Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's complaint sua sponte on the ground of res judicata. Plaintiff filed the present case after the dismissal of his first case, alleging nearly identical claims with a single additional claim that defendants terminated his employment in retaliation for filing the first case. The court held that the termination claim could have been raised in the prior action and was, and that res judicata precluded plaintiff from asserting the claim in this subsequent action. In this case, the termination claim was reasonably related to the original administrative charge so the exhaustion requirement would not have foreclosed raising the claim added in the first case. Nonetheless, the court also held that the requirement to exhaust administrative remedies did not disturb the court's holding that the termination claim was barred by res judicata. View "Soules v. Connecticut" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against Stony Brook under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq., alleging discrimination and retaliation when he was terminated from his employment as an electrician. The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment on the issue of whether plaintiff was an employee of Stony Brook. The court held, according to precedent, that a trial court did not commit error by submitting the question of whether plaintiff was defendant's employee to the jury, whether by general verdict or by special question. The court rejected plaintiff's contention that the district court erred when it instructed the jury to use the factors in Cmty. for Creative Non‐Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730, 751–52 (1989), to determine whether plaintiff was a Stony Brook employee. The court held that the evidence presented disputed issues of fact regarding several of the Reid factors, and the balancing of those factors and others that pointed both in favor of and against employee status also presented a disputed issue requiring resolution by the fact‐finder. The court rejected plaintiff's remaining arguments. View "Knight v. State Univ. of N.Y. at Stony Brook" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's third amended complaint against the Department and others. Plaintiff alleged that he was subjected to discrimination and retaliation after he filed complaints against the Department with OSHA. The court held that the district court erred in holding that administrative exhaustion must be pleaded in the complaint. Rather, administrative exhaustion under Title VII was an affirmative defense. Accordingly, the court remanded for further proceedings. View "Hardaway v. Hartford Public Works Department" on Justia Law

WD filed suit against OGS, alleging that defendants violated its rights under the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, and the New York State Constitution by denying WD's applications to participate as a food truck vendor in the Lunch Program based on its ethnic-slur branding. The Second Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendant, holding that defendants' action violated WD's equal protection rights and its rights under the New York State Constitution. In this case, it was undisputed that defendants denied WD's applications solely because of its ethnic-slur branding. In Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744 (2017), the Supreme Court clarified that this action amounted to viewpoint discrimination and, if not government speech or otherwise protected, was prohibited by the First Amendment. The court rejected defendants' argument that their actions were unobjectionable because they were either part of OGS's government speech or permissible regulation of a government contractor's speech. View "Wandering Dago, Inc. v. Destito" on Justia Law

After receiving the answer to two certified questions from the Nevada Supreme Court, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's defamation suit. The Nevada Supreme Court held that a hyperlink to source material about a judicial proceeding may suffice as a report within the common law fair report privilege, and that the online petition, as it existed when plaintiff's complaint was filed, fell within the purview of Nevada's fair report privilege. The state court also held that, pursuant to Delucchi v. Songer, 396 P.3d 826 (Nev. 2017), Nevada's anti-SLAPP statute covers communication that is aimed at procuring any governmental or electoral action, result or outcome which is truthful or is made without knowledge of its falsehood, even if that communication was not addressed to a government agency. In this case, plaintiff failed to allege knowledge of falsity, much less facts to support such a conclusion. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court's denial of plaintiff's request for additional discovery and the district court's application of the anti‐SLAPP statute to this case. View "Adelson v. Harris" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a petition for writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner argued that the introduction at his trial, during the testimony of an expert lab analyst, of a case file concerning DNA testing of petitioner's buccal cheek swab and containing notations made by the expert's coworkers, analysts whom the State did not call to the stand, violated petitioner's Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses against him. The court held that the Supreme Court cases on which petitioner relied neither clearly established his entitlement to cross‐examine the analysts who prepared the informal, unsworn documents in the case file introduced as evidence at his trial, nor provided a basis for concluding that the state court judgment was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established law. View "Washington v. Griffin" on Justia Law

Although the Second Circuit agreed with the district court that defendant's substantive due process rights were violated when prison officials assigned plaintiff, who was then a pretrial detainee, to Administrative Segregation, the court held that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. In this case, defendant was discharged from Administrative Segregation and released, arrested again on new drug-related offenses, and then re-admitted into Administrative Segregation. The court held that the law was not clearly established at the time that a substantive due process violation would result from plaintiff's placement in Administrative Segregation based solely on his prior assignment to (and failure to complete) that program. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's judgment for plaintiff. View "Allah v. Milling" on Justia Law

Plaintiff appealed the district court's grant of summary judgment to defendants on his claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments for false arrest, malicious prosecution, and violation of due process. Plaintiff's claim stemmed from his arrest and charge in connection with a bar brawl that resulted in one dead victim and another severely injured victim. The Second Circuit held that the district court's grant of summary judgment on the false arrest and malicious prosecution claims was premature, because disputed questions of material fact remained regarding key aspects of the criminal investigation and subsequent prosecution. The panel concluded that those same questions of material fact preclude a grant of qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage. However, the court agreed with the district court that plaintiff's due process claim failed as a matter of law. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, and vacated and remanded in part. View "Dufort v. City of New York" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit reversed the district court's denial of qualified immunity for federal law enforcement authorities in an action for money damages pursuant to Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), based on alleged Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations in procuring and executing a search warrant. The court held that plaintiff failed to plead a plausible Fourth Amendment claim of unreasonable search and seizure because a corrected affidavit supports both probable cause for and the scope of the challenged search; plaintiff failed to plead a plausible Fifth Amendment claim that fabricated evidence (in the search warrant affidavit) deprived him of property without due process because the warrant would have issued on a corrected affidavit and thus any deprivation of the seized property was not the result of the fabricated evidence; plaintiff could not plausibly plead that defendants' alleged failure to intercede in the challenged search caused him preventable constitutional harm; plaintiff failed to plead any clearly established right to have federal officials state in a search warrant affidavit whether each referenced person is or is not then a target of investigation, nor a right to have federal officials so state after the fact if the search becomes public knowledge; and plaintiff failed to plead sufficient facts as to the supervisor defendants' personal involvement in the submission of any misstatements to the magistrate judge. Accordingly, the court remanded for entry of judgment for defendants. View "Ganek v. Leibowitz" on Justia Law

The Second Circuit reversed the district court's denial of the police's motion for qualified immunity. Plaintiff, a teenaged train enthusiast, was stopped and handcuffed after the police department received a 911 report that someone holding an electronic device was bending down by the tracks at a rail crossing. The court held that it could not be said that every reasonable officer in their circumstances would know that the conduct complained of violated clearly established law. In this case, plaintiff's unlawful arrest claim failed because his handcuffing was an investigatory detention that never ripened into an arrest and was supported by reasonable suspicion; if Officers McVeigh and Farina had a duty to intervene, that duty was not clearly established and defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on the failure to intercede claim; and defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on a supervisory liability claim. View "Grice v. McVeigh" on Justia Law