Opinion ID: 4565247
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plaintiffs’ APA Claim

Text: In assessing whether Plaintiffs’ APA claim raises a reviewable challenge to a collateral agency “pattern or practice” rather than a challenge to specific TPS determinations barred by section 1254a, we are guided by several considerations. One “guiding principle” from McNary and CSS is “whether the claim challenges a procedure or policy that is collateral to an alien’s substantive eligibility, for which the administrative record is insufficient to provide a basis for meaningful judicial review.” City of Rialto, 581 F.3d at 874 (quotations and internal marks omitted). We have also emphasized the distinction between procedural challenges and substantive ones, and between claims seeking collateral relief and those seeking direct relief from an agency decision, finding that the former types of claims may be reviewable under McNary while the latter usually are not. See City of Rialto, 581 F.3d at 875 (discussing Skagit Cty. Pub. Hosp. Dist. No. 2 v. Shalala, 80 F.3d 379, 386 (9th Cir. 1996)). Likewise, we have stated that claims “like those asserted in McNary” are reviewable when: (1) they are “not based on the merits of [a plaintiff’s] individual situation, but constitute a broad challenge to allegedly unconstitutional [agency] practices”; (2) “the 40 RAMOS V. WOLF administrative record for a single [decision] would have little relevance”; and (3) the court’s “examination is neither peculiarly within the agency’s ‘special expertise’ nor an integral part of its ‘institutional competence.’” Mace, 34 F.3d at 859. Our cases demonstrate that the nature and scope of a particular claim, the type of agency action that it challenges, and the type of relief sought are all important factors to consider in determining whether the claim is indeed a reviewable McNary-like claim. Applied to Plaintiffs’ APA claim as alleged in their original complaint, many of these factors lean in favor of concluding that the claim is not reviewable. For one, Plaintiffs’ APA claim does not challenge any agency procedure or regulation. “True procedural challenges confront an agency’s methods or procedures and do not depend on the facts of any given individual agency action.” City of Rialto, 581 F.3d at 876. In alleging that the Secretary has violated the APA by no longer considering intervening events in the TPS terminations at issue, Plaintiffs essentially raise a substantive challenge to the Secretary’s underlying analysis in reaching those specific decisions. Their claim also largely depends on a review and comparison of the substantive merits of the Secretary’s specific TPS terminations, which is generally barred by section 1254a. Moreover, the consideration of “intervening events” in a TPS determination is a task squarely within the agency’s “special expertise” and “institutional competence” and which section 1254a commits to the Secretary’s discretion. And insofar as Plaintiffs’ request declaratory and injunctive relief in setting aside the TPS terminations, they appear to seek direct relief from the challenged decisions, rather than collateral relief from an allegedly unlawful agency practice. RAMOS V. WOLF 41 Plaintiffs, however, insist that their APA claim does not challenge the specific TPS determinations, but “goes to the agency’s underlying practice” and does not “seek to establish that a particular country must remain designated[.]” They characterize their APA claim as a challenge to an “arbitrary and capricious” change in a broad agency practice: specifically, they allege that the agency, without explanation, adopted a new practice of refusing to consider intervening events in its TPS extension determinations, and that this practice is unlawful under the APA. Despite this characterization, we find that Plaintiffs’ claim is not reviewable under section 1254a. As we have reiterated several times before, “the phrase ‘pattern and practice’ is not an automatic shortcut to federal court jurisdiction.” Gebhardt, 879 F.3d at 987 (citing City of Rialto v. W. Coast Loading Corp., 581 F.3d at 872). In other words, Plaintiffs cannot obtain judicial review over what is essentially an unreviewable challenge to specific TPS terminations by simply couching their claim as a collateral “pattern or practice” challenge. “No matter how a plaintiff characterizes an argument, we can review a claim in this context only if it challenges a genuinely collateral action.” Id. Our analysis of section 1254a dictates that a claim challenging the Secretary’s failure to “consider intervening events”—or even her failure to adequately explain why the agency is no longer considering intervening events when it did so in the past—is essentially an attack on the substantive considerations underlying the Secretary’s specific TPS determinations, over which the statute prohibits judicial review. Nothing in the language of the TPS statute requires the Secretary to consider intervening events prior to terminating TPS, or to explain her failure to do so. In fact, the statute is entirely silent as to the specific types of events 42 RAMOS V. WOLF or factors the Secretary must consider in reaching her TPS determinations. As far as the TPS statute is concerned, the decision whether to consider intervening events when making TPS determinations appears to be fully within the Secretary’s discretion. Thus, even presuming that DHS adopted a new practice of refusing to consider intervening events, as Plaintiffs allege, the TPS statute provides no legal basis to challenge such an action. Instead, the alleged illegality of the agency action here is based solely on the APA and its requirement that agencies not “arbitrarily and capriciously” depart from past practice. See 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A); F.C.C. v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 556 U.S. 502, 513–14 (2009). To review Plaintiffs’ claim, we must accept that—even though the TPS statute affords the Secretary full discretion as to whether she considers intervening events (or any other factors) when making her TPS determinations—the APA’s