Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

Chicago police officers arrested plaintiffs for disorderly conduct at a 2005 antiwar demonstration. The plaintiffs brought claims for First Amendment retaliation, Fourth Amendment false arrest, Fourteenth Amendment class-of-one equal protection violations, and state law malicious prosecution. They also brought facial challenges against Chicago’s disorderly conduct ordinance, as overbroad and unconstitutionally vague. The district court granted summary judgment. The Seventh Circuit affirmed on the basis of qualified immunity. The facial attack on the ordinance was rendered moot by an earlier decision, which partially invalidated the subsection on overbreadth and vagueness grounds. The court acknowledged that the plaintiffs’ arrests under a now-invalid ordinance may have affected their free speech rights, but that they did not bring an as-applied challenge to redress such an injury. View "Thayer v. Chiczewski" on Justia Law

A class of persons required to register on the state’s online sex and violent offender database sued the Indiana Department of Correction, alleging that failure to provide any procedure to correct errors in the registry violates due process. In response, the DOC created a new policy to give notice to current prisoners about their pending registry listings and an opportunity to challenge the information. The district court granted summary judgment on the ground that the new policy was sufficient to comply with due process. The new procedures still fail to provide any process at all for an entire class of registrants: those who are not incarcerated. The Seventh Circuit reversed. State judicial post-deprivation remedies cited by the DOC are insufficient to meet the requirements of due process. Although registrants can challenge registry errors in the course of criminal prosecutions for failure to comply with registration requirements, due process does not require a person to risk additional criminal conviction as the price of correcting an erroneous listing, especially where a simple procedural fix is available much earlier.

The Church holds a festival, open to the public, without charge, and obtains a Chicago permit to close portions of streets to vehicles. For the 2008 festival, the parish used a team of paid security guards and volunteer off-duty police officers (parishioners), headed by Kolasinski, a parishioner and Chicago police officer. Members of another church (Garfield) attended the festival to conduct ministry. Its pastor (Teesdale) carried a bullhorn; others carried signs with Scripture verses. The group distributed gospel tracts. Kolasinski, off-duty, wearing a shirt that read “St. Symphorosa Police,” told Teesdale that he could not use a bullhorn or distribute literature without permission. Teesdale attempted to use the bullhorn. Kolasinski handcuffed Teesdale and stated that he was under arrest. Police arrived 30 minutes later. Teesdale was arrested for trespass, a charge eventually dismissed. Teesdale, and others alleged violations of First and Fourth Amendment rights and sought to enjoin the city from preventing attendance at future festivals. A court order permitted Garfield members to enter the festival during specific hours with limitations on the size of signs and a prohibition on sound-enhancement. The 2009 festival passed without incident. The court ruled in favor of the city, but found that First Amendment rights at future festivals were threatened by official policy. The Seventh Circuit remanded that holding for dismissal, based on lack of standing.

A Wisconsin inmate checked out two books from the prison library, and purchased, with the prison’s permission, a copy of To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton (the founder of the Black Panthers). Plaintiff copied on a sheet of paper the Panthers’ “Ten-Point Program,” which appears in all three books. He put the sheet in the footlocker in his cell. A guard discovered the sheet in a random search of the cell. Plaintiff was found guilty, in a prison disciplinary proceeding, of possession of “gang literature” in violation of Wis. Admin. Code DOC 303.20(3). He was given 90 days of confinement in segregation. The prison also destroyed the sheet of paper on which he’d copied the Ten-Point Program. The district court rejected his free speech and due process claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The Seventh Circuit affirmed with respect to the free speech claim, but vacated with respect to due process. “Freedom of speech is not absolute, and the curtailment challenged in this case is slight and the justification adequate, though not ample.” The court made no findings that would enable an inference that plaintiff’s 90-day sentence to segregation was, or was not, a deprivation of liberty.

Petitioner's son was charged with assault and battery on a person over 60 years of age and with resisting arrest. The petitioner is the alleged victim. The son unsuccessfully moved to suppress a recording made by a third party, allegedly in violation of the wiretapping statute, G.L. c. 272, 99. The recording includes statements made by the defendant and the petitioner. The motion was denied. Petitioner sought relief under G.L. c. 211, 3, on the ground that the introduction of the recording into evidence in the defendant's trial would violate her privacy rights. The Massachusetts Supreme Court affirmed. Nothing in G.L. c. 211, 3, or rule 2:21 grants a nonparty to a criminal case standing to obtain review of an interlocutory order. The Legislature has expressly provided a civil remedy, including compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorney's fees, for any aggrieved person whose oral or wire communications are unlawfully intercepted, disclosed, or used, or whose privacy is violated by means of an unauthorized interception. G.L. c. 272, 99 Q. The petitioner does not address this remedy or explain why it would not be adequate to vindicate her privacy interests.

