Opinion ID: 205533
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mandatory Injunction

Text: The district court erred, however, when it required Defendants to execute HAP contracts with the Oakland Housing Authority. The court incorrectly inverted the burden of proof by examining whether the proposed injunction would cause irreparable harm to Defendants. The court wrote: Since Defendant could identify no specific terms in the HAP contract which were objectionable, the Court finds unpersuasive his asserted irreparable injury from being required to comply with the law and enter into HAP contracts with the Oakland Housing Authority. This conclusion fails to recognize that those seeking injunctive relief, not those opposing that relief, are responsible for showing irreparable injury. See Winter v. NRDC, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 129 S.Ct. 365, 374, 172 L.Ed.2d 249 (2008). By examining the legally irrelevant question of whether Defendants were likely to suffer harm if they were ordered to execute HAP contracts with the Oakland Housing Authority, the district court failed to make the essential finding that Plaintiffs are likely to suffer irreparable harm unless Defendants are ordered to enter HAP contracts with the Oakland Housing Authority. The district court's oversight is legally significant for three related reasons. First, the person or entity seeking injunctive relief must demonstrate that irreparable injury is likely in the absence of an injunction. Id. at 375. An injunction will not issue if the person or entity seeking injunctive relief shows a mere possibility of some remote future injury, id. (internal quotation marks omitted), or a conjectural or hypothetical injury, City of L.A. v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 102, 106 n. 7, 103 S.Ct. 1660, 75 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983). Second, [i]njunctive relief ... must be tailored to remedy the specific harm alleged. An overb[roa]d injunction is an abuse of discretion. Lamb-Weston, Inc. v. McCain Foods, Ltd., 941 F.2d 970, 974 (9th Cir. 1991) (emphasis added) (citations omitted). Third and finally, [a] mandatory injunction... is particularly disfavored. In general, mandatory injunctions are not granted unless extreme or very serious damage will result[,] and are not issued in doubtful cases. Marlyn Nutraceuticals, 571 F.3d at 879 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). By requiring Defendants to enter a HAP contract with the Oakland Housing Authority, the district court's injunction violates all three of these principles governing injunctive relief. First, Plaintiffs have not made any showing that they are likely to be harmed by the Defendants' failure to enter HAP contracts. Absent such evidence of Plaintiffs' likely injuries, Plaintiffs have satisfied neither the baseline Winter standard nor the heightened standard we have adopted with respect to mandatory injunctions. See, e.g., Marlyn Nutraceuticals, 571 F.3d at 879-80 (vacating mandatory injunction where record failed to establish harm). In addition, absent any harm relating to the HAP contracts, the district court's injunction is overbroad because it is not tailored to remedy the Plaintiffs' actual harms, which are limited entirely to Defendants' threats of eviction, not Defendants' threats to refuse enhanced vouchers. See, e.g., United States v. BNS Inc., 858 F.2d 456, 466 (9th Cir.1988) (modifying injunction to reduce hardship to defendant while continuing to eliminate the harm . . . at issue in the [plaintiff's] . . . complaint). We disagree with our dissenting colleague's conclusion that the injunction is appropriate because the plaintiffs' statutory right to remain necessarily includes an implied statutory right to adequate heat and hot water, lighting, air quality, sanitary conditions, and building security. Dissent at 1164. As our colleague correctly acknowledges, the statute nowhere explicitly requires an owner to enter into a HAP contract. Id. at 1164. Moreover, the sections of the statute on which he relies as the conceptual underpinning for his view of implied rights by definition speak only to the time period when the owner has not yet lawfully opted out of the Section 8 programa time when a HAP contract is clearly required. See id. at 1164. The Dissent doesn't say so, but since he is conjuring up out of whole cloth the costly implied rights he finds, those implied rights could be significantly expanded by the PHA (all in the name of furthering its mission) to render essentially worthless an owner's right to lawfully opt-out of its involvement in the Section 8 program (subject to certain tenants' right to remain in the Apartments, as provided supra ). Such uncabined, implied rights could also frustrate Congress's clear intention in the 1996 amendments to the Act to end so-called endless leases, under which owners could not refuse to renew the leases of Section 8 tenants at the conclusion of a lease term, except as otherwise provided in 42 U.S.C. § 1437f(d)(1)(B)(ii) (repealed 1996), and the take one, take all provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 1437f(t)(1)(A) (repealed 1996), which effectively provided that once a landlord [had chosen] to participate by accepting a Section 8 tenant, it [could] not