Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-13-05081/USCOURTS-caDC-13-05081-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 18, 2014 Decided July 18, 2014

No. 13-5081

ARIANA KLAY, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

LEON E. PANETTA, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:12-cv-00350)

Susan L. Burke argued the cause and filed the brief for 

appellants. 

Lowell V. Sturgill Jr., Attorney, U.S. Department of 

Justice, argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief 

were Stuart F. Delery, Assistant Attorney General, Ronald C. 

Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Barbara L. Herwig, Attorney.

Before: ROGERS, GRIFFITH, and SRINIVASAN, Circuit 

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

Concurring Opinion filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

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GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: Plaintiffs are current or former 

members of the United States Navy and Marine Corps who 

allege that they were raped, sexually assaulted, or sexually 

harassed by their fellow Sailors and Marines, only to suffer 

retaliation from their superiors for reporting their plight. Their 

appeal is both difficult and easy. Difficult, because it involves

shocking allegations that members of this nation’s armed 

forces who put themselves at risk to protect our liberties were 

abused in such a vile and callous manner. Easy, because 

plaintiffs seek relief under a legal theory that is patently 

deficient. 

Plaintiffs have not sued their attackers or those who 

retaliated against them for reporting their abuse. Rather,

plaintiffs have sought money damages directly under the 

Constitution from senior officials in the military and 

Department of Defense who, plaintiffs allege, could have put 

in place policies to prevent their injuries but failed to do so. 

The Supreme Court has held that military officials are not 

subject to personal liability under the Constitution for their 

management decisions, including the choices they make about 

the discipline, supervision, and control of servicemembers. 

Because adjudication of plaintiffs’ claims would require 

judicial intrusion upon such military matters, we affirm the 

district court’s dismissal of their suit.

I

Because this appeal arises from the defendants’ 

successful motion to dismiss, we presume the allegations in 

the complaint are true and view the facts in the light most 

favorable to plaintiffs. See Autor v. Pritzker, 740 F.3d 176, 

179 (D.C. Cir. 2014).

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Plaintiffs are twelve current and former sailors and 

Marines. During their service, eleven were either raped or 

sexually assaulted by fellow members of the armed forces. 

One was the target of severe sexual harassment by Marines 

and a fellow Navy Corpsman with whom she deployed. The

attacks and harassment left plaintiffs with a range of serious 

physical and psychological injuries. In each case the injury 

was compounded by the retaliation plaintiffs suffered when 

they reported what had happened to their superiors.

Though the experience of each plaintiff is unique, that of 

Janet Galla provides an example of the kind of harm plaintiffs

endured. See First Am. Compl. ¶¶ 144-164. Galla served in 

the Navy from 1999 to 2005 as a Hospital Corpsman. On June 

11, 2004, after having dinner with a group of friends, Galla 

returned to her ship. While she was checking her email in the 

ship’s Medical Department, a fellow Corpsman asked if he 

could show her something in one of the Department’s 

operating rooms. She followed him into an operating room, 

where he tried to kiss her. She resisted, asked him to stop, and 

tried to leave the room, but he prevented her from escaping,

then raped her. Galla immediately reported the rape. Although 

her attacker was ultimately convicted and sent to prison, Galla 

faced retaliation from her chain of command. She was not 

allowed to work in enclosed spaces with male colleagues, a 

restriction her superiors claimed was for her own protection. 

This limitation not only made it difficult for her to do her job,

but left her feeling ostracized from her shipmates. Galla began 

to receive negative performance evaluations and was 

eventually told by her commander that it would be best for 

“morale” if she left the ship. She transferred to a duty station 

on land, but the retaliation continued when her new chain of 

command learned about the rape and the ongoing

investigation. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, 

Galla was singled out for drug and alcohol tests and was 

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accused of using her rape as an excuse for poor job 

performance. One member of her new command told her that 

the rape was only “five minutes of her life” and she needed to 

“get over it already.” In the face of such harassment and 

ostracism, Galla accepted her superiors’ offer of immediate 

separation from the Navy in 2005.

