Opinion ID: 3065529
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mandamus Jurisdiction under the Bauman

Text: factors Having determined that the rule recognized in Vizcaino does not apply here, we address appellants’ petition for issuance of a writ of mandamus under Bauman v. United States District Court, 557 F.2d 650 (9th Cir.1977), where “we established five guidelines to determine whether mandamus is appropriate in a given case: (1) whether the petitioner has no other means, such as a direct appeal, to obtain the desired relief; (2) whether the petitioner will be damaged or prejudiced in any way not correctable on appeal; (3) whether the district court’s order is clearly erroneous as a matter of law; (4) whether the district court’s order is an oft repeated error or manifests a persistent disregard of the federal rules; and (5) whether the district court’s order raises new and important problems or issues of first impression.” Perry I, 591 F.3d at 1156 (citing Bauman, 557 F.2d at 654-55). The first and second factors disfavor issuance of the writ. As we have explained, appellants have a means of obtaining 5658 PERRY v. SCHWARZENEGGER appellate review, and protecting themselves from injury from compelled disclosure, by defying the district court’s discovery orders and appealing from a final, appealable contempt order. That route was not available to the parties from whom discovery was sought in Perry I until the end of the litigation. See, e.g., Koninklijke Philips Elecs. N.V. v. KSD Tech., Inc., 539 F.3d 1039, 1042 (9th Cir. 2008) (explaining that we lack jurisdiction to hear interlocutory appeals from civil contempt orders entered against parties to litigation). The fourth factor also counsels against issuance of the writ. The district court has not committed an oft-repeated error or manifested a persistent disregard of the federal rules. The third factor—legal error—arguably militates in favor of issuance of the writ, because the district court may have partly misinterpreted the legal boundaries of the First Amendment privilege we articulated in Perry I. In Perry I, we held that the disclosure of internal campaign communications can “have a deterrent effect on participation in campaigns,” as well as a “deterrent effect on the free flow of information within campaigns,” which is necessary to “formulate [campaign] strategy and messages.” Id. at 1162. As applied to the claims before the court at that time, we held that the official proponents of Proposition 8 had made a prima facie showing that disclosure of their internal campaign communications would chill participation in campaigns and the free exchange of ideas within such campaigns. See id. at 1163. In addition, we emphasized that our holding was limited to “communications among the core group of persons engaged in the formulation of campaign strategy and messages.” Id. at 1165 n.12 (emphasis in original). We left to the district court the determination of the “core group of persons” engaged in formulating campaign strategy and messaging, but did not hold that the privilege is limited only to persons within a particular organization or entity. In the March 22, 2010 order, the district court said as a matter of law that “the First Amendment privilege does not PERRY v. SCHWARZENEGGER 5659 cover communications between [or among] separate organizations.” Doc. #623 at 13 (brackets in original). If the district court meant that the privilege cannot apply to persons who are part of a political association spanning more than one organization or entity, then this interpretation was questionable. Under Perry I, the privilege applies to the core group of persons engaged in the formulation of strategy and messages, whether or not they are members of a single organization or entity. The operative inquiry is whether they are part of an association subject to First Amendment protection. We did not hold that the privilege cannot apply to a core group of associated persons spanning more than one entity. Nonetheless, there does not appear to have been clear error. The district court granted in part Proponents’ motion to compel because appellants “in any event failed to furnish the magistrate [judge] information from which a functional interpretation of [an inter-organizational] core group . . . could be derived.” Doc. #623 at 10. Thus, even if we were persuaded that the court misinterpreted Perry I, it is not clear that the district court’s ultimate conclusions were clearly erroneous as a matter of law. Accordingly, the third factor at most lends some support to the case for mandamus. The fifth factor disfavors mandamus jurisdiction. In Perry I, we exercised mandamus jurisdiction because the proceedings raised a particularly novel and important question of first impression—whether the First Amendment provides any protection against compelled disclosure of internal campaign communications, an issue that might otherwise have evaded appellate review. See Perry I, 591 F.3d at 1156-57, 1159. By contrast, the current proceedings present the application of that now recognized privilege. They thus do not present comparable concerns of novelty and evasion of review. On balance, mandamus jurisdiction is not appropriate under the Bauman factors. Although the district court may have erred to the extent it concluded as a matter of law that the 5660 PERRY v. SCHWARZENEGGER First Amendment privilege cannot apply to persons who are members of a single political association comprised of different organizations, appellants have not demonstrated that the district court’s ultimate conclusions were clearly erroneous as a matter of law, and the other four factors disfavor issuance of the writ. As we explained in Perry I, “[t]he writ of mandamus is an ‘extraordinary’ remedy limited to ‘extraordinary’ causes.” Id. at 1156 (quoting Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. U.S. Dist. Court, 408 F.3d 1142, 1146 (9th Cir. 2005) (quoting Cheney v. U.S. Dist. Court, 542 U.S. 367, 380 (2004)) (internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore deny the petition for issuance of a writ of mandamus.