Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca2-12-02634/USCOURTS-ca2-12-02634-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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12‐2634‐cv

Garcia v. Jane & John Does

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

                               

August Term, 2012

(Argued: April 22, 2013       Decided: August 21, 2014)

Docket No. 12‐2634‐cv

                                  

KARINA GARCIA, AS CLASS REPRESENTATIVE ON BEHALF OF HERSELF AND OTHERS

SIMILARLY SITUATED, YARI OSORIO, AS CLASS REPRESENTATIVE ON BEHALF OF

HERSELF AND OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED, BENJAMIN BECKER, AS CLASS

REPRESENTATIVE ON BEHALF OF HIMSELF AND OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED,

CASSANDRA REGAN, AS CLASS REPRESENTATIVE ON BEHALF OF HERSELF AND OTHERS

SIMILARLY SITUATED, YAREIDIS PEREZ, AS CLASS REPRESENTATIVE ON BEHALF OF

HERSELF AND OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED, TYLER SOVA, AS CLASS REPRESENTATIVE

ON BEHALF OF HIMSELF AND OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED, STEPHANIE JEAN UMOH, AS

CLASS REPRESENTATIVE ON BEHALF OF HERSELF AND OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED,

MICHAEL CRICKMORE, AS CLASS REPRESENTATIVE ON BEHALF OF HIMSELF AND

OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED, BROOKE FEINSTEIN, AS CLASS REPRESENTATIVE ON

BEHALF OF HERSELF AND OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED,

Plaintiffs‐Appellees,

MARCEL CARTIER, AS CLASS REPRESENTATIVE ON BEHALF OF HIMSELF AND OTHERS

SIMILARLY SITUATED,

                      Plaintiff,

— v. —

Case 12-2634, Document 85-1, 08/21/2014, 1300591, Page1 of 28
JANE AND JOHN DOES 1‐40, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN THEIR OFFICIAL CAPACITIES,

Defendants‐Appellants,

RAYMOND W. KELLY, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY, CITY OF NEW

YORK, MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AND INDIVIDUALLY,

Defendants.

*

                                   

B e f o r e:

CALABRESI, LIVINGSTON, and LYNCH, Circuit Judges.

__________________

Defendants‐appellants, New York Police Department officers, appeal from

an order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York

(Jed S. Rakoff, Judge) denying their motion pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) to dismiss

plaintiffs‐appellees’ complaint against them on qualified immunity grounds.

Defendants argue that the district court erred in concluding that plaintiffs’

complaint, and the other materials that could properly be considered on a motion

to dismiss for failure to state a claim, did not establish that defendants had

* The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to amend the official caption in

this case to conform with the caption above.

2

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arguable probable cause to arrest plaintiffs for disorderly conduct.  We disagree,

and affirm the judgment of the district court.  

AFFIRMED.

Judge Livingston dissents in a separate opinion.

                             

MARA VERHEYDEN‐HILLIARD (Andrea Hope Costello and Carl

Messineo, on the brief), Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Washington,

D.C., for Plaintiffs‐Appellees.

RONALD E. STERNBERG, Assistant Corporation Counsel (Leonard

Koerner and Arthur G. Larkin, Assistant Corporation Counsel, on the

brief), for Michael A. Cardozo, Corporation Counsel of the City of New

York, New York, New York, for Defendants‐Appellants.

                              

GERARD E. LYNCH, Circuit Judge:

Defendants‐appellants ask us to definitively conclude, on the limited

record before us on their motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, that they

are entitled to qualified immunity for their arrest of a group of demonstrators.

Because we cannot resolve at this early stage the ultimately factual issue of

whether certain defendants implicitly invited the demonstrators to walk onto the

roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge, which would otherwise have been prohibited

3

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by New York law, we AFFIRM the judgment of the United States District Court

for the Southern District of New York (Jed S. Rakoff, Judge).    

BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs commenced this action for false arrest under 42 U.S.C. § 1983

following their arrests for participating in a demonstration in support of the

Occupy Wall Street movement.  Although plaintiffs have not been able to

conduct discovery, they attached five video excerpts and nine still photographs

as exhibits to the Second Amended Complaint (the “Complaint”), which we

consider when deciding this appeal, see DiFolco v. MSNBC Cable L.L.C., 622 F.3d

104, 111 (2d Cir. 2010).  We also consider videos submitted by defendants, which

plaintiffs concede are incorporated into the Complaint by reference.  For

purposes of this appeal, we take as true the facts set forth in the Complaint, see

Almonte v. City of Long Beach, 478 F.3d 100, 104 (2d Cir. 2007), to the extent that

they are not contradicted by the video evidence.  

