Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

Louisiana’s Act 620 required any doctor who performs abortions to hold “active admitting privileges at a hospital . . . located not further than thirty miles from the location at which the abortion is performed or induced.” The district court provisionally prohibited the Act's enforcement, directing the doctors to seek privileges. Months later, the court declared Act 620 unconstitutional. On remand following the Supreme Court’s 2016 “Whole Woman’s Health” decision, the court entered a permanent injunction, finding that the law offers no significant health benefit; that conditions on admitting privileges common to Louisiana hospitals make it impossible for abortion providers to obtain privileges for reasons unrelated to asserted interests in promoting women’s health and safety; and that this inability places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking an abortion. The Fifth Circuit reversed, disagreeing with those factual findings.The Supreme Court reversed. The district court’s factual findings, made after a six-day bench trial, and precedent, particularly Whole Woman’s Health, establish that Act 620 is unconstitutional as an unnecessary health regulation that has the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions. The findings show that enforcing the Act would drastically reduce the number and geographic distribution of abortion providers, making it impossible for many women to obtain a safe, legal abortion in Louisiana and imposing substantial obstacles on those who could. The evidence supporting those findings is stronger than in Whole Woman’s Health and showed that opposition to abortion played a role in some hospitals’ decisions to deny the plaintiff-physicians admitting privileges. Delays in obtaining an abortion might increase the risk that a woman will experience complications and may make it impossible for her to choose non-invasive medication abortion. The burdens of increased travel to distant clinics would fall disproportionately on poor women. View "June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed two actions arising from defendants' provision of mental health services to him, alleging violations of his First and Ninth Amendment rights and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The district court dismissed the suits.The Second Circuit dismissed plaintiff's appeals because they lack an arguable basis either in law or in fact and denied his motions to proceed in forma pauperis for the appointment of counsel and for a writ of certiorari. In this case, plaintiff failed to plausibly allege that defendants engaged in state action by violating his constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. 1983. Furthermore, there is no private cause of action, express or implied, under HIPAA. View "Meadows v. United Services, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, a Louisiana church and its pastor, filed suit seeking to enjoin stay-at-home orders restricting in-person church services to ten congregants.The Fifth Circuit held that the appeal of the denial of injunctive relief and related request for an injunction under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 8(a)(1) are moot because the challenged orders expired more than a month ago. In this case, plaintiffs failed to cite any authority applying the "capable of repetition" exception to support an injunction against an order that is no longer in effect. View "Spell v. Edwards" on Justia Law

