Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-22-05243/USCOURTS-caDC-22-05243-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 152
Nature of Suit: Recovery of Defaulted Student Loans
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued March 4, 2024 Decided August 13, 2024

No. 22-5243

JACQUELYN BRENEA N’JAI,

APPELLANT

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:19-cv-02712)

Alison Fine, Student Counsel, argued the cause as amicus 

curiae in support of appellant. With her on the briefs were 

Thomas Burch, appointed by the court, and Elizabeth Hope 

Garrison and Robert Wedge, Student Counsel.

Jacquelyn Brenea N’Jai, pro se, filed the briefs for 

appellant.

Deborah N. Misir argued the cause and filed the brief for 

appellees New York University and Long Island University. 

Kenneth T. Maloney entered an appearance.

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Richard J. Perr and Monica M. Littman were on the brief 

for appellee Immediate Credit Recovery, Inc. 

Before: SRINIVASAN, Chief Judge, GARCIA, Circuit Judge, 

and ROGERS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge SRINIVASAN. 

SRINIVASAN, Chief Judge: This appeal raises a question of 

personal jurisdiction under District of Columbia law. The 

District of Columbia’s jurisdictional statute generally allows 

for the exercise of jurisdiction over a defendant for claims 

arising from the defendant’s transacting of business in the 

District. But that jurisdictional ground is subject to a 

“government contacts” exception. Under that exception, entry 

into the District for the purpose of contacting a federal 

government agency cannot serve as the basis for the assertion 

of personal jurisdiction. 

On more than one occasion, our court has explained that 

the scope of the government contacts exception under District 

of Columbia law is uncertain, and we have certified questions 

to the D.C. Court of Appeals in an effort to obtain clarification. 

The D.C. Court of Appeals, though, has resolved those cases in 

a way that has left uncertain one recurring issue: whether the 

government contacts exception is confined to First Amendment 

activity. This case implicates that uncertainty, and we again 

certify questions to the D.C. Court of Appeals about the scope 

of the government contacts exception under District of 

Columbia law.

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I.

A.

“Federal courts ordinarily follow state law in determining 

the bounds of their jurisdiction over persons.” Daimler AG v. 

Bauman, 571 U.S. 117, 125 (2014). In the District of 

Columbia, personal jurisdiction is governed by the D.C. longarm statute, D.C. Code § 13-423. This case concerns

subsection (a)(1) of the long-arm statute, under which a court 

may exercise personal jurisdiction over a company “as to a 

claim for relief arising from [the company’s] transacting any 

business in the District of Columbia.” D.C. Code § 13-

423(a)(1).

That basis for asserting personal jurisdiction under D.C. 

law, however, is subject to the so-called “government contacts” 

exception. The D.C. Court of Appeals recognized the 

government contacts exception in its en banc decision in

Environmental Research International, Inc. v. Lockwood 

Greene Engineers, Inc., 355 A.2d 808 (D.C. 1976) 

(Environmental Research). Under that exception, “entry into 

the District of Columbia by nonresidents for the purpose of 

contacting federal governmental agencies is not a basis for the 

assertion of in personam jurisdiction.” Id. at 813. “The 

rationale for the ‘government contacts’ exception to the District 

of Columbia’s long-arm statute,” the court elaborated, “finds 

its source in the unique character of the District [of Columbia] 

as the seat of [the] national government and in the correlative 

need for unfettered access to federal departments and agencies 

for the entire national citizenry.” Id. In particular, “[t]o permit 

our local courts to assert personal jurisdiction over 

nonresidents whose sole contact with the District [of 

Columbia] consists of dealing with a federal instrumentality 

not only would pose a threat to free public participation in 

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government, but also would threaten to convert the District of 

Columbia into a national judicial forum.” Id.

B. 

The lawsuit in this case was brought by Jacquelyn N’Jai. 

At this stage of the proceedings, we assume the truth of the 

allegations in her complaint. According to those allegations, 

N’Jai attended Long Island University (LIU) from 1986 to 

1988 and New York University (NYU) from 1988 to 1989. 

While in school, she took out two student loans totaling

$5,500—loans she asserts she has paid back in full. 

N’Jai contends that, in 1993, a bank analyst used her name 

to falsely certify federal student loans amounting to $21,200. 

She claims that NYU and LIU signed her name on the false 

loan applications and then withheld refunds from the loans. 