Plaintiff sued defendants under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that the copying and dissemination of her son's autopsy photographs violated her Fourteenth Amendment Due Process rights. The court held that plaintiff had a constitutionally protected right to privacy over her child's death images. But, because defendant Coulter, the San Diego Deputy District Attorney, wasn't acting under color of state law when he sent the autopsy photograph to the press, that claim must be dismissed. And, because there was no "clearly established" law to inform Coulter that any of his earlier conduct was unlawful, Coulter was entitled to qualified immunity. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants.

An Illinois statute makes it a felony to audio record any part of any conversation unless all parties consent and applies regardless of whether the conversation was intended to be private. The offense is elevated to a class 1 felony, with a possible prison term of 4 to 15 years, if a recorded individual is performing duties as a law-enforcement officer. 720 ILCS 5/14-2(a)(1). Illinois does not prohibit taking silent video of officers performing duties in public. The ACLU has not implemented its planned Chicago police accountability program for fear of prosecution. The district court held that the First Amendment does not protect a right to audio record. The Seventh Circuit reversed and remanded with instructions to enter a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement as applied to recording of the kind at issue. The statute restricts a medium commonly used for communication of information and ideas, triggering First Amendment scrutiny. Any governmental interest in protecting conversational privacy is not implicated when officers are performing duties in public places. Even under the more lenient intermediate standard of scrutiny applicable to content- neutral burdens on speech, this application of the statute "very likely flunks." The law restricts more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests.

This case arose when the FCC found that Minority had "willfully and repeatedly" violated 47 U.S.C. 399b when it broadcasted paid promotional messages on its radio station from for-profit corporations. The statute was a a content-based ban on speech: public broadcasters could transmit many types of speech, but, unlike most other stations, they could not transmit three classes of advertising messages. Minority contended that section 399b was an unconstitutional content-based restriction on speech because it banned all paid public issue and political speech while permitting promotional messages by non-profits. The court applied intermediate scrutiny and upheld the ban on the transmission of advertisements for goods and services by for-profit entities, but the court struck down as unconstitutional the ban on public issue and political advertisements.

During the 2008 campaign, Joe, a plumber working near Toledo, asked then-candidate Obama about a proposed tax plan’s impact on Joe’s ability to own a business. The interaction was replayed by national media. Joe later accepted media requests and criticized Obama’s policies, resulting in Senator McCain’s reference to "Joe the Plumber." After Joe’s media moment, employees of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Obama supporters, searched his name in databases and that the Inspector General found no legitimate agency purpose for those searches. Defendants were suspended from their positions. Joe filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging First Amendment retaliation and violation of privacy rights. The district court granted defendants judgment on the pleadings. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. Plaintiff did not suffer sufficient adverse action: he did not suffer a threat to his livelihood, was not defamed, did not endure a search or seizure, and did not experience the public disclosure of embarrassing information. He did not allege continuing investigation or "chilling" of First Amendment rights; "a person of ordinary firmness" would not be deterred or chilled. In his privacy claim, Joe did not identify an interest "fundamental or implicit in the concept of ordered liberty."

Hanners, then a Master Sergeant with the Illinois State Police, used his work computer to send an email to 16 fellow employees, including pictures and descriptions of "fictitious Barbie Dolls," depicting stereotypical area residents. After investigation, an EEO officer concluded that, although the email related to race, sexual orientation, parental status, pregnancy, family responsibilities, and the characteristics of gender, no person receiving it reported being offended. The EEO officer recommended discipline for Hanners and three employees who had forwarded the email. The disciplinary review board recommended, and the director imposed a 30-day suspension. Hanners's promotion rating was reduced. The district court granted summary judgment for defendants in his suit under 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1983. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Hanner did not establish that individuals outside the protected class (Caucasians) received systematically better disciplinary treatment or identify any instance where defendants engaged in behavior or made comments suggesting discriminatory attitude against Caucasians generally or against him because he is Caucasian.