Jacquelyn Brenea N’j Ai v. United States Department of Education, Et Al .

United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Argued March 4, 2024 Decided August 13, 2024
No. 22-5243
J ACQUELYN BRENEA N’J AI ,
APPELLANT
v.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, ET AL .,
APPELLEES
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(No. 1:19-cv-02712)
Alison Fine, Student Counsel, argued the cause as amicus
curiae in support of appellant. With her on the briefs were
Thomas Burch, appointed by the court, and Elizabeth Hope
Garrison and Robert Wedge, Student Counsel.
Jacquelyn Brenea N’Jai, pro se, filed the briefs for
appellant.
Deborah N. Misir argued the cause and filed the brief for
appellees New York University and Long Island University.
Kenneth T. Maloney entered an appearance.

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Richard J. Perr and Monica M. Littman were on the brief
for appellee Immediate Credit Recovery, Inc.
Before: SRINIVASAN , Chief Judge, GARCIA, Circuit Judge,
and ROGERS , Senior Circuit Judge.
Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge SRINIVASAN .
SRINIVASAN , Chief Judge: This appeal raises a question of
personal jurisdiction under District of Columbia law. The
District of Columbia’s jurisdictional statute generally allows
for the exercise of jurisdiction over a defendant for claims
arising from the defendant’s transacting of business in the
District. But that jurisdictional ground is subject to a
“government contacts” exception. Under that exception, entry
into the District for the purpose of contacting a federal
government agency cannot serve as the basis for the assertion
of personal jurisdiction.
On more than one occasion, our court has explained that
the scope of the government contacts exception under District
of Columbia law is uncertain, and we have certified questions
to the D.C. Court of Appeals in an effort to obtain clarification.
The D.C. Court of Appeals, though, has resolved those cases in
a way that has left uncertain one recurring issue: whether the
government contacts exception is confined to First Amendment
activity. This case implicates that uncertainty, and we again
certify questions to the D.C. Court of Appeals about the scope
of the government contacts exception under District of
Columbia law.

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I.
A.
“Federal courts ordinarily follow state law in determining
the bounds of their jurisdiction over persons.” Daimler AG v.
Bauman, 571 U.S. 117, 125 (2014). In the District of
Columbia, personal jurisdiction is governed by the D.C. long-
arm statute, D.C. Code § 13-423. This case concerns
subsection (a)(1) of the long-arm statute, under which a court
may exercise personal jurisdiction over a company “as to a
claim for relief arising from [the company’s] transacting any
business in the District of Columbia.” D.C. Code § 13-
423(a)(1).
That basis for asserting personal jurisdiction under D.C.
law, however, is subject to the so-called “government contacts”
exception. The D.C. Court of Appeals recognized the
government contacts exception in its en banc decision in
Environmental Research International, Inc. v. Lockwood
Greene Engineers, Inc., 355 A.2d 808 (D.C. 1976)
(Environmental Research). Under that exception, “entry into
the District of Columbia by nonresidents for the purpose of
contacting federal governmental agencies is not a basis for the
assertion of in personam jurisdiction.” Id. at 813. “The
rationale for the ‘government contacts’ exception to the District
of Columbia’s long-arm statute,” the court elaborated, “finds
its source in the unique character of the District [of Columbia]
as the seat of [the] national government and in the correlative
need for unfettered access to federal departments and agencies
for the entire national citizenry.” Id. In particular, “[t]o permit
our local courts to assert personal jurisdiction over
nonresidents whose sole contact with the District [of
Columbia] consists of dealing with a federal instrumentality
not only would pose a threat to free public participation in

