Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff filed suit against Sheriff Huey Mack and others, alleging claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983, arising from his detention as a pretrial detainee at the Baldwin jail. On appeal, plaintiff argues that Sheriff Mack violated his substantive due process rights by confining him in an unsanitary and overcrowded cell. Defendant also argues that Sheriff Mack violated his procedural due process rights at his August 15, 2012, disciplinary hearing. The court concluded that plaintiff's allegations - that he was temporarily forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor near the toilet - are not enough to clearly establish that his conditions of confinement were unconstitutional. The court also concluded that, although plaintiff was entitled to the due process hearing he received before being punished for his misconduct while in jail, plaintiff failed to overcome Sheriff Mack’s qualified immunity defense on either of his claims. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to defendants. View "Jacoby v. Baldwin County" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a retired criminal investigator with the Cobb Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, filed suit against the county, alleging discrimination on the basis of sex after he learned that a less-experienced female in the office was earning a substantially higher salary for the same job. The district court granted summary judgment to the county. The court affirmed, concluding that the county is a legally separate and distinct entity that did not control the fundamental aspects of the employment relationship between the office of the District Attorney and its criminal investigators, nor did it act as a joint employer with the District Attorney. Because its role as paymaster is wholly insufficient to establish that the county was plaintiff's employer, he could not sue the county under the federal antidiscrimination laws. View "Peppers v. Cobb County" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a Georgia state prisoner with a third-grade education, alleged in his pro se handwritten complaint that he was on his way to the dining hall at the Valdosta State Prison when he was savagely attacked by another inmate who had been threatening him. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state an Eighth Amendment claim of deliberate indifference. According to the complaint, the prisoner attacked plaintiff because he was not a gang member and not Muslim, yet was housed in a dormitory where gang members reigned, weapons were tolerated, and violence ran amuck. Plaintiff said that he had asked certain prison officials to move him to a different dormitory before he was attacked, but they refused his request. The court concluded that the allegations in the complaint sufficed to make out a plausible claim that the officials named as defendants were aware of the serious risk of harm faced by plaintiff. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded with instructions that plaintiff be allowed to formally and properly amend his complaint. View "Lane v. Philbin" on Justia Law

After officers shot and killed Dirk Smith in his own home, his surviving wife and children filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and Georgia law against the county, the police chief, and the officers. The court chose to exercise pendant appellate jurisdiction over plaintiffs' claims in their cross-appeals. The court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the officers on plaintiffs' illegal entry claim because the officers were authorized to enter the home without a warrant under the exigent circumstances exception where officers believed that an emergency existed. The court concluded that the officers' single use of a taser on Mr. Smith was not unreasonable. However, the court affirmed the district court's denial of summary judgment on plaintiffs’ section 1983 claim against Officers Ings and LePage for shooting Mr. Smith because the officers had “reasonable warning” that fatally shooting an unarmed person suspected of a misdemeanor in his own home merely because he was moving toward them was a constitutional violation; the court affirmed the district court's denial of summary judgment on plaintiffs’ parallel state-law claim; affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment as to the supervisory liability claims where no supervisory liability can arise from the second tasing of Mr. Smith and plaintiffs' section 1983 supervisory liability claim related to the shooting fails because Sgt. Gamble neither participated in the shooting nor had a legally sufficient causal connection to it; and plaintiffs’ state-law supervisory liability claims related to the shooting fail because Sgt. Gamble did not violate a ministerial duty or act with actual malice. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Smith v. LePage" on Justia Law

