N'Jai v. U.S. Department of Education

• Court: District of Columbia Court of Appeals
• Decided: September 4, 2025
• Docket: 24-SP-0735
• Status: Published

Opinion

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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS

No. 24-SP-0735

JACQUELYN BRENEA N’JAI, APPELLANT,

V.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, et al., APPELLEES.

On Certified Question from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (22-5243)

(Argued May 14, 2025 Decided September 4, 2025)

Jacquelyn Brenea N’Jai, pro se.

Taylor Stablein and Garfield McIntyre, Jr., Student Counsel, with whom Thomas Burch, appearing by invitation of the court, was on the briefs, for the University of Georgia School of Law Appellate Litigation Clinic, amicus curiae in support of appellant.

Natalie J. Salmanowitz, with whom Jessica L. Ellsworth and Odunayo Durojaye were on the briefs, for appellees New York University and Long Island University.

Before BLACKBURNE-RIGSBY, Chief Judge, MCLEESE, Associate Judge, and WASHINGTON, Senior Judge.

MCLEESE, Associate Judge: The United States Court of Appeals for the

District of Columbia Circuit has certified the following questions to this court: 2

1. Under District of Columbia law, is the government contacts exception to personal jurisdiction limited to First Amendment activity between the defendant and a government entity?

2. If the first question is answered in the affirmative, are the contacts with the Department of Education alleged in the amended complaint here covered under the exception?

When considering certified questions, “we are not limited to the designated

questions of law but may exercise our prerogative to frame the basic issues as we

see fit for an informed decision.” Akhmetshin v. Browder, 275 A.3d 290, 292 (D.C.

2022) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). We conclude that (1) under

this court’s decision in Rose v. Silver, 394 A.2d 1368, 1374 (D.C. 1978), the

government-contacts exception applies only if a defendant can establish that relying

on the conduct at issue as a basis for personal jurisdiction would violate the First

Amendment; and (2) although our decision in Rose is at least arguably inconsistent

with this court’s prior decision in Environmental Research International, Inc. v.

Lockwood Greene Engineers, Inc. (ERI), 355 A.2d 808 (D.C. 1976) (en banc), Rose

is the binding precedent for current purposes.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

In an opinion issued in connection with its order certifying questions to this

court, the D.C. Circuit outlined the pertinent factual background. N’Jai v. U.S. Dep’t 3

of Educ., 111 F.4th 1288, 1290 (D.C. Cir. 2024). Assuming the truth of Ms. N’Jai’s

allegations, Ms. N’Jai attended Long Island University (LIU) from 1986 to 1988 and

New York University (NYU) from 1988 to 1989. Id. While in school, she took out

two student loans totaling $5,500, which Ms. N’Jai has paid back in full. Id.

In 1993, a bank analyst used Ms. N’Jai’s name to falsely certify federal

student loans amounting to $21,200. N’Jai, 111 F. 4th at 1290. NYU and LIU

signed Ms. N’Jai’s name on false loan applications and then withheld refunds from

the loans. Id. Ms. N’Jai unsuccessfully appealed to the United States Department

of Education (DOE). Id. After the amount owed on the loans increased to $66,000

due to interest and nonpayment, DOE tried to collect on the loans by contracting

with debt collectors, including Immediate Credit Recovery, Inc. (ICI) and FMS

Investment Corporation (FMS). Id. The debt collectors used unlawful practices in

their efforts to collect on the fraudulent loans. Id. Finally, DOE unlawfully

garnished Ms. N’Jai’s tax refund and threatened to garnish her Social Security

checks. Id.

Ms. N’Jai sued DOE, NYU, LIU, ICI, FMS, and others. N’Jai, 111 F.4th at

1290. The trial court dismissed the claims against NYU, LIU, ICI, and FMS for lack

of personal jurisdiction based on the government-contacts exception. Id. at 1290-91.