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government, but also would threaten to convert the District of
Columbia into a national judicial forum.” Id.
B.
The lawsuit in this case was brought by Jacquelyn N’Jai.
At this stage of the proceedings, we assume the truth of the
allegations in her complaint. According to those allegations,
N’Jai attended Long Island University (LIU) from 1986 to
1988 and New York University (NYU) from 1988 to 1989.
While in school, she took out two student loans totaling
$5,500—loans she asserts she has paid back in full.
N’Jai contends that, in 1993, a bank analyst used her name
to falsely certify federal student loans amounting to $21,200.
She claims that NYU and LIU signed her name on the false
loan applications and then withheld refunds from the loans.
N’Jai unsuccessfully attempted to dispute the loans by
appealing to the U.S. Department of Education. N’Jai claims
that, after the amount owed on the loans ballooned to $66,000
due to interest and nonpayment, the Department tried to collect
on the loans by contracting with debt collectors, including
Immediate Credit Recovery, Inc. (ICR), and FMS Investment
Corporation (FMS). She maintains that those debt collectors
used unlawful practices in their efforts to collect on the
allegedly fraudulent loans. And she asserts that the Department
unlawfully garnished her tax refund and threatened to garnish
her Social Security checks.
N’Jai filed this action against the Department of
Education, NYU, LIU, ICR, and FMS, among others, alleging
various violations of federal law. N’Jai v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ.,
No. 19-cv-02712, 2021 WL 1209281, at *2 (D.D.C. Mar. 31,
2021). The district court dismissed the claims against LIU,
NYU, ICR, and FMS for lack of personal jurisdiction based on

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the government contacts exception. Id. at *4–7; N’Jai v. U.S.
Dep’t of Educ., No. 19-cv-02712, 2022 WL 4078948, at *2–3
(D.D.C. Sept. 6, 2022). The court dismissed N’Jai’s claims
against the remaining defendants for reasons other than a lack
of personal jurisdiction. N’Jai, 2021 WL 1209281 at *7–13;
N’Jai v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ., No. 19-cv-02712, 2022 WL
898859 (D.D.C. Mar. 28, 2022).
N’Jai appealed. This court summarily affirmed the district
court’s dismissals against various defendants for reasons other
than a lack of personal jurisdiction. N’Jai v. U.S. Dep’t of
Educ., No. 22-5243, 2023 WL 3848363 (D.C. Cir. June 2,
2023); N’Jai v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ., No. 22-5243, 2023 WL
5155786 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 4, 2023). That leaves N’Jai’s appeal
of the dismissals of the claims against NYU, LIU, ICR, and
FMS for lack of personal jurisdiction. As to that remaining part
of her appeal, our court appointed an amicus curiae to present
arguments supporting N’Jai’s position on the issue of personal
jurisdiction, including on “whether the ‘government contacts
exception’ to personal jurisdiction under District of Columbia
law is limited to activities protected by the First Amendment of
the Constitution.” N’Jai, 2023 WL 5155786, at *1.
II.
N’Jai argues that the district court has personal jurisdiction
over NYU, LIU, ICR, and FMS under the D.C. long-arm
statute based on their contacts with the Department of
Education, a federal government agency located in the District.
According to N’Jai, NYU and LIU have engaged in long-term
contacts with the Department by applying to and receiving
approval from the Department to participate in the federal
student loan program, completing student loan applications,
and certifying student loans. As for ICR and FMS, N’Jai
asserts that they, too, have participated in long-term contacts

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with the Department by seeking approval to participate in the
federal student loan program and contracting with the
Department to collect on delinquent loans. N’jai connects her
asserted injuries—all of which relate to the administration of
the allegedly fraudulent federal student loans in her name—to
the defendants’ contacts with the Department in the District. In
support of N’Jai’s position on personal jurisdiction, the court-
appointed amicus argues that the government contacts
exception under D.C. law is limited to activities protected by
the First Amendment.
The defendants argue that the district court properly
determined it could not assert personal jurisdiction over them
due to the government contacts exception. They cite federal
district court decisions for the proposition that the government
contacts exception covers participation in the federal student
loan program. See Morgan v. Richmond Sch. of Health &
Tech., Inc., 857 F. Supp. 2d 104, 107–08 (D.D.C. 2012);
Stevens v. Del. State Univ., 70 F. Supp. 3d 562, 565–65 (D.D.C.
2014). The university defendants, LIU and NYU, contend that
the government contacts exception is not confined to First
Amendment activity.
In assessing whether the government contacts exception
precludes the assertion of personal jurisdiction over the
remaining defendants in this case, a key question is whether
that exception is confined to First Amendment activity (and if
so, what kinds of activity qualify). On several occasions, our
court has noted the seeming uncertainty on that question under
D.C. law.
That uncertainty arises from the decision of a panel of the
D.C. Court of Appeals in Rose v. Silver, 394 A.2d 1368 (1978),
which came two years after the en banc D.C. Court of Appeals
recognized the government contacts exception in

