Justia Civil Procedure Opinion Summaries

In 2015, the Forro children attended St. Augustine, a self-identified Catholic school in Hartford, Wisconsin. Wisconsin provides transportation benefits for parents who send their children to private sectarian schools, Wis.Stat. 121.54. The school district and the state superintendent of public instruction denied the Forros' request because transportation was being provided to St. Gabriel, another Catholic school in the area. The law stipulates that only one school from a single organizational entity in each “attendance area” may qualify for benefits. While both claim an affiliation with Catholicism, the two schools are not affiliated with one another in other significant ways. St. Augustine and the Forros sued. Several years of litigation ensued, including a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, two published Seventh Circuit opinions, and a Supreme Court of Wisconsin opinion, after which the Seventh Circuit concluded that the denial of transportation benefits violated Wisconsin law because it rested on an improper methodology for determining affiliation between two schools of similar faith.After noting that certain state law claims had been waived and that the federal constitutional issues did not require resolution, the Seventh Circuit affirmed that a declaratory judgment remains in effect against the Superintendent and the School District. The district court may decide what attorneys’ fees the plaintiffs should be awarded, if any, given that they have prevailed only in obtaining declaratory relief under state law. View "St. Augustine School v. Underly" on Justia Law

The Montgomery County Board of Education adopted Guidelines for Gender Identity for 2020–2021 that permit schools to develop gender support plans for students. The Guidelines allow implementation of these plans without the knowledge or consent of the students’ parents. They even authorize the schools to withhold information about the plans from parents if the school deems the parents to be unsupportive. In response, three parents with children attending Montgomery County public schools challenged the portion of the Guidelines that permit school officials to develop gender support plans and then withhold information about a child’s gender support plan from their parents. Terming it the “Parental Preclusion Policy,” the parents alleged the policy unconstitutionally usurps the parents’ fundamental right to raise their children under the Fourteenth Amendment.   The Fourth Circuit vacated the district court’s order and remanded for the case to be dismissed. The court explained that the parents have not alleged that their children have gender support plans, are transgender or are even struggling with issues of gender identity. As a result, they have not alleged facts that the Montgomery County public schools have any information about their children that is currently being withheld or that there is a substantial risk information will be withheld in the future. Thus, under the Constitution, they have not alleged the type of injury required to show standing. Absent an injury that creates standing, federal courts lack the power to address the parents’ objections to the Guidelines. Thus, the court remanded to the district court to dismiss the case for lack of standing. View "John and Jane Parents 1 v. Montgomery County Board of Education" on Justia Law

The Church of St. Theresa (St. Theresa’s) owned and operated the St. Theresa School. St. Theresa’s terminated art teacher and toddler room caregiver Victoria Crisitello for violating the terms of her employment agreement. That agreement required employees to abide by the teachings of the Catholic Church and forbade employees from engaging in premarital sex; Crisitello, who was unmarried, had become pregnant. In response to her firing, Crisitello filed a complaint against St. Theresa’s alleging employment discrimination in violation of the Law Against Discrimination (LAD), based on pregnancy and marital status. St. Theresa’s countered that its decision to terminate Crisitello was protected by both the First Amendment and the LAD. The New Jersey Supreme Court held: (1) the “religious tenets” exception of N.J.S.A. 10:5-12(a) was an affirmative defense available to a religious entity when confronted with a claim of employment discrimination; and (2) the uncontroverted fact was that St. Theresa’s followed the religious tenets of the Catholic Church in terminating Crisitello. The Court thus concluded St. Theresa’s was entitled to summary judgment and that the trial court correctly dismissed the complaint with prejudice. View "Crisitello v. St. Theresa School" on Justia Law

