office” provision from its rule.

Plaintiff Herbert Howard Detrick, II (“Detrick”) is an attorney admitted to, and in good standing of, the bars of several state and federal courts, including the Supreme Courts of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Florida and the United States District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the District of New Jersey. He alleges that he has moved between states several times and that his principal law office is currently located in Zurich, Switzerland. Detrick proclaims that he has

essentially wasted tens of thousands of dollars and hours in preparing to take repetitive state bar exams and waiting for his results.

He asserts that he is injured by the existing rule and that he would apply for admission to the D.D.C. Bar if defendants were to remove the “principal law office” provision from the rule.

The remaining plaintiff, “Patent Lawyer Doe,” is an unnamed member of NAAMJP and a patent lawyer who claims that he is injured by the rule because he is not admitted in the state where his principal law office is located and thus is precluded from admission to the D.D.C. Bar.

Defendants are 1) the Chief Judge and thirteen active United States District Judges of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia at the time of the filing of the complaint and 2) the United States Attorney General at the time of the filing of the complaint. Plaintiffs assert claims against defendants in their official capacities.

C. Procedural history

In December, 2013, plaintiffs filed a complaint in the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia claiming that the then-existing D.D.C. Local Rule 83.8(a)(2), which contained a prior version of the “principal law office” provision in conjunction with a reciprocity requirement, violated 1) the Rules Enabling Acts of 28 U.S.C. §§ 2071

and 2072, 2) the Supremacy Clause, 3) the First Amendment rights to free speech, free association and petition and 4) the Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection and due process. The case was initially assigned to D.D.C. United States Senior District Judge Thomas F Hogan.

In March, 2014, Judge Hogan allowed defendants' motion to stay the case until defendants voted on a proposal by the District Court's Rules Committee to remove the reciprocity requirement from the D.D.C. Local Rules. In June, 2014, defendants voted to approve the amended version of D.D.C. Local Rule 83.8(a)(2) that plaintiffs now challenge.

In July, 2014, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint asserting that the “principal law office” provision of D.D.C. Local Rule 83.8(a)(2) violated 1) the Rules Enabling Acts of 28 U.S.C. §§ 2071

and 2072 (Count 1), 2) the Supremacy Clause (Count 2), 3) the First Amendment rights to free speech, free association and petition (Count 3 and 4) the Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection and due process (Counts 4 and 5). Plaintiffs seek a) an order declaring the “principal law office” provision of D.D.C. Local Rule 83.8(a)(2) unconstitutional, b) an injunction against its enforcement and c) an order declaring that the D.D.C. Local Rules shall provide

general bar admission privileges to all sister-state attorneys admitted to the highest court of any state.

Shortly thereafter, Judge Hogan allowed a joint motion of the parties to stay the case pending resolution of plaintiffs' motion to transfer the instant action and related actions in other district courts to the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation as one consolidated case. The motion to transfer was denied and, in November, 2014, Judge Hogan, upon consideration of plaintiffs' motion for recusal, plaintiffs' affidavit of bias and defendants' response, voluntarily recused himself “to further the fair administration of justice in this case.” The case was randomly reassigned to D.D.C. United States Senior District Judge Randolph D. Moss.

Defendants filed the instant motion to dismiss the amended complaint in November, 2014 and plaintiffs filed their pending motion for summary judgment in January, 2015.

Jurisdictional concerns were time consuming but ultimately, the case was reassigned to the D.D.C. Calendar Committee and then, in November, 2015, by the Chief Justice of the United States to this judicial officer to sit by designation on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

In December, 2015, this Court convened a hearing on the pending motions for dismissal and summary judgment. The Court has now heard oral argument from the parties and proceeds to decide the case.

II. Standing

Defendants contend in their motion that the Court should dismiss the complaint because all plaintiffs lack standing.

A. Legal standard

The Article III jurisdiction of a federal court is limited to “Cases” and “Controversies” in which the claimant has standing to litigate before the court. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 559–60, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)

. In order to establish constitutional standing, a plaintiff must show 1) an injury in fact, 2) a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of, such that the injury is fairly traceable to that conduct and 3) a likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. Id. at 560–61, 112 S.Ct. 2130. An injury in fact is one that is “concrete and particularized and [ ] actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.” Id. at 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). A plaintiff claiming a prospective injury has standing “where the threatened injury is real, immediate, and direct.” Davis v. Fed. Election Comm'n, 554 U.S. 724, 734, 128 S.Ct. 2759, 171 L.Ed.2d 737 (2008).

B. Application

1. Individual plaintiffs

Defendants contend that the individual plaintiffs lack standing for several reasons. Defendants first claim that the individual plaintiffs lack qualifying injuries because they fail to allege

that they are not members of the [District of Columbia (“D.C.”) ] Bar, that they have applied for admission to the [D.C.] Bar or for admission to the Bar of this Court and been rejected, or that they have actual or prospective clients with cases before this Court, whose engagements they may not pursue due to ineligibility for admission to the Bar of this Court.

Defendants concede that Callaway and Detrick submit that they would apply for admission if the “principal law office” provision were removed...