Opinion ID: 626931
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Claims for Return or Compensation for the Marijuana

Text: Appellants seek return of, or compensation for, the seized marijuana under RFRA. [3] The district court denied this request, correctly observing that the marijuana was destroyed prior to Plaintiffs' request for its return in their First Amended Complaint, and the court cannot order the government to return something it does not have. The issue then is whether Plaintiffs may, pursuant to RFRA, obtain compensation for the destroyed drugs  i.e. money damages. The district court concluded that the government is immune from claims for money damages because RFRA does not unambiguously waive sovereign immunity to authorize money damages. We agree and hold that RFRA does not waive the federal government's sovereign immunity from damages. RFRA waives immunity from some forms of relief. Its judicial relief provision states: A person whose religious exercise has been burdened in violation of this section may assert that violation as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding and obtain appropriate relief against a government. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1(c). This provision, however, does not define relief, so the issue is whether the waiver extends to relief in the form of money damages. The United States may not be sued without its consent, and we strictly construe waivers of sovereign immunity, which must be unequivocally expressed in the statutory text. Dep't of Army v. Blue Fox, Inc., 525 U.S. 255, 261, 119 S.Ct. 687, 142 L.Ed.2d 718 (1999) (internal citations omitted). To show that the government is liable for awards of monetary damages, the waiver of sovereign immunity must extend unambiguously to such monetary claims. Lane v. Pena, 518 U.S. 187, 192, 116 S.Ct. 2092, 135 L.Ed.2d 486 (1996). The D.C. Circuit is the only other circuit court to have considered whether RFRA waives sovereign immunity for monetary damages. In Webman v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons, it held that RFRA does not authorize money damages. 441 F.3d 1022 (D.C.Cir.2006). The Court explained that it is plausible to read RFRA's appropriate relief provision as covering money damages or, alternatively, as applying only to equitable relief but not damages, given Congress's awareness of the importance of sovereign immunity and its silence in the statute on the subject of damages. Id. at 1026. Because the relief provision is susceptible to more than one interpretation, the Court could not find an unambiguous waiver in language this open-ended and equivocal. Id. Further, the Supreme Court recently interpreted identical appropriate relief language in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc-2(a). In Sossamon v. Texas, the Supreme Court held that by accepting federal funds, states do not consent to waive their immunity to suits for monetary damages under RLUIPA. ___ U.S. ___, 131 S.Ct. 1651, 179 L.Ed.2d 700 (2011). It explained that RLUIPA's express private cause of action, which is identical to the judicial relief provision in RFRA, is not the unequivocal expression of state consent that our precedents require. Id. at 1658. The Supreme Court explained that appropriate relief does not clearly include money damages, but rather that the word appropriate is inherently context-dependent. Id. at 1659 (citations omitted). The Court stated that [t]he context here  where the defendant is a sovereign  suggests, if anything, that monetary damages are not `suitable' or `proper.' Id. (citing Fed. Mar. Comm'n v. S.C., State Ports Auth., 535 U.S. 743, 765, 122 S.Ct. 1864, 152 L.Ed.2d 962 (2002)). Although the Supreme Court in Sossamon considered claims against a state, rather than federal actors, [4] and was therefore guided by the Eleventh Amendment, the Court's interpretation of appropriate relief is also applicable to actions against federal defendants under RFRA. See Sossamon, 131 S.Ct. at 1658 n. 4 (explaining the overlapping analysis of state and federal sovereign immunity). Just like the identical language in RLUIPA, RFRA's authorization of appropriate relief is not an unequivocal expression of the waiver of sovereign immunity to monetary claims. Lane, 518 U.S. at 192, 116 S.Ct. 2092. The provision could be read as authorizing only injunctive relief, and therefore does not so clearly and unambiguously waive sovereign immunity to private suits for damages that we can `be certain that the State in fact consents' to such a suit. Sossamon, 131 S.Ct. at 1658-59 (quoting Coll. Sav. Bank v. Fla. Prepaid Postsecondary Educ. Expense Bd., 527 U.S. 666, 680, 119 S.Ct. 2219, 144 L.Ed.2d 605 (1999)). Strictly construing the appropriate relief provision in favor of the government, we conclude that RFRA does not authorize suits for money damages. We therefore affirm the district court's dismissal of Plaintiffs' claims for compensation for the seized marijuana. [5]