Archive for the ‘Civil Rights – Section 1983’ Category
Nieves v. Bartlett and Retaliatory Arrests: Protecting Law Enforcement at the Expense of the First Amendment and Section 1983
Nieves v. Bartlett: The Court’s First Amendment Retaliatory Arrest Decision
The Supreme Court handed down Nieves v. Bartlett, No. 17-1174, on May 28, 2019. In an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court, resolving a split in the circuits, held that probable cause is a defense to a section 1983 claim against law enforcement officers accused of arresting a person in retaliation for his or her speech. But the Court provided what it called a “narrow qualification”: because officers have such wide-ranging discretion to make warrantless misdemeanor arrests for minor criminal offenses–with the potential for abuse of First Amendment rights–probable cause is not a defense where the plaintiff presents objective evidence that he or she was arrested when other similarly situated persons not engaged in the same protected conduct were not.
In Nieves, the plaintiff was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in the setting of “Arctic Man,” a winter sports festival held in Paxson, Alaska: “During that week, the Arctic Man campground briefly becomes one of the largest and most raucous cities in Alaska.” Criminal charges were eventually dismissed and the plaintiff thereafter filed his section 1983 complaint. The facts were disputed by the parties but the plaintiff alleged in his section 1983 claim that he was arrested in violation of the First Amendment in retaliation for failing to speak to one officer and for intervening in another officer’s discussion with an underage partygoer. The district court determined that there was probable cause to arrest the plaintiff for interfering with an investigation and for initiating a physical confrontation with one of the officers, and thus granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants. The Ninth Circuit reversed on the ground that probable cause is not a defense. The Supreme Court in turn reversed the Ninth Circuit.
The Majority Opinion by Chief Justice Roberts
Chief Justice Roberts first noted that this issue–whether probable cause is a defense to a First Amendment claim of retaliatory arrest–had been before the Court twice previously (see https://nahmodlaw.com/?s=lozman) but was not resolved on the merits. He then went on to discuss the general requirement in First Amendment retaliation cases of proof by a plaintiff of but-for causation, citing Mt. Healthy Bd. of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977). He observed that in many retaliation cases, showing the causal connection between a defendant’s animus and the plaintiff’s injury is “straightforward.” But in situations involving claims of First Amendment retaliatory prosecution, the causal connection is much more attenuated, because an officer’s animus in making an arrest, for example, is not the retaliatory action itself, which is the separate act of a prosecutor in bringing charges. The related presumption of prosecutorial regularity was therefore a major reason that Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 547 U.S. 250 (2006), ruled that a plaintiff bringing a section 1983 claim of First Amendment retaliatory prosecution must allege and prove the absence of probable cause in order to proceed further or, in other words, that the decision to press charges was objectively unreasonable.
Chief Justice Roberts, admitting that the two situations–retaliatory prosecutions and retaliatory arrests–are not identical, nevertheless concluded as a matter of policy that the Hartman requirement imposed on plaintiffs in First Amendment retaliatory prosecution cases should also apply to First Amendment retaliatory arrest cases. It accepted the officers’ contention that retaliatory arrest claims involve factual complexities parallel to those involved in retaliatory prosecution claims. For one thing, police officers made split-second decisions all the time, sometimes based on what was said. For another, the Fourth Amendment is an objective inquiry and a purely subjective approach would tend to undermine Fourth Amendment precedent and might even improperly set off wide-ranging discovery into an officer’s subjective state of mind, contrary to the thrust of qualified immunity and Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982). The Court also analogized retaliatory arrest to the common law tort of malicious prosecution, which has an absence of probable cause requirement imposed on plaintiffs.
Finally, Chief Justice Roberts, perhaps prodded by Justices Breyer and Kagan who might not otherwise have joined the opinion to create a majority, recognized that police officers have wide-ranging discretion to conduct misdemeanor arrests even for minor offenses, and could thereby abuse this discretion in violation of the First Amendment. It was therefore appropriate for a plaintiff in a First Amendment retaliation case to have the opportunity to show that, even where there was probable cause to arrest, this is not a defense where the plaintiff presents objective evidence that he or she was arrested when other similarly situated persons not engaged in the same protected conduct were not. This “narrow qualification” to its holding would protect the First Amendment adequately.