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Environmental Research, 355 A.2d 808. In Rose, this court has
explained, “a panel of the same court [i.e., the D.C. Court of
Appeals] appeared to limit the ‘government contacts’
exception to activities implicating first amendment rights.”
Naartex Consulting Corp. v. Watt, 722 F.2d 779, 786 (D.C. Cir.
1983). As we noted at the time, however, “a panel of the
District of Columbia Court of Appeals ‘is prohibited from
issuing an opinion which conflicts materially with a prior
decision of [the en banc] court as this may be done only by the
court sitting en banc.’” Id. (quoting Rose v. Silver, 398 A.2d
787, 787 (D.C. 1979) (denying petition for rehearing en banc)
(Gallagher, J., concurring)). But when the D.C. Court of
Appeals denied “rehearing en banc in the Rose case, the [en
banc] court failed to explain or reconcile the apparent conflict
with the Environmental Research opinion.” Id. We added that,
“if it were necessary to determine what law controls today in
the District of Columbia, we would still be hesitant to conclude
that the clear holding against governmental contacts as a basis
for personal jurisdiction in Environmental Research no longer
controls.” Id. But we ultimately did not need to resolve the
issue because the contacts at issue in Naartex “implicate[d] the
first amendment” and “so would qualify for exemption under
the Rose test as well.” Id. at 787.
In a later decision, we reiterated that the “scope of the
government contacts exception is unsettled . . . under the D.C.
Court of Appeals’ precedents.” Companhia Brasileira
Carbureto de Calicio v. Applied Indus. Materials Corp., 640
F.3d 369, 371 (D.C. Cir. 2011). We said that, while “the
government contacts exception articulated in Environmental
Research” would indicate that “there was no jurisdiction in this
case,” the “subsequent decision of a D.C. Court of Appeals
panel [in Rose] may have limited the government contacts
exception to cases in which the contacts with the federal
government were an exercise of First Amendment rights.” Id.

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at 372. Because “the scope of the government contacts
exception [was] genuinely uncertain” and because the issue
was “of sufficient public importance,” we certified to the D.C.
Court of Appeals the question whether personal jurisdiction
existed in the circumstances at hand. Id. at 373. The D.C.
Court of Appeals then held that personal jurisdiction existed in
the case, but without resolving the “uncertainty” created by its
decision in Rose about whether “rationales apart from the First
Amendment” can “support the government contacts doctrine.”
Companhia Brasileira Carbureto De Calcio v. Applied Indus.
Materials Corp., 35 A.3d 1127, 1133 n.5 (D.C. 2012).
We recently revisited that uncertainty once again in
Akhmetshin v. Browder, 993 F.3d 922 (D.C. Cir. 2021). There,
we explained that “decisions of the D.C. Court of
Appeals . . . have left the scope of the government contacts
exception unsettled.” Id. at 928 (internal quotation marks
omitted). We “decided to certify questions to the D.C. Court
of Appeals regarding the circumstances in which the
government contacts exception applies.” Id. at 925. One of the
certified questions asked whether a defendant must “possess
cognizable rights pursuant to the First Amendment generally,
or any specific clause thereunder, in order to invoke the
exception.” Id. at 929. The D.C. Court of Appeals
acknowledged that “there has been ongoing confusion as to the
scope of the [government contacts] principle.” Akhmetshin v.
Browder, 275 A.3d 290, 294 (D.C. 2022). But the court
ultimately decided that there was no personal jurisdiction in the
case for separate reasons, without definitively settling whether
the government contacts exception is limited to First
Amendment activity or the scope of any such limitation. Id. at
294–96.
Due to continuing uncertainty about the scope of activities
encompassed by the government contacts exception under D.C.

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law, we again opt to certify questions to the D.C. Court of
Appeals. That court may answer certified questions of law if
they “may be determinative of [a] cause pending . . . as to
which it appears . . . there is no controlling precedent in the
[court’s] decisions.” D.C. Code § 11-723(a). We accordingly
have certified questions to the D.C. Court of Appeals “when
‘District of Columbia law is genuinely uncertain’ and the
question is of ‘extreme public importance.’” Companhia, 640
F.3d at 373 (quoting Sturdza v. United Arab Emirates, 281 F.3d
1287, 1303 (D.C. Cir. 2002)). Both of those conditions are
satisfied here, as we have already determined when certifying
closely related questions to the D.C. Court of Appeals in
Companhia, 640 F.3d at 373, and Akhmetshin, 993 F.3d at 928–
29.
We therefore certify the following questions to the D.C.
Court of Appeals:
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?
So ordered.

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