American Pacific Textile, Inc.; v. United States of America

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
AMERICAN PACIFIC TEXTILE, INC.;
et al.,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Defendant - Appellee.
No. 13-16348
D.C. No. 1:10-cv-00018
MEMORANDUM*
HONG KONG ENTERTAINMENT
(OVERSEAS) INVESTMENT, LTD. and
RIFU APPAREL CORPORATION,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Defendant - Appellee.
No. 13-16355
D.C. No. 1:10-cv-00019
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of the Northern Mariana Islands
Ramona V. Manglona, Chief District Judge, Presiding
FILED
DEC 17 2015
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.

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Argued and Submitted June 10, 2015
Honolulu, Hawaii
Before: WARDLAW, BERZON, and OWENS, Circuit Judges.
1. Plaintiffs-Appellants, thirteen corporate employers of thousands of
foreign nonresident temporary garment factory workers between 2004 and 2008 in
the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (“CNMI”), appeal the entry of
judgment on the pleadings in favor of the United States in these consolidated cases.
The district court held that temporary foreign workers in the CNMI and their
employers are required to pay Federal Insurance Contributions Act (“FICA”) taxes,
which fund Social Security and Medicare. For the reasons stated in our opinion in
Ai v. United States, appeal No. 13-17491, published today, we affirm the district
court.
2. The district court may have abused its discretion in staying discovery
pending the government’s motion for judgment on the pleadings as the discovery
related to the question of statutory interpretation at issue in the government’s
motion. However, any error was harmless as the district court considered the
congressional record in construing Covenant § 606(b) to the extent that any
consideration of legislative history was necessary or relevant. Laub v. U.S. Dep’t
of Interior, 342 F.3d 1080, 1093 (9th Cir. 2003) (“A district court is vested with
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broad discretion to permit or deny discovery, and a decision ‘to deny discovery
will not be disturbed except upon the clearest showing that the denial of discovery
results in actual and substantial prejudice to the complaining litigant.’” (citation
omitted)); Alaska Cargo Transp., Inc. v. Alaska R.R., 5 F.3d 378, 383 (9th Cir.
1993) (decision to stay discovery reviewed for an abuse of discretion).
3. Nor did the district court abuse its discretion in denying Plaintiffs-
Appellants the “extraordinary remedy” of amending the judgment, Allstate Ins. Co.
v. Herron, 634 F.3d 1101, 1111 (9th Cir. 2011), because they had notice of the
constitutional claims they sought to add to their complaint well before the district
court granted the government’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. Plaintiffs-
Appellants thus were not entitled to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) relief as
such a motion should not be used “to raise arguments or present evidence that
could have been raised prior to the entry of judgment.” Exxon Shipping Co. v.
Baker, 554 U.S. 471, 485 n.5 (2008) (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted).
AFFIRMED.
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