Justia U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The plaintiff and her four-year-old daughter, Muslim U.S. citizens, were returning from Canada in 2006 when a Customs and Border Protection computer mistakenly identified them as armed and dangerous. She was handcuffed and questioned for several hours; her car was searched and damaged. The district court dismissed plaintiff's suit to obtain unredacted Treasury Enforcement Communications System and Automated Targeting System (ATS) documents from DHS and for failure to maintain accurate records under the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a. The Sixth Circuit vacated in part and remanded. Noting a split in the circuits, the court held that an agency may exempt a system of records from civil remedies provisions of the Act only if the underlying substantive duties fall within the Act's general exemption provision. Claims concerning improper disclosure and records of First Amendment activity do not fall within the general exemption, but DHS properly exempted the records from other provisions of the Act. The court further noted that the effort to exempt the all of the records may have been ambiguous and procedurally inadequate. A challenge to exemption of documents from the ATS was properly rejected for failure to claim "adverse effect" as a result of alleged procedural deficiencies.

The IRS auctioned the taxpayer's property for back taxes. Letters sent by the taxpayer, in an attempt to resolve or appeal the decision, were incorrectly addressed. The district court dismissed a suit for damages. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, but held that failure to exhaust administrative remedies (26 U.S.C. 7433)did not deprive the court of jurisdiction. What is mandatory is not necessarily jurisdictional; the context shows that the requirement is a limit on relief.