KRISTEN H. COLINDRES AND EDVIN A. COLINDRES JUAREZ, APPELLANTS v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, ET AL., APPELLEES
No. 22-5009
United States Court of Appeals FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Argued March 17, 2023 Decided June 23, 2023
Christopher W. Dempsey argued the cause and filed the briefs for appellants.
Catherine M. Reno, Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellees. With her on the brief were Brian M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and T. Monique Peoples, Senior Litigation Counsel.
Before: SRINIVASAN, Chief Judge, WALKER, Circuit Judge, and RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judge.
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALKER.
WALKER, Circuit Judge: Edvin Colindres Juarez applied for a visa to enter the United States. But the Government denied his application, fearing that he was part of a criminal organization.
Mr. Colindres and his wife — who is an American citizen — filed this suit to challenge that decision. But their suit faced an uphill struggle: With narrow exceptions, a court may not review the government‘s decision to deny a visa.
To show that their suit fits within an exception, the Colindreses point to a rule allowing American citizens to challenge visa denials that burden their constitutional rights. Mrs. Colindres says the rule applies here because denying her husband a visa interfered with her constitutional right to marriage.
The district court rejected that argument and dismissed. We affirm. Though marriage is a fundamental right, it does not include the right to live in America with one‘s spouse. So the right is not burdened when the government denies a spouse‘s visa application.
Plus, even if the exception applied, allowing us to review the Government‘s visa denial, Mrs. Colindres‘s challenge would fail on the merits. To survive judicial review, the Government need only cite a statute listing a factual basis for denying a visa. It did that here.
Mr. Colindres was born and raised in Guatemala. He entered the United States “without inspection” when he was fourteen. Colindres v. United States Department of State, 575 F.Supp.3d 121, 127 (D.D.C. 2021). For more than twenty years, he made his life in America – he got a job working for a pool company, married an American citizen named Kristen, and had a daughter.
But for all that time, Mr. Colindres did not have permission to live or work in the United States. So in 2015, he decided to fix his immigration status.
To do that, he first filed an Application for Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver. Aliens like Mr. Colindres who are “unlawfully present” in the United States for more than six months are “ineligible to receive visas and ineligible to be admitted to the United States.”
Even so, the waiver did not give Mr. Colindres permission to live in the United States. To get permission, he had to successfully apply for a visa.
Visa applications are adjudicated by consular officers.
The officer did not resolve Mr. Colindres‘s application at that interview. Instead, the officer asked Mr. Colindres to
Mr. Colindres asked the embassy to reconsider. The embassy‘s Immigrant Visa Chief “reviewed the evidence” and “reconsider[ed]” the consular officer‘s decision. JA 248. But “he did not find any compelling new information” to justify a departure from the officer‘s determination.
Unwilling to accept the embassy‘s decision, Mr. Colindres and his wife sued the Department of State. They asked the district court to “[d]eclare” that Mr. Colindres‘s visa denial was “contrary to law” and to issue an injunction directing the Government to issue him a visa. JA 257.
The district court dismissed. Though it did “not take lightly” the “hardship” that the embassy‘s decision had caused the Colindreses, it held that judicial review was unavailable. Colindres, 575 F.Supp.3d at 126. The “doctrine of consular non-reviewability” bars judicial review of most visa denials. Id. at 140. And though there are narrow exceptions to the doctrine, none allowed the Colindreses’ suit to proceed here. Id.
The Colindreses appealed. We review the district court‘s decision to dismiss de novo. Sanchez v. Office of State Superintendent of Education, 45 F.4th 388, 395 (D.C. Cir. 2022). Taking as true the factual allegations in the Colindreses’ complaint, we agree with the district court that they failed to state a claim. Id. at 393. We thus affirm.
Deciding who is allowed into the United States and who is not can involve hard policy choices. Denying a visa may “implicate” America‘s relationship with “foreign powers” or require evaluating “changing political and economic circumstances.” Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 2418-19 (2018) (cleaned up). For that reason, “the power to exclude aliens” is “a power to be exercised exclusively by the political branches,” with limited judicial review. Kiyemba v. Obama, 555 F.3d 1022, 1025 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (cleaned up).
