Petition for Writ of Certiorari — Fei Fei Fan, Petitioner v. Yan Yao Jiang, et al.

No.

In the Supreme Court of the Anited States

FEI FEI FAN,

Petitioner,

v.

YAN YAO JIANG & WEI WU,

Respondents.

ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTORARI

Fei Fei Fan

10420 Queens Blvd. #20R

Forest Hills, NY 113875

(404) 432-4868

feifei.fan@hotmail.com

April 29, 2025 Pro Se Petitioner

LEGAL PRINTERS LLC @ Washington, DC @ 202-747-2400 @ legalprinters.com

:

RECEIVED

MAY ~ 2 2025

SURE SE TUG CLERK

1

QUESTION PRESENTED

1. Whether the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of

18 U.S.C. § 1595(c) forecloses equitable tolling and

continuing violation principles for trafficking victims

whose visa dependency impaired their ability to file

timely claims, in contravention of the Thirteenth and

Fourteenth Amendments and in conflict with other

circuits’ equitable doctrines jurisprudence.

rb

RELATED PROCEEDINGS

United States District Court (D. Nev.):

Fan v. Jiang and Wu, No. 3:21-cv-00458-RCJ-CLB

(Sept. 9, 2023) (order dismissing all claims)

United States Court of Appeals (9th Cir.):

Fan v. Jiang and Wu, No. 23-16215 (Dec. 5, 2024)

(unpublished memorandum disposition

affirming in part, reversing in part, and

remanding)

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Question Presented gisscexesecssenpcssecaayscserecyesenetiasaenesis- 1

Related Proceedings sissisissesesevaveseceiawenaiacevecsvaxccsauasers i

Table of Cited Authorities ..........ccccccccccccccceeseeeeereees lv

Opinions Below ..........ccccceeeeesseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeasenteeeeeeeaea 1

SULISCICTION.............cccceeeeececceeeeeeceeeeseeeeeesaeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 1

Constitutional and Statutory Provisions Involved. 1

Introduction. sssssncascacessussceeannsccaeseesrareersxecwmimancasccress 3

Statement of the Case ssssscasssssvarsvnnsanncaccvansvenvorssnenens 4

Reasons for Granting the Petition........00.........:.:eeee 6

I. The Circuits Are Divided Over the

Application of Equitable Doctrines to

Trafficking Victim,....... ccvssaxsowessvsvsssssecensens 6

II. The Question Presented Involves

Constitutional Rights and Threatens

the TVPRA’s Core Purpose ..............cccceeeeeeees 8

III. This Case Presents a Clean Vehicle to

Resolve an Entrenched and Recurring

Conflict ...........cccesensccccccceeteeeeeesseeeettesesseeneees 10

ConclusiON .........::ccccceesccseeeseesnneeeeeeeeeeeeeenseneeeesereeeees 11

Appendix

Appendix A

United States Court of Appeals for the

Ninth Circuit, Memorandum, December

Appendix B

United States District Court for the

District of Nevada, Order, September 9,

1V

TABLE OF CITED AUTHORITIES

Cases

Arce v. Garcia,

434 F.3d 1254 (11th Cir. 2006)... 7

Cruz v. Maypa,

773 F.3d 138 (4th Cir. 2014) -scscsvssessensaseousvovsvcen 7

Ditullio v. Boehm,

662 F.3d 1091 (9th Cir. 2011)... cece 6

Constitutional Provisions, Statutes & Rules

U.S. Const. amend. XIII, § 1... ecccceee scene ees 1

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 oo... cceeceeecceceeeeeeeees 1

18 U.S.C. § 1595(6) .ececececcccceseecescesscessceessceseeasensees 2

28 U.S.C. § 12541)... eccccccescsescsesessseesesesseesseeeesceesenees 1

Other Authorities

H.R. Rep. No. 106-487, pt. 1 (2000) .......e eee 8

H.R. Rep. No. 106-939 (2000) .........cccccccseseeeseeeeees 5, 9

Polaris Project, U.S. National Human Trafficking

Hothne Data, https://polarisproject.org/resources/usnational-human-trafficking-hotline-statistics/ ....... 5

U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons

Report (2023), https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-

trafficking-in-persOns-report) .............sceeeceeeeseeeeeeeees 5

1

OPINIONS BELOW

The Ninth Circuit’s unpublished memorandum

disposition is reprinted at App.la—5a. The United

States District Court for the District of Nevada’s

unpublished order is reprinted at App.6a—21a.