Justices Breyer, Alito, Kagan and Kavanaugh joined the Court’s opinion, as did Justice Thomas except for Part IID and its “narrow qualification.” Justice Thomas argued that the common law was clear that probable cause defeated false imprisonment, malicious arrest and malicious prosecution claims, and so the rule should be the same in section 1983 First Amendment retaliatory arrest cases.
Justice Gorsuch’s Opinion
Justice Gorsuch concurred in part and dissented in part in a thoughtful but rather conflicted opinion, observing that the presence of probable cause should not defeat a First Amendment retaliatory arrest as a matter of First Amendment doctrine. However, as a matter of section 1983 and Fourth Amendment policy, probable cause analysis is not “entirely irrelevant to the analysis.” In addition, probable cause may be relevant not only to causation but also to separation of powers and federalism. Thus, he argued that the Court should not at this time have carved out the “narrow qualification” that it did, apparently based on U.S. v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456 (1996), a racial discrimination selective prosecution case. He would have simply held “as the majority does, that the absence of probable cause is not an absolute requirement of such a claim and its presence is not an absolute defense.” He would leave for another day the harder probable cause and First Amendment questions until they were properly raised before the Court.
Justices Ginsburg’s and Sotomayor’s Opinions
Justice Ginsburg concurred in the judgment in part and dissented in part. In her view, Mt. Healthy was applicable: with its burden-shift to the defendant to show that, even without the impermissible motive, the defendant would have do the same thing anyway, Mt. Healthy struck the right balance between protecting free speech and section 1983 law enforcement defendants. “In any event, I would not use this thin case to state a rule that will leave press members and others exercising First Amendment rights with little protection against police suppression of their speech.”
Justice Sotomayor dissented. She agreed with the “eight Justices” majority that probable cause alone does not “always suffice[]” to defeat a section 1983 First Amendment retaliatory arrest claim. However, she strongly disagreed with a “slimmer majority” that a showing of probable cause defeats such a claim unless the person arrested can show that otherwise similarly situated individuals whose speech differed were not arrested (the “narrow qualification”). She commented that the majority did not really try to show how First Amendment or section 1983 doctrine supported this result. In her view, the Court should evaluate section 1983 First Amendment retaliatory arrest claims in the same way they evaluate other First Amendment retaliation claims: under the Mt. Healthy burden-shift test. This test, she pointed out, is not easily satisfied by many plaintiffs even when there is proof of retaliatory animus. Finally, she criticized the majority’s use of comparison-based evidence as “the sole gateway through the probable-cause barrier that it otherwise erects.” This, in her view, will lead to arbitrary results and shield unconstitutional conduct: “a particularly brazen officer could arrest on transparently speech-based grounds and check the statute books later for a potential justification.”
Comments
1. Nieves posed this choice for the Court: protect police officers or protect the First Amendment. The Court chose to protect police officers. It thereby mangled both section 1983 and the First Amendment. Consequently, Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor got it right: Mt. Healthy should have governed section 1983 First Amendment retaliatory arrest claims.
2. The decision in Nieves stems from the Court’s misguided decision in Hartman involving First Amendment retaliatory prosecutions. In Hartman the Court improperly inserted pro-law enforcement policy into section 1983 statutory interpretation in the course of setting out the proper elements of a section 1983 First Amendment retaliatory prosecution claim. This set the stage for Nieves. As I have argued previously–see the post cited above–to the extent that such policy considerations are relevant, they belong on the qualified immunity side of section 1983 statutory interpretation (indeed, the Court has used qualified immunity with a vengeance to favor law enforcement). In this regard, note that the Court in Nieves explicitly cited Harlow v. Fitzgerald, where the Court eliminated the subjective part of the then-existing qualified immunity test in order to protect defendants from what it considered non-meritorious claims.
The Court in Nieves compounded its mistake by extending Hartman (where the presumption of prosecutorial regularity was the driving consideration) to Nieves and First Amendment retaliatory arrest claims, where this presumption simply does not play any role.
