Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02704/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02704-0/pdf.json

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

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15-2704

JULIAN T. NETTLES-BEY,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

PHILIP WILLIAMS and BRODERICK BURKE,

Defendants-Appellants.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 11 C 8022 — Joan B. Gottschall, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED MARCH 29, 2016 — DECIDED APRIL 14, 2016

____________________

Before FLAUM, EASTERBROOK, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Adherents to the Moorish 

Science Temple change their surnames to include “-Bey” or 

“-El”. Julian Nettles-Bey was born with that surname and 

does not hold Moorish beliefs. He contends in this suit under 

42 U.S.C. §1983 that two police officers in South Holland, Illinois, assumed from his name that he is a Moor and on that 

account arrested him for trespassing, when they would not 

have arrested a Christian or an atheist. He maintains that ofCase: 15-2704 Document: 34 Filed: 04/14/2016 Pages: 7
2 No. 15-2704

ficial action based on a belief (accurate or not) about a person’s religion violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First 

Amendment, applied to the states through the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court 

denied the arresting officers’ motion for summary judgment, 

see 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 101995 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 4, 2015), and 

they immediately appealed.

The case is still live in the district court, while 28 U.S.C. 

§1291 requires litigants to wait for final decisions before appealing. The Supreme Court held in Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 

U.S. 511 (1985), that an order rejecting a defense of qualified 

immunity is final in the sense that it conclusively rejects a 

defendant’s claim of a right not to be tried, and the arresting 

officers have invoked this principle. But the Supreme Court 

has also held that an appeal under Mitchell is limited to a 

contention that doubt about legal doctrine forecloses an 

award of damages. The idea behind qualified immunity is 

that public employees who act in the shadow of legal uncertainty should not be required to pay damages if judges later 

resolve that uncertainty against the public actors. See, e.g., 

Reichle v. Howards, 132 S. Ct. 2088 (2012). But when the argument concerns what the record shows about the facts, rather than whether legal uncertainty dogs public officials who 

try to cope with particular situations, the appeal must await 

the fully final decision. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304 (1995). 

Debates about material facts must be resolved at trial, for 

public officials no less than other litigants.

The district judge thought that this suit presents a triable 

issue not because of any doubt about the law—the judge 

deemed it clearly established that an officer may not arrest 

someone believed to hold one set of religious beliefs, when 

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No. 15-2704 3

in otherwise-identical circumstances the officer would not 

have arrested a person holding a different set of beliefs—but 

because of doubt about what reasonable jurors would infer 

about why the officers acted as they did.

Nettles-Bey, who lives in Knoxville, travels around the 

country to assist African-American youths. He usually stays 

with the people who invite him to come. Sabeel El-Bey invited Nettles-Bey to South Holland and offered accommodations in what El-Bey described as his house, at 84 Woodland 

Drive. El-Bey gave Nettles-Bey a garage-door opener and 

told him to use the door between house and garage. NettlesBey took the invitation and found Felicia Mohammad, 

whom he had already met, staying in the house.

What Nettles-Bey did not know is that El-Bey was lying. 

He was a squatter at 84 Woodland Drive and had no lawful 

interest in the house. Adolph Clark, the owner of the property, does not live there, but he happened to stop by while 

Nettles-Bey was present and called the police, reporting the 

trespass. On arriving, officers Williams and Burke discovered not only Nettles-Bey’s name but also some literature 

referring to Moorish Science.

Here is where stories, and potential inferences, diverge. 

The officers contend that they take into custody anyone who 

is the subject of a trespass complaint, so they arrested Nettles-Bey as a matter of routine when he could not show any 

ownership interest or an invitation by Clark—neither of 

which Nettles-Bey has ever claimed to have. For his part, 

Nettles-Bey says that the arresting officers, and others at the 

stationhouse, remarked on his status as a Moor (ignoring his 

denials) and congratulated themselves on rounding up another member of that troublesome sect, which they strongly 

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implied they were trying to drive out of South Holland. The 

subject of Nettles-Bey’s religious beliefs, and Moors’ insouciance toward property rights, also came up at his trial for 

criminal trespass, injected by the arresting officers. (NettlesBey was acquitted, but that does not affect, one way or another, the constitutional propriety of his arrest. See Wallace v. 

Kato, 549 U.S. 384 (2007).) The district court’s opinion adds 

many additional details.

