Opinion ID: 3064664
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Extension of the Decree

Text: [1] By its express terms, the decree provided for the district court’s retention of jurisdiction over compliance with the decree only until October 29, 2006, ten years after its execution.5 Because the decree contains an express expiration date for the court’s retention of jurisdiction, any change to that date entails a modification of the decree. See Thompson, 404 F.3d at 824 (holding that extension of a consent decree’s termination date required modification of the decree). The first issue, then, is whether, and under what conditions, a modification of the decree is permitted. [2] To answer this question, we turn first to the decree itself. See United States v. Asarco Inc., 430 F.3d 972, 980 (9th 5 BRU argues that “[t]he Decree contains no termination date” and therefore that the district court lacked the discretion to end its jurisdiction until MTA complied fully with the terms of the decree. BRU did not raise this issue before the district court and we generally will not consider an issue raised for the first time on appeal. See Bolker v. Comm’r, 760 F.2d 1039, 1042 (9th Cir. 1985). BRU argues that the issue is one of law and can be resolved on the record as it presently exists. We decline to exercise our discretion to consider the issue because it may turn upon facts that MTA did not have an opportunity to develop before the district court, namely, extrinsic evidence of the parties’ intent. See id. (declining to address issue not raised below because of possibility of relevant facts not developed in the record). LABOR/COMMUNITY v. L.A. COUNTY MTA 5217 Cir. 2005) (noting that the meaning of “[a] consent decree, like a contract, must be discerned within its four corners”). According to Section VI of the decree, modification of the decree is permitted only if the party seeking modification establishes that (1) “a significant change in circumstances warrants revision” and (2) “the proposed revision or revisions are suitably tailored to the changed circumstances.” The decree further provides that modification “may be warranted when changed factual conditions make compliance with the Consent Decree unworkable or substantially more onerous, and when the changed factual conditions were unforeseen at the time of the entry into this Consent Decree.” Perhaps not surprisingly, these requirements are essentially identical to those articulated by the Supreme Court in Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367, 393 (1992), and applied by this Court in Asarco and other cases involving modifications to consent decrees. See Asarco, 430 F.3d at 979; Hook v. Arizona, 120 F.3d 921, 924 (9th Cir. 1997). So, as provided both by the decree and by the Rufo case law, BRU’s requested modification — i.e., extension of the district court’s jurisdiction over the decree — is warranted only if the following four conditions are met. First, BRU must establish that a “significant change either in factual conditions or in the law” occurred after execution of the decree. See Asarco, 430 F.3d at 979. Second, it must demonstrate that the change was not “anticipated at the time it entered into [the] decree.” Id. Third, it must show that the changed factual circumstance makes “compliance with the consent decree more onerous, unworkable, or detrimental to the public interest.” Id. (internal citations omitted). Finally, the proposed extension of the decree’s termination date must be “suitably tailored to resolve the problems created by the changed . . . conditions.” Id. [3] The failure of substantial compliance with the terms of a consent decree can qualify as a significant change in circumstances that would justify the decree’s temporal extension. See Thompson, 404 F.3d at 828-29; David C., 242 F.3d at 1212; Vanguards of Cleveland, 23 F.3d at 1019-20; Hol5218 LABOR/COMMUNITY v. L.A. COUNTY MTA land, 246 F.3d at 283-84. Here, however, after overseeing this case for more than twelve years, the district court concluded that MTA had substantially complied with the decree. The court ruled as follows: For the past ten years — the entire term of the Con- sent Decree — the parties have disagreed as to how to implement the Consent Decree, how to reach its objectives, and how to measure its success. In hindsight, the Consent Decree was a less than perfect document. As a result, it is impossible to achieve absolute compliance. Indeed, the Special Master informed the parties that the Consent Decree did not require perfection. [Citation] However, it was possible for MTA to substantially comply with the Con- sent Decree. Despite an increasing ridership, increasing traffic congestion and fiscal constraints, MTA has substantially complied with the Consent Decree while maintaining fares at reasonable levels. The Consent Decree has served its purpose and will be not extended. . . . As a result of the Consent Decree and the efforts of all of the parties, the quality of life has improved for Los Angeles’s public transit dependant poor population. [4] The court’s finding that the decree “had served its purpose” reflected a conclusion that it was no longer necessary to involve the federal courts in the day-to-day operation of the Los Angeles County bus system. The district court, armed with a decade of knowledge about the case, was uniquely positioned to determine whether there had been substantial compliance. We accord that court’s decision deference on this issue. See Thompson, 404 F.3d at 827 (noting deferential standard of review in institutional reform cases and stating that “[o]ver time, the district court gains an intimate understanding of the workings of an institution and learns what specific changes are needed within that institution in order to achieve the goals of the consent decree” (quoting Navarro-Ayala v. LABOR/COMMUNITY v. L.A. COUNTY MTA 5219 Hernandez-Colon, 951 F.2d 1325, 1338 (1st Cir. 1991))); see also Ruiz v. Lynaugh, 811 F.2d 856, 861 (5th Cir. 1987) (discussing deference due district court in institutional reform cases “because it is intimately involved in the often complex process of institutional reformation” and “has the personal knowledge, experience, and insight necessary to evaluate the parties’ intentions, performances, and capabilities”). [5] Moreover, it is BRU’s burden to show otherwise. BRU must demonstrate that MTA failed to substantially comply with the decree in order to justify its extension. Asarco, 430 F.3d at 980 (stating that burden is on the moving party). In