The trial court dismissed Ms. N’Jai’s claims against other defendants on different 4

grounds. Id. at 1291. Ms. N’Jai appealed, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed the

dismissal of the latter group of defendants. Id. With respect to the trial court’s ruling

relying on the government-contacts exception to dismiss the claims against NYU,

LIU, ICI, and FMS, the D.C. Circuit certified the questions noted above. Id. at 1291,

1293. ICI and FMS have not participated in the proceedings in this court.

II. Analysis

The District of Columbia “long-arm” statute, D.C. Code § 13-423, provides

that the courts of the District have personal jurisdiction over claims arising from

various types of conduct related to the District, including, among other things,

“transacting any business in the District,” id. § 13-423(a)(1), and causing “tortious

injury” in the District under specified circumstances, id. § 13-423(a)(3), (4).

“The government contacts principle predates the enactment of the D.C.

long-arm statute, originating as a way of determining what it meant to be ‘doing

business’ in the District within the meaning of the service-of-process statute then in

effect.” Akhmetshin, 275 A.3d at 292 (citing D.C. Code § 13-103 (1940)). In ERI,

this court addressed the question whether the “transacting any business” provision

of the long-arm statute, D.C. Code § 13-423(a)(1), incorporated a

government-contacts exception. 355 A.2d at 810-14. 5

The court answered that question in the affirmative. ERI, 355 A.2d at 810-14.

The court made the following primary points: (1) Congress intended the District’s

long-arm statute to “permit the exercise of personal jurisdiction over nonresident

defendants to the extent permitted by the due process clause of the United States

Constitution,” id. at 810-11; (2) Congress did not intend to set aside the

government-contacts exception when it enacted the long-arm statute, id. at 813;

(3) the government-contacts exception “does not hinge upon the wording of the

statute,” id.; (4) “[t]o permit our local courts to assert personal jurisdiction over

nonresidents whose sole contact with the District consists of dealing with a federal

instrumentality not only would pose a threat to free public participation in

government, but also would threaten to convert the District of Columbia into a

national judicial forum,” id.; and (5) “[w]e believe, although we need not so hold,

that had Congress intended to abrogate the [government-contacts exception] in

enacting the present long-arm statute, it thereby would have been placing an

impermissible burden on the First Amendment right of the people to petition the

Government for a redress of grievances,” id. at 813 n.11 (ellipses and internal

quotation marks omitted).

This court addressed the government-contacts exception again two years later

in Rose. 394 A.2d at 1372-74. The court in Rose reiterated that Congress intended

the D.C. long-arm statute “to permit the exercise of personal jurisdiction over 6

nonresident defendants to the full extent permitted by the due process clause of the

Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.” Id. at 1369. The court then posed the question

whether the government-contacts exception was subsumed by the Due Process

Clause’s limits on personal jurisdiction or whether instead the “government contacts

principle is based upon something more than due process.” Id. at 1373. The court

stated that ERI did not “come to grips with this question,” because ERI relied on the

government-contacts exception “solely with reference to a minor part of the case”

and because the court therefore did not have to consider whether the contacts at issue

in that part of the case “were enough to satisfy due process.” Id.

The court in Rose explained that ERI had indicated that the

government-contacts exception “had emerged with a First Amendment as well as

due process underpinning.” Rose, 394 A.2d at 1373-74. After considering ERI and

other cases applying the government-contacts exception, the court held in Rose that

“the First Amendment provides the only principled basis for exempting a foreign

defendant from suit in the District of Columbia, when its contacts are covered by the

long-arm statute and are sufficient to withstand a traditional due process attack.” Id.

at 1374. The court therefore remanded the case to give the defendants the

opportunity to raise the argument that an assertion of long-arm jurisdiction under the

circumstances of the case “would violate the First Amendment.” Id. 7

The defendants in Rose sought rehearing en banc, which the court denied over

the dissent of two judges who expressed the view that Rose was inconsistent with

ERI. Rose v. Silver, 398 A.2d 787 (D.C. 1979) (per curiam); id. at 787-91 (Harris,

J., dissenting from denial of petition for rehearing en banc); see also id. at 787

(Gallagher, J.) (opinion respecting denial of petition for rehearing en banc)

(expressing view that division’s decision in Rose lacked authority to overrule ERI).