prohibition on “arbitrary and capricious” changes in practice may nonetheless require her to consider intervening events if prior Secretaries did so before her, and to explain herself if she chooses to depart from this “practice.” We must also presuppose that—even though section 1254a precludes us from reviewing the Secretary’s TPS determinations and her underlying considerations—the APA may independently form the basis of a justiciable challenge and thereby allow such a claim to elude the statute’s judicial review bar. This cannot be so. As we have noted, the APA cannot be used as the sole basis for conferring justiciability over what would otherwise be unreviewable claim. To conclude otherwise would render section 1254a(b)(5)(A) virtually meaningless and would contradict the APA’s express language on the limits of the statute’s applicability. See 5 U.S.C. § 701(a) (“This chapter applies . . . except to the extent that— (1) statutes preclude judicial review; or (2) agency action is RAMOS V. WOLF 43 committed to agency discretion by law.”). Because Plaintiffs’ APA claim alleges an “arbitrary and capricious” change in agency practice that is otherwise committed to the Secretary’s discretion under the TPS statute and, at its core, challenges only the Secretary’s specific TPS determinations, we find that it is unreviewable. The dissent criticizes our application of the City of Rialto factors to Plaintiffs’ APA claim, even asserting that we “dismiss[] one of City of Rialto’s guiding principles” in our analysis. 12 We think the dissent’s criticisms ultimately miss the point in a few respects. For one, the dissent seems to conceive the City of Rialto factors as providing a strict mechanical test for reviewing McNary-type claims. But this is a misconception. Our court has, in fact, employed a fluid range of considerations in assessing the reviewability of a McNary-type claim, which we even recognize in our lengthy discussion of these considerations in City of Rialto. Not every factor that we discussed in City of Rialto will bear the same weight in every case because not every claim or statutory context is the same. Under McNary and its progeny, a statutory jurisdictional bar that is limited to specific agency “determinations” does not bar challenges to agency “patterns or practices” that are collateral to those individual decisions. But the question of what constitutes an unreviewable agency action, as opposed to a reviewable collateral one, is largely defined by the precise statute at issue. As we have already noted, the 12 In City of Rialto, we identified “two ‘guiding principles,’” the first of which we have already discussed, and the second of which is “whether Plaintiffs’ claim is ripe.” 581 F.3d at 875 (citation omitted). Because the ripeness of Plaintiffs’ claim in this case is neither in dispute nor significant to our analysis, we did not need to address it at length. 44 RAMOS V. WOLF statutory judicial review bar in the TPS statute is different in several respects from the Reform Act provisions considered in McNary and CSS, as it is from other statutory provisions that limit judicial review over agency decisions on individual applications for relief. In the same vein, the dissent’s point regarding the unavailability of another forum for Plaintiffs’ APA claim overlooks the unique statutory context of this case. We fully recognize that Plaintiffs cannot raise their APA challenge in another forum or at a different stage in the proceedings. But that is precisely what Congress intended under the TPS statute. The statute not only bars from judicial review APA challenges to specific TPS determinations, but more broadly, it provides no administrative avenue whatsoever for individual aliens, or foreign states, to apply for TPS designation. In light of this critical distinction between the TPS statute and the provisions in McNary, CSS, and many other immigration statutes, we do not find the lack of an alternative review forum particularly critical to our analysis. Finally, we decline to adopt the dissent’s reconstruction of Plaintiffs’ APA claim as a challenge to an agency interpretation of the TPS statute. In general, a claim that an agency has adopted an erroneous interpretation of a governing statute would be reviewable under McNary, particularly because the court’s resolution of these sort of challenges turns on a review of the law itself, rather than a review of the merits of any specific agency determinations. Plaintiffs, however, do not squarely raise such a claim. Although they loosely assert that “DHS adopted a novel interpretation of the TPS statute” by taking the position of no longer considering intervening events, the facts and arguments they raise pertain almost exclusively to the alleged change in agency practice, rather than any official RAMOS V. WOLF 45 DHS interpretation of the statute. As the dissent even highlights, the only facts from the complaint specifically alleging a novel interpretation include several sentences from oral testimony by then-Secretary Nielsen totaling over four and a half hours in front of a Congressional subcommittee, a similar excerpt from testimony by thenSecretary Kelly lasting over two hours, and an informal internal briefing paper prepared for a meeting attended by acting Secretary Duke. Plaintiffs’ focus throughout on the alleged change in agency practice dwarf the cursory allegations of a novel interpretation. A bare assertion that DHS adopted a novel interpretation is insufficient to achieve judicial review given our analysis of the statute and its grant of wide discretion for TPS determinations. We elect to address Plaintiffs’ APA claim as they present it—a challenge to the agency’s new and unexplained practice of refusing to consider intervening events in its TPS decisions. Because such a claim fundamentally attacks the Secretary’s specific TPS determinations, we find that it is barred from review by section 1254a. Given that Plaintiffs may not raise their APA claim as a matter of law, the claim cannot serve as a basis for the preliminary injunction and we need not consider its likelihood of success on the merits.