After canvassing the evidence that would be admissible 

at a civil trial, the district court concluded that a reasonable 

jury could rule either for, or against, Nettles-Bey on the central issue: Whether the arresting officers would have arrested him had they believed him to be a Christian or otherwise 

not to hold Moorish beliefs. If the answer is yes, the district 

court concluded, then the officers did not violate the Constitution (for they had probable cause to believe that NettlesBey was trespassing); but if the answer is no, then the officers violated his clearly established rights under the First 

Amendment. That’s why the court denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment—though it did end the case 

against the Village, which does not have a policy of treating 

Moors worse than other faiths.

In contesting this ruling on appeal, the officers do not 

contend that there is an open issue of constitutional law 

about whether public officials may hold a person’s religion 

against him when deciding whether to make an arrest. Nor 

do they contend that there is an unsettled issue about 

whether making an error in determining a person’s religion 

permits an arrest, even though acting on the basis of correct 

information would be forbidden. Cf. Heffernan v. Paterson, 

No. 14–1280 (argued in the Supreme Court on January 19 

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No. 15-2704 5

and posing the question whether a demotion because of a 

person’s incorrectly perceived political beliefs violates the 

First Amendment). What they maintain is that the district 

judge misunderstood the facts. They insist that there is no 

material dispute about their reasons for arresting NettlesBey—that any reasonable juror would have to find that they

acted on Clark’s complaint, and for that reason alone.

Appellants’ brief makes it clear that they think that the 

district judge got the facts wrong. Their summary of argument tells us: “[T]he record is devoid of evidence to support 

the inference that religious discrimination led to Plaintiff’s 

arrest and detention”. The first caption in the argument section of their brief begins: “The district court erred in concluding that a triable fact issue existed as to whether the Defendant officers were motivated by discriminatory animus 

toward Moors”. From beginning to end, appellants’ brief is 

about what the record shows and what inferences a reasonable juror could draw. That’s the domain of Johnson; appellants’ line of argument has nothing to do with uncertainty in 

federal law.

Appellants’ reply brief tells us that Johnson is irrelevant. 

They observe that whether to grant summary judgment is a 

question of law, at least in the sense that a district judge does 

not make any findings of fact (but must take matters in the 

light most favorable to the party opposing the motion) and 

that a court of appeals decides without deferring to the district court’s view. They add that immunity likewise is about 

questions of law. It follows, they believe, that they are entitled to contend in a pre-trial qualified-immunity appeal that 

the district judge erred in evaluating the record and that, as 

a matter of law, they are entitled to immediate decision in 

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their favor. If that is right, however, then Johnson itself is 

wrong.

The question posed by the Supreme Court for qualifiedimmunity appeals is whether legal uncertainty affected the

primary conduct of which the defendants are accused. That’s 

the qualified-immunity issue: Whether it is clearly established that federal law (statutory or constitutional) forbade 

the public employees to act as they did. Johnson holds that, 

when addressing this question about the propriety of the defendants’ behavior, the court of appeals must accept as given 

the district court’s reading of the record. If the district judge 

concludes that a reasonable jury could resolve a particular 

factual dispute in the plaintiff’s favor, the court of appeals 

must address the question about legal uncertainty on that 

understanding.

Appellants insist that Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372 (2007), 

and Plumhoff v. Rickard, 134 S. Ct. 2012 (2014), modify the 

approach of Johnson and entitle them to contest the district 

court’s factual understanding. Whether, and if so how far, 

that may be true when there is also a dispute about the nature of and uncertainty in the federal legal principles that 

govern the public officials’ primary conduct is an interesting 

question, which this court may address in Stinson v. Gauger, 

No. 13-3343 (7th Cir. argued en banc Feb. 9, 2016). Neither 

Scott nor Plumhoff allows an appeal whose sole goal is to upset how the district judge understood the record. We have 

nothing more to say about Scott and Plumhoff, because there 

is no uncertainty at all about the rules of federal law that 

govern the question whether police may hold a person’s religion against him when deciding whether to make an arrest. 

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No. 15-2704 7

That they cannot has been established for a long, long time—

and appellants do not argue otherwise.

They do say that there is uncertainty about a different issue that they call a dispute of law: Whether standing orders 

to police in South Holland require an arrest for criminal 

trespass whenever the owner demands. This is not a dispute 

about federal law—and it does not concern “law” at all. 

There is a factual dispute about whether Clark did demand 

Nettles-Bey’s arrest, and a further dispute about whether officers in South Holland are obliged to honor the owner’s 

wishes in the face of exculpatory information such as Nettles-Bey’s contention that he was present at the invitation of 

someone he honestly (and reasonably) thought to be the 

owner. The chief of police himself testified by deposition 

that officers have discretion. These are among the issues that 

may be explored at the impending trial.

The appeal is dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

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