Opinion ID: 4535302
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The meaning of “position of the United

Text: States” Notwithstanding its reference to “the position of the United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app., the Hyde Amendment is not a tool to combat misconduct by the federal government writ large. It applies only “in a[] criminal case,” id., which directs us to focus on “the government’s position underlying the prosecution,” Manzo, 712 F.3d at 810 (emphasis added) (quoting Gilbert, 198 F.3d at 1299). The Amendment thus reaches “prosecutorial misconduct” affecting the “case as an inclusive whole,” id. (citations omitted), not misconduct in distinct government proceedings nor isolated “errors” by individual law enforcement officers in the course of the investigation or prosecution, id. at 813. Our sister circuits share that view. The Second Circuit, for instance, reads “the position of the United States” for Hyde Amendment purposes “to mean . . . the government’s general litigation stance: its reasons for bringing a prosecution, its characterization of the facts, and its legal arguments.” United States v. Bove, 888 F.3d 606, 608 (2d Cir. 2018). The Ninth Circuit reads the Amendment as requiring an assessment of “the government’s litigating position as a whole,” not of “other types of bad conduct by government employees during the course of an investigation.” United States v. Mixon, 930 F.3d 1107, 1111 (9th Cir. 2019); see id. at 1112 (requiring “serious misconduct on the part of prosecutors” (emphasis added)). Several others have agreed, see, e.g., Monson, 636 F.3d at 439– 40 (holding that a ruling for the defendant under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), which “constitutes a finding that law enforcement deliberately lied or recklessly disregarded the truth,” “does not necessarily mean that . . . the prosecution 29 against the defendant was frivolous or vexatious”), and we are aware of no precedential appellate decision taking a different approach. In sum: The Hyde Amendment demands we “[f]ocus[] on the prosecutors’ conduct,” Monson, 636 F.3d at 439 (emphasis added), and ask whether the alleged prosecutorial misconduct was so “pervasive” as to “render the government’s litigating position as a whole vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith,” Mixon, 930 F.3d at 1112 (emphasis added). The District Court, however, understood the “position of the United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app., to include both “the litigation position of the DOJ through th[e] . . . U.S. Attorney’s Office and the actions taken (or not taken) by” DHS officers, App. 26 (emphasis added), including as far back as Reyes-Romero’s administrative removal proceeding in 2011. In assessing Reyes-Romero’s Hyde Amendment application, for example, the Court found that DHS officers “railroaded [him] out of the country in 2011” in a manner that was “lacking in any reasonable factual or legal basis” and was therefore frivolous, App. 28–29, and that the officers’ testimony in 2018 “demonstrate[d] clear bad faith” on their part, App. 29. That understanding was mistaken. It assumes that, because the EAJA’s “procedures and limitations” are incorporated into the Hyde Amendment, 18 U.S.C. § 3006A app., and because the EAJA defines “position of the United States” to include, “in addition to the position taken by the United States in the civil action, the action or failure to act by the agency upon which the civil action is based,” 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(D), the Hyde Amendment must also incorporate that definition. But the EAJA’s substantive definition of “position of the United 30 States” is neither a “procedure[]” nor a “limitation[],” so it cannot be read into the Hyde Amendment. And there are good reasons not to compare EAJA apples to Hyde Amendment oranges. For one thing, we took a contrary view in Manzo, emphasizing “the government’s position underlying the prosecution” and asking whether it was “objectively []reasonable for the government to attempt to prosecute” the defendant. 712 F.3d at 810, 813 (emphasis added) (citation omitted); see also, e.g., Mixon, 930 F.3d at 1111 (defining “position of the United States” under the Hyde Amendment without reference to the EAJA definition); Bove, 888 F.3d at 608 & n.10 (noting that the phrase “position of the United States” “cannot mean precisely the same thing in both” the Hyde Amendment and the EAJA). For another, the EAJA covers a much broader swath of litigation, including civil actions arising from agency enforcement or adjudication. See 28 U.S.C. § 2412(a)(1); see also Taylor v. Heckler, 835 F.2d 1037, 1040 (3d Cir. 1987) (under the EAJA, the “position of the United States” necessarily includes “not only the litigation position . . . but also the agency position [that] made the lawsuit necessary” (alterations in original) (citation omitted)). Yet a criminal prosecution for unlawful reentry does not fit that paradigm: Although a previous removal order is “a necessary element to the [§ 1326] charge,” App. 27, the criminal prosecution is distinct from and collateral to the immigration proceeding that led to the order and thus unlike agency enforcement actions that directly lead to civil actions in federal court. For these reasons, 12 we reaffirm the principles set out in Manzo and 12 In interpreting the “position of the United States” to include actions of DHS and its officers, the District Court also 31 cited two out-of-circuit district court opinions—United States v. Holland, 34 F. Supp. 2d 346 (E.D. Va. 1999), and United States v. Gardner, 23 F. Supp. 2d 1283 (N.D. Okla. 1998)— both of which were decided before we or many of our sister circuits had a chance to construe the Amendment. In Holland, the court considered the defendants’ application for costs and fees to flow not from the Hyde Amendment as bounded by the “procedures and limitations” of § 2412(d), but from a distinct open-ended EAJA provision holding the United States “liable for such fees and expenses to the same extent that any other party would be liable under the common law,” 18 U.S.C. § 2412(b). See 34 F. Supp. 2d at 356–59. As the District Court recognized elsewhere in its opinion, Holland’s analysis deviates from the “consensus among circuits that the Hyde Amendment incorporates only those procedures and limitations in subpart (d).” App. 25. And although the Holland court originally found “vexatious misconduct” on the part of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as well as DOJ, it later vacated that portion of its award after concluding the FDIC had lacked “sufficient notice that . . . fees and litigation expenses might be assessed against it.” United States v. Holland, 48 F. Supp. 2d 571, 581 (E.D. Va. 1999). In Gardner, the district court ruled that the EAJA’s broad definition of “position of the United States” is a “procedure or limitation incorporated into the Hyde Amendment” and therefore that executive agencies like the Internal Revenue Service can be swept into that definition. 23 F. Supp. 2d at 1293–95. But that analysis was not based on a rigorous analysis of the Amendment’s statutory text, has never been cited favorably by any court of appeals, and is contrary to both Manzo and our conclusion today. 32 hold that the “position of the United States” for purposes of the Hyde Amendment refers only to the position taken by the department and officers charged with administering the prosecution—here, DOJ and AUSA Hallowell. To be clear, misconduct by law enforcement officers or other executive departments can be relevant to a Hyde Amendment application if prosecutors leverage that misconduct to further a prosecution that has no factual or legal basis or that is brought for purposes of harassment. But because the Amendment is concerned only with prosecutorial misconduct, see Mixon, 930 F.3d at 1112 (“A defendant is not entitled to attorneys’ fees under the Hyde Amendment due to law enforcement misconduct; rather, the focus is on the prosecutors . . . .”), alleged misconduct by DHS or its officers cannot independently create liability for attorney’s fees and costs.