3. The “narrow qualification” somewhat helps plaintiffs bringing section 1983 First Amendment retaliatory arrest claims. But the evidentiary burden of proof on plaintiffs to show similarly situated individuals who did not engage in protected speech and were not arrested, and plaintiffs’ ability thereby to end-run a finding of probable cause, is extremely high. Compare the onerous burden on section 1983 plaintiffs bringing claims of class-of-one equal protection violations.
4. Here are the results in real world terms:
(1) Going forward, the law regarding First Amendment retaliatory arrests is clearly established for qualified immunity purposes;
(2) Probable cause is a defense to section 1983 First Amendment retaliatory arrest claims unless the plaintiff can show that he or she was treated differently from others similarly situated because of his or her speech.
(3) Probable cause is not a defense to a section 1983 First Amendment retaliatory arrest claim brought against a municipality whose official policy or custom brought about the plaintiff’s allegedly unconstitutional arrest. This is the teaching of Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, decided in 2018 and discussed in the post cited above as well as in Chapter 3 of my treatise, CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 (4th ed. 2018, West).
Clearly Settled Law and Municipal Liability for Failure to Train: Erroneous Circuit Decisions
Quere: what is the relationship, if any, between the deliberate indifference required for failure to train liability and qualified immunity with its clearly settled law in inquiry? To be specific: suppose a local government and individual government officials or employees are sued in connection with a plaintiff’s constitutional deprivations. Suppose further that the individuals escape liability not because they did not violate the plaintiff’s constitutional rights (they did) but because they did not violate clearly settled constitutional law at the time of the challenged conduct. Can the local government nevertheless be held liable for deliberate indifference to the plaintiff’s constitutional rights? Interestingly, several circuits seem to take the erroneous position that the answer is no.
For example, in Bustillos v. El Paso County Hospital District, 2018 WL 2338812, *5 (5th Cir. 2018), the plaintiff sued a county hospital district and various medical personnel and law enforcement officers, alleging, among other things, that they violated her Fourth Amendment rights by subjecting her to intrusive body searches. After ruling that the individual medical personnel were protected by qualified immunity because there was no violation of clearly settled Fourth Amendment law, the Fifth Circuit went on also to hold that the county hospital district could not be liable for deliberate indifference for its failure to train medical personnel in how to handle government requests to do body cavity searches. It simply quoted from a Sixth Circuit decision declaring that a “policymaker cannot exhibit fault rising to the level of deliberate indifference to a constitutional right when that right has not yet been clearly established.” Hagans v. Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, 695 F.3d 505, 511 (6th Cir. 2012)(emphasis in original)(in turn quoting Szabla v. City of Brooklyn Park, 486 F.3d 385, 393 (8th Cir. 2007)(en banc).
This reasoning is seriously off-base. For one thing, it conflates deliberate indifference to constitutional rights with clearly settled law: the relevant constitutional law may not be clearly settled at the time of the challenged conduct for individual liability purposes but a local government can still be deliberately indifferent to whether its officials or employees could violate that not-yet-clearly-settled constitutional right. There is no specific intent requirement for local government failure to train liability (or for individual liability either, for that matter). For another thing, introducing the clearly settled law inquiry into local government failure to train liability effectively confers qualified immunity protection on local governments, contrary to the Supreme Court’s decision in Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U.S. 622 (1980).
I cover local government liability in detail in Chapter 6 my treatise, CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 (2018)(West, Westlaw). I cover qualified immunity in Chapter 8.
(A personal note: the delay between the immediately preceding post on Excessive Fines and this post is attributable to my deep dive into preparing the 2019 Update to my section 1983 treatise).
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The Excessive Fines Clause, Timbs v. Indiana and Section 1983 Implications
The Eighth Amendment
The Eighth Amendment declares: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Although the Eighth Amendment on its face applies only to the federal government, the Excessive Bail and Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clauses, like many other provisions of the Bill of Rights, have gradually been incorporated and applied to the states and local governments through the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. But what of the Excessive Fines Clause?
Timbs v. Indiana and the Excessive Fines Clause
On February 20, 2019, the Supreme Court held in Timbs v. Indiana, No. 17-1091, reversing the Indiana Supreme Court, that the Excessive Fines Clause is similarly incorporated and applies to states and local governments. The Court, in an opinion by Justice Ginsburg, found that the Excessive Fines Clause is fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty with deep roots in history and our tradition. The Court further rejected Indiana’s argument that the Clause does not apply to the use of civil in rem forfeitures, reasoning that the proper incorporation inquiry is whether the right guaranteed in fundamental and deeply rooted, not whether each and every particular application of that right is fundamental or deeply rooted. The Supreme Court then remanded to the Indiana Supreme Court to determine whether the attempted civil in rem forfeiture in Timbs violated the Excessive Fines Clause.