Considered in isolation, Rose seemingly provides a straightforward answer to

the first question the D.C. Circuit has certified to this court: the government-contacts

exception applies only if a defendant can establish that relying on the conduct at

issue as a basis for personal jurisdiction would violate the First Amendment. Rose,

394 A.2d at 1374. NYU and LIU argue that this principle in Rose is nonbinding

dicta, but we do not find that argument persuasive.

The legal principle at issue in Rose was not some passing remark that the court

did not rely upon as the basis for its decision. To the contrary, the court in Rose

adopted that legal principle after explicit analysis and then relied on the principle to

decide the case. Rose, 394 A.2d at 1374. The Supreme Court has held that such

lines of reasoning, relied upon as the basis of a decision, constitute binding authority.

See Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 67 (1996) (“As a general rule, the

principle of stare decisis directs us to adhere not only to the holdings of our prior 8

cases, but also to their explications of the governing rules of law.”) (internal

quotation marks omitted). This court has expressly endorsed the view of binding

precedent articulated by the Supreme Court in Seminole Tribe. Holman v. United

States, 335 A.3d 880, 883 (D.C. 2025). We thus understand Rose to have held that

the government-contacts exception applies only if a defendant can establish that

relying on the conduct at issue as a basis for personal jurisdiction would violate the

First Amendment.

NYU and LIU also argue that Rose and ERI can be read together differently

to establish the following approach: (1) the court should apply the

government-contacts exception as it existed in prior law to determine whether a

defendant’s activities in the District constitute “transacting business” within the

meaning of D.C. Code § 13-423(a)(1); (2) if the defendant’s activities, excluding

government contacts, do not constitute “transacting business,” then the court lacks

personal jurisdiction; and (3) if the defendant’s activities, excluding government

contacts, do constitute “transacting business,” then the court can assert jurisdiction

as long as doing so would not violate the First Amendment. On that view, ERI

interpreted the long-arm statute to have fully adopted the preexisting

government-contacts exception, and Rose did not affect the scope of the

government-contacts exception but rather simply acknowledged the possibility of an

additional First Amendment defense to the assertion of personal jurisdiction. We 9

are not persuaded by this view. To the contrary, the court in Rose was considering

what the government-contacts exception “is based upon” in order to determine the

proper scope of that doctrine in the context of the long-arm statute. 394 A.2d at

1373. Moreover, the court in Rose did not interpret ERI as having fully adopted the

preexisting government-contacts exception in the context of the long-arm statute.

Id. at 1373-74.

NYU and LIU also argue that if Rose conflicts with ERI, this court would be

bound to follow ERI as the earlier decision. We view that argument as raising a

difficult issue. We agree that one can reasonably debate whether Rose’s

interpretation of ERI was the best reading of ERI. See, e.g., Companhia Brasileira

Carbureto de Calcio v. Applied Indus. Materials Corp., 35 A.3d 1127, 1133 n.5

(D.C. 2012) (noting that our decision in Rose had “generated controversy . . . and

uncertainty,” but declining to resolve that uncertainty). On the other hand, as this

court explained in Akhmetshin, the conceptual basis for the government-contacts

exception is itself “uncertain[]” and there has been “ongoing confusion as to the

scope of the” exception. 275 A.3d at 294. Moreover, our decision in ERI is itself

rather unclear. For example, ERI rather confusingly says both that Congress

intended the long-arm statute to reach to the full extent of the Due Process Clause

and that Congress did not intend to abrogate the government-contacts exception.

ERI, 355 A.2d at 810-11, 813. Those two propositions either are inconsistent or 10

imply that the government-contacts exception adds nothing to the requirements of

the Due Process Clause.