In 2012, Galla and the other plaintiffs filed suit in the 

district court against nine defendants: the three most recent 

Secretaries of Defense, Secretaries of the Navy, and 

Commandants of the Marine Corps. Id. ¶¶ 181-189. Plaintiffs

alleged that their injuries resulted from the acts and omissions 

of these defendants who were fully aware of the prevalence of 

sexual misconduct and retaliation in the Navy and Marine 

Corps, had the power to eliminate it, and yet failed to take 

effective steps to do so. See id. ¶¶ 190-206. Plaintiffs 

identified a variety of practices the defendants allegedly 

authorized or oversaw that contributed to this hostile 

environment. For instance, the defendants granted “moral 

waivers” that let recruits with criminal convictions serve in 

the military; they allowed commanders to interfere with the 

impartiality of criminal investigations into sexual assaults;

and they permitted perpetrators to receive nonjudicial 

punishment and to be honorably discharged. See id. ¶¶ 200, 

207-222. In addition, plaintiffs alleged that the three 

defendant Secretaries of Defense flatly ignored statutory 

mandates from Congress requiring the establishment of a 

commission to investigate the military’s treatment of sexual 

misconduct allegations and the creation of a centralized 

database of sexual assault incidents. See id. ¶¶ 216-217, 219, 

222.

Plaintiffs did not, however, claim that this alleged 

misconduct ran afoul of any federal statute that would 

authorize them to recover damages from the defendants. 

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Instead, plaintiffs argued that the defendants’ actions and 

inactions violated a variety of plaintiffs’ constitutional rights: 

Fifth Amendment rights to bodily integrity, due process, and 

equal protection; a First Amendment right to speak about their 

assaults without retaliation; and a Seventh Amendment right 

to have juries try their assailants. See id. ¶¶ 223-240. Citing 

Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of 

Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), plaintiffs argued that the

cause of action for damages they sought could be implied 

directly under these constitutional provisions. See First Am. 

Compl. ¶ 2.

The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of 

Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim, and the 

district court granted their motion. Klay v. Panetta, 924 F. 

Supp. 2d 8 (D.D.C. 2013). Acknowledging that the “factual 

recitations . . . describe brutal and criminal assaults, 

compounded by a degrading and humiliating institutional 

response,” the court nonetheless concluded that it lacked “the 

power to provide the particular sort of remedy sought here for 

the specific injustices alleged in the complaint.” Id. at 12. 

According to the district court, plaintiffs’ suit for damages 

under Bivens was foreclosed by Supreme Court precedent

disallowing such a remedy “‘for injuries that arise out of or 

are in the course of activity incident to [military] service.’” Id.

at 13 (quoting United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669, 684 

(1987)). 

Plaintiffs appealed. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1291 and review the district court’s dismissal de novo. 

Autor, 740 F.3d at 179.

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II

Plaintiffs’ theory of liability is based upon the Supreme 

Court’s decision in Bivens, which recognized an implied 

private cause of action for damages against federal officials

who violate the Fourth Amendment. 403 U.S. at 395-97. But 

while Bivens could have ushered in a new era of broad 

constitutional tort liability, history has taken a different 

course. Only twice has the Supreme Court approved the 

application of Bivens’s reasoning to new classes of cases, and 

never in the past thirty years. See Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 

228, 230-31, 234 (1979) (congressional employee’s 

employment discrimination claim under the Fifth 

Amendment); Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14, 18-23 (1980) 

(prisoner’s cruel and unusual punishment claim against prison 

officials under the Eighth Amendment). In numerous other 

cases, by contrast, the Court has found extension of Bivens

unwarranted, see Minneci v. Pollard, 132 S. Ct. 617, 622-23 

(2012) (collecting cases), expressing its “reluctan[ce] to 

extend Bivens liability to ‘to any new context or new category 

of defendants,’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1948 

(2009) (quoting Corr. Servs. Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U.S. 61, 

68 (2001)); see also Wilkie v. Robbins, 551 U.S. 537, 550 

(2007) (noting that “in most instances we have found a Bivens

remedy unjustified”). This unwillingness to extend Bivens

derives from the Court’s shift toward disfavoring judicially

implied causes of action generally. See Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 

1948; see also Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275, 286 

(2001) (“Like substantive federal law itself, private rights of 

action to enforce federal law must be created by Congress.”).