In 1982, the district court entered a consent decree requiring the City of Jacksonville to hire in its fire department “an equal number of blacks and whites until the ratio of black fire fighters to white fire fighters reflects the ratio of black citizens to white citizens in the City of Jacksonville.” The City stopped complying with the decree in 1992. Plaintiffs filed suit in 2007, fifteen years after the City had stop complying with the decree, seeking a motion to show cause as to why the City should not be held in contempt of the 1982 consent decree. The district court denied plaintiffs’ motion on grounds of laches, and dissolved the decree. The court concluded that, because plaintiffs’ fifteen-year delay prejudiced the City’s ability to defend itself and because a new lawsuit had taken up the cause of fighting racial discrimination in the City’s firefighting department, neither the district court’s application of laches nor its dissolution of the 1982 consent decree was an abuse of discretion. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Coffey v. Braddy" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an African-American male and licensed, board-certified general surgeon and a specialist, filed suit alleging claims for race discrimination and retaliation in violation of 42 U.S.C. 1981. The district court granted defendants' Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss the federal claims. The court held that plaintiff pled sufficient facts to support his section 1981 discrimination claim. In this case, plaintiff alleged that he was retaliated against by Grady and the Hospital Authority because of his opposition to discriminatory practices, which included subjecting him and other African-American physicians to limited surgery facilities and support staff and the assignment of certain medical cases to white doctors. Accordingly, the court reversed as to this claim. The court affirmed the district court's grant of defendants' motion to dismiss as to the section 1981 discrimination claim. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Moore v. Grady Memorial Hosp. Corp." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against defendants under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging a violation of his First Amendment rights. Defendants, all city officials, terminated plaintiff from his position as City manager after he reported to law enforcement and other agencies defendants' misconduct and made public disclosures about the same. The district court denied appellants’ motion to dismiss on the basis of qualified immunity. The court concluded that plaintiff pled a plausible First Amendment claim that he spoke as a citizen and not pursuant to his ordinary job duties as City Manager when he made reports to law enforcement and other agencies about city officials' violations of Florida’s campaign finance laws. As to plaintiff's other claims, the court concluded that plaintiff's poorly-drafted complaint does not state plausible claims that he spoke as a citizen and not pursuant to ordinary job responsibilities. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded with instructions to the district court to afford plaintiff an opportunity to amend his complaint. View "Carollo v. Boria" on Justia Law

After plaintiff, an ordained minister, obstructed a police investigation and resisted arrest in a city park, he was arrested and issued a “trespass warning” under City Ordinance 20-30, which prohibited him from re-entering the park for one year. Plaintiff filed suit alleging that section 20-30 violates the First Amendment because it prevented him from re-entering the park to exercise his First Amendment rights. The court rejected plaintiff's contention, concluding that the city did not inevitably single him out based on his expressive activity, and he did not receive his trespass warning because he was engaged in expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. The court also concluded that section 20-30(g) of the ordinance is not an unlawful prior restraint on speech; it actually permits more speech, not less. View "Wright v. City of St. Petersburg" on Justia Law

The City enacted into law several provisions that, inter alia, prohibit the commercial distribution of sexual devices within the City. Plaintiffs and intervenors brought, in relevant part, a Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause challenge to Ordinance 2009-04-24, codified at section 38-120 of the City’s Code of Ordinances. The district court granted the City’s motion and entered an order upholding the Ordinance against each challenge. The court concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause claim is foreclosed by the court's prior holding in Williams v. Attorney General (Williams IV), and the district court properly entered judgment on the pleadings for the City as to Intervenor-Appellant Henry’s First Amendment claims that the law burdens his artistic expression. The district court committed no reversible error as to any other claim properly raised on appeal. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Flanigan's Enter. v. City of Sandy Springs" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, on behalf of her minor son D.H., filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against school officials, including Assistant Principal Tyrus McDowell, and others, alleging that defendants deprived D.H. of his rights to privacy, to be secure in his person, and to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. On appeal, McDowell challenged the district court’s interlocutory order denying his motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The district court found that McDowell’s strip search of D.H., a minor student, violated clearly established constitutional law. The court concluded that McDowell violated D.H.'s constitutional rights. Furthermore, a reasonable official in McDowell’s position would not have believed that requiring D.H. to strip down to his fully naked body in front of several of his peers was lawful in light of the clearly established principle that a student strip search, even if justified in its inception, must be “reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.” Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court’s denial of McDowell’s motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. View "D. H. v. McDowell" on Justia Law