What does this have to do with section 1983? A great deal, it turns out.
Civil In Rem Forfeiture Proceedings
In Timbs itself, the criminal defendant pleaded guilty to state charges of dealing in a controlled substance and conspiracy to commit theft, and had already been sentenced to one-year home detention and five-years probation, with fees and costs totaling $1203.
But this did not satisfy Indiana. It also engaged a private law firm–a not unusual tactic in such cases–to bring a civil suit on behalf of the state for forfeiture of the criminal defendant’s recently purchased $42,000 Land Rover. The suit charged that the vehicle had been used to transport heroin. Notably, the maximum monetary fine for a drug conviction under Indiana law is $10,000, less than one-quarter of the value of the Land Rover. In addition, the Land Rover was purchased by the defendant with money from an insurance policy when his father died.
Section 1983 Implications
Here’s where section 1983 may come into the picture. The criminal defendant in Timbs, and others like him, can now use the Excessive Fines Clause as an affirmative Eighth Amendment defense to a civil in rem forfeiture proceeding. Going even further, the criminal defendant in Timbs, and others like him, can raise the Excessive Force argument as the basis of a section 1983 counterclaim for damages. Since the civil in rem forfeiture proceeding is brought on behalf of the state, albeit by a private law firm, there would still be state action.
It is true that the state itself is not a suable person for damages under section 1983 (in contrast, local governments can indeed be sued for damages under section 1983). Nevertheless responsible state officials (and local government officials as well) could be sued for damages in their individual capacities. Timbs has now clearly established relevant Eighth Amendment Excessive Fines Clause law for qualified immunity purposes, although what is excessive or not was not addressed by the Court.
Note also that a possible hurdle for criminal defendants who want to bring section 1983 claims against state and local government officials based on the Excessive Fines Clause could be absolute prosecutorial immunity.
(See chs. 7 & 8, Nahmod, CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 (West 2018), on absolute and qualified immunity).
But I am getting ahead of myself here. Despite these qualifications, Timbs is an Eighth Amendment game-changer.
City of Escondido v. Emmons: Another SCOTUS Summary Reversal in a Qualified Immunity Excessive Force Case
The Supreme Court handed down City of Escondido v. Emmons, No. 17-1660 (per curiam), on January 7, 2019. In this qualified immunity excessive force case, the Court summarily reversed and once more chastised the Ninth Circuit for making the clearly settled law inquiry at too high a level of generality. What courts must instead do, the Court emphasized, is focus on the particular circumstances of the case and make the clearly settled law inquiry accordingly.
In Emmons, police officers had previously arrested a man after his wife called them to her apartment complaining of domestic violence. Thereafter, in the present case, police received a 911 call from the woman’s mother about another possible domestic violence incident at the apartment: the mother had heard yelling and screaming over the phone. When police arrived, they could not enter the apartment in order to make a welfare check (two children may have been in the apartment). After a few minutes of conversation between the police (from outside of the apartment) and the woman and an unidentified man, the plaintiff–who turned out to be the woman’s father–came out of the apartment and tried to brush past the officers. One of the officers then took him quickly to the ground and arrested him for the misdemeanor offense of resisting or delaying a police officer. The officer did not hit the plaintiff or display his weapon, and the police body camera video showed that the plaintiff was not in any pain.
The Ninth Circuit found that even though there was probable cause for the arrest, the officer may have violated clearly settled Fourth Amendment excessive force law and thus was not entitled to qualified immunity. It cited one of its own 2013 precedents, saying only that the right to be free of excessive force was clearly established in May 2013, when the events occurred.
The Supreme Court’s Summary Reversal
The Supreme Court summarily reversed, criticizing the Ninth Circuit for making the clearly settled law inquiry at too general a level. It also observed that the circuit precedent relied on by the Ninth Circuit involved the police use of force against individuals engaged in passive resistance, unlike this case. The Court thus remanded for a proper application of qualified immunity.
