Ritchie v. Blinken
Opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
LUIS ALBERTO RITCHIE, et al., Plaintiffs,
v.
No. 25-cv-1278 (TSC)
MARCO RUBIO, in his official capacity as Secretary of State, et al.,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Plaintiffs are Luis Alberto Ritchie, a 28-year-old American citizen, and his father, Jesus Ritchie Estrada, a Mexican national. Compl. ¶¶ 4, 16–17, 43, ECF No. 1. In March 2024, a consular officer denied Estrada’s visa application on the ground that there was “reason to believe” Estrada was or had been involved “in drug trafficking.” Id. ¶¶ 23–24; see also 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2)(C)(i). Plaintiffs then filed this suit, seeking to compel Defendants to provide a facially legitimate and bona fide explanation for the denial of Estrada’s application. Compl. ¶¶ 63–64, 73. Defendants now move to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). See Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss, ECF No. 23. Although the court is sympathetic to Plaintiffs’ hardship, the doctrine of consular nonreviewability bars their suit and, in any event, Plaintiffs have already received a legally sufficient explanation. The court will therefore GRANT Defendants’ motion.
I. ANALYSIS
To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, “a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)).
“Denying a visa” is a sensitive decision that “may implicate” foreign policy or “changing political and economic circumstances”; accordingly, such decisions are committed to “the political branches, with limited judicial review.” Colindres v. U.S. Dep’t of State, 71 F.4th 1018, 1021 (D.C. Cir. 2023) (cleaned up); see also Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. 667, 702 (2018) (“For more than a century, this Court has recognized that the admission and exclusion of foreign nationals is a fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control.” (cleaned up)). Indeed, because the “Immigration and Nationality Act . . . does not authorize judicial review of a consular officer’s denial of a visa,” federal courts, “as a rule, . . . cannot review those decisions.” Dep’t of State v. Muñoz, 602 U.S. 899, 908 (2024) (cleaned up). This principle—known as the doctrine of consular nonreviewability—is subject to “two narrow exceptions.” Colindres, 71 F.4th at 1021.
“The first exception applies when ‘a statute expressly authorizes judicial review,’” but it “is not at issue here because [Plaintiffs] have pointed to no statute that allows review.” Colindres, 71 F.4th at 1021 (quoting Baan Rao Thai Restaurant v. Pompeo, 985 F.3d 1020, 1025 (D.C. Cir. 2021)). Instead, Plaintiffs rely on the “second exception,” which “lets ‘an American citizen . . . challenge the exclusion of a noncitizen if it burdens the citizen’s [fundamental] constitutional rights.’” Id. (quoting Baan Rao, 985 F.3d at 1024); see also id. at 1023 (“Because the Colindreses cannot show that the Government’s visa denial burdened Mrs. Colindres’s fundamental rights, their suit does not fall within the constitutional-rights exception[.]”). This exception originates from the Supreme Court’s decision in Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753 (1972). But even if the Mandel exception applies, the government need only provide “a ‘facially legitimate and bona fide reason’ for denying [the] visa.” Colindres, 71 F.4th at 1021 (quoting Mandel, 408 U.S. at 770). If it has, the court’s review ends. See id. at 1024.
To the extent Estrada himself seeks to invoke the Mandel exception, see Pls.’ Opp’n at 8, 24–26, ECF No. 25, that attempt fails. The second exception allows only “an American citizen” to challenge a visa denial “if it burdens the citizen’s constitutional rights.” Colindres, 71 F.4th at 1021 (emphasis added) (cleaned up). Estrada, “as a noncitizen [with] no constitutional right to enter the United States,” cannot “challenge the denial of his visa.” Muñoz, 602 U.S. at 902.
Although Ritchie is an American citizen, his effort to invoke Mandel fares no better.
Ritchie claims that the denial of his father’s visa burdens his procedural due process rights. See Pl.’s Opp’n at 8, 26. An individual does not usually have “a procedural due process right in someone else’s legal proceeding.” Muñoz, 602 U.S. at 916 (emphasis in original). And indeed, “Mandel does not hold that citizens have procedural due process rights in the visa proceedings of others.” Id. at 917. Instead, Mandel involved the denial of a visa for a self-described “revolutionary Marxist, Ernest Mandel, who had been invited to speak at a conference at Stanford University.” Hawaii, 585 U.S. at 703 (citing Mandel, 408 U.S. at 756–57). A group of American professors sued, arguing “that the denial of Mandel’s visa directly deprived them of their First Amendment right[]” to hear Mandel speak. Muñoz, 602 U.S. at 918. “To make an argument logically analogous to that of the professors, [Ritchie] would have to claim that the denial of [Estrada’s] visa denied [his] substantive due process” by depriving him of a fundamental liberty interest, and that this deprivation entitles him to procedural due process in his father’s visa denial. Id. at 918–19 (emphasis added); see also Colindres, 71 F.4th at 1023 (“Because the Colindreses cannot show that the Government’s visa denial burdened Mrs. Colindres’s fundamental rights, their suit does not fall within the constitutional-rights exception[.]” (emphasis added)); Muñoz, 602 U.S. at 934 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (“[A] fundamental right may trigger procedural due process protectives over a noncitizen’s exclusion[.] (emphasis added)).
But Ritchie cannot point to any right so “objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” as to be considered fundamental. Muñoz, 602 U.S. at 910 (quoting Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720–21 (1997)). To start, “an adult citizen has no fundamental right to have his or her unadmitted [noncitizen] parent immigrate into the United States.” See Khachatryan v. Blinken, 4 F.4th 841, 860 (9th Cir. 2021); cf. Muñoz, 602 U.S. at 909 (“[W]e hold that a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country.”); Butera v. District of Columbia, 235 F.3d 637, 656 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (“A parent does not have a constitutionally-protected interest in the companionship of a child who is past minority and independent.”). Ritchie suggests that the visa denial’s determination that there is reason to believe his father has been involved in drug trafficking deprives him of his ability to do business with his father. See Pl.’s Opp’n at 7, 13–17. Even assuming a deprivation has occurred—and that is far from clear—Ritchie’s argument still fails because the fundamental “‘liberties’ protected by substantive due process do not include economic liberties.” Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Fla. Dep’t of Env. Prot., 560 U.S. 702, 721 (2010). Congress’s “broad [and] comprehensive powers to regulate Commerce with foreign nations,” moreover, cuts against any argument that there is a fundamental right to transact business with a foreign national. United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 538 (1985) (cleaned up); see also Muñoz, 602 U.S. at 903 (“Congress’s longstanding regulation of spousal immigration . . . cuts” against Muñoz’s contention that there is a fundamental right to immigrate one’s spouse.).
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