Reflecting the limited role of the judiciary, the consular-non-reviewability doctrine “shields a consular official‘s decision to issue or withhold a visa from judicial review,” with two narrow exceptions. Baan Rao Thai Restaurant v. Pompeo, 985 F.3d 1020, 1024-25 (D.C. Cir. 2021). The first exception applies when “a statute expressly authorizes judicial review.” Id. at 1025 (cleaned up). That exception is not at issue here because the Colindreses have pointed to no statute that allows review. The second exception lets “an American citizen . . . challenge the exclusion of a noncitizen if it burdens the citizen‘s constitutional rights.” Id. at 1024.
Even if an exception applies, judicial review is narrow. It is limited to whether the officer gave a “facially legitimate and bona fide reason” for denying a visa. Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753, 770 (1972).
Here, the Colindreses claim that the constitutional-rights exception lets them bring this challenge. First, because Mrs. Colindres is a citizen, they argue that the Government‘s visa denial burdened her “fundamental . . . marital right to live together” with her husband. JA 2. Second, they argue that, if the exception applies, they should prevail on the merits because the
We disagree with both arguments.
A. The Visa Denial Did Not Burden Mrs. Colindres‘s Constitutional Right To Marriage
“[M]arriage is a fundamental right.” Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644, 673 (2015). But a citizen‘s right to marry is not impermissibly burdened when the government refuses her spouse a visa.
The right to marriage is the right to enter a legal union. See id. at 680-81. It does not include the right to live in America with one‘s spouse. Thus, in Swartz v. Rogers, a wife challenged her husband‘s deportation because it burdened her “right, upon marriage, to establish a home, create a family, [and] have the society and devotion of her husband.” 254 F.2d 338, 339 (D.C. Cir. 1958). This court rejected that argument because “deportation would not in any way destroy the legal union which the marriage created. The physical conditions of the marriage may change, but the marriage continues.” Id.; see also Rohrbaugh v. Pompeo, 2020 WL 2610600 (D.C. Cir. May 15, 2020) (relying on Swartz to reject a husband‘s claim that denying his wife a visa burdened his right to marriage).
True, the Supreme Court has said “the right to marry, establish a home and bring up children is a central part of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause.”1 Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374, 384 (1978) (cleaned up). But “constitutional protection” is not triggered “whenever a regulation in any way touches upon an aspect of the marital relationship.” Kerry v. Din, 576 U.S. 86, 95 (2015) (plurality op.).
Instead, constitutional protection kicks in only when “this Nation‘s history and practice” show that a government regulation is incompatible with a fundamental liberty interest. Id. (cleaned up); see also Dobbs v. Jackson Women‘s Health Organization, 142 S. Ct. 2228, 2248 (2022) (courts must be “guided by... history and tradition” when asking what liberty interests are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment).
From the Founding, the government has had discretion to control entry into the United States. Consider the debates around the Alien Act of 1798. The Act gave the President unfettered discretion to remove “all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” Ch. 58, 1 Stat. 570 (1798).
Though the Act‘s constitutionality was vigorously debated, its supporters and detractors agreed that the government had discretion to control aliens’ entry into the United States — even though they disagreed about which government should wield that power. Supporters argued that the immigration power was federal. George Keith Taylor thus cited Blackstone to show that “by the law of nations, it is left in the power of all states to take such measures about the admission of strangers as they think convenient.” Debate on the Virginia Resolutions, reprinted in The Virginia Report of 1799-1800, at 31 (1850). For their part, opponents contended that “the power to admit, or to exclude alien[s]” was left “to each individual state.” 8 Annals of Cong. 1955 (1798) (Statement of Rep. А. Gallatin). But even James Madison — one of the Act‘s strongest critics — recognized that some government must have the power to control entry into the United States. James Madison, Report of 1800 (Jan. 7, 1800). He “allow[ed] the truth” of the notion that the “discretionary power” to admit aliens “into the country [is] of favor [and] not of right.”