turn away subsequent Section 8 certificate holders based on their status as Section 8 participants. Salute v. Stratford Greens, 918 F.Supp. 660, 663 (E.D.N.Y.1996), aff'd sub nom., Salute v. Stratford Greens Garden Apartments, 136 F.3d 293 (2d Cir.1998); see also Salute v. Stratford Greens Garden Apartments, 136 F.3d at 300 (noting that repeal of these provisions reflects a clear congressional intent that the burdens of Section 8 participation are substantial enough that participation should not be forced on landlords). If Congress had intended that owners must continue to execute HAP contracts despite opting out of Section 8, it could easily have said so. Instead, Congress was silent on the issue. Rather than inferring from this silence an obligation on the part of opting-out owners to enter HAP contracts, the more logical inference (particularly in light of the opt-out provision and the 1996 amendments to the Act) is that building owners are free to opt out of Section 8 so long as they respect the eligible tenants' statutory right to remain. If owners are willing to forego significant rental income in order to avoid the obligations imposed by HAP contracts, they are free to do so. If owners prefer to receive a fair market rent via enhanced vouchers, they must also execute an HAP contract. But unless and until Congress fills in the gaps in its statutory scheme, we are unwilling to adopt the sweeping conclusion endorsed by the Dissent and require Defendants to enter HAP contracts. Indeed, we do not even know what HAP terms the PHA proposed for the Defendants in this case because the record before us does not include a copy. We cannot fathom that Congress intended sub silentio to require Section 8 opt-outs to enter contracts of adhesion whose terms are dictated solely by PHAs but whose financial burdens can easily frustrate other provisions of the Act. Even if we agreed with the Dissent's legal premise that the statutory right to remain includes an implied statutory right to certain housing conditions (which we do not), we would still be compelled to conclude that the district court abused its discretion. The essence of equity jurisdiction is the power of the court to fashion a remedy depending upon the necessities of the particular case.  United States v. Odessa Union Warehouse Co-op, 833 F.2d 172, 175 (9th Cir.1987) (emphasis added). Under our case-specific approach, we do not presume irreparable harm simply because a defendant violates a statute that authorizes injunctive relief. See Small ex rel. NLRB v. Operative Plasterers' & Cement Masons' Int'l Ass'n Local 200, 611 F.3d 483, 494 (9th Cir.2010) (rejecting, in light of Winter, our prior holding that once a likelihood of success is established, district courts are required to `presume irreparable injury' in statutory enforcement actions (quoting Miller ex rel. NLRB v. Cal. Pac. Med. Ctr., 19 F.3d 449, 460 (9th Cir.1994) (en banc))); cf. Mac's Shell Serv., Inc. v. Shell Oil, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1251, 1263 & n. 12, 176 L.Ed.2d 36 (2010) (discussing 15 U.S.C. § 2805(b)(2)(A)(ii), a statute that substantially relaxes the normal standard for obtaining preliminary-injunctive relief). Rather, we must determine whether, [o]n the facts of this case, an injunction is warranted. Winter, 129 S.Ct. at 375. On the record before us, it is entirely speculative for the Dissent to conclude that Defendants are likely to violate HUD's housing quality standards in the absence of adequate economic incentives to do so. The Dissent assume[s] that Defendants are not trying to commit economic suicide, and further assumes that Defendants will only be able to stay in business if they drastically reduce the services and housing standards provided to Plaintiffs. Dissent at 1165. These assumptions wholly lack evidentiary support, and rest on the untenable premise that Defendants are willing to risk the imposition of significant penalties under state law by providing substandard housing conditions. See Cal. Civ.Code § 1942.4(b)-(c) (requiring landlords who violate housing standards to abate the harmful conditions and pay actual damages, statutory damages, attorney's fees). We disagree with the Dissent that these results are likely, and that, even if these results were likely, the proper remedy would be to compel Defendants to enter HAP contracts with the Oakland Housing Authority. Instead, if the Dissent were correct (which we believe he is not) that the statutory right to remain requires landlords to provide certain housing conditions, the appropriate remedy would be to order landlords to provide those housing conditions, not to require them to enter into HAP contracts with local housing authorities. Thus, even under the Dissent's construction of the statute, the district court's injunction is not properly tailored to remedy the speculative harms discussed by the Dissent. Because Plaintiffs must show a likelihood, not a mere possibility, of irreparable injury, see Winter, 129 S.Ct. at 374-75, and because Plaintiffs have made no such showing, the district court abused its discretion by issuing an overbroad mandatory injunction that failed to identif[y] and appl[y] the correct legal rule. United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247, 1263 (9th Cir.2009) (en banc).