Opinion ID: 4301602
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: This Case Presents a New Context for a Bivens

Text: Claim. The majority acknowledges, as it must, that this case presents a new Bivens context. However, the majority downplays the new-context inquiry, relegating its analysis on the question to only a few sentences. To properly address the majority’s error, we first consider the Supreme Court’s new instructions on the issue. “The proper test for determining whether a case presents a new Bivens context is as follows. If the case is different in a meaningful way from previous Bivens cases decided by th[e] Court, then the context is new.” Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 60 RODRIGUEZ V. SWARTZ 1859. That the differences between a given claim and previous Bivens cases are “small” is insignificant: “Given th[e] Court’s expressed caution about extending the Bivens remedy, . . . the new-context inquiry is easily satisfied.” Id. at 1865. The Court provided a non-exhaustive list of differences that may render a given context new. Id. at 1859–60. For example, A case might differ in a meaningful way because of the rank of the officers involved; the constitutional right at issue; the generality or specificity of the official action; the extent of judicial guidance as to how an officer should respond to the problem or emergency to be confronted; the statutory or other legal mandate under which the officer was operating; the risk of disruptive intrusion by the Judiciary into the functioning of other branches; or the presence of potential special factors that previous Bivens cases did not consider. Id. at 1860. At bottom, the touchstone is whether the “claims bear . . . resemblance to the three Bivens claims the Court has approved in the past,” namely, “a claim against FBI agents for handcuffing a man in his own home without a warrant; a claim against a Congressman for firing his female secretary; and a claim against prison officials for failure to treat an inmate’s asthma.” Id. at 1860. Rodriguez’s claims bear no resemblance whatsoever to the three Bivens claims previously authorized by the Court. RODRIGUEZ V. SWARTZ 61 The differences are obvious: J.A. was a Mexican national, and his death, caused by the actions of a Border Patrol agent, occurred in Mexico. This case presents far more than “a modest extension” of the Supreme Court’s Bivens cases. Id. at 1864. Indeed, “no court has previously extended Bivens to cases involving either the extraterritorial application of constitutional protections or in the national security domain, let alone a case implicating both.” Meshal v. Higgenbotham, 804 F.3d 417, 424–25 (D.C. Cir. 2015), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 2325 (2017). The Court also has never upheld a Bivens claim against Border Patrol agents, who perform different duties than FBI agents, Congressmen, or prison officials. Under the Supreme Court’s new-inquiry test, which is “easily satisfied,” Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1859, the majority’s attempt to liken this case to Bivens is unpersuasive. The majority fails to accord any meaningful significance to the conclusion that this case presents a new context for a Bivens claim. By the majority’s reckoning, the fact that a Bivens claim presents a new context means only that a court must perform the second half of the Bivens analysis—the special-factors inquiry—and nothing more. This approach clearly flouts the Supreme Court’s instructions. The majority fails to heed the Supreme Court’s warning that expanding Bivens is a “disfavored” activity, id. at 1857 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 675), and that courts may not run roughshod across the separation of powers. As was the case in Hernandez, Rodriguez’s “unprecedented claims embody . . . a virtual repudiation of the Court’s holding” in Abbasi. 885 F.3d at 818. In fact, “[t]he newness of this ‘new context’ should alone require dismissal of [Rodriguez’s] damage claims.” Id. 62 RODRIGUEZ V. SWARTZ