N’Jai unsuccessfully attempted to dispute the loans by 

appealing to the U.S. Department of Education. N’Jai claims 

that, after the amount owed on the loans ballooned to $66,000 

due to interest and nonpayment, the Department tried to collect 

on the loans by contracting with debt collectors, including 

Immediate Credit Recovery, Inc. (ICR), and FMS Investment 

Corporation (FMS). She maintains that those debt collectors

used unlawful practices in their efforts to collect on the

allegedly fraudulent loans. And she assertsthat the Department 

unlawfully garnished her tax refund and threatened to garnish 

her Social Security checks. 

N’Jai filed this action against the Department of 

Education, NYU, LIU, ICR, and FMS, among others, alleging 

various violations of federal law. N’Jai v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ., 

No. 19-cv-02712, 2021 WL 1209281, at *2 (D.D.C. Mar. 31, 

2021). The district court dismissed the claims against LIU, 

NYU, ICR, and FMS for lack of personal jurisdiction based on 

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the government contacts exception. Id. at *4–7; N’Jai v. U.S. 

Dep’t of Educ., No. 19-cv-02712, 2022 WL 4078948, at *2–3 

(D.D.C. Sept. 6, 2022). The court dismissed N’Jai’s claims

against the remaining defendants for reasons other than a lack 

of personal jurisdiction. N’Jai, 2021 WL 1209281 at *7–13; 

N’Jai v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ., No. 19-cv-02712, 2022 WL 

898859 (D.D.C. Mar. 28, 2022). 

N’Jai appealed. This court summarily affirmed the district 

court’s dismissals against various defendants for reasons other 

than a lack of personal jurisdiction. N’Jai v. U.S. Dep’t of 

Educ., No. 22-5243, 2023 WL 3848363 (D.C. Cir. June 2, 

2023); N’Jai v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ., No. 22-5243, 2023 WL 

5155786 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 4, 2023). That leaves N’Jai’s appeal 

of the dismissals of the claims against NYU, LIU, ICR, and 

FMS for lack of personal jurisdiction. As to that remaining part 

of her appeal, our court appointed an amicus curiae to present 

arguments supporting N’Jai’s position on the issue of personal 

jurisdiction, including on “whether the ‘government contacts 

exception’ to personal jurisdiction under District of Columbia

law is limited to activities protected by the First Amendment of 

the Constitution.” N’Jai, 2023 WL 5155786, at *1. 

II.

N’Jai argues that the district court has personal jurisdiction 

over NYU, LIU, ICR, and FMS under the D.C. long-arm 

statute based on their contacts with the Department of 

Education, a federal government agency located in the District. 

According to N’Jai, NYU and LIU have engaged in long-term 

contacts with the Department by applying to and receiving 

approval from the Department to participate in the federal 

student loan program, completing student loan applications, 

and certifying student loans. As for ICR and FMS, N’Jai

asserts that they, too, have participated in long-term contacts 

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with the Department by seeking approval to participate in the 

federal student loan program and contracting with the 

Department to collect on delinquent loans. N’jai connects her

asserted injuries—all of which relate to the administration of 

the allegedly fraudulent federal student loans in her name—to

the defendants’ contacts with the Department in the District. In 

support of N’Jai’s position on personal jurisdiction, the courtappointed amicus argues that the government contacts

exception under D.C. law is limited to activities protected by 

the First Amendment.

The defendants argue that the district court properly 

determined it could not assert personal jurisdiction over them 

due to the government contacts exception. They cite federal 

district court decisions for the proposition that the government 

contacts exception covers participation in the federal student 

loan program. See Morgan v. Richmond Sch. of Health & 

Tech., Inc., 857 F. Supp. 2d 104, 107–08 (D.D.C. 2012); 

Stevens v. Del. State Univ., 70 F. Supp. 3d 562, 565–65 (D.D.C. 

2014). The university defendants, LIU and NYU, contend that 

the government contacts exception is not confined to First 

Amendment activity. 

In assessing whether the government contacts exception 

precludes the assertion of personal jurisdiction over the 

remaining defendants in this case, a key question is whether 

that exception is confined to First Amendment activity (and if 

so, what kinds of activity qualify). On several occasions, our 

court has noted the seeming uncertainty on that question under 

D.C. law. 

That uncertainty arises from the decision of a panel of the 

D.C. Court of Appeals in Rose v. Silver, 394 A.2d 1368 (1978), 

which came two years after the en banc D.C. Court of Appeals 

recognized the government contacts exception in 

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Environmental Research, 355 A.2d 808. In Rose, this court has

explained, “a panel of the same court [i.e., the D.C. Court of 

Appeals] appeared to limit the ‘government contacts’ 

exception to activities implicating first amendment rights.” 

Naartex Consulting Corp. v. Watt, 722 F.2d 779, 786 (D.C. Cir. 