JURISDICTION

The judgment of the United States Court of

Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was entered on

December 5, 2024. Pursuant to a granted extension of

time to file under Supreme Court Rule 13.5, this

petition is timely filed. This Court has jurisdiction

under 28 U.S.C. § 1254(1).

CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY

PROVISIONS INVOLVED

U.S. Const. amend. XIII, § 1:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,

except as a punishment for crime whereof the

party shall have been duly convicted, shall

exist within the United States, or any place

subject to their jurisdiction.

U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1:

No State shall make or enforce any law which

shall abridge the privileges or immunities of

citizens of the United States; nor shall any

State deprive any person of life, liberty, or

property, without due process of law; nor deny

to any person within its jurisdiction the equal

protection of the laws.

18 U.S.C. § 1595(c):

No action may be maintained under

subsection (a) unless it is commenced not

later than the later of—

(1) 10 years after the cause of action arose; or

(2) 10 years after the victim reaches 18 years

of age, if the victim was a minor at the time of

the alleged offense.

3

INTRODUCTION

This case presents a recurring and nationally

significant question concerning the constitutional and

statutory protections guaranteed to victims of human

trafficking who remain trapped under visa-dependent

coercion. Petitioner Fei Fei Fan, a _ former

international scholar, alleges that sustained

immigration-based dependency prevented her from

timely asserting claims for forced labor under the

Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act

(TVPRA), 18 U.S.C. §§ 1589, 1595. The Ninth

Circuit’s rigid application of the ten-year statute of

limitations, without regard to the structural barriers

to access faced by visa-dependent victims,

extinguishes the very rights Congress sought to

protect and undermines the Thirteenth and

Fourteenth Amendments.

The courts of appeals are divided over whether

equitable tolling and the continuing violation doctrine

apply to trafficking victims who experience long-term

coercion, including psychological manipulation and

immigration threats. Some circuits recognize that

sustained coercion necessitates tolling to preserve

access to justice; others, like the Ninth Circuit, reject

such doctrines, applying a strict limitations period

even where coercion persisted. This entrenched

conflict has significant implications for the uniform

enforcement of federal civil rights statutes designed

to eradicate modern slavery.

The question presented is urgent and recurring.

Without this Court’s intervention, victims of

trafficking whose silence was compelled by fear and

4

dependency will continue to be barred from seeking

redress, and the TVPRA’s remedial purpose will be

compromised. The Court’s review is warranted to

ensure that the constitutional promises of freedom

and due process are not denied by the very coercion

they were designed to remedy.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE

Petitioner Fei Fei Fan, a former international

scholar, filed suit under the Trafficking Victims

Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), alleging

that she was subjected to forced labor through

sustained immigration-based coercion. The district

court dismissed Petitioner’s claims arising from

conduct beginning in 2006 as time-barred under 18

U.S.C. § 1595(c), concluding that the alleged coercion

did not extend into the limitations period, and

dismissed her remaining claims for failure to plead

the necessary elements under the TVPRA and state

law. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth

Circuit affirmed in part, reversed in part, and

remanded in an _ unpublished memorandum

disposition.

Petitioner alleged that her trafficker exercised de

facto control over her visa sponsorship by leveraging

his influence within her academic institution,

creating an enduring structure of psychological and

legal dependency that suppressed her ability to access

judicial remedies within the limitations period. Her

experience reflects a broader systemic problem.

According to the U.S. Department of State’s 2023

Trafficking in Persons Report, traffickers frequently

exploit visa dependency to isolate victims and sup-

5

press complaints through threats of deportation and

immigration retaliation.! Independent data confirm

the scale of the issue: thousands of visa-holding labor

trafficking victims have been identified through the

National Human Trafficking Hotline in recent years,

underscoring the systemic risks faced by

immigration-dependent workers.?

Victims from countries subject to long

immigration backlogs face especially prolonged

periods of visa dependency, often spanning a decade

or more. For such individuals, continued compliance

with the trafficker’s demands may be the only means

of maintaining lawful presence in the United States,

compounding the structural barriers to timely

seeking legal redress.

