Opinion ID: 2805947
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Likelihood of Irreparable Injury

Text: The district court determined that the Plaintiffs established a likelihood of irreparable injury. The Department argues for the first time on appeal that the Plaintiffs failed to show that the proposed class was likely to suffer irreparable harm. The Department waived this argument by failing to raise it before the district court. See Int’l Union of Bricklayers & Allied Craftsman Local Union No. 20, AFL-CIO v. Martin Jaska, Inc., 752 F.2d 1401, 1404 (9th Cir. 1985).4 III. The Eleventh Amendment The Department argues that the injunction violates the Eleventh Amendment by awarding retrospective relief against the state. We disagree. The Eleventh Amendment shields unconsenting states from suits in federal court. See Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 54 (1996). “To ensure the enforcement of federal law, however, the Eleventh Amendment permits suits for prospective injunctive relief against state officials acting in violation of federal law,” Frew ex rel. Frew v. Hawkins, 540 U.S. 431, 437 (2004) (citing Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908)), and courts may also order “measures ancillary to appropriate prospective relief,” id. (citing Green v. Mansour, 474 U.S. 64, 71–73 (1985)). But “[f]ederal 4 On appeal, the Department does not contest the district court’s determination that “the balance of equities tips in the plaintiff[s’] favor” and that the “injunction is in the public interest.” Pimentel v. Dreyfus, 670 F.3d 1096, 1105 (9th Cir. 2012) (citing Winter v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20 (2008)). 24 K.W. V. ARMSTRONG courts may not award retrospective relief, for instance, money damages or its equivalent, if the State invokes its immunity.” Id. (citing Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 668 (1974)). Equitable relief is impermissible if it will likely require payment of state funds and “is measured in terms of a monetary loss resulting from a past breach of a legal duty on the part of the defendant state officials.” Edelman, 415 U.S. at 668. The classwide injunction grants only prospective relief allowed under the Eleventh Amendment, by restoring class members to the individualized budgets they had prior to the Department’s defective 2011 Budget Notice. The injunction does not compensate class members for any loss of services that occurred prior to the date it was entered. Thus, the relief granted is not measured in terms of a past monetary loss. See id. We therefore join a number of our sister circuits in rejecting Eleventh Amendment challenges directed at orders reinstating social assistance benefits prospectively. See, e.g., Turner v. Ledbetter, 906 F.2d 606, 609–10 (11th Cir. 1990); Coalition for Basic Human Needs v. King, 654 F.2d 838, 842 (1st Cir. 1981) (“[W]e see no Eleventh Amendment impediment to an order which enjoins the state defendants to resume payment of AFDC benefits prospectively.”); Kimble v. Solomon, 599 F.2d 599, 605 (4th Cir. 1979) (holding that reinstating Medicaid benefits prospectively does not violate the Eleventh Amendment). IV. Pendent Jurisdiction to Review Denial of Motion to Approve Notice We now turn to the Department’s argument that the district court abused its discretion by failing to approve the 2013 Proposed Notice. We must first determine whether we K.W. V. ARMSTRONG 25 have jurisdiction to review this issue. The order denying the motion to approve is not final under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, see Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U.S. 706, 712 (1996) (“[A] decision is . . . final and appealable under § 1291 only if it ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); does not fit within the collateral order exception to the final judgment rule, see Mohawk Indus., Inc. v. Carpenter, 558 U.S. 100, 106–09 (2009); and is not an appealable interlocutory order, see 28 U.S.C. § 1292. The Department urges that we exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction to review the non-appealable order rejecting the 2013 Proposed Notice in conjunction with the appealable order expanding the injunction. We conclude that we may not. “Pendent appellate jurisdiction refers to the exercise of jurisdiction over issues that ordinarily may not be reviewed on interlocutory appeal, but may be reviewed on interlocutory appeal if raised in conjunction with other issues properly before the court.” Cunningham v. Gates, 229 F.3d 1271, 1284 (9th Cir. 2000). “[T]he Supreme Court [has] declined to settle definitively ‘whether or when it may be proper for a court of appeals, with jurisdiction over one ruling, to review, conjunctively, related rulings that are not themselves appealable.’” Meredith, 321 F.3d at 812 (quoting Swint v. Chambers Cnty. Comm’n, 514 U.S. 35, 50–51 (1995)). We have consistently acknowledged that we must “exercise restraint in reviewing on interlocutory appeal otherwise nonappealable orders,” id., lest litigants use collateral orders as “multi-issue . . . appeal tickets,” id. (quoting Swint, 514 U.S. at 49–50); see also Poulos v. Caesars World, Inc., 379 F.3d 654, 670 (9th Cir. 2004) (noting that “we took pains to cabin our holding [in Meredith] to the unique facts” of the case). 