 

In recent years, the Court has prescribed a two-step 

approach for determining whether a Bivens remedy is 

available. First, a court should ask “whether any alternative, 

existing process for protecting the interest amounts to a 

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convincing reason for the Judicial Branch to refrain from 

providing a new and freestanding remedy in damages.” 

Wilkie, 551 U.S. at 550. “[E]ven in the absence of an 

alternative,” however, “a Bivens remedy is a subject of 

judgment: ‘the federal courts must make the kind of remedial 

determination that is appropriate for a common-law tribunal, 

paying particular heed, however, to any special factors 

counselling hesitation before authorizing a new kind of 

federal litigation.’” Id. (quoting Bush v. Lucas, 462 U.S. 367, 

378 (1983)).

Assuming (without deciding) there is no alternative 

remedy here, we conclude plaintiffs’ would-be Bivens action

nonetheless fails at the second step of this analysis. As we 

will explain, both the military context of plaintiffs’ claims and 

Congress’s extensive legislation on this specific issue are 

special factors that counsel decisively against authorizing a 

Bivens remedy.1

A

The Supreme Court first addressed the availability of a

Bivens action in the military context in Chappell v. Wallace, 

462 U.S. 296 (1983), a case in which enlisted Navy sailors 

sued superior officers who had allegedly mistreated them on 

the basis of race. The Court held that the plaintiffs could not 

 1 Given our conclusion that special factors preclude a Bivens 

remedy, we need not address whether plaintiffs have adequately 

alleged violations of the various constitutional provisions cited in 

their complaint. See Ali v. Rumsfeld, 649 F.3d 762, 772-74 (D.C. 

Cir. 2011) (declining to decide whether plaintiffs had adequately 

alleged constitutional violations where special factors 

independently foreclosed Bivens claims). For the same reason, we 

need not address whether the defendants are protected by qualified 

immunity.

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seek damages under Bivens because “the unique disciplinary 

structure of the Military Establishment and Congress’ activity 

in the field” were “special factors” that cut squarely against 

such liability. Id. at 304. “[T]he need for unhesitating and 

decisive action by military officers and equally disciplined 

responses by enlisted personnel,” the Court explained, “would 

be undermined by a judicially created remedy exposing 

officers to personal liability at the hands of those they are 

charged to command.” Id. Moreover, Congress had “exercised 

its plenary constitutional authority over the military” to 

regulate military life and military justice in numerous 

respects, but notably had “not provided a damages remedy for 

claims by military personnel that constitutional rights have 

been violated by superior officers.” Id. at 302, 304. For the 

judiciary to imply such a remedy would therefore “be plainly 

inconsistent with Congress’ authority in this field.” Id. at 304.

The Court clarified just how little room Chappell left for

Bivens actions in the military context in United States v. 

Stanley, 483 U.S. 669 (1987). Stanley, a former soldier, 

alleged that the Army had surreptitiously given him doses of

LSD to study its effects on humans. Id. at 671. Rejecting 

Stanley’s argument that Chappell should be limited to suits by 

subordinates against superior officers in their direct chain of 

command, the Court ruled that he could not bring a Bivens

action against the various federal officials involved in the 

testing, both military and civilian. Id. at 679-84. Chappell, the

Court noted, had drawn support from a line of case law

precluding liability under the Federal Tort Claims Act 

(FTCA) for injuries suffered in the course of military service.

Id. at 681-82; see also Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135, 

146 (1950) (establishing the military exception to the FTCA).

Failing to see “any reason why our judgment in the Bivens

context should be any less protective of military concerns 

than it has been with respect to FTCA suits,” the Court 

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concluded that the same test should apply in both contexts. 

Stanley, 483 U.S. at 681. Accordingly, it held “that no Bivens

remedy is available for injuries that ‘arise out of or are in the 

course of activity incident to service.’” Id. at 684 (quoting 

Feres, 340 U.S. at 146).

2

Stanley thus frames the central inquiry in this case: Did 

plaintiffs’ injuries arise out of activity incident to service?