I. The Protest and Plaintiffs’ Arrests

On October 1, 2011, thousands of demonstrators marched through Lower

Manhattan to show support for the Occupy Wall Street movement.  The march

began at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan and was to end in a rally at Brooklyn Bridge

Park in Brooklyn.  Although no permit for the march had been sought, the New

York City Police Department (“NYPD”) was aware of the planned march in

advance, and NYPD officers escorted marchers from Zuccotti Park to the

4

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Manhattan entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge (the “Bridge”), at times flanking the

marchers with officers on motorscooters or motorcycles.  Those officers issued

orders and directives to individual marchers, at times directing them “to proceed

in ways ordinarily prohibited under traffic regulations absent police directive or

permission.”  J. App’x at 165.  The officers blocked vehicular traffic at some

intersections and on occasion directed marchers to cross streets against traffic

signals.

When the march arrived at the Manhattan entrance to the Bridge, the first

marchers began funneling onto the Bridge’s pedestrian walkway.  Police,

including command officials, and other city officials stood in the roadway

entrance to the Bridge immediately south of the pedestrian walkway and, at least

at first, watched as the protesters poured across Centre Street towards the Bridge.

A bottleneck soon developed, creating a large crowd at the entrance to the

Bridge’s pedestrian walkway.  While video footage suggests that the crowd

waiting to enter the pedestrian walkway blocked traffic on Centre Street,

defendants do not contend that they had probable cause to arrest plaintiffs for

their obstruction of traffic at that point, as opposed to their obstruction of traffic

on the Bridge roadway.  Indeed, plaintiffs alleged in their complaint that the

police themselves stopped vehicular traffic on Centre Street near the entrance to

the bridge1 before the majority of the marchers arrived at the entrance to the

Bridge.

1 There are three eastbound entry ramps to the Bridge on the Manhattan

side.  The ramp referred to here is the first ramp moving from west to east.

5

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While a steady stream of protesters continued onto the walkway, a group

of protesters stopped and stood facing the police at the vehicular entrance to the

Bridge at a distance of approximately twenty feet.  Some of these protesters

began chanting “Take the bridge!” and “Whose streets? Our streets!”  An officer

stepped forward with a bullhorn and made an announcement.  In the video taken

by NYPD’s Technical Assistance Response Unit, the officer can clearly be heard

repeating several times into the bullhorn: “I am asking you to step back on the

sidewalk, you are obstructing traffic.”  

Plaintiffs, ten protesters who purport to represent the class of all protesters

arrested that day, allege that the officers knew that these statement were

“generally inaudible.”  J. App’x at 166.  In a video provided by plaintiffs,

recorded from roughly the second row of protesters, it is clear that protesters

even at the front of the crowd twenty feet away could not make out the words of

this announcement over the noise of the demonstration.  Two minutes later the

same officer announced into the bullhorn: “You are obstructing vehicular traffic.

If you refuse to move, you are subject to arrest,” and “If you refuse to leave, you

will be placed under arrest and charged with disorderly conduct.”  While it is

clear that at least one marcher at the front of the crowd heard this announcement,

plaintiffs allege that the officers knew that they had not given any warnings or

orders to disperse that would have been audible to the vast majority of those

assembled.

6

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A minute and a half after the second announcement, the officers and city

officials in the lead group turned around and began walking unhurriedly onto

the Bridge roadway with their backs to the protesters.  The protesters began

cheering and followed the officers onto the roadway in an orderly fashion about

twenty feet behind the last officer.  The protesters on the roadway then

encouraged those on the pedestrian walkway to “come over,” and the videos

show several protesters jumping down from the pedestrian walkway onto the

roadway.  When one such protester was told by someone still on the pedestrian

walkway “Don’t go into the street, you will get arrested,” he can be heard

responding, “Whatever, they’re allowing us to.”  Officers initially blocked

protesters from impeding the second and third entry ramps to the Bridge and the

southernmost lane of traffic, but eventually both of these ramps and all lanes of

traffic across the Bridge were blocked by the protesters.

Midway across the bridge, the officers in front of the line of marchers

turned and stopped all forward movement of the demonstration.  An officer

announced through a bullhorn that those on the roadway would be arrested for

disorderly conduct.  Plaintiffs allege that this announcement was as inaudible as

the previous announcements.  Officers blocked movement in both directions

along the Bridge and “prevented dispersal through the use of orange netting and

police vehicles.”  J. App’x at 173.  The officers then methodically arrested over

seven hundred people who were on the Bridge roadway.  These individuals were

“handcuffed, taken into custody, processed and released throughout the night

into the early morning hours.”  Id. at 174.

7

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Plaintiffs allege that the officers “led the march across the bridge,” and that

the marchers saw the officers’ movement onto the roadway as an “actual and

apparent grant of permission to follow.” J. App’x at 168. They allege that the

combination of those officers in front “leading” the protesters onto the roadway

and the officers on the side escorting them along the roadway led them to believe

that the NYPD was escorting and permitting the march to proceed onto the

roadway, as it had escorted and permitted the march through Lower Manhattan

earlier in the day.  Officers at the roadway entrance did not instruct the ongoing

flow of marchers not to proceed onto the roadway.  Other officers walked calmly

alongside the protesters in the roadway and did not direct any protesters to leave

the roadway.  The named plaintiffs allege that they did not hear any warnings or

orders not to proceed on the roadway, and understood their passage onto the

Bridge roadway to have been permitted by defendants.2

  Several allege that they

did not even realize they were on the roadway until they were already on it.