The result in Emmons is no surprise to those following the Supreme Court’s increasingly blunt warnings to the courts to apply qualified immunity with a good deal of specificity. Indeed, the Court in Emmons itself cited four of its recent qualified immunity decisions to that effect. (See, for example, my post on May 22, 2018, on Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. — (2018)(per curiam): https://nahmodlaw.com/2018/05/22/kisela-v-hughes-another-predictable-supreme-court-excessive-force-qualified-immunity-decision/)
A Hidden and Disturbing Implication?
But what may be a bit of a shocker is what the Court tucked into its per curiam opinion almost in passing: it said that it assumed without deciding that a Court of Appeals decision can constitute clearly settled law for qualified immunity purposes. This is a rather remarkable statement to toss off so casually, since it has been assumed by courts and litigators for decades that in the absence of relevant Supreme Court case law (perhaps also in the absence of a clear circuit consensus to the contrary), a Court of Appeals decision can indeed constitute clearly settled law.
Consider the extreme implications of the Court’s statement: there can be no clearly settled law unless the Supreme Court has weighed in on the specific issue in comparable factual circumstances. Where the Supreme Court has not done so, qualified immunity must always be granted to defendants, thereby undermining individual section 1983 liability except in the most egregious cases. This cannot be correct.
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Brochure for 36th Annual Section 1983 Conference on April 11-12, 2019
As I mentioned in an earlier save-the-date post, the 36th Annual Conference on Section 1983 will be held at Chicago-Kent College on Law on Thursday and Friday, April 11-12, 2019. This Conference is an outstanding value and is suitable for both newcomers to the field and experienced attorneys.
Many aspects of section 1983 doctrine and practice will be expertly covered, including attorney’s fees, together with Equal Protection, the Religion Clauses and pending Supreme Court cases.
The Conference’s nationally known speakers are Kimberly Bailey, Gerald Birnberg, Karen Blum, Erwin Chemerinsky, Rosalie Levinson, John Murphey and Sheldon Nahmod.
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me directly: snahmod@kentlaw.edu
Here is the link to the brochure, with relevant registration details: . https://cle.kentlaw.edu/database/brochures/sec83%20brochure%20201970554751.pdf
Flint, Michigan, the Safe Drinking Water Act and Section 1983 Constitutional Claims
Boler v. Earley, 865 F.3d 391 (6th Cir. 2017), is a significant Sixth Circuit case involving the Safe Drinking Water Act, 42 U.S.C. secs. 300g-1 et seq (SDWA). It arose out of the disturbing and infamous events involving the contaminated drinking water of residents of Flint, Michigan.
The plaintiffs were residents of Flint, Michigan, who were adversely affected by water contamination. They sued various state and local officials and entities under section 1983 alleging substantive due process and equal protection violations, together with various state law claims. The defendants argued that the SDWA showed that Congress intended to preclude the plaintiff’s constitutional claims, thus limiting the plaintiffs to whatever SDWA remedies they had.
Rejecting this argument and ruling that the SDWA did not preclude the plaintiff’s section 1983 constitutional claims, the Sixth Circuit relied on the SDWA’s text and legislative history, as well as its remedial scheme, for its conclusion. The court also mentioned the SDWA’s savings clause and examined the divergence of the rights protected by the SWDA and the constitutional provisions raised by plaintiffs. All of these considerations demonstrated that Congress did not intend to preclude section 1983 constitutional claims when it enacted the SDWA. Thus, the plaintiffs were entitled to go ahead with their substantive due process and equal protection claims.
Comments
1. The precise issue presented in Boler was whether the plaintiffs could even proceed with their section 1983 constitutional claims in light of the SDWA. I discuss this preclusion issue generally in sec 2:46 of my treatise, NAHMOD, CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 (2018)(West). See also Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee, 129 S. Ct. 788 (2009), unanimously holding that Title IX did not preclude section 1983 equal protection sex discrimination claims against school districts and officials.
2. This preclusion issue is different from what I have called the “laws issue,” namely, whether the violation of a federal statute by a state or local government official, or by a local government, can be the basis of a section 1983 claim. See sections 2:27-2:47 of my treatise.