This appeal challenges the district court's denial of appellants' motion for a temporary restraining order and order to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not issue in appellants' challenge to the application of California and San Diego's stay-at-home orders to in-person religious services during the Covid-19 pandemic.The Ninth Circuit issued an order denying appellants' emergency motion seeking injunction relief permitting them to hold in-person religious services during the pendency of this appeal. The panel held that appellants have not demonstrated a sufficient likelihood of success on appeal. The panel explained that, where state action does not infringe upon or restrict practices because of their religious motivation and does not in a selective manner impose burdens only on conduct motivated by religious belief, it does not violate the First Amendment. In this case, the panel stated that we are dealing with a highly contagious and often fatal disease for which there presently is no known cure. The panel held that the remaining factors do not counsel in favor of injunctive relief. View "South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit stayed an injunction that was issued by the district court against the County and the Director of the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitations Department (MDCR), requiring defendants to employ numerous safety measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and imposing extensive reporting requirements. Metro West inmates had filed a class action challenging the conditions of their confinement under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and seeking habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2241 for the named plaintiffs with a "medically vulnerable" subclass of inmates.The court held that defendants established that they are likely to prevail on appeal. In this case, the district court likely committed errors of law in granting the preliminary injunction when it incorrectly collapsed the subjective and objective components of the deliberate indifference inquiry. Defendants are also likely to succeed on appeal because plaintiffs offered little evidence to suggest that defendants were deliberately indifferent. Furthermore, defendants have shown that they will be irreparably injured absent a stay where defendants will lose the discretion vested in them under state law to allocate scarce resources among different county operations necessary to fight the pandemic. Finally, the balance of the harms and the public interest weigh in favor of the stay. Because defendants have satisfied all four Nken factors for a stay, the court granted the stay pending appeal and motion to expedite the appeal. View "Swain v. Junior" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit denied a motion for a stay of a preliminary injunction that enjoins certain applications of a public health order issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Alabama. The public health order, published on March 27, 2020, mandated the postponement of all dental, medical, or surgical procedures. Plaintiffs, abortion providers in Alabama, sought a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing enforcement of the public health order as applied to pre-viability abortions. After the district court issued a TRO, the state filed a motion to dissolve the TRO and included clarifications. The district court subsequently adopted the state's clarifications and issued an April 3rd order, staying the TRO in part. The state later changed its interpretation again. Based on the evidence presented at the preliminary injunction hearing, the district court determined that the medical restrictions, as read pursuant to the state's earlier interpretation, violate the Fourteenth Amendment.The court held that the state has not made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal or that it will be irreparably injured absent a stay. In this case, because of the state's shifting interpretations of the March 27th and April 3rd orders, the district court had ample authority to issue a preliminary injunction to preserve the status quo and prevent the state from reverting to its initial and more restrictive interpretations.The district court considered Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Smith v. Avino, but read them together with cases holding that the Fourteenth Amendment generally protects a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy. Applying both the Jacobson framework and the Casey undue-burden test together, the district court concluded that the April 3rd order imposed a plain, palpable invasion of rights, yet had no real or substantial relation to the state's goals. The court held that the district court was permitted to reach this conclusion and to issue a status quo preliminary injunction to ensure that the state did not deviate from the Alabama State Health Officer's interpretation of the April 3rd order at the preliminary injunction hearing. View "Robinson v. Planned Parenthood Southeast Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit alleging that TDCJ's adoption and implementation of measures guided by changing CDC recommendations in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic do not go far enough. Plaintiffs filed a class action alleging violations of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, seeking a preliminary injunction.The Fifth Circuit granted TDCJ's motion to stay the district court's preliminary injunction, which regulates the cleaning intervals for common areas, the types of bleach-based disinfectants the prison must use, the alcohol content of hand sanitizer that inmates must receive, mask requirements for inmates, and inmates' access to tissues (amongst many other things). The court held that TDCJ is likely to prevail on the merits of its appeal because: (1) after accounting for the protective measures TDCJ has taken, plaintiffs have not shown a "substantial risk of serious harm" that amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment"; and (2) the district court committed legal error in its application of Farmer v. Brennan, by treating inadequate measures as dispositive of defendants' mental state. In this case, even assuming that there is a substantial risk of serious harm, plaintiffs lack evidence of defendants' subjective deliberate indifference to that harm. The court also held that TDCJ has shown that it will be irreparably injured absent a stay, and that the balance of the harms and the public interest favor a stay. Finally, the court held that plaintiffs have not exhausted their administrative remedies as required in the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), and the district court's injunction goes well beyond the limits of what the PLRA would allow even if plaintiffs had properly exhausted their claims. View "Valentine v. Collier" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit granted a writ of mandamus in part and directed the district court to dissolve a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) enjoining the State from enforcing a COVID-19-related health directive against a provider of surgical abortions. The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) issued a directive requiring that all non-medically necessary surgeries be postponed in response to Executive Order 20-03, directing the ADH to do everything reasonably possible to respond to and recover from the COVID-19 virus.After adopting the Fifth Circuit's reasoning in In re Abbott, No. 20-50264, 2020 WL 1685929 (5th Cir. April 7, 2020), the court held that the State is entitled to mandamus relief because it has satisfied its burden in demonstrating that it has no other means to obtain the relief that it seeks, the State is clearly and indisputably entitled to the writ, and entry of the writ is appropriate under the circumstances.In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), the Supreme Court held that, when faced with a public health crisis, a state may implement measures that infringe on constitutional rights, subject to certain limitations. The court found that the district court's failure to apply the Jacobson framework produced a patently erroneous result. In this case, the directive bears a real and substantial relation to the State's interest in protecting public health in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic; the directive is not, beyond all question, a prohibition of pre-viability abortion in violation of the Constitution because it is a delay, not a ban, and contains emergency exceptions; and the district court clearly abused its discretion in finding that the provider is likely to prevail on its argument that the directive will likely operate as a substantial obstacle to a woman's choice to undergo an abortion in a large fraction of the cases in which the directive is relevant. The court declined to exercise its mandamus power to direct the district court to dismiss the supplemental complaint, and denied the emergency motion to stay the ex parte TRO and for a temporary administrative stay as moot. View "In Re: Leslie Rutledge" on Justia Law

On April 7, 2020, the Fifth Circuit issued a writ of mandamus vacating the district court's temporary restraining order (TRO) that exempted abortions from GA-09, an emergency measure temporarily postponing non-essential medical procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 9, 2020, the district court entered a second TRO exempting various categories of abortion from GA-09. At issue in this mandamus petition is the April 9 TRO.The court held that the district court disregarded the court's mandate in Abbott II and failed to apply the framework governing emergency exercises of state authority during a public health crisis, established over 100 years ago in Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905). Furthermore, the district court second-guessed the basic mitigation strategy underlying GA-09 (the concept of "flattening the curve"), and also acted without knowing critical facts such as whether, during this pandemic, abortion providers do (or should) wear masks or other protective equipment when meeting with patients. The court concluded that these errors resulted in an overbroad TRO that exceeds the district court's jurisdiction, reaches patently erroneous results, and usurps the state's authority to craft emergency public health measures "during the escalating COVID-19 pandemic." Therefore, the court granted the writ in part and directed the district court to vacate parts of the April 9 TRO. View "In re: Greg Abbott" on Justia Law

The Fifth Circuit granted a writ of mandamus directing vacatur of the district court's issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) against executive order GA-09 as applied to abortion procedures. In order to preserve critical medical resources during the escalating COVID-19 pandemic, the Governor of Texas issued GA-09, which postpones non-essential surgeries and procedures until 11:59 p.m. on April 21, 2020.The court held that the drastic and extraordinary remedy of mandamus was warranted in this case because the district court ignored the framework governing emergency public health measures, like GA-09, in Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905); the district court wrongly declared GA-09 an "outright ban" on previability abortions and exempted all abortion procedures from its scope, rather than apply the Jacobson framework to decide whether GA-09 lacks a "real or substantial relation" to the public health crisis or whether it is "beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion" of the right to abortion; the district court failed to apply the undue-burden analysis in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 857 (1992), and thus failed to balance GA-09's temporary burdens on abortion against its benefits in thwarting a public health crisis; and the district court usurped the state's authority to craft emergency health measures, substituting instead its own view of the efficacy of applying GA-09 to abortion. Therefore, the court found that the requirements for a writ of mandamus are satisfied in light of the extraordinary nature of these errors, the escalating spread of COVID-19, and the state's critical interest in protecting the public health. View "In re: Gregg Abbott" on Justia Law