Plaintiffs allege that “[p]rior to terminating the march when it was mid‐way

across the bridge, the police did not convey that they were going to revoke the

actual and apparent permission of the march to proceed,” and that the officers

therefore did not have probable cause to arrest them for disorderly conduct.  Id.

at 173.  

2 While one plaintiff, Cassandra Regan, acknowledges that she was told to

leave the roadway, she alleges that the warning was given only after defendants

had blocked off the roadway and no exit was possible.

8

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II. District Court Proceedings

Plaintiffs sued the unidentified NYPD officers who participated in their

arrests3 as well as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly,

and the City of New York, alleging that the arrests violated plaintiffs’ rights

under the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments.  Defendants moved to

dismiss plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint on qualified immunity grounds

and pursuant to Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978),

arguing, in part, that the Complaint and the videos demonstrate that they had

probable cause to arrest plaintiffs for disorderly conduct.4

    

The district court denied the motion to dismiss the claims against the

individual officers and granted the motion to dismiss the claims against the City,

3 Eleven of these 40 John and Jane Does have since been identified and their

names have replaced “John/Jane Does ## 1‐11” in the caption of the district court

proceedings.  When the Complaint was filed and the relevant district court

opinion was issued, however, none of the NYPD officers who participated in the

arrests had been identified.

4 While defendants initially arrested many of the plaintiffs for failure to

obey a lawful order, the offense that an officer cites at the time of the arrest need

not be the same as, or even “closely related” to, the offense that the officer later

cites as probable cause for the arrest.  See Devenpeck v. Alford, 543 U.S. 146, 154‐

55.  Defendants now argue that plaintiffs engaged in disorderly conduct, defined

as “with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly

creating a risk thereof . . . obstruct[ing] vehicular or pedestrian traffic.”  N.Y.

Penal Law § 240.20.  While defendants argued before the district court that they

also had probable cause to arrest plaintiffs for marching without a permit in

violation of New York City Administrative Code § 10‐110(a), defendants have

abandoned that argument on appeal.

9

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Bloomberg, and Kelly.5 Garcia v. Bloomberg, 865 F. Supp. 2d 478 (S.D.N.Y. 2012).

The district court held that the allegations of the Complaint, if true, established

that a reasonable officer would have known that he did not have probable cause

to arrest plaintiffs.  The district court further held that while plaintiffs had clearly

violated the law by entering the Bridge roadway and blocking vehicular traffic,

based on the facts alleged, no reasonable police officer could believe that

plaintiffs had received fair warning that their behavior was illegal, as required by

law.  The district court concluded that while New York’s disorderly conduct

statute would normally have given protesters fair warning not to march on the

roadway, it did not do so here, where defendants, who had been directing the

march along its entire course, seemed implicitly to sanction the protesters’

movement onto the roadway.6

Defendants now appeal the denial of their motion to dismiss on qualified

immunity grounds, arguing that under the circumstances, “an objectively

5 Plaintiffs argued that the City of New York maintains a policy, practice,

and/or custom of trapping and arresting peaceful protesters without probable

cause.  The district court held that plaintiffs had not plausibly alleged any such

policy, practice, or custom.  That interlocutory ruling is not before us, and we

have no occasion to address its merits.

6 The district court stressed that its conclusion did “not depend in any way

on a finding that the police actually intended to lead demonstrators onto the

bridge.”  Garcia, 865 F. Supp. 2d at 491 n.9.  Indeed, the court considered it far

more likely that defendants had decided to move the protesters to a point where

they believed they could better control them, not that defendants had

orchestrated a “charade” to create a pretense for arrest.  Id.  

10

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reasonable police officer would not have understood that the presence of police

officers on the Bridge constituted implicit permission to the demonstrators to be

on the Bridge roadway in contravention of the law.”7

  Appellants’ Br. at 3.

DISCUSSION

I. Appellate Jurisdiction

We have jurisdiction over an appeal from a district court’s denial of

qualified immunity at the motion to dismiss stage because “qualified immunity –

which shields Government officials from liability for civil damages insofar as

their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional

rights – is both a defense to liability and a limited entitlement not to stand trial or

face the other burdens of litigation.”  Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 672 (2009)

(citation and internal quotation marks omitted).  “Provided it turns on an issue of

law,” a denial of qualified immunity is a final reviewable order because it

“conclusively determine[s] that the defendant must bear the burdens of

discovery; is conceptually distinct from the merits of the plaintiff’s claim; and

would prove effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.”  Id.