Congressional findings supporting the TVPRA

recognized that fear of deportation creates a

structural barrier to justice, and emphasized the need

to protect individuals subjected to immigration-based

coercion.

Nevertheless, the lower courts applied a rigid,

incident-based interpretation of § 1595(c),

disregarding the cumulative effects of sustained

coercion. They refused to consider equitable tolling

1U.S. Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report

(2023), https‘//www.state.gov/reports/2023-trafficking-inpersons-report/.

2 See Polaris Project, U.S. National Human Trafficking

Hotline Data, https://polarisproject.org/resources/us-nationalhuman-trafficking-hotline-statistics/.

8 See HR. Rep. No. 106-939, (2000),

https‘//www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-

106hrpt939/pdf/CRPT- 106hrpt939.pdf.

6

or the continuing violation doctrine despite

unrebutted allegations that coercion persisted well

into the limitations window. That interpretation not

only undermines Congress’s remedial purpose to

protect victims of modern slavery but also exacerbates

a conflict among the circuits concerning the

availability of equitable doctrines for trafficking

victims. The constitutional stakes under the

Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the

systemic threat to the enforcement of anti-trafficking

laws, warrant this Court’s review.

REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION

I. The Circuits Are Divided Over the Application of

Equitable Doctrines to Trafficking Victims

The courts of appeals are divided over the extent

to which equitable doctrines—including equitable

tolling and the continuing violation doctrine—apply

to trafficking victims subjected to long-term

immigration-based coercion. This entrenched conflict

is outcome-determinative and warrants this Court’s

review.

The Ninth Circuit applies the TVPA's temporal

protections narrowly. In Ditullio v. Boehm, 662 F.3d

1091, 1098-1102 (9th Cir. 2011), the court declined to

allow a continuing violation theory where the

principal trafficking acts predated the TVPA's civil

remedy provision, emphasizing that sustained

coercion cannot revive claims absent new postenactment violations.*

4 §1595(c) extended limitations period under later TVPRA

amendments is not at issue in Ditullio.

7

This strict approach contrasts with more flexible

interpretations adopted by other circuits under 18

U.S.C. § 1595(c), particularly where equitable tolling

or continuous coercion is alleged to impair timely

filing.

The Fourth Circuit in Cruz v. Maypa, 773 F.3d

138 (4th Cir. 2014), applied a broader reading of the

TVPRA’s temporal protections. The court held that

equitable tolling may be appropriate where fear,

isolation, and intimidation by traffickers prevent

victims from seeking legal redress within the

statutory period. Cruzemphasized that the remedial

purpose of the TVPRA supports a more flexible

approach to timeliness where coercion impairs access

to the courts.

Similarly, in the context of torture claims under

the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), the

Eleventh Circuit in Arce v. Garcia, 434 F.3d 1254,

1263-64 (11th Cir. 2006), held that equitable tolling

was appropriate where victims delayed filing due to

an ongoing fear of retaliation while the perpetrators'

regime remained in power. The court recognized that

when coercive political circumstances, even after

defendants’ relocation to the United States, continue

to impede victims' access to justice, the limitations

period may be tolled to preserve meritorious claims.

These divergent approaches expose trafficking

survivors to unequal treatment based solely on

geography. In circuits like the Fourth, visa-dependent

survivors may seek redress despite prolonged

coercion. But in circuits like the Ninth, a stricter

continuity requirement and rigid limitations rule may

bar claims even when coercion persists. This en-

8

trenched split frustrates Congress’s remedial purpose

in enacting the TVPRA and threatens the uniform

enforcement of federal anti-trafficking protections.

Review is warranted to restore doctrinal consistency

and to ensure that equitable principles are not denied

to the most vulnerable. Without this Court’s

intervention, trafficking victims’ access to justice will

continue to hinge not on the severity of their coercion,

but on arbitrary jurisdictional lines—an outcome the

Constitution and Congress alike sought to prevent.

II. The Question Presented Involves Constitutional

Rights and Threatens the TVPRA’s Core Purpose

The rigid limitations rule endorsed by the Ninth

Circuit threatens core constitutional guarantees

secured by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth

Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment ensures

freedom not only from chattel slavery but from all

modern forms of coerced labor enabled through

psychological and immigration-based control.

Congress enacted the TVPRA under its Thirteenth

Amendment authority to dismantle such systems and

to provide victims with meaningful access to justice.