Despite having been active-duty servicemembers at the time 

of the attacks and retaliation, plaintiffs contend that their

injuries were not “incident to service.” According to 

plaintiffs, “In order to fall within the scope of the ‘incident to 

service [test],’ the injury must actually arise from conduct 

done to further a military mission.” Appellants’ Br. 25. And, 

they say, it is inconceivable that they “were raped to advance 

a military mission.” Id. at 27. The latter point is surely 

correct, but the former—for which plaintiffs tellingly offer no 

citation of supporting authority—is not, as United States v. 

Shearer, 473 U.S. 52 (1985), illustrates.

The plaintiff in Shearer was the mother of an Army 

private who, while off-duty and off-base, was kidnapped and 

murdered by another soldier. Id. at 53. Private Shearer’s 

mother sued the United States under the FTCA, alleging that 

the Army had known that the murderer was dangerous and yet 

had negligently failed to exert proper control over him or to 

warn others of the danger he posed. Id. at 53-54. Although the 

murder of Private Shearer plainly did not advance any 

military mission, the Supreme Court nonetheless held the

 2 The Supreme Court did not itself apply this test to the facts of 

Stanley’s suit. Instead, the Court noted that the Ninth Circuit had 

already decided “[t]he issue of service incidence” against Stanley in 

the course of dismissing the FTCA claim that he brought alongside

his Bivens claim, and that that ruling was not properly before the 

Court. See Stanley, 483 U.S. at 680.

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claim barred under the “incident to service” test. See id. at 57, 

59. In so deciding, the key questions the Court asked were 

“whether the suit requires the civilian court to second-guess 

military decisions, and whether the suit might impair essential 

military discipline.” Id. at 57 (citations omitted). Because the 

plaintiff’s claim was framed in terms of the Army’s failure to 

supervise and control the perpetrator, it “str[uck] at the core 

of these concerns.” Id. at 58; see also id. (“This allegation 

goes directly to the ‘management’ of the military; it calls into 

question basic choices about the discipline, supervision, and 

control of a serviceman.”).

Shearer reveals that in deciding whether an injury is 

“incident to service,” a court cannot focus narrowly on the 

conduct that proximately caused the harm. Instead, the court 

must take a broader view and examine the plaintiff’s theory of 

the case. If adjudicating the case would require military 

leaders to defend their professional management choices—“to 

convince a civilian court of the wisdom of a wide range of 

military and disciplinary decisions,” id.—then the claim is 

barred by the “incident to service” test. Or, as the Fourth 

Circuit recently put it in a case nearly identical to this one, 

“the ‘incident to service’ test asks, in relevant part, whether 

‘particular suits would call into question military discipline 

and decisionmaking [and would] require judicial inquiry into, 

and hence intrusion upon, military matters.’” Cioca v. 

Rumsfeld, 720 F.3d 505, 515 (4th Cir. 2013) (alteration in 

original) (quoting Stanley, 483 U.S. at 682).

The district court ably explained how this proper 

understanding of the test applies to plaintiffs’ case:

Despite plaintiffs’ efforts to characterize this case as a 

suit about rape and retaliation, that is not the basis of 

their legal claims. Plaintiffs have not sought damages 

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from any of the service members who allegedly raped or 

retaliated against them, and they do not allege that 

defendants personally participated in the alleged sexual 

assaults or retaliatory actions. Rather, by alleging that the 

wrongdoing arose out of a hostile climate created—or at 

least, not effectively addressed and therefore, tacitly 

sanctioned—by defendants, plaintiffs have asked the 

Court to review a decade’s worth of military management 

decisions . . . .

Klay, 924 F. Supp. 2d at 18-19 (citations omitted). Plaintiffs’ 

suit invites a civilian court to adjudicate, for example, 

whether it was proper for the defendants to permit felons to 

serve in the military, commanders to use nonjudicial 

punishment on offenders, offenders to be honorably 

discharged, and military (rather than civilian) authorities to 

investigate and prosecute sexual assaults. This is precisely the 

kind of “judicial inquiry into, and hence intrusion upon, 

military matters” that the Supreme Court disavowed in 

Stanley. 483 U.S. at 682.