((internal quotation marks omitted); see also Locurto v. Safir, 264 F.3d 154, 164

(2d Cir. 2001) (noting that “denials of immunity are conclusive with regard to a

defendant’s right to avoid pre‐trial discovery, so long as the validity of the denial

7 Defendants also moved to dismiss plaintiffs’ claims for failure to state a

claim and for failure to properly notify the City of the claims.  Defendants do not

appeal the denial of these motions.   

11

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of the qualified immunity defense can be decided as a matter of law in light of

the record on appeal” (emphasis in original)).

II. Standard of Review

We review a district court’s denial of qualified immunity on a motion to

dismiss de novo, “accepting as true the material facts alleged in the complaint

and drawing all reasonable inferences in plaintiffs’ favor.”  Johnson v. Newburgh

Enlarged Sch. Dist., 239 F.3d 246, 250 (2d Cir. 2001).

III. Qualified Immunity

“Qualified immunity protects public officials from liability for civil

damages when one of two conditions is satisfied: (a) the defendant’s action did

not violate clearly established law, or (b) it was objectively reasonable for the

defendant to believe that his action did not violate such law.”  Russo v. City of

Bridgeport, 479 F.3d 196, 211 (2d Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Defendants bear the burden of establishing qualified immunity.  Vincent v.

Yelich, 718 F.3d 157, 166 (2d Cir. 2013).  “Even if this or other circuit courts have

not explicitly held a law or course of conduct to be unconstitutional, the

unconstitutionality of that law or course of conduct will nonetheless be treated as

clearly established if decisions by this or other courts clearly foreshadow a

particular ruling on the issue, even if those decisions come from courts in other

circuits.”  Scott v. Fischer, 616 F.3d 100, 105 (2d Cir. 2010) (citation and internal

quotation marks omitted).

12

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An officer is entitled to qualified immunity against a suit for false arrest if

he can establish that he had “arguable probable cause” to arrest the plaintiff.

Zalaski v. City of Hartford, 723 F.3d 382, 390 (2d Cir. 2013) (internal quotation

marks omitted).  “‘Arguable probable cause exists if either (a) it was objectively

reasonable for the officer to believe that probable cause existed, or (b) officers of

reasonable competence could disagree on whether the probable cause test was

met.’”  Id., quoting Escalera v. Lunn, 361 F.3d 737, 743 (2d Cir. 2004).  “In

deciding whether an officer’s conduct was objectively reasonable . . . , we look to

the information possessed by the officer at the time of the arrest, but we do not

consider the subjective intent, motives, or beliefs of the officer.”  Amore v.

Novarro, 624 F.3d 522, 536 (2d Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Under both federal and New York law, an officer “has probable cause to

arrest when he or she has knowledge or reasonably trustworthy information of

facts and circumstances that are sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable

caution in the belief that the person to be arrested has committed or is

committing a crime.”  Dickerson v. Napolitano, 604 F.3d 732, 751 (2d. Cir. 2010)

(internal quotation marks omitted); see also Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31,

37 (1979) (holding that a police officer has probable cause to arrest when the

“facts and circumstances within the officer’s knowledge . . . are sufficient to

warrant a prudent person, or one of reasonable caution, in believing, in the

circumstances shown, that the suspect has committed, is committing, or is about

to commit an offense”).  Where an arrest is made without warrant, “the

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defendant in a false arrest case bears the burden of proving probable cause as an

affirmative defense.”  Dickerson, 604 F.3d at 751.

IV. Probable Cause and the First Amendment

The First Amendment’s prohibition on laws “abridging the freedom of

speech . . . or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,” U.S. Const. amend. I,

“embodies and encourages our national commitment to ‘robust political debate,’”

Papineau v. Parmley, 465 F.3d 46, 56 (2d Cir. 2006), quoting Hustler Magazine v.

Falwell, 485 U.S. 46, 51 (1988).  It protects “political demonstrations and protests

– activities at the heart of what the Bill of Rights was designed to safeguard.”  Id.

Courts have therefore been especially solicitous where regulation of protests

threatens to discourage the exercise of First Amendment rights.  

Cox v. State of Louisiana established that when officials grant permission

to demonstrate in a certain way, then seek to revoke that permission and arrest

demonstrators, they must first give “fair warning.”  379 U.S. 559, 574 (1965).  In

Cox, officials explicitly permitted civil rights protesters to demonstrate across the

street from a courthouse, even though a statute prohibited demonstrating “near”

a courthouse.  Id. at 568‐69.  A few hours later, the officials changed their minds

and ordered the demonstrators to disperse, arresting those who refused.  Id. at

572.  The Supreme Court held that because the statute prohibiting demonstration

“near” the courthouse was vague, the demonstrators had justifiably relied on the

officials’ “administrative interpretation” of “near,” id. at 568‐69, and that the

14

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protesters’ conviction for picketing where directed by officials therefore violated

due process.

We reiterated the need for fair warning in Papineau.  465 F.3d at 60‐61.