For example, the Page Act of 1875 gave “consol[s]” at ports in Asia discretion to deny permission to come to the United States to any immigrant who “ha[d] entered into a contract or agreement for a term of service within the United States[] for lewd and immoral purposes.” Ch. 141 § 1, 18 Stat. 477, 477-78. Though the Act was designed to stop prostitutes emigrating, consuls unfortunately treated it as a “general restriction of Chinese female immigration.” George Anthony Peffer, Forbidden Families: Emigration Experiences of Chinese Women Under the Page Law, 1875-1882, 6 J. Am. Ethnic Hist. 28, 42 (1986). As a result, the Act “made the immigration of Chinese wives extremely difficult.”
Immigration statutes passed in the decades following the Page Act likewise limited spousal immigration. Take the Immigration Act of 1882. It required the Treasury Secretary to “examine” aliens arriving at United States ports and to deny “permi[ssion] to land” to “any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” Ch. 376 § 2, 22 Stat. 214. And the Act contained no exceptions for citizens’ spouses. See also Immigration Act of 1891, Ch. 551 § 1, 26 Stat. 1084 (expanding grounds of inadmissibility and allowing only administrative review).
To sum up, from early federal immigration legislation to today, Congress has sometimes limited spousal immigration. To be sure, on other occasions, Congress has facilitated citizens bringing their spouses to America. See, e.g., War Brides Act of 1945, 59 Stat. 659. But Congress‘s “long practice of regulating spousal immigration” confirms that citizens have no fundamental right to live in America with their spouses. Din, 576 U.S. at 95.
Because the Colindreses cannot show that the Government‘s visa denial burdened Mrs. Colindres‘s fundamental rights, their suit does not fall within the constitutional-rights exception to the consular-non-reviewability doctrine. See Baan Rao Thai Restaurant, 985 F.3d at 1024-25.2
Even if the Colindreses could get judicial review, their claim would fail on the merits.
When the constitutional-rights exception to the consular-non-reviewability doctrine applies, judicial review is “deferential.” Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 2419 (2018). Courts ask only whether the government has given “a facially legitimate and bona fide reason” for denying a visa. Mandel, 408 U.S. at 770.
That requirement is easy to satisfy. It “mean[s] that the [g]overnment need provide only a statutory citation to explain a visa denial.” Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. at 2419. Citing a statutory provision that “specifies discrete factual predicates the consular officer must find to exist before denying a visa” is enough. Din, 576 U.S. at 105 (Kennedy, J. concurring). And even if the government fails to cite such a statute, it may still meet its burden by “disclos[ing] the facts motivating [its] decision.” Id.; see also Mandel, 408 U.S. at 769.
To be sure,
Thus, here, as in Din, the Government‘s statutory “citation . . . indicates it relied upon a bona fide factual basis for denying” Mr. Colindres‘s request for a visa. Din, 576 U.S. at 105 (Kennedy, J., concurring).
As a fallback, the Colindreses assert that the Government‘s visa denial was in “bad faith” because its stated reasons for
The Colindreses do not do that here. Instead, they point to evidence in the record — Mr. Colindres‘s clean criminal history and his lack of gang tattoos, for example — that they say undercuts the Government‘s decision. Colindres Br. 51-52. But disagreeing with the Government‘s decision to discount that evidence falls well short of the kind of clear showing necessary to establish bad faith. Cf. NRDC v. SEC, 606 F.2d 1031, 1049 n.23 (D.C. Cir. 1979) (giving examples of evidence sufficient to rebut the presumption of agency regularity); Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250, 264 (2006) (the similar presumption of prosecutorial regularity can be rebutted when a prosecutor admits to improper “retaliatory thinking” or “rubber stamp[ing]” decisions).
The Colindreses’ challenge thus fails on the merits. The Government met its burden by giving a facially legitimate and bona fide reason for denying Mr. Colindres a visa.
C. The Colindreses’ Other Arguments Are Not Properly Before The Court
The Colindreses raise two other arguments to challenge the Government‘s visa denial, but neither is properly before us.
Second, the Colindreses contend that the visa denial violated the Equal Protection Clause. But they forfeited that argument by raising it in a single-sentence footnote of their appellate brief. Colindres Br. 47, n.5; see also CTS Corp. v. EPА, 759 F.3d 52, 64 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (“hiding an argument” in a footnote “and then articulating it in only a conclusory fashion” is “forfeiture“).