3. Allowing the plaintiff’s section 1983 claims to go forward in Boler resulted in a subsequent (and very recent) landmark decision in which the Sixth Circuit held that the plaintiffs pleaded plausible substantive due process claims against various individual defendants, and also that these individual defendants were not protected by qualified immunity because the relevant substantive due process law was clearly settled at the time. See Guertin v. State of Michigan, Nos. 17-1698, 1699, 1745, 1752 & 1759 (6th Cir., January 4, 2019).
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Younger Abstention and Amended Complaints
It’s not easy being a section 1983 plaintiff in federal court. There are many procedural hurdles facing such a section 1983 plaintiff who seeks damages and/or declaratory and injunctive relief.
Among these hurdles are justiciability doctrines such as standing and ripeness, various statutory bars such as the Tax Injunction Act, statutes of limitations, claim and issue preclusion, the Eleventh Amendment and various abstention doctrines that amount to an exhaustion of judicial remedies requirement. See generally Nahmod, CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 chs. 5 & 9 (2018)(West).
Among those abstention doctrines, typically applied to section 1983 claims for declaratory and injunctive relief, is what is called Younger abstention, based on Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), which is in turn based on considerations of federalism and comity. In its simplest terms, this is the rule: when state criminal judicial proceedings are already pending, a federal plaintiff seeking declaratory or injunctive relief against their continuation will typically be barred from the federal forum.
The Younger rule has been extended by the Supreme Court to include equitable relief against certain pending state judicial proceedings that are civil in nature where state interests are particularly weighty. Pennzoil Co. V. Texaco, Inc., 481 U.S. 1 (1987). The Court has even applied Younger to certain pending state administrative proceedings. Ohio Civil Rights Commission v. Dayton Christian Schools, 477 U.S. 619 (1986).
With this as background, consider the interesting (and somewhat technical) question of whether the filing of an amended complaint can require a federal court to reexamine whether Younger abstention, previously rejected, is now appropriate.
Hill v. Snyder, 878 F.3d 193 (6th Cir. 2017), involved section 1983 constitutional challenges by juvenile offenders, convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, to the state’s no-parole eligibility. The lawsuit was brought in 2010. Thereafter, the Supreme Court in different cases ruled that such a policy was unconstitutional (in 2012) and that its ruling was to be applied retroactively (in 2016). The plaintiffs then filed a supplemental amended complaint (SAC).
The Sixth Circuit found Younger absention inappropriate for the SAC for several reasons. First, the lawsuit was initiated long ago and Younger abstention is “bound up with beginnings.” The SAC was not a new case and defendants offered no authority for the proposition that the filing of an amended complaint requires a reexamination of Younger’s application.
Second, even if Younger analysis were now appropriate, the result would be the same: no abstention. “Plaintiffs should not be punished because the novel position they championed in 2010 was subsequently given a voice by the Supreme Court, a development that necessitated updates to the complaint in 2016. To do so would create perverse incentives that would punish Plaintiffs’ prescience in understanding the direction in which the Supreme Court was heading.”
Comment
The Sixth Circuit’s decision was rather clearly based on Hill‘s unique facts–including the Supreme Court’s subsequent decisions supporting the plaintiffs’ position–and its procedural history. Hill did not purport to set out a general rule precluding the applicability of Younger to amended complaints.
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Substantive Due Process Privacy Violations and Section 1983 Claims
Section 1983 makes actionable violations of “rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.” This includes not only violations of incorporated provisions of the Bill of Rights such as the First, Second, Fourth and Eighth Amendments but also the Fourteenth Amendment’s stand-alone provisions, the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.
As a result of Supreme Court contraceptive, abortion and homosexual sodomy decisions–see Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), as modified by Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992); Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S. Ct. 2472 (2003)–a constitutional right of privacy is now recognized under the Due Process Clause. This right essentially protects procreations, marriage, family matters and sexual autonomy.
See generally my earlier post on substantive due process and the right of privacy here: https://nahmodlaw.com/2014/09/29/know-your-constitution-7-what-is-subtantive-due-processright-of-privacy/
A good recent example of a section 1983 damages action arising out of a substantive due process violation is Perez v. City of Roseville, 2018 WL 797453, *2 (9th Cir. 2018). This Ninth Circuit case involved a former probationary police officer who was discharged after an internal investigation into her romantic relationship with a fellow police officer She alleged under section 1983 that this violated her due process rights to privacy and intimate association because it was based in part on disapproval of her private, off-duty sexual conduct.