There, the plaintiffs were protesting on private property bordering a public

highway.  A handful of protesters violated state law by briefly entering the

highway to distribute pamphlets.  Later, once the protesters were all back on

private property, police officers marched onto the property and began arresting

protesters without giving any warning.  Id. at 53.  We affirmed the district court’s

denial of qualified immunity to the officers, holding that even if the officers had a

lawful basis to interfere with the demonstration, the plaintiffs “still enjoyed First

Amendment protection, and absent imminent harm, the troopers could not

simply disperse them without giving fair warning.”  Id. at 60, citing City of

Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 58 (1999) (“[T]he purpose of the fair notice

requirement [in disorderly conduct statutes] is to enable the ordinary citizen to

conform his or her conduct to the law.” (alteration in original)).  Papineau also

suggested in dictum that if the police had granted permission to demonstrate in a

certain fashion, as in Cox, “even an order to disperse would not divest

demonstrators of their right to protest.”  Id. at 60 n.6.

The Seventh and Tenth Circuits have applied Cox’s requirement of fair

warning before revoking permission to protest to situations similar to the protest

here.  In Vodak v. City of Chicago, protesters were arrested after walking down a

street that officers arguably led them to think was a permitted route along their

15

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march.  639 F.3d 738, 743‐44 (7th Cir. 2011).  While officers had ordered protesters

not to march westward from their planned route, on one street they stood aside

and permitted protesters to march westward, then moved in behind the

protesters and arrested them.  Some marchers alleged that they believed that the

police were directing them to proceed west on the road.  Id. at 744.  The court

denied qualified immunity to the officers, finding that while the officers did not

give explicit permission to move west down the street, “their presence, not

blocking the avenue, might have made the marchers think it a permitted route

west for them.”  Id.  In Buck v. City of Albuquerque, a protester was arrested for

marching without a permit and walking in the street.  549 F.3d 1269, 1283 (10th

Cir. 2008).  The Tenth Circuit denied qualified immunity to the arresting officers,

holding that taking facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the police

officers’ “street closures and direction of the procession sanctioned the protesters

walking along the road and waived the permit requirement.”  Id. at 1284.

V. Probable Cause to Arrest Plaintiffs

Defendants acknowledge that “[i]n some circumstances, advice from

officials as to the propriety of proposed conduct may indeed justify an individual

in believing that his planned conduct is not prohibited,” Piscottano v. Murphy,

511 F.3d 247, 286 (2d Cir. 2007), and that had the officers explicitly invited

protesters onto the bridge, they could not have arrested the protesters without

fair warning of the revocation of such permission.  Indeed, defendants concede

that the involvement of officers in directing the protest prior to its movement

16

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onto the roadway “may have sanctioned the demonstration . . . so long as the

parameters of the implied permission were complied with and the demonstrators

remained on the sidewalk.”  Appellants’ Br. at  28‐29.

However, defendants argue that the protesters violated this initial implied

permission when they left the sidewalk and entered the Bridge roadway.  They

argue that after this point in the march, plaintiffs’ actions were in direct

contravention of the officers’ repeated admonitions to protesters to remain on the

sidewalk, and that plaintiffs have not alleged facts sufficient to establish that a

reasonable police officer would have understood that plaintiffs had been invited

onto the roadway.  Defendants argue that a reasonable officer would have

understood that the lead group of officers were not “leading” the protesters onto

the roadway but were instead strategically retreating, “reacting to a surging

crowd that was following leaders who were intent on ‘taking the bridge’ despite

both the law and direct and explicit warnings that their continued presence on

the roadway would result in arrest.”  Appellants’ Br. at 28.  In such a situation,

where no “implicit invitation” had been given to proceed onto the roadway,

defendants argue that New York’s disorderly conduct statute, which criminalizes

“obstruct[ing] vehicular or pedestrian traffic” with “intent to cause public

inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof,”  N.Y.

Penal Law § 240.20, gave plaintiffs fair warning that their conduct was illegal,

and no further warning was necessary.

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Defendants have identified the relevant inquiry: not whether plaintiffs will

ultimately prevail, or whether a reasonable demonstrator would have

understood the police’s actions as an invitation to enter the roadway, but rather

whether a reasonable police officer (in the position of the officers who decided to

arrest plaintiffs) should have known that under the totality of the circumstances,

the conduct of the police could have been reasonably understood by plaintiffs as

an implicit invitation to enter the Bridge roadway, and thus should have known

that additional, louder, or clearer instructions were required.  But defendants’

assertions of what the officers understood are unsupported by the Complaint or

the record, which do not provide any details as to what any individual defendant

knew or saw of the events leading up to the arrests.8

  Further, to the extent that

defendants’ arguments rest on a markedly different characterization of the events

of the protest than those alleged by plaintiffs, we are unable to consider the

8 The dissent references the Supreme Court’s recent decision in  Wood v.

Moss, 134 S. Ct. 2056 (2014), implying that the decision requires us to ignore the

reality of what each defendant officer knew or saw.  But Wood did not unmoor

the reasonableness standard from facts as they transpire in an individual case.  In

Wood, the Court reasoned that a discriminatory motive cannot be inferred from

facts that conclusively point in a neutral direction, in that case, towards officers’

reasonable concern for the safety of the President.  Id. at 2069.  But that common‐

sense conclusion does not change the analysis here.  Officers at the Brooklyn

Bridge had a constitutional obligation to warn protesters of a revoked invitation

to march on the roadway.  If the officers knew, or should have known, that their

actions would be construed by reasonable protesters as inviting them onto the

bridge, then a reasonable officer should have issued a fair warning revoking that

permission. Plaintiffs allege that the officers’ actions amount to such an

invitation.  Discovery will illuminate whether that it is indeed true.