arguing that MTA’s level of compliance was insubstantial, BRU focuses exclusively on just one of the decree’s several requirements, and uses an imperfect and misleading metric to evaluate compliance. Further, BRU ignores the many ways in which MTA met or exceeded its obligations. Although the underlying data measuring bus overcrowding are not in dispute, the parties interpret that data in vastly different ways. BRU argues that the data demonstrate compliance rates as low as 9% with the 1.20 load factor target during 2005 and 2006. Meanwhile, MTA argues the same data supports the conclusion that it achieved a 94-99% compliance rate with the load factors during the same time period. In some sense, both figures are correct. [6] BRU’s compliance figures are based on the standard set forth in the decree for identifying instances of violations of the load factor targets. According to the decree, peak load factors are to be determined “by computing the highest ratio of total number of passengers to total number of seats achieved during any 20 minute weekday peak period in the peak direction of travel on each bus line.” Under this metric, if a bus line exceeds the load factor just once during a given quarter, that line is deemed noncompliant for the entire quarter, even if that line met the target at every other measurement that quarter. MTA argues that this standard greatly overstates its 5220 LABOR/COMMUNITY v. L.A. COUNTY MTA level of noncompliance, and it offers its own figures to compensate for this limitation. MTA states that in 2005, it monitored 123,154 20-minute time periods and found that 96.89% of those periods experienced no load factors above the 1.20 target. [7] BRU correctly notes that the figures it cites are based on the compliance standard written into the decree and affirmed by this court in Labor/Community. 263 F.3d at 104849. But that standard measures only strict compliance with the load factor targets — not compliance with the decree overall — and does so in an imprecise manner. That coarse-grained metric is useful for certain types of analyses, such as determining whether there has been full and absolute compliance (MTA concedes there has not been), but it is not particularly helpful in measuring levels of compliance below 100%, and it fails to accurately capture the extent to which MTA did meet the targets during the relevant time periods. [8] If the question here were simply whether MTA had achieved full compliance with the decree, we would use BRU’s proposed standard. But the question is whether there was substantial compliance, a less precise standard that cannot be satisfied by reference to one particular figure, while ignoring alternative information. Our analysis requires we do more than simply count the number of technical deviations from the decree. Instead, we must determine, using a holistic view of all the available information, whether MTA’s compliance with the Decree overall was substantial, notwithstanding some minimal level of noncompliance. [9] In addition to using an imperfect metric to evaluate compliance with the load factor targets, BRU also focuses narrowly on that one requirement, as does the dissent, at the expense of giving due weight to the various other requirements under the decree which MTA met, and in some cases, exceeded. There is no question that the reduction of bus overcrowding was an important part of the decree. But so were LABOR/COMMUNITY v. L.A. COUNTY MTA 5221 other requirements. As BRU’s counsel described, the decree imposes three “essential” and “core” requirements on MTA. These are the reduction in bus overcrowding through the load factor targets, new service through an expedited pilot project followed by a five-year new service plan, and a roll-back and lowering of bus fares for at least five years. MTA exceeded its obligations as to the bus fare and pass requirements, maintaining fares at specified levels for years longer than it was required to do so. And MTA has now met its obligations relating to new service requirements. To give some idea of the extent of MTA’s efforts, since the start of the decree, it has added 1.2 million in-service hours annually, and added over 545 buses to its peak fleet in order to expand its bus service. BRU argues that MTA’s achievements in these areas are outweighed by its imperfect compliance with the load factor targets. Of course, there is no precise formula describing how best to weigh the various obligations under the decree, and there is no indication that the district court abused its discretion in weighing them as it did. We note that the de minimis level of noncompliance here is nowhere close to the near total noncompliance in cases in which courts concluded that extensions of the consent decrees were warranted. In Thompson, 404 F.3d at 834, there was a “near total failure” of some defendants to comply with their obligations. Those defendants failed to do “almost [anything] that they were required to do under the Decree[.]” Id. at 828; see also David C., 242 F.3d at 1212-13 (noting that defendant was “20 percent in compliance and 80 percent in noncompliance”). In contrast, aside from the imperfect compliance with the load factor targets, MTA complied fully with its numerous obligations under the decree. [10] We hold that BRU has failed to demonstrate that the district court abused its discretion in finding that MTA had substantially complied with the consent decree. The evidence presented supported the district court’s finding that the imperfections with respect to load factor targets were de minimis in 5222 LABOR/COMMUNITY v. L.A. COUNTY MTA relation to the overall scheme of things. Because the first prong of the Rufo test fails, we hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to extend the decree. [11] Our decision is consistent with the principle that federal court intervention in state institutions is a temporary measure and may extend no longer than necessary to cure constitutional violations. See Bd. of Ed. of Okla. City Pub. Sch. v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237, 248 (1991); Toussaint v. McCarthy, 801 F.2d 1080, 1087 (9th Cir. 1986). In this case, as the district court found, perhaps every last wish and hope of the decree was not achieved, but the decree accomplished its essential purposes and the situation improved greatly. These improvements strongly inform our assessment that the district court was within its discretion in holding that it no longer needed to oversee the running of the Los Angeles County bus system.