Court Opinion

ID: 9496901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:38:23.838956+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:52.705444
License: Public Domain

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Although Judges Reinhardt, Archer, and I agree that Ubaldo Figueroa’s convictions must be reversed based on the fact that he could have sought § 212(c) relief had his underlying removal hearing been constitutionally adequate, I write separately to express my views on Ubaldo-Figueroa’s alternative argument: that the retroactive application of IIRIRA § 321 violated his right to due process and constitutes a plausible legal ground for relief from deportation. I would reverse Ubaldo-Figueroa’s convictions on this ground as well.
A.
The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment forbids Congress from enacting legislation expressly made retroactive when the “retroactive application [of the statute] is so harsh and oppressive as to transgress the constitutional limitation.” United States v. Carlton, 512 U.S. 26, 30, 114 S.Ct. 2018, 129 L.Ed.2d 22 (1994) (quoting Welch v. Henry, 305 U.S. 134, 147, 59 S.Ct. 121, 83 L.Ed. 87 (1937)). As Justice Story observed, the Supreme *1052Court has long disfavored retroactive statutes because “retrospective laws are, indeed generally unjust; and, as has been forcibly said, neither accord with sound legislation nor with the fundamental principles of the social compact.” Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498, 533, 118 S.Ct. 2131, 141 L.Ed.2d 451 (1998) (quoting 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution § 1398 (5th ed. 1891)). Retroactive legislation “presents problems of unfairness that are more serious than those posed by prospective legislation, because it can deprive citizens of legitimate expectations and upset settled transactions.” General Motors Corp. v. Romein, 503 U.S. 181, 191, 112 S.Ct. 1105, 117 L.Ed.2d 328 (1992). Thus, due process “protects the interests in fair notice and repose that may be compromised by retroactive legislation.” Landgraf v. USI Film Prod., 511 U.S. 244, 266, 114 S.Ct. 1483, 128 L.Ed.2d 229 (1999). The Supreme Court limits retroactive statutes under the Due Process Clause as part of its longstanding “prohibition against arbitrary and irrational legislation.” Carlton, 512 U.S. at 30, 114 S.Ct. 2018 (quoting Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. v. R.A. Gray & Co., 467 U.S. 717, 733, 104 S.Ct. 2709, 81 L.Ed.2d 601 (1984)).1
To satisfy due process, the Court requires that Congress must have enacted a retroactive statute for a legitimate legislative purpose, and retroactively applying the statute must be a rational means to accomplish Congress’ purpose. Carlton, 512 U.S. at 31, 114 S.Ct. 2018. The constitutionality of retroactive legislation is “conditioned upon a rationality requirement beyond that applied to other legislation.” Bowen v. Georgetown Univ. Hosp., 488 U.S. 204, 223, 109 S.Ct. 468, 102 L.Ed.2d 493 (1988) (Scalia, J. concurring) (citing Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 467 U.S. at 730, 104 S.Ct. 2709; Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 16-17, 96 S.Ct. 2882, 49 L.Ed.2d 752 (1976)). Further, the period of retroactivity must be moderate and “confined to short and limited periods required by the practicalities of national legislation.” Carlton, 512 U.S. at 32, 114 S.Ct. 2018 (quoting United States v. Darusmont, 449 U.S. 292, 296, 101 S.Ct. 549, 66 L.Ed.2d 513 (1981)).
The Court focuses on three primary factors in determining whether the purpose of a retroactive statute comports with due process. First, the Court looks to whether Congress applied a law retroactively to remedy a defect in previous legislation. Second, the Court examines whether Congress provided a specific rationale for applying the statute retroactively because “[t]he retrospective aspects of legislation, as well as the prospective aspects, must meet the test of due process, and the justifications for the latter may not suffice for the former.” Usery, 428 U.S. at 17, 96 S.Ct. 2882. Finally, the Court considers the severity of the consequences of the retroactive legislation, including the effect of the legislation on a party’s interest in fair notice and repose. Carlton, 512 U.S. at 31, 114 S.Ct. 2018; Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 467 U.S. at 731, 104 S.Ct. 2709; Usery, 428 U.S. at 16-17, 96 S.Ct. 2882; see also Carlton, 512 U.S. at 37-38, 114 S.Ct. 2018 (O’Connor, J. concurring) (“The governmental interest in revising the tax laws must at some point give way to the taxpayer’s interest in finality and repose.... In every case in which we have upheld a retroactive federal tax statute *1053against a due process challenge ■... the law applied retroactively for only a relatively short period prior to enactment.”).
