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AVTAR SINGH,
Petitioner,
v.
JEFFREY A. ROSEN, Acting Attorney General,
Respondent. |
No. 20-3127 |
On Petition for Review from the Board of Immigration Appeals;
No. A 076 297 680.
Decided and Filed: January 7, 2021
Before: DAUGHTREY, NALBANDIAN, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
MURPHY, Circuit Judge. Avtar Singh, an immigrant in this country unlawfully, applied
for “cancellation of removal” to prevent his removal to India. The Board of Immigration
Appeals denied his request because Singh failed to establish that his removal would cause
“exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to his family. 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(b)(1)(D). In
essence, Singh now raises two arguments: that the Board wrongly held that he did not meet the
requirements for cancellation of removal and that the immigration judge acted with
unconstitutional bias. We traditionally could not review the “hardship” portion of Singh’s first
argument because our cases treated the Board’s “hardship” decision as the type of discretionary
call that falls outside our jurisdiction. The Supreme Court recently held, however, that courts
have jurisdiction to review the Board’s “application of a legal standard to settled facts”
(otherwise known as a mixed question of law and fact). See Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr,
140 S. Ct. 1062, 1068–69 (2020). And the Board’s application of the statutory “hardship”
standard to an immigrant’s facts qualifies as such a mixed question. Guerrero-Lasprilla thus
makes clear that we may review Singh’s hardship argument. That argument nevertheless fails on
the merits. And we may not review Singh’s second argument even after Guerrero-Lasprilla
because he did not exhaust his unconstitutional-bias claim with the Board. So we deny his
petition for review in part and dismiss it in part. |
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KENNETH J. KUBALA,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
RANDY SMITH; TRUMBULL COUNTY, OHIO,
Defendants-Appellees. |
No. 20-3085 |
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Ohio at Youngstown.
No. 4:18-cv-01988—George J. Limbert, Magistrate Judge.
Argued: October 9, 2020
Decided and Filed: January 7, 2021
Before: BOGGS, STRANCH, and THAPAR, Circuit Judges.
_________________________
OPINION
_________________________
BOGGS, Circuit Judge. Kenneth Kubala (Appellant) sued his former employers,
Trumbull County Engineer Randy Smith and Trumbull County, Ohio (collectively Appellees) in
the Trumbull County Court of Common Pleas for (1) sexual harassment (hostile-workenvironment sex discrimination) under Ohio Revised Code § 4112 and for (2) violating his First
Amendment rights, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Appellees removed to federal district court, and the
parties consented to a ruling by a magistrate judge. The district court granted Appellees’
motions for summary judgment and dismissed Kubala’s state and federal claims with prejudice.
Kubala appealed to our court.
The district court lacked supplemental jurisdiction over Kubala’s state sexual-harassment
claim because that claim shares no common nucleus of operative fact with his constitutional
claim. We therefore vacate the district court’s dismissal of Kubala’s state-law claim and direct
the district court to dismiss that claim without prejudice for want of subject-matter jurisdiction.
Kubala fails to show that Smith violated his First Amendment rights because the alleged threat is
too ambiguous. We therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal of Kubala’s First Amendment
claim. |
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