1983). As we noted at the time, however, “a panel of the 

District of Columbia Court of Appeals ‘is prohibited from 

issuing an opinion which conflicts materially with a prior 

decision of [the en banc] court as this may be done only by the 

court sitting en banc.’” Id. (quoting Rose v. Silver, 398 A.2d 

787, 787 (D.C. 1979) (denying petition for rehearing en banc)

(Gallagher, J., concurring)). But when the D.C. Court of 

Appeals denied “rehearing en banc in the Rose case, the [en 

banc] court failed to explain or reconcile the apparent conflict 

with the Environmental Research opinion.” Id. We added that, 

“if it were necessary to determine what law controls today in 

the District of Columbia, we would still be hesitant to conclude 

that the clear holding against governmental contacts as a basis 

for personal jurisdiction in Environmental Research no longer 

controls.” Id. But we ultimately did not need to resolve the 

issue because the contacts at issue in Naartex “implicate[d] the 

first amendment” and “so would qualify for exemption under 

the Rose test as well.” Id. at 787.

In a later decision, we reiterated that the “scope of the 

government contacts exception is unsettled . . . under the D.C. 

Court of Appeals’ precedents.” Companhia Brasileira 

Carbureto de Calicio v. Applied Indus. Materials Corp., 640 

F.3d 369, 371 (D.C. Cir. 2011). We said that, while “the 

government contacts exception articulated in Environmental 

Research” would indicate that “there was no jurisdiction in this 

case,” the “subsequent decision of a D.C. Court of Appeals 

panel [in Rose] may have limited the government contacts 

exception to cases in which the contacts with the federal 

government were an exercise of First Amendment rights.” Id. 

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at 372. Because “the scope of the government contacts 

exception [was] genuinely uncertain” and because the issue

was “of sufficient public importance,” we certified to the D.C. 

Court of Appeals the question whether personal jurisdiction 

existed in the circumstances at hand. Id. at 373. The D.C. 

Court of Appeals then held that personal jurisdiction existed in 

the case, but without resolving the “uncertainty” created by its 

decision in Rose about whether “rationales apart from the First 

Amendment” can “support the government contacts doctrine.” 

Companhia Brasileira Carbureto De Calcio v. Applied Indus.

Materials Corp., 35 A.3d 1127, 1133 n.5 (D.C. 2012).

We recently revisited that uncertainty once again in 

Akhmetshin v. Browder, 993 F.3d 922 (D.C. Cir. 2021). There, 

we explained that “decisions of the D.C. Court of 

Appeals . . . have left the scope of the government contacts 

exception unsettled.” Id. at 928 (internal quotation marks 

omitted). We “decided to certify questions to the D.C. Court 

of Appeals regarding the circumstances in which the 

government contacts exception applies.” Id. at 925. One of the 

certified questions asked whether a defendant must “possess 

cognizable rights pursuant to the First Amendment generally, 

or any specific clause thereunder, in order to invoke the 

exception.” Id. at 929. The D.C. Court of Appeals 

acknowledged that “there has been ongoing confusion as to the 

scope of the [government contacts] principle.” Akhmetshin v. 

Browder, 275 A.3d 290, 294 (D.C. 2022). But the court 

ultimately decided that there was no personal jurisdiction in the 

case for separate reasons, without definitively settling whether 

the government contacts exception is limited to First 

Amendment activity or the scope of any such limitation. Id. at 

294–96.

Due to continuing uncertainty about the scope of activities 

encompassed by the government contacts exception under D.C. 

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law, we again opt to certify questions to the D.C. Court of 

Appeals. That court may answer certified questions of law if 

they “may be determinative of [a] cause pending . . . as to 

which it appears . . . there is no controlling precedent in the 

[court’s] decisions.” D.C. Code § 11-723(a). We accordingly 

have certified questions to the D.C. Court of Appeals “when 

‘District of Columbia law is genuinely uncertain’ and the 

question is of ‘extreme public importance.’” Companhia, 640 

F.3d at 373 (quoting Sturdza v. United Arab Emirates, 281 F.3d 

1287, 1303 (D.C. Cir. 2002)). Both of those conditions are 

satisfied here, as we have already determined when certifying 

closely related questions to the D.C. Court of Appeals in 

Companhia, 640 F.3d at 373, and Akhmetshin, 993 F.3d at 928–

29.

We therefore certify the following questions to the D.C. 

Court of Appeals: 

1. Under District of Columbia law, is the government 

contacts exception to personal jurisdiction limited to 

First Amendment activity between the defendant and a 

government entity?

2. If the first question is answered in the affirmative, are 

the contacts with the Department of Education alleged 

in the amended complaint here covered under the 

exception?

So ordered.

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