The Court has also upheld retroactive statutes against due process challenges when they operate retroactively to spread the costs of a current social problem. In Usery, for example, the Court considered a due process challenge to a statute that required coal mine operators to compensate former employees disabled by pneu-moconiosis, even if those employers no longer worked in the coal industry when the statute was enacted. The Court upheld the statute because “the imposition of liability for the effects of disabilities bred in the past is justified as a rational measure to spread the costs of the employees’ disabilities to those who have profited from the fruits of their labor — the operators and the coal consumers.” Usery, 428 U.S. at 18, 96 S.Ct. 2882. See also Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 467 U.S. at 730-31, 104 S.Ct. 2709.
The Court provided additional guidance in this area in Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498, 118 S.Ct. 2131, 141 L.Ed.2d 451 (1998). There, a plurality of the Court noted that “[o]ur decisions ... have left open the possibility that legislation might be unconstitutional if it imposes severe retroactive liability on a limited class of parties that could not have anticipated the liability, and the extent of that liability is substantially disproportionate to the parties’ experience.” Id. at 528-29, 118 S.Ct. 2131. Justice Kennedy, concurring, emphasized that the due process' right against retroactive legislation reflects the Court’s “recognition that retroactive lawmaking is a particular concern for the courts because of the legislative ‘tempt[ation] to use retroactive legislation as a means of retribution against unpopular groups or individuals.’ ” Id. at 548, 118 S.Ct. 2131 (quoting Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 266, 114 S.Ct. 1483).
B.
Applying these principles, I would find that Ubaldo-Figueroa established that he had a plausible ground of relief for challenging his removal order based on the fact that the explicit retroactive application of IIRIRA § 321 raises serious due process concerns.2
IIRIRA § 321 first raises due process concerns because Congress did not explain in the statute or in the legislative record why it chose to apply the expanded aggravated felony definition retroactively to persons who had committed crimes well before IIRIRA’s enactment. See S. 1664, 104th Cong. §§ 101(a)(43), 244(a)(1)(A), 24(a)(2)(E) (1996) (printed in S.Rep. No. 1004-249, at 88-90, 125-26' (1996)). Congress’s silence on the rationale for retroactive application of § 321 is troubling because the Court requires that Congress have an independent rationale as to why a statute should be applied retroactively. Usery, 428 U.S. at 17, 96 S.Ct. 2882 (“The retrospective aspects of legislation, as well as the prospective aspects, must meet the test of due process, and the justifications for the latter may not suffice for the former.”). The Court has consistently relied on legislative history to determine whether *1054the purpose of a retroactive statute was justified by a legitimate independent rationale. See, e.g., Carlton, 512 U.S. at 34, 114 S.Ct. 2018 (examining legislative history of tax statute to conclude that Congress intended to pass subsequent retroactive statute to close loophole in previous statute); General Motors Co., 503 U.S. at 184-85, 112 S.Ct. 1105 (tracing events and legislative history that led state legislature to pass retroactive curative measure to the Worker’s compensation statute); Pension Benefit Guaranty Co., 467 U.S. at 723-25, 104 S.Ct. 2709 (reviewing Congressional history to determine rationale for retroactively extending liability to employers who withdrew from pension plans); Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, 342 U.S. 580, 72 S.Ct. 512, 96 L.Ed. 586 (1952) (examining Congress’s concern with prior Communist activity and national security in reviewing whether retroactive deportation statute based on prior Communist activity is constitutional). Without any accompanying explanation, we are left to speculate why Congress applied § 321 retroactively.
The government answers Congress’s silence by arguing that Congress could have concluded that the “population of [aliens with criminal convictions] had reached a point where the line needed to be redrawn to increase the group of criminal aliens subject to removal.” Congress, according to the government, could have reasoned that a theft offense that carries a one year sentence was a better measure of determining who should be deported from the United States than a theft offense that carries a five year sentence. Assuming, arguendo, that Congress believed that more “criminal aliens” needed to be deported, this does not adequately explain why Congress retroactively reclassified removable offenses to render removable aliens who had committed an offense at any time in the past, however remote. Does the government consider all such immigrants dangerous to society? Such a belief is plainly irrational because it sweeps in a broad class of immigrants who have committed a crime at some time in the remote past, no matter how young they were when they committed the offense, no matter how they have straightened out their lives, no matter whether they have become loyal hardworking employees, good neighbors, taxpayers, and an asset to their communities, and no matter whether they have married, cared for their American-born children, etc. It is arbitrary to assume that all such persons threaten our society because they committed a crime at some time in the past.