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resulting factual dispute at this stage.  We must take the Complaint’s allegations

as true when considering defendants’ motion to dismiss, as they are not

“blatantly contradicted” or “utterly discredited” by the submitted videos and still

images, Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 380 (2007).9

  

Given the paucity of the record as to the actions of any specific defendant

on the day of the march, we cannot say at this stage whether or not defendants

had sufficient knowledge of plaintiffs’ perceptions of the officers’ actions such

that they acted unreasonably in arresting plaintiffs.  A homely analogy will

illustrate what is ultimately a common‐sense point.  Any driver knows that he

may not ordinarily cross an intersection against a red light, but that an officer

directing traffic can lawfully order him to ignore the red light and proceed.  We

assume arguendo that being signaled by a police officer to proceed in the face of

a red light would be a valid defense for a driver charged with running that red

light.  In that situation, an officer who directed a driver to proceed, or realized

that her gesture could reasonably have been seen as giving such a directive,

would clearly act unreasonably by ticketing the driver for ignoring the red light.

On the other hand, a second officer who saw the driver run the red light but was

unaware of her colleague’s instructions to do so would have probable cause to

ticket the driver.

9 The videos and still images submitted by the parties are inconclusive on

these points.  They depict only what can be seen and heard from particular

vantage points, and not what the police or protesters in general, or particular

officers named as defendants, saw and heard.

19

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The facts of this case are of course far more complicated than this simple

example.  Although we have recounted the facts by referring to “the police” and

“the demonstrators,” we have done so only because the record is so undeveloped

that we cannot specify the conduct or knowledge of particular named

defendants.  Ultimately, to recover damages, the plaintiffs will need to establish

that particular defendants acted unreasonably in arresting them (or directing

their arrest).  Just as some demonstrators (but not others) might be convicted of

disorderly conduct because it can be proven that they had heard and defied a

clear warning that they were obstructing traffic and needed to move, so

discovery might reveal that some police officers (but not others) were fully aware

of facts that would lead reasonable officers to know that many of the

demonstrators reasonably understood that they had been granted permission to

proceed across the bridge, just as plaintiffs allege.

Given this standard, plaintiffs may have a difficult time establishing

liability or avoiding the qualified immunity defense at a later stage of litigation.10

In order to have a reasonable belief that probable cause exists, an officer need not

anticipate or investigate every possible defense that a person suspected of

violating the law may have, and an officer may have probable cause despite

knowledge of facts that create an arguable defense.  On the other hand, as Cox

10 The difficulty may be especially pronounced with respect to officers who

were unaware of earlier events, and were directed by superiors to arrest

demonstrators who plainly appeared, at that later stage of events, to be in

violation of New York Penal Law § 240.20(5).

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and Papineau clearly establish, an officer may not constitutionally arrest a

demonstrator when he is personally aware that responsible officials have

implicitly or explicitly authorized the very conduct for which he seeks to make

the arrest.  As the Seventh Circuit has held, “[o]nce a police officer discovers

sufficient facts to establish probable cause, she has no constitutional obligation to

conduct any further investigation in the hope of discovering exculpatory

evidence,” but “[a] police officer may not ignore conclusively established

evidence of the existence of an affirmative defense.”  Hodgkins ex rel. Hodgkins

v. Peterson, 355 F.3d 1048, 1061 (7th Cir. 2004); see also Fridley v. Horrighs, 291

F.3d 867, 873 (6th Cir. 2002) (holding that an officer, when assessing probable

cause, “is not required to inquire into facts and circumstances in an effort to

discover if the suspect has an affirmative defense,” but may not “ignore

information known to him which proves that the suspect is protected by an

affirmative legal justification” (emphasis and internal quotation marks omitted)).

Taking plaintiffs’ allegations as true, as we must, we believe that they have

adequately alleged actionable conduct.  Plaintiffs have alleged that the police

directed the demonstrators’ activity along the route of their march, at times

specifically condoning, or even directing, behavior that on its face would violate

traffic laws.  When the bottleneck at the pedestrian walkway of the Bridge led the

demonstrators to pool into the roadway, the police did not immediately direct

them out of the street, and when they did undertake to issue such a warning to

clear the roadway, they did so in a way that no reasonable officer who observed

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the warning could have believed was audible beyond the first rank of the

protesters at the front of the crowd.11  According to plaintiffs’ account, the police

then retreated back onto the Bridge in a way that would reasonably have been

understood, and was understood, by the bulk of the demonstrators to be a

continuation of the earlier practice of allowing the march to proceed in violation

of normal traffic rules.

