FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT VICENTE PALACIOS CRAWFORD, No. 17-16942 individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, D.C. No. Plaintiff-Appellant, 1:15-cv-00001 v. OPINION ANTONIO B. WON PAT INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AUTHORITY, GUAM; EDDIE BAZA CALVO; RICARDO C. DUENAS, GIAA Board Chairman; ANTHONY ADA, In His Official Capacity as Chairperson of the Guam Ancestral Lands Commission, Defendants-Appellees. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Guam Frances Tydingco-Gatewood, Chief District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted November 13, 2018 San Francisco, California Filed March 1, 2019 2 CRAWFORD V. A.B. WON PAT INT’L AIRPORT AUTH. Before: Sidney R. Thomas, Chief Judge, Susan P. Graber, Circuit Judge, and Leslie E. Kobayashi,* District Judge. Opinion by Judge Kobayashi SUMMARY** Civil Rights The panel dismissed the appeal in part and affirmed in part the district court’s summary judgment in an action brought by plaintiff, individually and on behalf of others similarly situated, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Guam law, alleging procedural due process and equal protection violations in connection with plaintiff’s attempts to be compensated for ancestral land taken by the government of Guam for the operation of A.B. Won Pat International Airport. The United States government took control of substantial amounts of privately owned land on Guam for military purposes around the time of World War II. Plaintiff’s ancestral land is in a region where many of the taken properties were subsequently transferred by the United States to the government of Guam, including land where the international airport is now located. In 1999, the Guam * The Honorable Leslie E. Kobayashi, United States District Judge for the District of Hawai`i, sitting by designation. ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. CRAWFORD V. A.B. WON PAT INT’L AIRPORT AUTH. 3 legislature passed the Guam Ancestral Lands Act, which added Chapter 80 to the Guam Code Annotated and established an administrative process for exercising ancestral property rights. However, no claims by ancestral landowners whose land is currently being used for public purposes have been considered and resolved through compensation. The panel held that because the International Airport Authority was not named in either the appealed due process or equal protection violation counts, it was not a proper party to the appeal and therefore needed to be dismissed. The panel further held that it would consider the merits of plaintiff’s equal protection claims only against the Guam government defendants. The panel held that while the Guam legislature had clearly established a process to receive, evaluate, and compensate ancestral property right claims, the legislature did not design the process to be sufficiently definite to transform plaintiff’s expectation into a property right entitled to due process protection. The panel therefore held that provisions of Chapter 80 and the Guam Public Laws, whether examined individually or read together, did not give rise to a protected property interest under the Due ...
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