For Congress to pass legislation that inflicts an additional penalty on a legal permanent resident who has already been punished for engaging in criminal conduct poses a risk that Congress may be using retroactive legislation as a means of exacting additional retribution against groups or individuals who are the focus of public hostility. See St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 315, 121 S.Ct. 2271 (“The Legislature’s unmatched powers allow it to sweep away settled expectations suddenly and without individualized consideration. Its responsivity to political pressures poses a risk that it may be tempted to use retroactive legislation as a means of retribution against unpopular groups or individuals.”) (quoting Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 266, 114 S.Ct. 1483). Aliens are at risk “because [as] noncitizens [they] cannot vote, [and] they are particularly vulnerable to adverse legislation.”3 St. *1055Cyr, 533 U.S. at 316 n. 39, 121 S.Ct. 2271 (citing Legomsky, Fear and Loathing in Congress and the Courts: Immigration and Judicial -Review, 78 Texas L.Rev. 1615, 1626 (2000)). - The Court has long recognized that society considers those who commit crimes, apart from their immigration status, as an unpopular group. For this reason, the Court flatly prohibits retroactive criminal statutes under the Ex Post Facto Clause, to “restrict[] governmental power by restraining arbitrary and potentially vindictive legislation.” Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 266, 114 S.Ct. 1483 (quoting Weaver v. Graham, 450 U.S. 24, 28-29, 101 S.Ct. 960, 67 L.Ed.2d 17 (1981)).
In addition, the government’s justification for the retroactive application of § 321 is unlike other justifications for retroactive legislation that the Court has considered sufficient under the Due Process Clause. Congress did not retrospectively apply § 321 to cure defects in prior legislation, as in Carlton and General Motors. Nor does deporting aliens who were previously not deportable spread the costs of a current social problem, as in Usery.
IIRIRA § 321 also raises, serious due process concerns because there is no temporal limitation on IIRIRA § 321. Carlton, 512 U.S. at 32, 114 S.Ct. 2018. Thus the .retroactive application of § 321 deprives immigrants of “finality and repose” for the legal consequences of their past conduct. Carlton, 512 U.S. at 37-38, 114 S.Ct. 2018 (O’Connor, J. concurring). Immigrants like Ubaldo-Figueroa, who have committed non-deportable crimes in the past, have built families, bought properties, married, reared children — all with the settled expectation that they had borne the consequences of their prior criminal conduct.
In addition, § 321 profoundly disrupts •the expectations of legal permanent residents who, with the consent of the prosecution, chose to plead guilty to crimes that did not render them deportable. Many legal aliens pleaded guilty to a certain offense relying on the then-existing immigration consequences of their conviction. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 322, 121 S.Ct. 2271 (citing Magana-Pizano v. INS, 200 F.3d 603, 612 (9th Cir.1999) (“That an alien charged with a crime ... would factor the immigration consequences of conviction in deciding whether to plead or proceed to trial is well-documented.”)). When Ubal-do-Figueroa negotiated his plea agreement he reasonably believed that his guilty plea would not have an adverse consequence on his immigration status.4 By *1056retroactively increasing the legal consequences to be bourne by an immigrant who enters a guilty plea, IIRIRA § 321 contravenes “elementary considerations of fairness [that] dictate that individuals have an opportunity to know what the law is and conform their conduct accordingly.” Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 265, 114 S.Ct. 1483.
Finally, the retroactive application of the statute raises the harsh consequences that the Due Process Clause protects against, because it renders deportable legal residents who have established their lives, their families, and their futures in United States. See United States Trust Co. v. New Jersey, 431 U.S. 1, 17 n. 13, 97 S.Ct. 1505, 52 L.Ed.2d 92 (1977). The Supreme Court has expressly described deportation as a “harsh measure,” I.N.S. v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 448, 107 S.Ct. 1207, 94 L.Ed.2d 434 (1987), that “may result in loss of ... all that makes life worth living.” Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276, 284, 42 S.Ct. 492, 66 L.Ed. 938 (1922). Deportation is considered “a drastic measure and at times the equivalent of banishment or exile.” Fong Haw Tan v. Phelan, 333 U.S. 6, 10, 68 S.Ct. 374, 92 L.Ed. 433 (1948).5
Thus, while I authored the opinion issued today in which my learned colleagues concur, I believe that Ubaldo-Figueroa makes a plausible claim that § 321 may not be applied retroactively, and I would reverse his convictions on this ground as well.

