Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff filed suit against Luke & Associates alleging race-based discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U.S.C. 1981. The district court granted summary judgment for Luke. The court concluded that plaintiff has failed to make a prima facie case of discrimination where she has not shown that any of the other employees shared her history of on-the-job violations. Even assuming that plaintiff had shown a prima facie case, Luke provided legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for its decision. Likewise, plaintiff's retaliation claim fails because plaintiff failed to provide evidence that "but for" her complaints to the Air Force, Luke would have given a pay raise. Finally, the court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to compel. The court affirmed the judgment. View "Outley v. Luke & Associates, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, former employees of the County, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, after they were reassigned, and later terminated, from their positions allegedly because they failed to support the sheriff's reelection. Plaintiffs also filed grievances with the Nueces County Civil Service Commission, alleging only that they were subjected to adverse employment actions in violation of county rules prohibiting such actions on grounds of participating or failing to participate in political activity. The state court affirmed the Commission's decision against plaintiffs. The district court granted summary judgment to defendants on claim-preclusion grounds. Plaintiffs appealed, arguing that the district court applied the law of res judicata incorrectly, and that res judicata was inappropriate because plaintiffs had deliberately abstained from litigating their federal claims in state court. The court rejected plaintiffs' arguments and concluded that, because plaintiffs could and should have brought these claims in their state suit, their stated reasons for not doing so are inadequate to prevent res judicata. The court also rejected plaintiffs' claim of abstention. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Cox v. Nueces County, TX" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, the City's former chief of police, filed a First Amendment retaliation suit alleging that he was terminated for suing the mayor. The district court granted summary judgment for the City. The court concluded that although plaintiff spoke as a citizen, his suit against the mayor in his personal capacity was not on a matter of public concern and thus was not protected speech. The court also concluded that plaintiff's state-law claim of malicious interference with employment (MIE) against the mayor is barred because plaintiff failed to bring notice of the claim before suing as required by state law. View "Gibson v. Kilpatrick" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit against the State Department, seeking to enjoin enforcement of certain laws governing the export of unclassified technical data relating to prohibited munitions. This case concerns plaintiffs' desire to share all of its 3D printing and CNC milling files online, available without cost to anyone located anywhere in the world, free of regulatory restrictions. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying plaintiffs' preliminary injunction based on their failure to carry their burden of persuasion on two of the three non-merits requirements for preliminary injunctive relief, namely (a) the threatened injury to them outweighs the threatened harm to the State Department, and (b) granting the preliminary injunction will not disserve the public interest. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court’s denial and declined to reach the question of whether plaintiffs have demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits. View "Defense Distributed v. U.S. Dept. of State" on Justia Law

Integrity and Buentello filed suit against the City, alleging that its refusal to include them on the non-consent tow list violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. On appeal, the City challenged the district court's order requiring it to include plaintiffs on the City's non-consent tow list and to develop neutral criteria for that list. The court has previously held that a class-of-one equal-protection claim is unavailable in a public employment context. The court concluded that this conclusion logically applies as well to a local government’s discretionary decision to include or not include a company on a non-consent tow list. In the alternative, the court concluded that Integrity and Buentello’s class-of-one equal-protection claim fails because they have not shown that the City had a discriminatory intent and because the City has a rational basis for excluding them. Accordingly, the court reversed and rendered a judgment of dismissal for the City. View "Integrity Collision Center v. City of Fulshear" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an evangelical Christian, filed suit against the City, alleging that he was denied his First Amendment right to hand out religious literature at a public festival. The parties entered into a consent decree where the City agreed to pay plaintiff a dollar in nominal damages and where, among other provisions, the City was prohibited from interfering with plaintiff's free speech rights or other individuals at future public events in downtown Ft. Worth. At issue are the attorney's fees. Because a plaintiff is a prevailing party when nominal damages are awarded, and this case does not present the special circumstances in which a prevailing civil rights plaintiff may be denied fees altogether, the court vacated the order denying fees and remanded for an assessment of the reasonableness of the fee request. View "Grisham v. City of Fort Worth" on Justia Law