Reversing the district court which had granted summary judgment to the defendants, the Ninth Circuit observed that it had “long held that the constitutional guarantees of privacy and free association prohibit the State from taking adverse employment action on the basis of private sexual conduct unless it demonstrates that such conduct negatively affects on-the-job performance or violates a constitutionally permissible, narrowly tailored regulation.” In this case, a genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether the plaintiff was terminated at least in part because of her extramarital affair.
The Ninth Circuit went on to rule that the defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity because the relevant due process law was clearly settled long ago in Thorne v. City of El Segundo, 726 F.3d 459 (9th Cir. 1983). Judge Tashima concurred, 2018 WL 797453, *14, disagreeing with the majority’s reasoning on this issue.
Comment
The broader the scope of the right of privacy, the broader the potential scope of section 1983 damages liability. This is true, of course, for other constitutional violations that are actionable under section 1983.
It is also important to note that the contours of the right of privacy are for the most part clearly established for qualified immunity purposes.
I discuss many other section 1983 substantive due process privacy cases in my treatise, CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 (2018)(West) at sec. 3:78.
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Manuel v. City of Joliet and Accrual: The Plaintiff Wins in the Seventh Circuit
Background
I posted several times previously on Manuel v. City of Joliet, 137 S. Ct. 911 (2017), an important section 1983 malicious prosecution case that came out of Seventh Circuit and made it to the Supreme Court, which reversed and remanded. My most recent post on Manuel, which can serve as background, is here:
Recall that after the plaintiff in Manuel was arrested on March 18, 2011, and charged with possessing unlawful drugs, he was held in jail pending trial pursuant to a judge’s decision. Forty-seven days later, all charges were dismissed against him because the drugs he was carrying were apparently legal, and he was released the next day. On April 22, 2013, the plaintiff sued for damages under section 1983 and the Fourth Amendment, alleging that his detention without probable cause was unconstitutional. Reversing the Seventh Circuit and remanding, the Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiff was entitled to seek damages under the Fourth Amendment but remanded to determine whether his complaint was timely under the applicable two-year Illinois statute of limitations.
On Remand to the Seventh Circuit
In Manuel v. City of Joliet, 2018 WL 4292913 (7th Cir. 2018), the particular issue before the Seventh Circuit, in light of the Supreme Court’s decision and remand, was when his section 1983 Fourth Amendment cause of action accrued? Was it March 18, when the plaintiff was arrested and ordered by the judge to remain in custody, in which case the suit would not be timely? Was it May 4, 2011, when the prosecutor dismissed the charge, in which case his suit would be timely? Or was it on May 5, 2011, when the plaintiff was released, in which case his suit would also be timely? The Seventh Circuit ruled that the plaintiff’s section 1983 Fourth Amendment cause of action accrued on May 5, 2011, when he was released; thus, his suit was timely.
The Defense Argument Based on Wallace v. Kato Rejected
In an opinion by Judge Easterbrook, the Seventh Circuit rejected the defense argument that the cause of action accrued when the plaintiff was brought before the judge and held pursuant to legal process, per Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384 (2007). First, here, unlike in Wallace, the plaintiff challenged his custody, and not just his arrest. Second, and more important, the Seventh Circuit asserted: “[T]he line that the Justices drew in Wallace–in which a claim accrues no later than the moment a person is bound over by a magistrate or arraigned on charges … and [that] all Fourth Amendment claims are to be treated alike–did not survive Manuel.” The Seventh Circuit reasoned that because the Court held in Manuel that wrongful pretrial custody violates the Fourth Amendment even when it follows the start of legal process in a criminal case, “[w] hen a wrong is ongoing rather than discrete, the period of limitations does not commence until the wrong ends.”