We emphasize that the procedural posture of this case presents a

formidable challenge to defendants’ position.  They urge us to find that qualified

immunity is established for all defendants based on plaintiffs’ version of events

(plus a few inconclusive photos and videos).  The evidence, once a full record is

developed, may contradict plaintiffs’ allegations, or establish that some or all of

the defendants were not aware of the facts that plaintiffs allege would have

alerted them to the supposed implicit permission.  We express no view on

11 The fact that some protesters clearly heard the warning does not

establish probable cause to arrest the entire group, when defendants knew that

the vast majority had not heard the warning.  See Papineau, 465 F.3d at 59‐60

(holding that officers could not engage in “indiscriminate mass arrests” of a

group where a few unidentified individuals from the group had violated the

law).  Nor would any warning the officers gave after demonstrators had already

proceeded halfway across the bridge qualify as “fair warning.”  At that point, the

police had allegedly blocked off any avenues of retreat.  As the district court

noted, “[i]mplicit in the notion of ‘fair warning’ is an opportunity for plaintiffs to

conform their conduct to requirements.”  Garcia, 865 F. Supp. 2d at 488 n.7; see

also Morales, 527 U.S. at 58  (noting that “the purpose of the fair notice

requirement is to enable the ordinary citizen to conform his or her conduct to the

law”).

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whether some or all of the defendants may be entitled to qualified immunity at a

later stage of the case.  Cf. Pena v. DePrisco, 432 F.3d 98, 111‐12 (2d Cir. 2005)

(affirming denial of application for qualified immunity at motion to dismiss stage

without prejudice to renew application at a later stage).  But to reverse the district

court’s denial of qualified immunity on a motion to dismiss, we would have to

say that on the basis of plaintiffs’ account of events, no officer who participated

in or directed the arrests could have thought that plaintiffs were invited onto the

roadway and then arrested without fair warning of the revocation of this

invitation.12  Since we cannot do so on this limited record, we affirm the

judgment of the district court.13  

12 Contrary to the dissent’s assertion, to say that officers may have had

different experiences is not to say that they were all reasonable or all

unreasonable. Discovery is necessary in this case simply because, as a factual

matter, individual officers may have had different experiences on the day of the

march, and, thus, some may be liable and some may not, depending on what

they saw, heard, and knew.  With a full record, the district court can then

evaluate whether reasonable officers could disagree about the legality of what

each officer did.

13 We also affirm the district court’s denial of qualified immunity on

plaintiffs’ state law claims, as our analysis of federal qualified immunity is

equally applicable to qualified immunity under New York law, which “in the

context of a claim of false arrest depends on whether it was objectively

reasonable for the police to believe that they had probable cause to arrest.”

Papineau, 465 F.3d at 64.

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VI. The Dissent

We add a few words in response to Judge Livingston’s dissent, which

seems to us to ignore the procedural context of this decision, and accordingly to

draw unwarranted conclusions about the nature and consequences of our

holding today.  We emphatically do not hold that – and have no occasion to

decide whether – any police officer acted unlawfully, is liable for damages, or

lacks qualified immunity for his or her actions on the day in question.  As we

have clearly stated, upon the development of an appropriate factual record, any

or all of the police officer defendants may well properly be found entitled to

qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage, or after trial.  The dissent,

however, engages in a lengthy description of various inflammatory facts gleaned

from a viewing of some of the videotapes submitted by the parties, all taken from

differing and partial perspectives, and treats its factual conclusions as established

facts about what “the police” were aware of.  If it turns out, after discovery, that

no reasonable factfinder could see the evidentiary record differently than the

dissent does, qualified immunity may well prove appropriate.  

Even at the summary judgment stage, however, it is well established that

dismissal on qualified immunity grounds may not be granted when factual

disputes exist, unless the defendants concede the facts alleged by the plaintiffs for

purposes of the motion.  Loria v. Gorman, 306 F.3d 1271, 1280 (2d Cir. 2002),

citing Coons v. Casabella, 284 F.3d 437, 440 (2d Cir. 2002).  Here, we are at an

even earlier stage, at which defendants, in order to prevail, must be entitled to

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qualified immunity based on the very facts alleged by the plaintiffs.  While we agree

that a motion to dismiss on such grounds can lie, success on such a motion must

be limited to situations where immunity is clear based on the allegations in the

complaint itself.  As is evident from the dissent, defendants here do not rest their

claim to immunity on the allegations of the complaint, but rather on an extensive

analysis of “facts” asserted by the defendants.  The existence of videotapes

depicting some of the events from the perspectives of some of the participants does

not establish those facts; a comparison of the tapes recording the police

announcement to the protesters to disperse makes entirely apparent how

different the events could appear from different vantage points.  

