Opinion ID: 3036693
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: constitutional claims for damages

Text: [8] Section 46110 does not bar all manner of review of FAA orders by the district court. See Mace, 34 F.3d at 859-60 (“[N]owhere did we say or imply that a district court could never exercise federal question jurisdiction over any action brought against FAA, NTSB, and/or DOT officials; rather, we declared that the district court’s federal question jurisdiction is preempted by [§ 46110] as to those classes of claims reviewable under [§ 46110].”) (internal quotation and alterations omitted) (citing Clark v. Busey, 959 F.2d 808, 811 (9th Cir. 1992)). In principle, a district court may decide a claim for damages because § 46110 does not grant the court of appeals jurisdiction over this form of relief. See Mace, 34 F.3d at 858 (noting that a claim for damages is not found in the precursor to § 46110(c)); § 46110(c) (providing the court of appeals with exclusive jurisdiction to “affirm, amend, modify, or set aside any part of the order and [the power to] order the . . . [FAA] Administrator to conduct further hearings”). [9] In practice, we have developed a body of case law that limits the jurisdiction of the district court, barring it from hearing a damages claim that is “inescapably intertwined with 2942 AMERICOPTERS v. FAA a review of the procedures and merits surrounding the FAA’s order.” Crist v. Leippe, 138 F.3d 801, 803 (9th Cir. 1998) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); accord Tur v. FAA, 104 F.3d 290, 292 (9th Cir. 1997). The purpose of this restriction is to prevent litigants from using a damages claim as a collateral attack on a pending FAA order, see Crist, 138 F.3d at 804, and to allow courts to identify and dismiss damages claims that are actually “thinly disguised attempt[s] at an end-run around the jurisdictional limitation imposed by [§ 46110].” Mace, 34 F.3d at 860. The collateral attack doctrine prevents plaintiffs from crafting constitutional tort claims either as a means of “relitigat[ing] the merits of the previous administrative proceedings,” Tur, 104 F.3d at 292, or as a way of evading entirely established administrative procedures. See Green v. Brantley, 981 F.2d 514, 517, 521 (11th Cir. 1993) (holding that district court had no jurisdiction over Bivens claims challenging an FAA order where “neither [plaintiff] nor his attorney . . . pursued the matter through any appeal to the FAA Administrator or otherwise”). But a damages claim is not “inextricably intertwined” with an FAA order and the procedures surrounding it—and thus may be heard by a district court—if the claim “constitute[s] a broad challenge to the allegedly unconstitutional actions of the FAA,” Mace, 34 F.3d at 858,8 and is not a claim merely “based on the merits of [an] individual situation.” Id. at 859. [10] The district court concluded that the “inescapably intertwined” doctrine prevented it from hearing Jan’s and Americopters’ damages claims. We hold that the collateral 8 See Crist, 138 F.3d at 802-03, 805 (holding that district court had jurisdiction over claims that the FAA violated due process by spoiling evidence during the pendency of the plaintiff’s hearings before the FAA); Foster, 70 F.3d at 1086-88 (holding that district court could hear Fifth Amendment claims that the FAA lacked authority to suspend or revoke pilot certificates and Sixth Amendment claims that such suspensions and revocations violated right to jury trial); Mace, 34 F.3d at 860 (same). AMERICOPTERS v. FAA 2943 attack doctrine does not preclude district court jurisdiction over the damages claims in the unusual circumstances presented here. [11] We note first that there is a conceptual, perhaps even existential, problem with applying the collateral attack doctrine to the facts here—there is nothing to collaterally attack. There are no pending or “live” FAA orders because the FAA renounced the Zeigler Email and Kanae Letter as issued by unauthorized officials.9 The Mace line of cases did not contemplate or anticipate the strange situation here. Our collateral attack cases all assume an FAA order currently in place—that is, not an action withdrawn or repudiated by the FAA before judicial review. See Tur, 104 F.3d at 291-92; Foster, 70 F.3d at 1086-87; Mace, 34 F.3d at 856-57. Here, the FAA repudiated the authority of Zeigler and Kanae to issue orders on behalf of the FAA long before Jan’s and Americopters’ challenges reached any court. Even if the Zeigler Email and Kanae Letter were final orders when issued, there can be no dispute that they are no longer pending FAA orders against Jan’s or Americopters. A damages claim in district court is not fairly characterized as an “end-run” around an order—or the procedures and merits surrounding it—if the order is no longer pending or, for lack of a better word, “live.” Cf. Mace, 34 F.3d at 860. The Fifth Circuit considered a similar set of facts in Zephyr Aviation, LLC v. Dailey, 247 F.3d 565 (5th Cir. 2001). Its analysis and resolution are pertinent here. In Zephyr, FAA inspectors summarily placed notices on an aircraft owned by Zephyr, effectively grounding it. Sometime later, FAA offi- 9 See, e.g., Americopters Compl. ¶ 14 (“On September 19, 2002, the Office of the Regional Counsel [a duly authorized FAA official] denied Americopters’ request for a hearing on quintessential ‘catch 22’ grounds: since Mr. Kanae had ‘no authority’ to issue the § 13.20 cease and desist order, it is ‘not really an order’ . . . and therefore, Americopters is not entitled to the hearing . . . .”). 