Filed Eighth Circuit Petition for Rehearing En Banc Denied as Inexplicably as the Order Challenged – Will SCOTUS Give Relief?

Excerpt. Download the FREE Doc of the Day above to read the entire petition. Try to figure out why the Eighth Circuit judges would ignore this and allow it to go to the United States Supreme Court.

Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure Rule 35(b) Statement

The proceeding involves many questions of exceptional importance. (FRAP Rule 35(b)(1)(B)) This petition focuses on three.

1) Whether pro se litigants with meritorious cases lose because of what appears to be a bias against them.

2) Whether the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas discriminates systemically against litigants who can’t afford attorneys, by forbidding pro se litigants from filing electronically based solely upon class, instead of criteria that will allow everyone who is technically and ethically
qualified access to this valuable tool.

3) Whether the regulatory opinions resulting from civil investigations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are authoritative and may be used as evidence of the respondents’ practices.

The panel decision conflicts with the following decisions of the United States Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and consideration by the full court is therefore necessary to secure and maintain uniformity of the court’s decisions. (FRAP Rule 35(b)(1)(A))

A) Nixon v. Warner Commc’ns, Inc., 435 U.S. 589, 597, 98 S.Ct. 1306, 55 L.Ed.2d 570 (1978), well settled. “Common-law right of access to judicial records provides a measure of accountability to the public at large, which pays for the courts.”

B) Whittington v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 21 F.4th 997, 1000 (8th Cir. 2021), well settled.
“Summary judgment is appropriate ‘if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.’ Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).”

C) U.S. v. Melton, 738 F.3d 903 (8th Cir. 2013)
“The recusal statute sets forth an objective standard for assessing a judge’s duty to recuse: the question is whether the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned by the average person on the street who knows all the relevant facts of a case. 28 U.S.C.A. § 455(a).”

D) U.S.A. v. Taleb Jawher, No. 22-2844 (8th Cir. 2023)
A party’s fabrication of business records exemplifies knowledge that the authentic evidence is adverse to that party. Extrapolating, spoliation of evidence gives a reasonable inference that the spoiled evidence is adverse to the party that altered or destroyed it.

E) Friedman v. Farmer, 788 F.3d 862 (8th Cir. 2015), well settled.
“A district court ‘should freely give leave [to amend] when justice so requires.’ Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a).”