To take only a few examples: the dissent suggest that some protesters

lawfully headed onto the pedestrian walkway of the Bridge while others

unlawfully headed for the roadway.  But that is hardly established fact.  The

pedestrian walkway is narrow, and large numbers of demonstrators appear to

have pooled on Centre Street, near the entrance to both the roadway and the

walkway, as they approached the bottleneck at the Bridge entrances.  Defendants

do not argue that they had probable cause to arrest these demonstrators, who

were already in the roadway of Centre Street.  Indeed, the complaint implies that

the police themselves had blocked off traffic at that point.  And, according to the

complaint, the police alleviated congestion at the base of the bridge by inviting

protesters to ignore traffic laws and stream across Centre Street regardless of

walkway signals and standard right‐of‐way rules.  Given police tactics that day,

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officers could quite plausibly have decided to channel the ballooning mass of

protesters onto the Bridge roadway in order to keep the march moving towards

its end on the other side of the East River, and, thus, protesters may have

reasonably believed that officers were doing so whether that was their true

motive or not.14  It is hardly apparent that many of the protesters who eventually

entered the Bridge roadway did so knowing that they were eschewing a

concededly lawful alternative and taking an illegal turn onto that road.  

Similar questions of fact undermine the dissent’s conclusion that the

officers on the scene all made objectively reasonable decisions.  Contrary to the

dissent’s suggestion, it is not clear that “it was anything but reasonable for any

officer – named or John Doe – to conclude that each of the plaintiffs on the

roadway of the Bridge (among the thousands who did not take to the roadway

and were not arrested) was obstructing traffic.” (Dis. Op. at 25).  At the time the

district court decided the motion in question, essentially all of the defendants

14  The dissent states that neither the complaint, photos, or videos support

this narrative.  But this conclusion reflects the Rashomon‐like quality of this case.

Photos attached as Exhibits, B, C, and D to the Second Amended Complaint

depict throngs of people pooling on Centre Street, the entrance to the bridge’s

pedestrian path, and the plaza to the east of City Hall.  In each, members of the

crowd stand shoulder to shoulder.  And at 23:12, the video focuses on a crowd of

people waiting at a standstill on Centre Street, looking around as if unsure where

to go and what to do.  Perhaps the dissent believes that the befuddled crowd had

no reason to think that it should migrate onto the roadway.  That may be true.

But at this stage in the litigation it is but one view of facts that can be arranged

and understood in multiple ways, including along the lines asserted by plaintiffs

in their complaint.

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were sued as John Does.  While some officers participating in the arrest have now

been identified, there is no clear record yet of who made the decision to arrest the

protesters on the roadway, where the decisionmakers were stationed, what those

decisionmakers observed, and what reasoning process they followed.  We do not

know why the officers at the front of the march chose to retreat onto the bridge,

and what if anything they intended to convey.15  As noted above, we share the

dissent’s expectation that many individual officers participating in the arrests,

based on their perspective on the events, will have had every reason to believe

that the protesters were acting unlawfully, and will have reasonably participated

in the arrests.  It does not follow, however, that those who made the command

decisions for the police to retreat onto the Bridge (and thus to create a situation in

which the protesters moved forward and eventually blocked traffic from other

eastbound entrance ramps that may have been unimpeded before the police

moved back), and then to arrest the protesters who predictably followed them,

would have been similarly unaware that the protesters’ actions had previously

been condoned and that no adequate warning had been given.  Based on the

15 This is not to say that officers’ subjective experience will ultimately

decide the qualified immunity question.  But the officers’ perspective will surely

help illuminate what actually happened in those pivotal moments on the bridge.

Put differently, were an officer to admit that he led marchers onto the bridge with

the intent of inviting them to continue marching on the roadway, such testimony

would certainly corroborate  protesters’ contention that the officers’ retreat onto

the bridge objectively appeared to be an invitation to continue marching on the

roadway.  

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allegations of the Complaint, and the confused images from the videos

submitted, the experienced district judge correctly ruled that discovery should go

forward.

Nor do we regard the applicable law as unsettled.  The dissent correctly

notes that Cox does not address the issue of probable cause.  As the dissent

concedes, however, Cox holds that when demonstrators have been given police

permission to be where they are, they cannot be found guilty of a crime absent

clear warning that permission has been revoked.  If a person cannot as a matter of

law be guilty of a crime, an officer aware of the facts establishing the applicable

defense cannot have probable cause to make an arrest.  In any event, our own

holding in Papineau applies exactly this analysis in the qualified immunity

context.  It may well be that no police officer, including those who made the

critical tactical decisions in this case, was aware of the relevant facts.  It is

impossible, however, to know that at this stage.

Unlike the dissent, we do not regard this case as presenting novel issues of

weighty consequence.  The only question before us is whether the Complaint on

its face (or as supplemented by a handful of still and moving images)

unequivocally establishes that the officers unquestionably had either probable

cause or arguable probable cause to arrest the plaintiffs.  Our answer is that it

does not.  

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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