Silvana Paloka v. Eric H. Holder, Jr.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• recognizing that a proposed particular 6 social group must be “defined with particularity” and 7 “socially distinct within the society in question”
• holding that an applicant must establish 6 that a proposed particular social group is cognizable and that membership in the 7 group is a central reason for the harm
• holding that “the applicant must establish both that the group 12 itself was cognizable and that the alleged persecutors targeted the applicant on 13 account of [his] membership in that group” (citations and quotation marks 14 omitted)
• observing that the burden is on the applicant to establish both a cognizable group and a nexus
• noting that 2 cognizability of a particular social group is a legal determination reviewed de 3 novo
• explaining that an immutable characteristic is one that group members “either cannot change, or should not be required to change”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).