See H.R. Rep. No. 106-487, pt. 1, at 3 (2000).

The Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of § 1595(c)

subverts this guarantee. By disregarding the

continuing effects of coercion—including, in many

cases, immigration-based threats that induce

prolonged silence—the decision below perpetuates

the very structural conditions the Constitution and

TVPRA were enacted to dismantle. It perversely

incentivizes traffickers to prolong their coercive

control, knowing that greater delay may extinguish

9

their victims’ legal remedies.

This rigid approach systematically excludes a

class of victims Congress specifically sought to protect.

By equating visa-dependent survivors with ordinary

litigants, and by ignoring the structural barriers

inherent in immigration dependency, the Ninth

Circuit’s rule institutionalizes a form of legal erasure.

Victims most deeply trapped are denied access to

justice precisely because of their prolonged

subjugation—a result fundamentally incompatible

with constitutional promises of freedom and due

process.

The Fourteenth Amendment compounds the

harm. Statutes of limitations cannot be applied in

ways that systematically deny vulnerable groups a

meaningful opportunity to be heard. Visa-dependent

trafficking survivors, particularly foreign scholars

and workers, remain legally tethered to their

sponsors, with termination of employment or

education triggering near-immediate loss of lawful

status under federal immigration regulations. Even

without explicit threats, the structure itself operates

coercively, disabling survivors' legal agency and

compounding the barriers to seeking judicial relief

that Congress intended to dismantle through the

TVPRA. The lower courts’ refusal to recognize these

structural barriers effectively nullifies the procedural

protections guaranteed by due process.

Congress’s findings supporting the TVPRA

explicitly recognized that fear of deportation erects a

systemic obstacle to justice. See H.R. Rep. No. 106-

939, at 56, 112 (2000). Ignoring that legislative

purpose undermines not only Congress’s remedial

10

framework but also the constitutional mandates it

was intended to vindicate.

Given the systemic stakes and the fundamental

rights at issue, this Court’s intervention is urgently

necessary to ensure that traffickers’ coercive success

does not extinguish survivors' access to justice.

III. This Case Presents a Clean Vehicle to Resolve an

Entrenched and Recurring Conflict

This case presents an ideal vehicle for resolving

the entrenched conflict concerning equitable

protections for trafficking victims. There are no

disputed material facts, no jurisdictional defects, and

no alternative holdings that could complicate review.

The legal question is clean and dispositive: whether

courts must consider the cumulative effects of

sustained coercion when applying § 1595(c)'s

limitations provision.

The record below squarely presents the issue.

Petitioner alleged ongoing visa-dependent coercion

suppressing her ability to seek redress, invoked both

equitable tolling and the continuing violation doctrine,

and faced dismissal solely on limitations grounds

without substantive adjudication of these doctrines.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed without resolving the

acknowledged circuit divergence.

No further factual development is necessary. This

Court can resolve, as a pure question of law, whether

victims under sustained coercion are categorically

barred from relief even when control persists into the

limitations period.

Moreover, the stakes are substantial and

recurring. Visa-dependent trafficking victims repre-

11

sent a significant subset of the national survivor

population. Polaris Project data confirm that

thousands of victims holding temporary visas have

been identified in recent years. Yet access to remedies

today turns not on the persistence of coercion, but on

the fortuity of forum. That inconsistency in the

application of civil rights protections urgently

demands correction.

This Court should grant the petition to ensure

that federal anti-trafficking protections and

constitutional guarantees operate uniformly and

effectively nationwide.

CONCLUSION

The entrenched conflict among the courts of

appeals over the application of equitable doctrines to

trafficking victims, the grave _ constitutional

implications under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth

Amendments, and the systemic threat to the TVPRA’s

remedial purpose warrant this Court’s review. This

case presents a clean vehicle to resolve a recurring

and nationally significant question concerning access

to justice for survivors of modern slavery.

The petition for a writ of certiorari should be

eranted.

Fei Fei Fan

10420 Queens Blvd. #20R

Forest Hills, NY 11375

(404) 432-4868

feifei.fan@hotmail.com

April 29, 2025 Pro Se Petitioner

APPENDIX TABLE OF CONTENTS

Appendix A: United States Court of Appeals

for the Ninth Circuit, Memorandum, December

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Appendix B: United States District Court for

the District of Nevada, Order, September 9,

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