26 K.W. V. ARMSTRONG We may exercise pendent jurisdiction over an otherwise nonappealable issue only in two “narrow” circumstances: (1) if it is “‘inextricably intertwined’ with” or (2) “‘necessary to ensure meaningful review of’” the order properly before us on interlocutory appeal. See Meredith, 321 F.3d at 813 (quoting Swint, 514 U.S. at 51). The adequacy of the 2013 Proposed Notice is not “inextricably intertwined” with whether the district court abused its discretion in expanding the preliminary injunction. To justify the exercise of pendent jurisdiction, “the legal theories on which the issues advance must either (a) be so intertwined that we must decide the pendent issue in order to review the claims properly raised on interlocutory appeal . . . , or (b) resolution of the issue properly raised on interlocutory appeal necessarily resolves the pendent issue.” Cunningham, 229 F.3d at 1285 (emphases added). “We have consistently interpreted ‘inextricably intertwined’ very narrowly,” id. at 1284, and “[o]ur cases make clear that if the properly appealable order can be resolved without necessarily resolving the pendent order, then the latter is not ‘inextricably intertwined’ with the former,” Hilton v. Hallmark Cards, 599 F.3d 894, 902 (9th Cir. 2009) (citing Batzel v. Smith, 333 F.3d 1018, 1023 (9th Cir. 2003)), as amended (Mar. 23, 2010). It is not necessary for us to decide whether the 2013 Proposed Notice was adequate in order to resolve whether the district court abused its discretion in expanding the preliminary injunction. The 2013 Proposed Notice had not been circulated to the class when the preliminary injunction was expanded. Whether the Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits–the sole Winter factor the Department has properly contested on appeal–depended on the notice they K.W. V. ARMSTRONG 27 had already received, not the notice the Department might provide in the future. Even if the district court had approved the 2013 Proposed Notice, it still would have been appropriate to expand the preliminary injunction to protect the status quo until that notice was circulated. Therefore, the adequacy of the 2013 Proposed Notice was not inextricably intertwined with whether the preliminary injunction should be expanded. Nor is it necessary to review the adequacy of the 2013 Proposed Notice to “ensure meaningful review” of the order expanding the preliminary injunction. We construe the related “necessary to ensure meaningful review” prong narrowly. See Poulos, 379 F.3d at 669 (stating that the second prong is “restrictive” and “requires that the pendent decision have much more than a tangential relationship to the decision properly before us on interlocutory appeal”). Pursuant to our narrow construction of “ensure meaningful review,” we may exercise pendent jurisdiction to consider issues that “call[] into question the district court’s ‘authority to rule on a party’s motion for a preliminary injunction.’” Hendricks v. Bank of Am. N.A., 408 F.3d 1127, 1135 (9th Cir. 2005) (emphasis omitted) (quoting Meredith, 321 F.3d at 816). But “we have declined to exercise pendent jurisdiction over rulings . . . that were ‘not a logical predicate to the’ issues properly raised on appeal and did not ‘implicate the very power of the district court to issue the rulings on appeal.’” Id. (quoting Wong v. United States, 373 F.3d 952, 960–61 (9th Cir. 2004)). The district court’s ruling on the 2013 Proposed Notice did not affect its authority to expand the preliminary injunction. Even if the Department was willing to circulate a notice the district court found adequate, a preliminary 28 K.W. V. ARMSTRONG injunction still would have been necessary to protect the status quo until that notice was circulated. Therefore, ruling on the proposed notice was not a “logical predicate” to ruling on the preliminary injunction. See Wong, 373 F.3d at 960–61. We accordingly decline to exercise jurisdiction to review the district court’s order denying the motion to approve the 2013 Proposed Notice. If the Department believes that the district court erred in denying approval of that notice, it may seek a final judgment from the district court in this litigation and appeal that order under § 1291. But the Department cannot have it both ways–continue to litigate this case in the district court and simultaneously seek appellate review of an interlocutory order about the 2013 Proposed Notice. If, as the Department contends, the adequacy of the 2013 Proposed Notice is the only real issue in this case, agreeing to a final judgment will allow prompt appellate review of that issue independent of our determination today that the district court did not abuse its discretion in expanding the prior preliminary injunction to protect class members from losing benefits “unless and until the defendants . . . provide adequate advance notice . . . and the opportunity for a fair hearing.”