Background
The FCC issued an order under the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022 that, among other things, reduced rate caps for communications services used by incarcerated people. After the FCC published portions of the order dismissing Securus Technologies’ clarification and waiver petitions, Securus and three public-interest petitioners sought review in multiple circuits. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation conducted a lottery under 28 U.S.C. § 2112(a)(3), selected the First Circuit, and directed the FCC to file the administrative record there.
Additional petitions were filed after the remainder of the order appeared in the Federal Register and were transferred to the First Circuit. Securus and Pay Tel initially sought discretionary transfer to the Fifth Circuit, but their merits briefing argued only that transfer was legally required. Meanwhile, the FCC asked the First Circuit to hold the merits proceedings in abeyance because forthcoming agency action might partially moot the challenges. The court addressed venue first because its resolution could affect where challenges to any superseding order would proceed.
The Court’s Holding
The First Circuit held that the consolidated petitions were properly before it and rejected the providers’ demand for mandatory transfer to the Fifth Circuit. Section 2112(a)(5) requires petitions concerning the same agency order to be transferred to the court where the administrative record was filed. Because the JPML directed the FCC to file the record in the First Circuit and the record remained there, the petitions were properly transferred to that court.
The providers argued that the lottery should never have occurred because Securus’ Fifth Circuit petition was the only qualifying petition filed within the relevant ten-day period. The court concluded that this argument amounted to an unsupported collateral attack on the JPML’s selection and identified no legal authority allowing the First Circuit to nullify that determination. Whether the public-interest petitioners’ earliest petitions were prematurely filed did not change the result because their later petitions were timely, challenged the same portions of the FCC order, and indisputably fell within the court’s jurisdiction.
No party maintained a request for discretionary transfer, and the court declined to order one sua sponte. The First Circuit had already developed familiarity with the consolidated proceedings, while no other court had comparable familiarity with their involved procedural history.
Key Takeaways
- Once the JPML selected the First Circuit and the FCC filed the administrative record there, 28 U.S.C. § 2112(a)(5) required other circuits to transfer petitions concerning the same order to the First Circuit.
- The petitioners identified no authority permitting a collateral attack in the First Circuit on the JPML’s decision to conduct the lottery and place the record there.
- Any jurisdictional defect in the public-interest groups’ initial petitions was immaterial to venue because their later, timely petitions challenged the same provisions and were properly before the court.
Why It Matters
The ruling clarifies that litigants cannot obtain mandatory transfer merely by arguing that the JPML should not have conducted a multi-circuit lottery. So long as the record was filed in the selected circuit under the JPML’s direction, Section 2112(a)(5) channels related petitions to that court unless a legally supported challenge to the JPML’s action is available.
The decision does not resolve the merits of the challenges to the FCC’s prison-communications order. It determines which court will handle the consolidated petitions while those proceedings otherwise remain in abeyance amid possible further FCC action.