Petitioner filed a 1983 claim, arguing that he was held in administrative segregation for 300 days over his 30-day disciplinary sentence without additional due process, such as new disciplinary hearings or periodic review of his custody status. The magistrate judge reviewed Petitioner's suit under 28 USC 1915(e) and 1915A and issued a Report and Recommendation recommending that Petitioner's federal claims be dismissed with prejudice as legally frivolous and for failure to state a claim. The district court reviewed and adopted the magistrate judge’s report, dismissing Petitioner's 1983 suit with prejudice as frivolous and for failure to state a claim.The Fifth Circuit reversed, finding that the district court failed to apply the appropriate, multi-faceted legal test considering the conditions and length of confinement, and thus, dismissing the Petition was an abuse of discretion. View "Carmouche v. Hooper" on Justia Law

Plaintiff was a passenger in a car that led West Memphis Police Department (WMPD) officers on a dangerous chase. He was shot and killed when officers tried to stop the car, and his estate sued them under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 for excessive force and state-created danger. The district court granted summary judgment to the officers.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that it is undisputed that Plaintiff had his hands up. And the court has no doubt that shooting into the car posed a substantial risk of serious bodily harm to him. But the driver had just led police on a reckless, high-speed chase, which involved swerving into oncoming traffic, hitting a police car, and resisting efforts to stop the car by other means. By the time officers started shooting, the car had run over one officer’s legs and was headed toward others. Here, the court wrote that all things considered, officers acted reasonably in using deadly force, and the district court didn’t err in granting summary judgment. View "Estate of De'Angelo Brown v. E.C. West" on Justia Law

After receiving a long suspension, Jacob Doe sued Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (“Virginia Tech”) and several university officials, alleging that Virginia Tech’s Title IX investigation, hearing, and appeal process denied him due process of law. The district court dismissed Doe’s complaint, holding that he hadn’t alleged a cognizable liberty or property interest in his continuing education.   The Fourth Circuit affirmed for a different reason. The court held that even assuming Doe has such an interest, he hasn’t alleged that he was deprived of it without sufficient process. The court wrote that Doe complains that his witnesses couldn’t appear in person at the hearing because it was held during the summer. But he doesn’t allege that the witnesses weren’t able to provide testimony by phone, video, or in writing. Nor does Doe claim he sought to continue the hearing until his witnesses were available. And Doe admits that the investigator interviewed his witnesses during her investigation into Roe, and the allegations against Roe were adjudicated at the same hearing. So these allegations too, don’t rise to the level of a due-process violation.   Moreover, the court explained that to find that Doe alleged a due-process violation on this sparse record, the court would have to hold that university students have a right—in effectively every disciplinary hearing—to advance notice of the evidence to be presented against them. The ask is even more striking here because Doe doesn’t allege that he sought a continuance or that Virginia Tech relied on the surprise testimony. Therefore, the court rejected Doe’s claim of error. View "Jacob Doe v. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universit" on Justia Law

A Virginia statute required the automatic suspension of residents’ driver’s licenses if they failed to pay certain court fines and fees. in 2016, a group of indigent Virginians who lost their licenses when they were unable to pay court debts initiated a putative class action against the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (“Commissioner”), alleging that the Commonwealth’s license-suspension scheme was unconstitutional. The plaintiffs raised several claims under the Fourteenth Amendment: that the statute’s requirement of automatic suspension without notice or a hearing violated their procedural due process rights; and that the statute’s enforcement against those who were unable, not unwilling, to pay violated both their substantive due process rights and their equal protection rights. As relief, the plaintiffs sought preliminary and permanent injunctions preventing the statute’s enforcement and requiring license reinstatement to the “hundreds of thousands of Virginians” with suspended licenses. Plaintiffs then petitioned for attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. Section 1988(b), which provides that the district court, “in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party” in Section 1983 actions “a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs.”   The Fourth Circuit vacated the district court’s denial of attorney’s fees and remanded. The court held that Plaintiffs here prevailed” in every sense needed to make them eligible for a fee award. The court explained that the named plaintiffs sought not only reinstatement of their own licenses but also class certification, a declaratory judgment that Section 46.2-395 was unconstitutional, and hence permanent license reinstatement for hundreds of thousands of Virginians. Those are precisely the kinds of considerations that bear on the “extent of a plaintiff’s success” – a critical factor in assessing a reasonable fee award in any fee litigation under Section 1988. View "Damian Stinnie v. Richard Holcomb" on Justia Law

