Justia Civil Rights Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff sued defendant, a general improvement district, arguing that defendant's policy of only allowing people who own or rent real property within defendant's 1968 boundaries to access beaches that it owned and operated was unconstitutional under the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment. The court held that the beaches were not a traditional public forum, and that plaintiff's exclusion from beaches did not violate either his First Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment rights. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court.

After the fiscal court voted to discontinue maintenance on a county road, Appellant, who owned property and lived on the road, erected a locked gate blocking the road and provided a key to each property owner on the road. Appellees, a non-profit association known as Preserve Rural Roads of Madison County, filed suit against Appellant to force him to remove the gates. The circuit court granted Appellees' motion for summary judgment, finding that Appellees had standing and that Appellant was without legal right or ownership to prohibit others from using the road. The court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) Rural Roads had associational standing in this matter; (2) the discontinuance of maintenance on the county road did not affect any public easement rights; and (3) the lower courts' decisions in this case, holding that the county road is a public road and that Appellant could not block the road with gates, did not constitute an unlawful taking of Appellant's land.

In this Section 1983 case, four homeless plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of two ordinances in the City Code of St. Petersburg, Florida and of the city's enforcement of the ordinances. The trespass ordinance at issue authorized certain city agents to issue a temporary trespass warning for specific city land on which the agent determined that the warning recipient had violated city or state law. The storage ordinance at issue prohibited storage of personal property on city land such as parks and rights-of-way. The district court dismissed all of plaintiffs claims. The court affirmed the district court's rulings, except the court vacated part of the district court's ruling about the trespass ordinance. Plaintiffs have stated claims on the issues of procedural due process under the United States Constitution and on their right to intrastate travel under the Florida Constitution.

Plaintiffs, five individuals with disabilities, alleged that defendant recently built and altered sidewalks that were not readily accessible to them and requested injunctive relief under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12132, and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. 794(e). At issue was whether Title II and section 504 extended to newly built and altered public sidewalks. Also at issue was whether that private right of action accrued at the time the city built or altered its inaccessible sidewalks, or alternatively at the time plaintiffs first knew or should have known they were being denied the benefits of those sidewalks. The court held that plaintiffs have a private right of action to enforce Title II and section 504 with respect to newly built and altered public sidewalks, and that the right accrued at the time plaintiffs first knew or should have known they were being denied the benefits of those sidewalks.

The Township proposed redevelopment that would eliminate 327-329 existing homes in a neighborhood, occupied predominantly by low-income minority residents, and replace them with more expensive housing, unaffordable to current residents. About half of the existing brick row houses, built in the 1950s, were owner-occupied. A 2000 report described the area as characterized by blight, excess land coverage, poor land use, and excess crime; the Township began to acquire properties. By 2008, 75 homes had been destroyed and 148 had been acquired and left vacant. By 2009, 110 more homes were destroyed, causing noise, vibration, dust, and debris. Residents alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. 3604(a)); the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (42 U.S.C. 1982) ; and the Equal Protection Clause. The district court granted summary judgment to the Township. The Third Circuit reversed. Drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the residents, the evidence was sufficient to establish a prima facie case of disparate impact under the FHA. The court must ask whether the Township's legitimate objectives could have been achieved in a less discriminatory way. Contrasting statements about the cost and feasibility of an alternative relying on rehabilitation, create genuine issues of material fact.

Plaintiffs brought an action against the City of Marietta, Georgia, challenging the validity of its zoning ordinance. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the city and against plaintiffs on all claims except for one plaintiff's claim (Covenant) that the city's ordinance, as amended in November 2004, facially violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc, by treating religious assemblies less favorably than non-religious assemblies. The court held that claims seeking injunctive relief were moot in light of the passage of the 2008 Ordinance and dismissed those claims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court held that, to the extent that RLUIPA claims sought damages, they failed on the merits because all damages stemmed from Covenant's inability to build a church in the R-2 residential zone and Covenant was not entitled to build a church in that zone. The court further held that the district court did not err in concluding that the 2004 Ordinance facially violated the equal terms provision of RLUIPA and did not err in awarding nominal damages for this claim. The court finally held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Covenant's motion to leave to amend the complaint.

Laclede Gas Company maintained gas lines along Pitman Hill Road in St. Charles County. Pitman Hill Road and the gas lines were located within areas established as public roads on five recorded subdivision plats. Each of the subdivision plats first established public roads and then designated the roads as utility easements. The plats specifically stated that one of the purposes of the utility easements was for the installation and maintenance of gas lines. The County planned to widen Pitman Hill Road, which required Laclede to relocate its gas lines. Laclede declined to pay for the relocation, after which the County filed a declaratory judgment action to require Laclede to bear the cost of relocation. The circuit court entered summary judgment in favor of the County. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the County was required to reimburse Laclede for displacing the gas lines from Laclede's utility easement because the easements were constitutionally cognizable property interests and, therefore, requiring Laclede to relocate its gas lines without compensation would amount to an unconstitutional taking of private property.

Over a period of two years, the City of Sioux Falls issued Daniel Daily four citations for a concrete extension to his driveway. Daily appealed each of the citations, but a hearing was held only on the final two citations received. Daily then initiated a declaratory judgment action against the City. The trial court ultimately concluded that the City's administrative appeals process, both as written and as applied, and the City's enforcement of its zoning ordinances violated Daily's constitutional rights to procedural due process and equal protection. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) because the hearing examiner in this case did not hold the City to its burden of proof, the City's administrative appeals process deprived Daily of a protected property interest without due process of law; and (2) the hearing examiner's application of the rules of evidence deprived Daily of a fair hearing.

Letitia Kilby filed a complaint with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, claiming unlawful housing discrimination by Defendants, the town housing authority and a property management company. The Commission found reasonable cause to believe that unlawful discrimination occurred. The trial court then granted Defendants' request to file a civil action in the trial court. Kilby moved to intervene, claiming both intervention as of right and permissive intervention. The trial court denied the motion. The appellate court reversed, concluding that although the statute at issue, Conn. Gen. Stat. 46a-83(d)(2), did not expressly grant Kilby a right of intervention, it impliedly granted Kilby a right of intervention. The Supreme Court granted Defendants' petition for certification to appeal, but while the case was pending, the legislature enacted Conn. Pub. Acts 11-237, which amended the text of section 46a-83 to allow a complainant to intervene as of right in a housing discrimination action brought by the commission on behalf of the complainant. The Court dismissed the appeal, concluding that the significance of Defendants' appeal was substantially undermined by Conn. Pub. Acts 11-237, and, thus, certification was improvidently granted.

Plaintiff sued defendants, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Alaska Department of Transportation (Alaska), and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company (Alyeska), in federal court, alleging causes of action for inverse condemnation, injunctive relief, nuisance, breach of fiduciary duties, and civil rights violations. At issue was whether the district court properly dismissed the action against the BLM and Alaska on the basis of sovereign immunity. The court held that federal sovereign immunity barred plaintiff's inverse condemnation, injunctive relief, and civil rights violations claims against the United States, but that the Federal Tort Claims Act, 25 U.S.C. 345, could provide a waiver of the government sovereign immunity for plaintiff's nuisance and breach of fiduciary duties claims. Additionally, the court held that the Eleventh Amendment barred plaintiff's action against Alaska in its entirety. Accordingly, the judgment was affirmed in part and reversed in part and remanded.