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9th Circuit Court of Appeals Updates
Beltran v. Astrue
Disability Law: For purposes of determining whether a claimant is “disabled” and thus qualified for benefits under Titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act, “a significant number” of jobs does not exist “where the jobs were ‘very rare’ or generally unavailable to the claimant due to [her] limitations.”
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Henry A. v. Willden
Juvenile Law: The 2 exceptions--"special relationship" and "state-created danger"--to the general rule that Due Process does not impose affirmative duties on the government should not be read too narrowly when evaluating claims that a state failed to provide basic rights of safety and proper medical care to foster children.
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Ward v. Chavez
Civil Procedure: First, when exhaustion is futile, the exhaustion requirement should be waived. Second, under the MVRA, where a defendant is unable to pay restitution immediately, a court may not order immediate repayment because such an order impermissibly delegates the setting a repayment schedule to the Bureau of Prisons or Probation.
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Nedds v. Calderon
Habeas Corpus: Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), a petitioner is entitled to equitable tolling of the statute of limitations for a habeas corpus claim when the petitioner relies on circuit court precedent, even if that precedent is later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Padilla v. Yoo
Civil Law: A government official is entitled to qualified immunity unless, at the time of their actions, the law is "sufficiently clear that every reasonable government official would have understood that what he was doing violated the plaintiff's rights."
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Veterans for Common Sense v. Shinseki
Administrative Law: The district court lacked jurisdiction to hear whether the procedures for veterans’ mental health services and service-related disability claims with the Department of Veteran’s Affairs violates due process and a statutory duty to provide timely care. The district court did have jurisdiction to consider if the Regional Office’s non-adversarial adjudication of disability claims satisfied due process and properly held that it did.
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Estate of Morgens v. CIR
Trusts and Estates: “Gift taxes paid by the donee trustees of a Qualifying Terminable Interest in Property (QTIP) trust, based on a 26 U.S.C. § 2519 deemed inter vivos transfer of the QTIP property within three years of the donor’s death, must be included in the transferor’s gross estate under the so-called “gross-up rule” of § 2035(b).”
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Crosby v. Schwartz
Habeas Corpus: Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), a denial of a writ of habeas corpus is reviewed under an extremely deferential standard and the denial will only be reversed if: the decision is contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, federal law; or if the decision was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts.
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Detrich v. Ryan
Habeas Corpus: A petition for habeas corpus on a penalty-phase ineffective assistance of counsel claim is granted when: the state post-conviction court unreasonably applied federal law and the deficient performance prejudiced the defense.
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Karl v. City of Mountain Terrace
Civil Law: Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, where a public employee gives subpoenaed deposition testimony in the course of a § 1983 lawsuit, a supervisor whose subsequent retaliatory conduct causes the termination of the employee does not have qualified immunity, even if the supervisor did not have final authority to terminate the employee.
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