We view our decision in Rose as a reasonable—if also reasonably debatable—

effort to determine the scope of the government-contacts exception as applied in ERI

to the District’s long-arm statute. For current purposes, we assume for the sake of

argument that Rose’s interpretation of ERI is not the best reading of ERI. NYU and

LIU argue that, on that assumption, we would be obliged to follow the interpretation

of ERI that the members of this division think is best, rather than the interpretation

of ERI that the court adopted in Rose. We disagree.

It is true that this court has said generally that where a division of the court is

faced with two conflicting prior decisions of the court, the division is “required to

follow the earlier decision rather than the later one.” Thomas v. United States, 731

A.2d 415, 420 n.6 (D.C.1999). As the author of the current opinion has previously

explained, however, this court has not squarely addressed whether that principle

applies when the later opinion, as part of its holding, expressly addressed and

interpreted the initial precedent. Parker v. K & L Gates, LLP, 76 A.3d 859, 879-80

(D.C. 2013) (McLeese, J. concurring). It thus is an open question in this court “how

a later court should proceed if it believes that there is a conflict between an initial 11

binding precedent and a subsequent decision that interpreted the initial precedent.”

Id. at 879.

We hold that, at least barring extraordinary circumstances, the division should

treat itself as bound by the holding of a subsequent decision that interpreted an earlier

decision. A contrary view would have surprising and undesirable consequences,

because it would mean that divisions of this court lack authority to adopt binding

principles based on the interpretation of prior decisions. Rather, each division would

be free to disregard decisions that interpret an initial decision, relying instead solely

on the current division’s own view about how best to interpret the initial decision.

In our view, such an approach would significantly undermine the stability of this

court’s system of precedent. We thus generally recognize the authority of divisions

of the court to issue binding holdings about the proper interpretation of earlier

decisions of the court.

We leave open the possibility that extraordinary circumstances might call for

a different approach, such as where a division’s interpretation of an initial decision

is plainly unreasonable. We see no basis for finding such extraordinary

circumstances in this case. To the contrary, as we have previously noted, we view

Rose’s interpretation of ERI to be reasonable, if also reasonably debatable.

Moreover, we otherwise agree with a number of the substantive points made in Rose, 12

including that the enactment of the long-arm statute undermined a number of the

prior justifications for the government-contact exception. Rose, 394 A.2d at 1374;

see also Akhmetshin, 275 A.3d at 295 (“Moreover, many if not all of the concerns

that underlie the [government-contacts] exception as it has been applied in [D.C.

Code § 13-423(a)(1)] cases can be protected by requiring defendants to show that

the exercise of jurisdiction would violate their constitutional rights or implicate other

existing doctrines such as forum non conveniens.”); id. at 296 (“Other underpinnings

of the government contacts principle can also be protected through existing doctrines

and constitutional inquiries.”).

In sum, we view ourselves as bound by the holding of the decision in Rose

that the government-contacts exception applies only if a defendant can establish that

relying on the conduct at issue as a basis for personal jurisdiction would violate the

In light of that conclusion, we decline to address the second question certified

by the D.C. Circuit. Because the government-contacts exception applies only if the

defendant can establish that it would violate the First Amendment to assert personal

jurisdiction over the defendant, there is no remaining issue of local law for this court

to address. To the extent that NYU and LIU raise such a constitutional defense, the

D.C. Circuit could resolve that issue as a matter of federal law. But cf. Calder v. 13

Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 786 n.5, 790 (1984) (in context of libel and defamation actions,

Supreme Court “reject[ed] the suggestion that First Amendment concerns enter into

the . . . analysis” of whether California’s long-arm statute lawfully conferred

personal jurisdiction).

For the foregoing reasons, we hold that, under the District’s long-arm statute,

the government-contacts exception applies only if a defendant can establish that

relying on the conduct at issue as a basis for personal jurisdiction would violate the

So ordered.