SELENA JEAN COOPER BUTT, ex rel Q.T.R., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General; CHAD F. WOLF, Acting Secretary, Department of Homeland Security, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 19-3716
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
Decided and Filed: March 31, 2020
20a0102p.06
Before: BOGGS, CLAY, and GIBBONS, Circuit Judges.
RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b). File Name: 20a0102p.06
COUNSEL
ON BRIEF: George A. Katchmer, Bloomingburg, Ohio, for Appellant. Kevin Koller, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY‘S OFFICE, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellee.
OPINION
CLAY, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff, a United States citizen child, appeals the district court‘s order dismissing his
BACKGROUND
Plaintiff brings this action for declaratory relief through his mother. Plaintiff is a United States citizen child residing in Columbus, Ohio. Plaintiff‘s father is a Pakistani citizen and previously a legal permanent resident of the United States. Plaintiff‘s father was removed from the United States pursuant to a removal order issued in Cleveland, Ohio.
Plaintiff‘s filings do not indicate when his father‘s removal proceeding took place and Plaintiff does not indicate the case name or number for his father‘s removal proceedings. Plaintiff‘s filings also do not provide any information about why his father was removed—for example, which provision of the
In any event, Plaintiff sought two declarations from the district court concerning his father‘s removal. First, Plaintiff requested a declaration that his father‘s removal was unconstitutional as applied to Plaintiff. Specifically, Plaintiff alleges that his father‘s removal violates Plaintiff‘s rights under the
Plaintiff appeals the district court‘s order granting Defendants’ motion to dismiss.
DISCUSSION
A. Standard of Review
This Court reviews de novo a district court‘s grant of a motion to dismiss pursuant to
This Court also has an independent duty to assess subject matter jurisdiction. E.g., Wachovia Bank v. Schmidt, 546 U.S. 303, 316 (2006). “We review a district court‘s findings as to whether it had subject matter jurisdiction de novo.” Mehanna v. USCIS, 677 F.3d 312, 314 (6th Cir. 2012) (quoting Carson v. U.S. Office of Special Counsel, 633 F.3d 487, 491 (6th Cir. 2011)).
B. Forfeiture
At the outset, Defendants argue that Plaintiff has forfeited all of his arguments on appeal by not opposing Defendants’ motion to dismiss in the district court. However, the district court ruled on the merits of Defendants’ motion based on Plaintiff‘s allegations in his complaint, and Plaintiff‘s complaint was sufficient to provide Defendants with the requisite notice of all of the claims that he now presents on appeal. Therefore, we do not enforce our forfeiture rule in the present case. See, e.g., Harris v. Klare, 902 F.3d 630, 636 (6th Cir. 2018) (explaining that the forfeiture rule “is born of the need ‘to ease appellate review by ensuring that district courts consider issues first, and to prevent surprise to litigants‘” (quoting Great Am. Ins. Co. v. E.L. Bailey & Co., 841 F.3d 439, 443 (6th Cir. 2016))).
C. Plaintiff‘s Treaty-Based Claims
Plaintiff‘s complaint alleges that his separation from his father pursuant to the removal order violates the principles of international treaties, including The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the “Declaration“); the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (the “ICESCR“); and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (the “CRC“). The district court correctly found that it did not have subject matter jurisdiction over Plaintiff‘s treaty-based claims because none of these treaties create a judicially-enforceable cause of action. See, e.g., Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 576 (2005) (stating that the United States has not ratified the CRC); Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 734 (2004) (“[T]he Declaration does not of its own force impose obligations as a matter of international law.“); Rose v. Borsos, No. 2:17-CV-204, 2018 WL 3967673, at *10 (E.D. Tenn. Aug. 17, 2018) (holding that the ICESCR is not self-executing (collecting cases)).
On appeal, Plaintiff concedes that these treaties are not self-executing but argues that the district court should have taken them into account in order to “consider fully the context in which its decisions are made on issues as sensitive as family unity and the rights of children.” (Appellant‘s Reply Br. at 2.) However, Plaintiff has not alleged in what way any of these treaties’ principles were supposedly abridged by his father‘s valid removal, and it is not clear to us that they were. Cf. Bamaca-Perez v. Lynch, 670 F. App‘x 892, 893 (6th Cir. 2016) (per
D. Plaintiff‘s Constitutional Claims
Plaintiff next contends that his father‘s removal violates Plaintiff‘s rights to due process and equal protection under the
Section 242 of the
In Hamdi ex rel. Hamdi v. Napolitano, 620 F.3d 615 (6th Cir. 2010), this Court interpreted
We then held that
Hamdi‘s holding that
Moreover, we are not convinced that the removal of Plaintiff‘s father does, in fact, implicate any of Plaintiff‘s constitutional rights. The district court found that “the law is well-
The same is true for Plaintiff‘s claims under the Eighth and Ninth Amendments. To start, “the
E. Plaintiff‘s Selective Enforcement Claim
Lastly, we must consider Plaintiff‘s selective enforcement claim, which implicates concerns different from those discussed above. It appears that the district court dismissed this claim pursuant to
Plaintiff alleges that he and his mother “were subjected to racially derogatory statements and treated in a racially discriminatory manner by ICE agents, who were white, when interviewed concerning” Plaintiff‘s father‘s removal. (R. 3, Compl., Pg. ID 10.) Construing Plaintiff‘s complaint in his favor as is proper at the motion to dismiss stage, e.g., Engler v. Arnold, 862 F.3d 571, 574-75 (6th Cir. 2017), Plaintiff seeks to assert a selective enforcement claim on behalf of his father. Under this approach, Plaintiff contends that the differential treatment to which he and his mother were subjected during his father‘s removal proceeding shows that his father was removed “based upon ethnic, religious and racial bias” in violation of the
The Fifth Circuit recently addressed this issue, and we find its reasoning persuasive. In Duron v. Johnson, 898 F.3d 644, 646 (5th Cir. 2018), the Fifth Circuit considered a claim brought by United States citizen children asserting that their parent was selectively targeted for removal based on his Hispanic origin, in violation of the
The plaintiffs in that case, relying on this Court‘s decision in Hamdi, argued that their claim was not brought “on behalf of any alien” but rather by U.S. citizens. Id. at 647 (quoting
We find Duron‘s reasoning instructive in the present case and its interpretation of our decision in Hamdi to be correct. Hamdi held that
Plaintiff‘s complaint states that he and his mother were subjected to differential treatment during the interviews concerning Plaintiff‘s father‘s removal. Ultimately, the complaint seeks a declaration that the removal of his father was “based upon ethnic, religious and racial bias” and therefore unconstitutional. (R. 3, Compl., Pg. ID 13.) The Supreme Court has held that “[a]s a general matter . . . an alien unlawfully in this country has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation.” AADC, 525 U.S. at 488 (footnote omitted); see also Elgharib v. Napolitano, 600 F.3d 597, 602 (6th Cir. 2010) (holding that AADC remains governing law for determining if
CONCLUSION
For the reasons set forth above, we AFFIRM the district court‘s order dismissing Plaintiff‘s complaint.