B

Plaintiffs contend that at least some of the misconduct 

they allege falls outside the logic of Stanley and Shearer: 

namely, that the defendant Secretaries of Defense ignored

congressional mandates requiring the creation of a 

commission to examine the military’s procedures for 

investigating allegations of sexual misconduct and the 

establishment of a centralized database of reported sexual 

assaults in the military. Plaintiffs argue that adjudicating this 

aspect of their suit would not entail impermissible judicial 

intrusion upon the management of the military because 

military leaders simply have no authority to violate statutory 

directives. The court would not, in other words, be requiring 

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the defendants “to convince a civilian court of the wisdom” of 

their decision, Shearer, 473 U.S. at 58, because no amount of 

military wisdom can justify ignoring a valid congressional

mandate. Even if plaintiffs’ reasoning about the limits of 

Stanley and Shearer has some force, we conclude nonetheless 

that authorizing this Bivens action would be inappropriate.

As we noted above, one of the special factors underlying 

Chappell’s holding was “Congress’ activity in the field.” 462 

U.S. at 304. If Congress has legislated pervasively on a 

particular topic but has not authorized the sort of suit that a 

plaintiff seeks to bring under Bivens, respect for the 

separation of powers demands that courts hesitate to imply a 

remedy. See id. at 302-04; Schweiker v. Chilicky, 487 U.S. 

412, 423 (1988) (“[T]he concept of special factors . . . has 

proved to include an appropriate judicial deference to 

indications that congressional inaction has not been 

inadvertent.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Thus, in

Doe v. Rumsfeld, this court’s conclusion that the plaintiff 

could not seek a Bivens remedy for alleged mistreatment 

while in military detention rested in part on the fact that 

recent relevant legislation, the Detainee Treatment Act of 

2005, did not create a cause of action for injured detainees. 

See 683 F.3d 390, 396-97 (D.C. Cir. 2012); see also Vance v. 

Rumsfeld, 701 F.3d 193, 200-01 (7th Cir. 2012) (en banc) 

(similar); Lebron v. Rumsfeld, 670 F.3d 540, 551-52 (4th Cir. 

2012) (similar).

The same separation-of-powers principle applies here. 

Congress has been “no idle bystander to th[e] debate” about 

sexual assault in the military. Lebron, 670 F.3d at 551. The 

four most recent National Defense Authorization Acts have 

each included numerous provisions aimed at combating this 

scourge. See Pub. L. No. 113-66, §§ 1701-1753, 127 Stat. 

672, 950-85 (2013); Pub. L. No. 112-239, §§ 570-579, 126 

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Stat. 1632, 1752-64 (2013); Pub. L. No. 112-81, §§ 581-586, 

125 Stat. 1298, 1430-36 (2011); Pub. L. No. 111-383, 

§§ 1601-1632, 124 Stat. 4137, 4429-36 (2011). The 

Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014 appropriated $25 

million for the Department of Defense to implement a Sexual 

Assault Special Victims Program. See Pub. L. No. 113-76, 

§§ 8124-8125, 128 Stat. 5, 133-34 (2014). And Congress is 

currently debating further legislation on the issue. See Victims 

Protection Act of 2014, S. 1917, 113th Cong. (2014); Ed 

O’Keefe, Senate Easily Passes McCaskill’s Military Sexual 

Assault Bill, WASH. POST, 2014 WLNR 6542224 (Mar. 10, 

2014). Crucially, none of these statutes—nor those the 

defendants allegedly violated—authorizes a damages action 

against the defendants. Cf. Vance, 701 F.3d at 201 (“These 

statutes have one thing in common: none provides for 

damages against military personnel or their civilian 

superiors.”). Given that Congress is extensively engaged with 

the problem of sexual assault in the military but has chosen 

not to create such a cause of action, we decline to imply a

Bivens remedy here, even in the face of plaintiffs’ allegations 

of statutory violations.

Plaintiffs flip this separation-of-powers logic on its head, 

contending that respect for Congress requires us to adjudicate 

their claims. “[I]f the judiciary refuses to adjudicate any 

claims alleging that the military ignored Congressional 

mandates, the military enjoys the very type of power not 

subject to checks and balances that the drafters of the 

Constitution feared.” Appellants’ Br. 14. But our decision that 

a Bivens action will not lie here hardly puts the military 

beyond the reach of Congress. Plaintiffs are forced to rely on 

Bivens because Congress has not authorized a cause of action 

against these defendants for this alleged misconduct, not 

because Congress cannot. Congress remains free to authorize 

a damages action of the sort plaintiffs wish to pursue; if it 

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does, courts will be duty-bound to adjudicate those claims.