2944 AMERICOPTERS v. FAA cials told Zephyr’s attorneys that, despite the placement of notices on the aircraft, “the Jet’s airworthiness certificate had never been revoked,” but nevertheless insisted that the jet was not airworthy. After Zephyr followed measures required by FAA officials to make the jet airworthy, the “FAA retracted the condition notice in a letter to Zephyr.” Id. at 569. Zephyr then brought a damages claim in district court, alleging that the actions of “two FAA inspectors [were] tantamount to an illegal taking of property.’ ” Id. at 569 n.3. The district court dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The Fifth Circuit reversed on the issue of jurisdiction (though it later dismissed the case on other grounds). In doing so, it analyzed our circuit’s collateral attack cases and concluded that the reasoning of the Mace line of cases did not apply to Zephyr: While we agree that parties may not avoid adminis- trative review simply by fashioning their attack on an FAA decision as a constitutional tort claim against individual FAA officers, we disagree with the Defendants that this case implicates that concern. Zephyr’s claims do not relate to an FAA order cur- rently pending against it. Indeed, to the extent that Zephyr sought review of the FAA’s attachment of a condition notice to the Jet, its complaint would be moot since the FAA has removed the condition notice. Id. at 572. The Fifth Circuit concluded that no exhaustion was required and the district court had jurisdiction over Zephyr’s claim for “monetary relief for alleged extra-procedural and unconstitutional actions by FAA inspectors,” because the cases barring collateral attacks on FAA orders “have no application to cases like this one that do not implicate an FAA order that is currently in place and hence could not function AMERICOPTERS v. FAA 2945 as a collateral attack on an FAA order or action.” Id. We agree with the Fifth Circuit that it makes little sense to apply the collateral attack doctrine to situations in which no FAA order is “currently in place.” Id. [12] The second reason the collateral attack rule does not apply to this case is that there is no danger that Jan’s and Americopters would be able to re-litigate, in district court, previous agency determinations because there were no such determinations. One rationale for the “collateral attack” doctrine is to prevent plaintiffs from using constitutional tort claims to re-litigate previous administrative hearings, Tur, 104 F.3d at 292, or to evade administrative procedures. See Green, 981 F.2d at 517, 521. In Tur, for instance, we held that the district court had no jurisdiction to hear a damages claim because the result would be a “new adjudication over the evidence and testimony” already considered by an ALJ and NTSB. 104 F.3d at 292. Jan’s and Americopters are not in danger of committing either foul. They did not attempt to evade the FAA’s administrative procedures. To the contrary, their attempts to invoke the administrative process were resisted by the FAA at every turn. Nor can their claims be construed as an attempt to relitigate anything—for the word “re-litigate” assumes that there was some form of previous adjudication. Because of the FAA’s repeated refusals to provide Jan’s and Americopters any hearing at all, this case is unlike Tur or cases upholding district court jurisdiction. By considering Jan’s and Americopters’ claims, the district court would not disturb any prior agency fact-findings based on testimony and documents, since there were none. [13] None of the rationales for the collateral attack doctrine will be advanced by denying district court jurisdiction over the damages claims here. Denying jurisdiction because a federal court claim is “inescapably intertwined” with an administrative proceeding or order perforce presumes the existence of 2946 AMERICOPTERS v. FAA something with which that claim could be intertwined. Because there is no pending FAA order and because there were no previous agency determinations on the merits, no foundation supports the notion of “intertwining.” Thus, the district court erred in determining that the due process claims were “inescapably intertwined” with direct challenges to FAA orders. The district court has jurisdiction to consider constitutional claims for damages.