A panel of this Court affirmed in a summary order containing a single substantive paragraph. Ricci v. DeStefano, No. 06-4996-cv, (2d Cir. Feb. 15, 2008). Three days prior to the filing of this opinion, the panel withdrew its summary order and filed a per curiam opinion adopting in toto the reasoning of the District Court, thereby making the District Court's opinion the law of the Circuit. See Ricci v. DeStefano, F.3d (2d Cir. 2008).
The use of per curiam opinions of this sort, adopting in full the reasoning of a district court without further elaboration, is normally reserved for cases that present straight-forward questions that do not require explanation or elaboration by the Court of Appeals. The questions raised in this appeal cannot be classified as such, as they are indisputably complex and far from well-settled.
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Four months later, and three days prior to the publication of this opinion, the panel withdrew its summary order and published a per curiam opinion that contained the same operative text as the summary order, with the addition of a citation to the District Court's opinion in the Westlaw and LexisNexis databases. This per curiam opinion adopted in loco the reasoning of the District Court, without further elaboration or substantive comment, and thereby converted a lengthy, unpublished district court opinion, grappling with significant constitutional and statutory claims of first impression, into the law of this Circuit. It did so, moreover, in an opinion that lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal. Indeed, the opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case, and a casual reader of the opinion could be excused for wondering whether a learning disability played at least as much a role in this case as the alleged racial discrimination. This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal.