After the City terminated plaintiff, he filed suit alleging disability discrimination claims. The district court granted summary judgment to the City. The court concluded that the district court correctly held that plaintiff failed to raise an issue of material fact as to whether the City terminated him because of his disability where there is no evidence that the City’s reliance on his history of misconduct and poor performance was pretextual or blended with discriminatory motives. The court saw no basis for concluding that the City failed to engage in good faith by not finding him a new position after he had shown no desire to try and succeed in the first position. The court concluded that, given the undisputed evidence that plaintiff did not make an honest attempt to succeed in the new position, he cannot make out a claim placing blame for the breakdown in the accommodation process on the City. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Dillard v. City of Austin" on Justia Law

After Officers Zoss, Mayo, and Ballew forcibly removed William Sullivan from his pickup truck after he refused to comply with their lawful commands to exit the vehicle, Sullivan - who was heavily intoxicated, morbidly obese, and handicapped - suffered a serious injury rendering him a quadriplegic. Sullivan died a few months later. The district court denied the officers' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The court concluded that the district court erred because, even on plaintiffs’ version of the tragic facts, the officers did not violate Sullivan’s constitutional rights. In this case, the approximately two minutes that Zoss spent negotiating with Sullivan before deciding to resort to force was not objectively unreasonable, especially in light of, inter alia, Sullivan’s explicit and repeated refusal to comply with Zoss’s requests to exit the pickup and the possibility that Sullivan might have had access to a weapon or could have tried to drive his huge, elevated truck into the police car. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Sullivan v. City of Round Rock" on Justia Law

In response to secretly recorded videos released by the Center for Medical Progress depicting conversations with Planned Parenthood employees elsewhere, LDHH terminated PPGC Louisiana Medicaid provider agreements. PPGC and the Individual Plaintiffs filed suit against LDHH under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging violations of 42 U.S.C. 1396a(a)(23) and the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Individual Plaintiffs, three women who are Medicaid beneficiaries and who receive medical care from one of PPGC’s Louisiana facilities, seek to continue receiving care from PPGC’s facilities. The Individual Plaintiffs contend that LDHH’s termination action will deprive them of access to the qualified and willing provider of their choice, PPGC, in violation of Medicaid’s free-choice-of-provider provision. The district court entered a preliminary injunction against LDHH’s termination of PPGC’s Medicaid provider agreements. The court held that the Individual Plaintiffs met their burden to show their entitlement to a preliminary injunction; the district court did not abuse its discretion in preliminarily enjoining LDHH’s termination of PPGC’s provider agreements; and thus the court affirmed the district court's preliminary injunction, remanding for further proceedings. View "Planned Parenthood v. Gee" on Justia Law

After plaintiff spent 16 days in county jail for an assault he did not commit, he filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against Kelly Phillips, a sheriff’s office deputy. Plaintiff alleged that Phillips intentionally or recklessly misidentified him as the assailant in an offense report that he prepared, thereby leading to plaintiff’s arrest without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied Phillips's motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The court affirmed the district court’s ruling that, under these circumstances, Phillips may be liable for Fourth Amendment violations under Franks v. Delaware even though he neither signed nor drafted the affidavit in support of the warrant for plaintiff’s arrest; in reviewing an interlocutory appeal from the denial of a motion for summary judgment qualified immunity, the court lacked jurisdiction to review the district court’s finding of a genuine fact dispute as to Phillips’s recklessness; and, assuming plaintiff's factual assertions are true, the independent intermediary doctrine does not apply to shield Phillips from liability. Accordingly, the court dismissed Phillips’s appeal to the extent he challenges the district court’s finding of genuine disputes of fact, and affirmed in all other respects. View "Melton v. Phillips" on Justia Law