Harris v. United States

Opinion

1 WO 2 3 4 5 6 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 7 FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

9 Deyoe R Harris, No. CV-20-00337-TUC-JGZ

10 Plaintiff, ORDER

11 v.

12 United States of America,

13 Defendant. 14 15 On August 19, 2020, the Court entered an Order dismissing Plaintiff’s Complaint 16 with prejudice. (Doc. 6.) In that Order, the Court found that it lacked jurisdiction because 17 Plaintiff failed to show that the United States waived its sovereign immunity and because 18 Plaintiff lacked standing to bring a generalized grievance. Now pending before the Court, 19 is Plaintiff’s Motion for Reconsideration of that Order. (Doc. 7.) The Court will deny the 20 motion. 21 Reconsideration is proper upon a “showing of manifest error or a showing of new 22 facts or legal authority that could not have been brought to its attention earlier with 23 reasonable diligence.” LRCiv. 7.2(g)(1). “Any such motion shall point out with specificity 24 the matters that the movant believes were overlooked or misapprehended by the Court, any 25 new matters being brought to the Court’s attention for the first time and the reasons they 26 were not presented earlier, and any specific modifications being sought in the Court’s 27 order.” Id. “A motion for reconsideration should not be used to ask a court ‘to rethink what 28 the court had already thought through—rightly or wrongly.’” Defs. of Wildlife v. Browner, 909 F. Supp. 1342, 1351 (D. Ariz. 1995) (quoting Above the Belt, Inc. v. Mel Bohannan 2|| Roofing, Inc., 99 F.R.D. 99, 101 (E.D. Va. 1983)). 3 Plaintiff asserts that he is “adversely affected, like all Americans” because the punishment for rape and child molestation do not match the crime, and therefore he has || standing to sue under the Tenth Amendment. Plaintiff hopes that this “will lead [the Court] || to change the law for all in our society.” 7 Plaintiff has not met any threshold requirement for reconsideration. Moreover, || Plaintiff fails to address the United States’ sovereign immunity and fails to establish that 9|| he has a personal and individualized injury, both of which are independently sufficient to uphold dismissal. Generalized grievances that “raise abstract questions of wide public significance” are “most appropriately addressed in the representative branches.” San Diego Cty. Gun Rights Comm. v. Reno, 98 F.3d 1121, 1131 (9th Cir. 1996) (quoting Valley Forge 13 || Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 474- 75 (1982)). 15 Accordingly, 16 IT IS ORDERED that Plaintiff's Motion for Reconsideration (Doc. 7) is DENIED. 17 Dated this 25th day of August, 2020. 18 19 □ 20 pote Soipe Honoral le Jennife ve Zfpps United States District Judge 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

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