. The Ninth Circuit adopted the Supreme Court's due process jurisprudence regarding retroactive economic legislation in an immigration context when it analyzed whether a retroactive immigration statute comported with due process in United States v. Yacoubian, 24 F.3d 1, 7-8 (9th Cir.1994). See also Hamama v. INS, 78 F.3d 233, 236 (6th Cir.1996).

. This court has upheld the retroactivity of IIRIRA § 321 on other grounds, but none of these cases examined a due process challenge to the retroactive application of § 321. Park v. INS, 252 F.3d 1018, 1025 (statutory construction principles) (9th Cir.2001); Aragon-Ayon, 206 F.3d 847, 851-52 (same). See also United States v. Maria-Gonzalez, 268 F.3d 664, 669 (9th Cir.2001) (enbanc), cert. denied, Maria-Gonzalez v. United States, 535 U.S. 965, 122 S.Ct. 1382, 152 L.Ed.2d 373 (2002) (under principles of statutory construction defendant's prior conviction, which was not an aggravated felony at the time he was convicted, could be relied upon to impose enhanced sentence under § 1326 because his prior conviction qualified as an aggravated felony under IIRIRA at the time of his illegal reentry).

. The Court has recognized that immigrants are susceptible to discriminatory treatment based on their status. See, e.g., Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 102 S.Ct. 2382, 72 L.Ed.2d 786 (1982) (The class of undocumented immigrants "raises the specter of a permanent caste of undocumented resident aliens, encouraged by some to remain here as a source of cheap labor, but nevertheless denied the benefits that our society makes available to citizens and lawful residents. The existence *1055of such an underclass presents most difficult problems for a Nation that prides itself on adherence to principles of equality under law.”). In addition, the Court has recognized that "a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest.” Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528, 534, 93 .S.Ct. 2821, 37 L.Ed.2d 782 (1973).

. As the Court observed in St. Cyr, by disrupting an alien’s expectations guiding their plea agreement the government alters the "quid pro quo between a criminal defendant and the government. In exchange for some perceived benefit, defendants waive several of their constitutional rights (including the right to a trial) and grant the government numerous tangible benefits, such as promptly imposed punishment without the expenditure of prose-cutorial resources.” St. Cyr, 533 U.S. at 321-22, 121 S.Ct. 2271.
•Furthermore, as one scholar notes, the new grounds for deportation extend to lesser offenses, which "reach into parts of the criminal justice system where it has been routine for lawyers and judges to treat, cases relatively casually. In a situation where no one expected the stakes to be high, a case may well have been disposed of in minutes.” Nancy Mora-wetz, Rethinking retroactive deportation laws and the Due Process Clause, 73 N.Y.U. L. REV. 97, 119 (1998). Ubaldo-Figueora’s 1993 conviction which formed the basis of his removal order illustrates this point because he was sentenced to only 90 days home-confinement and three years probation.

. The government relies on Harisiades, 342 U.S. 580, 72 S.Ct. 512, 96 L.Ed. 586, for the propositions that § 321 does not offend due process and that we have limited power to review § 321. Because the Court in Hari-siades was examining policies such as the Alien Registration Act, that are so "vitally and intricately interwoven with contemporaneous policies in regard to the conduct of foreign relations, the war power, and the maintenance of a republican form of government,” the Court stated that Congress’s immigration enactments are "largely immune from judicial interference.” Id. at 588-589, 72 S.Ct. 512 (emphasis added). The instant case, in contrast, concerns the constitutionality of a statute that retroactively made immigrants de-portable for theft, fraud, misdemeanors, and similar petty offense punishable for more than a year — crimes that have no relation to national security or the government’s war power. Moreover, Harisiades, decided in 1952, also pre-dates the requirement that Congress provide a distinct rationale to justify the retroactive application of legislation.
This case is also unlike United States v. Yacoubian, 24 F.3d 1 (9th Cir.1994), where we upheld a statute that retroactively made deportable aliens who "at any time after entry . . . have been convicted of possessing or carrying in violation of any law any firearm or destructive device.” Id. at 6. Unlike IIRI-RA § 321, Yacoubian dealt with a statute that retroactively made deportable those immigrants who were convicted of a narrow class of dangerous crimes; the petitoner in Yacou-bian, for example, was made deportable for his conviction of three counts of possession and transportation of explosive materials as part of his participation in a conspiracy to place an explosive device in front of the offices of the Turkish Counsul in Pennsylania. Id. at 3. In addition, the statute’s legislative history was available to assist us in determining the rationale for the retroactive reach of the statute. Id. at 6.