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To get judicial review, the Colindreses must show that the Government‘s decision to deny Mr. Colindres a visa burdened Mrs. Colindres‘s constitutional rights. They cannot do that here.
And even if they could, the Government would win on the merits. To survive judicial review, it need only cite a statute listing a factual basis for denying a visa. It did that here.
In Part II.A, my colleagues hold that a person‘s fundamental constitutional right to marriage does not include any protected liberty interest in living in the United States with her spouse. And because there is no protected interest to which due process protections apply, there is no need to apply any due process scrutiny, even a relaxed form of review. On that view, the government could deny an American citizen‘s spouse a visa to reenter the country—thus depriving the citizen of the company of her spouse in the country ever again—without any explanation and for a wholly arbitrary reason, and that result would not implicate the fundamental right to marriage so as to trigger due process scrutiny. To be sure, as my colleagues note, our court issued a decision 65 years ago holding that the deportation of a citizen‘s spouse did not violate the citizen‘s right to marriage. Swartz v. Rogers, 254 F.2d 338, 339 (D.C. Cir. 1958). But insofar as that decision rested on the notion that the right to marriage does not include any protected interest in living in the country with one‘s spouse, we have had no occasion to reassess the issue afresh in the intervening decades.
The Supreme Court has since “acknowledged,” though, that when a foreign scholar is denied admission into the country to speak at a conference, an American professor‘s constitutional “right to receive information” is “implicated,”
Notably, when the Supreme Court recently considered the same issue in Kerry v. Din, 576 U.S. 86 (2015), a majority of the Court either assumed or concluded that the right to marriage includes a protected interest in living with one‘s spouse in the country. Id. at 102 (Kennedy, J., joined by Alito, J., concurring in the judgment); id. at 107–10 (Breyer, J., joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor & Kagan, JJ., dissenting). In deciding to the contrary, my colleagues rely on the plurality opinion in Din joined by three Justices. See id. at 88–101 (plurality opinion). But the remaining six Justices expressly declined to join the plurality‘s resolution of the issue. Id. at 102 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment); id. at 107 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
There is no need for us to take up the merits of that constitutional question anew in this case, and I would refrain from doing so. Rather, we can rest our decision solely on the ground my colleagues address in Part II.B of the court‘s opinion—i.e., that even assuming Mrs. Colindres‘s fundamental right to marriage includes a protected interest in living in the country with her husband, such that at least some form of due process scrutiny applies, the government‘s denial of a visa to him afforded her adequate process. That is precisely how the controlling opinion in Din resolved that case. Id. at 102 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). I would follow the same course here.
That brings me to Part II.B of the court‘s opinion. While I agree with my colleagues’ conclusion in that Part that the government provided whatever process may have been due in this case, my route for reaching that conclusion differs in part. As my colleagues explain (Maj. Op. 10), the question is whether the government gave “a facially legitimate and bona fide reason” for denying Mr. Colindres Juarez a visa. Mandel, 408 U.S. at 770; see Din, 576 U.S. at 103–04 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). The government‘s citation of an applicable admissibility statute as its basis for denying a visa establishes that the reason for its denial is “facially legitimate,” as it “show[s] that the denial rested on a determination that [the applicant] did not satisfy the statute‘s requirements.” Din, 576 U.S. at 104–05 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment). Such a statutory reference can also show that the government
In the event the statute speaks in sufficiently broad terms that it does not itself “specif[y] discrete factual predicates” for denying a visa, the government can still satisfy due process by “disclos[ing] the facts motivating [its] decision to deny” the visa under the statute. Id. In Mandel, for instance, the relevant statute was framed in highly general terms that “granted the Attorney General nearly unbridled discretion,” but the government‘s disclosure of the underlying “facts motivating [its] decision” under the statute—viz., “Mandel‘s abuse of past visas“—satisfied due process. Id. at 103, 105. Disclosure of such facts shows a “bona fide” basis for denying a visa by conveying why the government believes a broadly framed statute applies in a particular case. See id. at 105.
In this case, the statute under which the government denied Mr. Colindres Juarez a visa is
I might well side with my colleagues if it were necessary to decide the issue, but we generally “avoid creating circuit