And contrary to plaintiffs’ counsel’s suggestion at oral 

argument, see Oral Arg. Recording at 2:50-3:05, Congress 

could even permit plaintiffs to sue in connection with their 

past injuries. See INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 316 (2001) 

(“[I]t is beyond dispute that, within constitutional limits, 

Congress has the power to enact laws with retrospective 

effect.”); Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 280 

(1994) (contemplating statutes that “increase a party’s 

liability for past conduct”). Far from requiring us to recognize 

a Bivens remedy here, the separation of powers supports our 

determination not to. See Stanley, 483 U.S. at 682 (“[T]he 

insistence . . . with which the Constitution confers authority 

over the Army, Navy, and militia upon the political 

branches . . . counsels hesitation in our creation of damages 

remedies in this field.”).

III

In affirming the district court’s dismissal, we do not take 

lightly the severity of plaintiffs’ suffering or the harm done by 

sexual assault and retaliation in our military. But the existence 

of grievous wrongs does not free the judiciary to authorize 

any and all suits that might seem just. Our authority to permit 

Bivens actions is narrow to start, and narrower in the military 

context. We therefore join the Fourth Circuit in concluding 

that no Bivens remedy is available here. See Cioca v. 

Rumsfeld, 720 F.3d 505 (4th Cir. 2013). The judgment of the 

district court is affirmed.

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GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge, concurring: I write separately to 

address one of plaintiffs’ allegations that I believe warrants 

brief discussion. Although we must generally assume the truth 

of plaintiffs’ allegations given the procedural posture of this 

case, we need not “accept as true the complaint’s factual 

allegations insofar as they contradict exhibits to the complaint 

or matters subject to judicial notice.” Kaempe v. Myers, 367 

F.3d 958, 963 (D.C. Cir. 2004); see also Earle v. District of 

Columbia, 707 F.3d 299, 308 n.10 (D.C. Cir. 2012) 

(recognizing that “we may take judicial notice of statutes”). 

Among other things, plaintiffs allege that defendant Donald 

Rumsfeld “ignor[ed] Public Law 105-85, which required the 

Secretary of Defense to establish a commission to investigate 

policies and procedures with respect to the military 

investigation of reports of sexual misconduct. Defendant 

Rumsfeld . . . failed to appoint any members of the 

commission.” First Am. Compl. ¶ 219.

Public Law 105-85 was the National Defense 

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998, passed more than 

three years before Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense. 

See Pub. L. No. 105-85, 111 Stat. 1629 (1997); First Am. 

Compl. ¶ 183. Although the act could in theory have imposed 

duties that eventually fell on Rumsfeld, I am unable to locate 

any provision that meets the complaint’s description of the 

obligation allegedly violated. (A more precise citation would 

have been useful: Public Law 105-85 is 450 pages long.) The 

provision that comes closest to fitting the complaint’s 

description did not require the establishment (or staffing) of a 

commission, but instead required the Secretary of Defense to 

procure within one year, from a specified nonprofit 

organization (the National Academy of Public 

Administration), an “independent study of the policies, 

procedures, and practices of the military criminal 

investigative organizations for the conduct of investigations 

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of complaints of sex crimes and other criminal sexual 

misconduct arising in the Armed Forces.” Pub. L. No. 105-85, 

§ 1072, 111 Stat. at 1898-99. Then-Secretary of Defense 

William Cohen appears to have complied fully with this 

directive. See NAT’L ACAD. OF PUB. ADMIN., ADAPTING 

MILITARY SEX CRIME INVESTIGATIONS TO CHANGING TIMES

(1999) (resulting report). It is no small thing to allege that the 

Secretary of Defense ignored an act of Congress, and I am 

troubled by the possibility that plaintiffs’ counsel leveled this 

charge without first carefully reading the act in question.

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