Salas v. United States
| Decision Date | 17 November 2022 |
| Docket Number | 1:22-cv-00008 |
| Parties | ANDREW SABLAN SALAS, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern Mariana Islands |
DECISION AND ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO DISMISS WITH PREJUDICE
Plaintiff Andrew Sablan Salas filed this civil action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief from the application of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (“AIA”) prohibiting any animal fighting venture under 7 U.S.C. § 2156 as to cockfighting. (Compl. 6, ECF No. 1.)[1] Defendant United States of America (“Government”) filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) requesting dismissal of this action with prejudice alleging the complaint fails to state a claim as a matter of law. (Mot. Dismiss 2, ECF No. 3.) Plaintiff filed his opposition (Opp'n, ECF No. 8), to which the Government filed its reply (Reply, ECF No. 9). The matter was fully briefed and came on for a hearing on October 13, 2022, during which the Court took the matter under advisement. (Min., ECF No. 10.) The Court now issues this decision and order GRANTING the motion to dismiss with prejudice without leave to amend.
The following facts are taken from the complaint. Plaintiff “has been regularly and actively involved in the sport of cockfighting since childhood” with activities like raising hundreds of roosters for cockfighting and entering roosters in competitive cockfights. (Compl. ¶ 5.) He “desires and intends to resume raising roosters for cockfighting purposes, and entering such roosters in competitive cockfights” in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (“CNMI”) but “a credible threat exists that he will [be] prosecuted for violation of law, particularly 7 U.S.C. § 2156,” which bans cockfights. (Id. ¶ 6.)
Section 12616 of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, which went into effect on December 20, 2019, amended 7 U.S.C. § 2156. (Id. ¶¶ 8, 9, 14.) Prior to the AIA § 2156 banned animal fighting in general but had an exception for “fighting ventures involving live birds in a State where it would not be in violation of the law.” (Id. ¶ 9.) Section 12616 of the AIA deleted that exception thus federally banning cockfighting. (Id.) Plaintiff asserts that section 12616 of the AIA had no effect on the fifty states and the District of Columbia because those jurisdictions had already banned cockfighting. (Id. ¶¶ 11-12.) The only effect was on the laws in “the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, [and] any other territory or possession of the United States.” (Id. ¶ 12.)
Plaintiff seeks a declaratory judgment stating that section 12616 of the AIA and 7 U.S.C. § 2156 do not apply to the CNMI, an injunction prohibiting Defendant from enforcing those laws in the CNMI, costs of suit, and all other relief the Court finds just and proper. (Compl. 6.) Plaintiff provides three separate justifications for its requested relief based on the “Covenant to Establish a Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Political Union with the United States of America” (the “Covenant”), which is an agreement between the United States and the people of the Northern Mariana Islands governing the application of federal law to the Northern Mariana Islands. (Id. at 4-6.)
First, Plaintiff argues that because § 2156 was not a law of general application in 1978, it does not apply to the CNMI pursuant to section 502 of the Covenant. (Id. ¶¶ 19-22.) Second, Plaintiff asserts that § 2156 does not apply to the CNMI pursuant to section 105 of the Covenant because the law cannot be made applicable to the several states. (Id. ¶¶ 23-27.) Finally, Plaintiff contends that section 12616 intrudes into an internal affair of the Northern Mariana Islands, particularly cockfighting, in violation of section 103 of the Covenant, which preserves the right of local self-government including internal affairs for the people of the Northern Mariana Islands. (Id. ¶¶ 28, 32.)
Conversely, the Government contends § 2156 was a law of general application in 1978 and so under section 502 of the Covenant, it may be amended and such amendment would be and is applicable to the CNMI. (Mot. Dismiss 8.) It further contends that because section 502 of the Covenant applies, Plaintiff's other two arguments fail. (Mot. Dismiss 25; Reply 6.)
To survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a pleading “must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). The factual allegations need not be detailed, but a plaintiff must provide “more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Id. at 678. In determining whether a motion to dismiss should be granted, there is a two-step process: first, “identify[] pleadings that, because they are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth,” and second, “[w]hen there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief.” Id. at 679. Conversely, “[a] motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) will be granted only if ‘it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.'” Bonnichsen v. U.S., Dep 't of the Army, 969 F.Supp. 614, 619 (D. Or. 1997) (quoting Gibson v. United States, 781 F.2d 1334, 1337 (9th Cir.1986)).
Generally, when ruling on a 12(b)(6) motion, a court may consider only the pleadings and limited materials, such as “documents attached to the complaint, documents incorporated by reference in the complaint, or matters of judicial notice[.]” United States v. Ritchie, 342 F.3d 903, 908 (9th Cir. 2003) (citations omitted). If a court considers other evidence, “it must normally convert the 12(b)(6) motion into a Rule 56 motion for summary judgment, and it must give the nonmoving party an opportunity to respond.” Id. at 907 (citations omitted).
If a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim is granted, “leave to amend should be granted unless it is clear that the deficiencies of the complaint cannot be cured by amendment.” Dog Bites Back, LLC v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., 563 F.Supp.3d 1120, 1123 (D. Nev. 2021) (citing DeSoto v. Yellow Freight Sys., Inc., 957 F.2d 655, 658 (9th Cir. 1992)). Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a) dictates that leave should be given freely “when justice so requires” and “in the absence of a reason such as ‘undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive on the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing party by virtue of allowance of the amendment, futility of the amendment, etc.'” Id. (quoting Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962)).
Defendant's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim attacks the legal sufficiency of Plaintiff's complaint. The central issue is whether the federal cockfighting ban contained in § 2156 is applicable to the CNMI based upon various sections of the Covenant. Plaintiff disputes the applicability of § 2156 “only to the extent that [it] [a]ffect[s] a federal cockfight prohibition in the CNMI.” (Opp'n 8.) Presently, § 2156 prohibits all animal fighting ventures, which includes fights not only involving birds, but also other mammals. See 7 U.S.C. § 2156(a)(1), (f)(4) (2019). Therefore, Plaintiff contests only one portion of § 2156; he does not dispute that other forms of animal fighting, such as dog fights, are prohibited in the CNMI. As the Government noted at the hearing, this carve-out of a particular section of a statute of the larger AIA, is unprecedented. This Court agrees.
The pertinent version of 7 U.S.C. § 2156 appeared in the Animal Welfare Act Amendments of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-279, 90 Stat. 421 (Apr. 22, 1976). Section 2156 provided that “[i]t shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly sponsor or exhibit an animal in any animal fighting venture to which any animal was moved in interstate or foreign commerce.” 7 U.S.C. § 2156(a) (1976) (current version at 7 U.S.C. § 2156) (emphasis added).
However, it had an exception that stated: “Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (a), (b), or (c) of this section, the activities prohibited by such subsections shall be unlawful with respect to fighting ventures involving live birds only if the fight is to take place in a State where it would be in violation of the laws thereof.” Id. at (d) (emphasis added). State was defined to mean “any State of the United States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and any territory or possession of the United States[.]” Id. at (g)(4). In other words, cockfighting was federally unlawful in a particular state only if the state also deemed cockfighting unlawful. If a state law authorized cockfighting, then there was no federal prohibition on cockfighting in that state.
In December of 2018, “Congress approved the Section 12616 amendments, under the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, PL 115-334, 132 Stat. 4490 (2018)[,]” which eliminated the cockfighting exception such that the ultimate effect was “the prohibition of animal fighting ventures, including live-bird fighting, in every United States jurisdiction[]” Club Gallstico de Puerto Rico Inc. v. United States, 414 F.Supp.3d 191, 200 (D.P.R. 2019) (citations omitted), aff'd sub nom. Hernandez-Gotay v. United States, 985 F.3d 71 (1st Cir. ...
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