Petitioner and her son entered the United States illegally after fleeing alleged gang violence in Honduras. They sought asylum and related relief but were denied; their appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) was likewise dismissed. Petitioner then moved the BIA to reopen her and her son’s removal proceedings. The BIA denied her motion. Petitioner petitioned for a review of that denial.   The Fifth Circuit dismissed the petition in part and denied it in part, explaining that the court lacked jurisdiction over the BIA’s refusal to reopen Petitioner, and it otherwise rejects her claims on the merits. The court explained that there is no per se rule that every family-based PSG is cognizable. Congress did not make persecution based on “family” a statutorily enumerated ground for asylum or withholding of removal. The court wrote that Petitioner was required to put forward at least some evidence of the social distinction of her son’s nuclear family in Honduran society. Because she did not, she failed to make out a prima facie case of eligibility for withholding of removal or asylum. The consequence is that she failed to demonstrate any prejudice caused by allegedly ineffective counsel. The BIA did not err in denying her motion to reopen proceedings on her withholding-of-removal and asylum claims. Moreover, the court explained that attempting to raise a due process claim through an argument about the BIA’s failure to reopen sua sponte does not bring the claim within the court’s jurisdiction. View "Garcia-Gonzalez v. Garland" on Justia Law

High-level officials in the California prison system transferred 122 inmates from the California Institution for Men, where there was a widespread COVID-19 outbreak, to San Quentin State Prison, where there were no known cases of the virus. The transfer sparked an outbreak of COVID-19 at San Quentin that ultimately killed one prison guard and over twenty-five inmates. The guard’s family members sued the prison officials, claiming that the officials violated the guard’s due process rights. The officials moved to dismiss, arguing that they were entitled to qualified immunity. The district court denied the motion with respect to some of the officials, who then filed an interlocutory appeal.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Defendants’ motion to dismiss. The panel held that based on the allegations in the complaint, Defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity. Plaintiffs sufficiently alleged a violation of the guard’s substantive due process right to be free from a state-created danger, under which state actors may be liable for their roles in creating or exposing individuals to danger they otherwise would not have faced. The panel held that the unlawfulness of defendants’ alleged actions was clearly established by the combination of two precedents: L.W. v. Grubbs, 974 F.2d 119 (9th Cir. 1992), which recognized a claim under the state-created danger doctrine arising out of a prison’s disregard for the safety of a female employee who was raped after being required to work alone with an inmate known to be likely to commit a violent crime if placed alone with a woman; and Pauluk v. Savage, 836 F.3d 1117 (9th Cir. 2016). View "PATRICIA POLANCO, ET AL V. RALPH DIAZ, ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiff appealed the district court’s judgment dismissing her claims of age, race, and gender discrimination and retaliation under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. Section 621 et seq., Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. Section 2000e et seq., and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. Section 1981. On appeal, Plaintiff argued that the district court applied an incorrect legal standard to her retaliation claim and that it erroneously concluded that she had failed to demonstrate that Defendants’ race-neutral explanations for not selecting her for two internal promotions were pretextual.   The Second Circuit affirmed. The court held that Plaintiff has not demonstrated that Defendants’ explanations for her non-promotions were pretextual. Second, the court held that although the district court applied an incorrect standard to her retaliatory hostile work environment claim, Plaintiff has nevertheless failed to make out a prima facie case of retaliation and did not demonstrate that her employer’s non-retaliatory explanations were pretextual. The court explained that Defendant’s evidence supporting summary judgment established that Plaintiff received negative performance evaluations because she was not adequately or timely completing her duties and had become increasingly challenging to work with. The court wrote that Plaintiff has not rebutted this showing with evidence demonstrating that the reasons the NYCTA provided for the poor performance reviews were pretextual. Instead, she argues that the performance reviews must have been retaliatory due to their temporal proximity to her complaints. But she offers nothing more to establish causation. View "Carr v. New York City Transit Authority" on Justia Law