The Plaintiff’s Argument Based on the Tort of Malicious Prosecution Also Rejected
The Seventh Circuit also rejected the plaintiff’s analogy to the tort of malicious prosecution, under which favorable termination–here, May 4, 2011, when the prosecutor dismissed the charge–would be determinative. Characterizing the plaintiff’s claim as a Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim was “wrong” after Manuel. The Seventh Circuit explained:
The problem is the wrongful custody. … But there is a constitutional right not to be held in custody without probable cause. Because the wrong is the detention rather than the existence of criminal charges, the period of limitations also should depend on the dates of the detention.
Finally, the Seventh Circuit observed that its conclusion was supported by the accrual principle that the “existence of detention forbids a suit for damages contesting that detention’s validity.” It commented that in light of Supreme Court precedent, section 1983 “cannot be used to contest ongoing custody that has been properly authorized.”
Comment
Once the Seventh Circuit determined that Wallace v. Kato was inapplicable in light of the Court’s decision in Manuel, an accrual decision favoring the plaintiff readily followed, even though not based on the plaintiff’s malicious prosecution analogy. Indeed, the Seventh Circuit expressly, and correctly, declared that malicious prosecution doctrine was irrelevant to what was a straightforward section 1983 Fourth Amendment claim challenging illegal custody.
In so stating, the Seventh Circuit was not only consistent with its own prior case law but also with my long-standing position (discussed in earlier posts and in my section 1983 treatise) that malicious prosecution doctrine should play no direct role in the elements of section 1983 claims. In this view, what is crucial is the particular constitutional claim, here the Fourth Amendment. Indeed, the Seventh Circuit went on to observe that malice was irrelevant to a claim like Manuel‘s: “[T]his is a plain-vanilla Fourth Amendment claim, and under that provision is objective.”
Thus, it bears repeating the Seventh Circuit’s accrual decision was based on the particular Fourth Amendment claim directed against plaintiff’s custody.
Quere: Is the Seventh Circuit’s decision certworthy in light of the Seventh Circuit’s take on the adverse, if not overruling, effect of Manuel on Wallace?
See generally, on section 1983 malicious prosecution, my treatise: CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 ch. 3 (2018)(West & Westlaw).
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Local Governments Can Be Liable for Failure to Supervise Police in Excessive Force Cases, But Not in This Second Circuit Decision
Local Government Liability Under Section 1983 for Failure to Train or Supervise Police in Excessive Force Cases
The Supreme Court ruled almost thirty years ago in City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378 (1989), that local governments can be liable under section 1983 for damages for their deliberately indifferent failures to train or supervise their employees who, as a result, commit constitutional violations.
Under this standard, there must be a close connection–both in terms of cause in fact and proximate cause–between the deliberate indifference (the required state of mind) and the particular constitutional violation. See generally ch. 6 in Nahmod, CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 (4th ed. 2018)(West & Westlaw).
However, proving deliberate indifference and its connection to the particular constitutional violation can be a difficult hurdle for section 1983 plaintiffs to overcome, as witness Outlaw v. City of Hartford, 884 F.3d 351 (2nd Cir. 2018).
Outlaw v. City of Hartford (2nd Cir. 2018)
In Outlaw, the Second Circuit dealt with a plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment excessive force claim against a city that alleged an official policy or custom of deliberate indifference in supervising police officers in the use of force. The defendant police officer had allegedly used excessive force against the plaintiff in arresting him, thereby violating his Fourth Amendment rights.
Affirming the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the city, the Second Circuit found that the evidence submitted by the plaintiff was insufficient to permit an inference of deliberate indifference by the city regarding supervision and the use of excessive force. The plaintiff’s reliance on proceedings in other police misconduct litigation was misplaced because that litigation focused on systemic discrimination against racial minorities.
Also, there had only been two prior excessive force complaints against this police officer: one was filed after the incident here and could not have been a proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries; the other complaint, which was filed after the incident here–although it related to an incident that occurred prior to it–was not deliberately ignored by the city but demonstrated no more than negligence.
Further, excessive force lawsuits against other officers and the claims sent to the city’s insurers might have provided a basis for a finding of deliberate indifference. But there was no evidence of the underlying facts or how thoroughly they were investigated. Some of these cases did not even involve excessive force.
Finally, it was “incumbent” on the plaintiff to “utilize procedures provided by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to compel responses to his request that sought necessary information and that were appropriate.”
Nahmod Law 