Source: https://govlawweb.typepad.com/government_liability_upda/free-speech/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 00:53:45+00:00

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In McNeil v. Sherwood School District, published March 14, 2019, the 9th Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of the defendant school district in a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 case brought by a high school student and his parents. The student wrote in his personal journal a hit list of students who "must die." His mother discovered the journal in his room. She made copies, and sought guidance from a therapist. The therapist, believing the information triggered his duties as a mandatory reporter, contacted the police. The police searched the house and confiscated a rifle and ammunition, but found nothing to indicate the student was planning to follow through with the list. The police did not charge the student. The police informed the school district. As required by law, the district informed the parents of students on the list of the list, without identifying the author. After media inquiries and social media accounts displaying the student's photo, the district informed all parents. Parents transferred students out of the district, while others had their children skip school. After a hearing, the district expelled the student for one year for making the list and disrupting the school. The student sued for violation of his First Amendment rights. The parents sued for violation of their due process right to educational venue choice.
The 9th Circuit ruled that the district had not violated the student's First Amendment rights. When determining whether a school’s regulation of a student’s off-campus speech is constitutional, a court must consider all of the relevant circumstances. The student's lack of intent to communicate the speech to any third party--such as when the student writes in a personal journal--is a relevant consideration, but it is not dispositive. Here, the lack of intent to communicate the threat was offset by the fact his speech created an identifiable, credible threat of school violence. He lived close to campus, and had weapons and ammunition. The speech bore a significant nexus to the school. The school district could therefore take disciplinary action. Because his continued presence at campus would cause disruption, the discipline imposed was reasonable and not punitive. The court also rejected the due process challenge to the expulsion. That right entitled the parents to enroll the student at the high school. Once there, the school had the power to administer discipline. That included expelling the student from campus and supplying alternative, online instruction of him.
In Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, Florida, published June 18, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded a judgment for the defendant city after a jury trial. The plaintiff was an outspoken critic of the city. After the plaintiff filed a lawsuit against the city, the city council held a closed-door meeting on the lawsuit and others. A councilmember suggested that the city "intimidate" the plaintiff and others who sued the city. Other councilmembers appeared to agree. Later that same year, the plaintiff spoke at the public comment segment of a council meeting. The plaintiff spoke about a subject and was told to stop. He continued, and was arrested. The state's attorney determined there was probable cause to arrest him, but decided to dismiss the charges. The plaintiff sued the city under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 for retaliatory arrest. The district court instructed the jury that for the plaintiff to prevail on that claim, he had to prove that the officer lacked probable cause to make the arrest. The jury returned a verdict for the defendants. The issue before the court was whether the existence of probable cause bars a First Amendment retaliatory arrest claim.
The court declined to address the broad question of whether the existence of probable cause negates a claim for retaliatory arrest. Instead, it ruled that in a case where the plaintiff alleges that the muncipality itself (rather than an officer) retaliated against him, under an official municipal policy of intimidation, executing a pre-meditated plan of intimidation in retaliation for the plaintiff exercising high-value speech such as the freedom to petition government (by filing lawsuits), the plaintiff need not prove lack of probable cause. Instead, the Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977) standard will apply, and the plaintiff must prove that retaliation was a but-for cause of the arrest.
Justice Thomas dissented. He would not have narrowed the analysis, and would have ruled that the existence of probable cause to arrest barred the retaliatory arrest claim.
In Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, published June 14, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed an Eighth Circuit decision upholding a Minnesota law prohibiting individuals from wearing a political badge, political button, or other political insignia inside a polling place. The Court held that a polling place is a nonpublic forum for First Amendment purposes. Therefore, the First Amendment permits the state to regulate speech there based on content, so long as the restrictions are reasonable and not an effort to suppress expression merely because public officials oppose the speaker's views. The statute does not make a distinction based on the speaker's views. It must therefore only be reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum: Voting. A restriction on political apparel serves the legitimate purpose of protecting voters from fraud, intimidation, and confusion. But the term "political" is too indefinite to provide a reasonable guideline on what is permitted and what is excluded. By contrast, other states--including California--have more definite restrictions on political apparel.
Dissenting justices would have sent the law to the Minnesota State Courts to interpret it.
In Keates v. Koile, published March 6, 2018, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed in part a district court's dismissal of a mother's and daughter's suit against multiple Arizona child protective services employees. The complaint alleged that the mother took the 13-year-old daughter to a clinic, where she stated she had been sad, had contemplated suicide in the past, but was not currently experiencing suicidal ideation. The clinic referred the mother to the emergency room of a hospital. The hospital rejected the mother's plans for caring for the daughter at home, and decided to send her to a mental hospital. The mother initially refused to provide contact information, because she did not have health insurance and was concerned that she was going to be billed for expensive inhouse treatment. Someone at the hospital called CPS and reported that the minor was suffering severe depression and had attempted suicide, and that the mother could not formulate a safety plan. The child was kept overnight. A defendant social worker interviewed the minor without the mother present. The minor told the social worker her only complaint about her mother was that she yelled, screamed, and cussed. The minor denied having attempted suicide. The social worker then issued a temporary custody notice, allowing him to take the child away from her mother and put her into CPS custody. The daughter was strapped to a gurney, and delivered by ambulance to a mental hospital. The intake nurse found the daughter's suicide risk to be low. The social worker concluded that the mother could not care for the daughter. CPS filed a dependency petition. When the daughter was discharged, she was put in a foster home and not reunited with her mother for four months. The district court dismissed the complaint because it concluded that based on the facts alleged the defendants--social workers involved in the case--were entitled to qualified immunity.
The 9th Circuit ruled that the social worker who issued the temporary custody notice and recommended the dependency petition was not entitled to qualified immunity. It is clearly established that the rights of parents and children to familial association under the Fourteenth, First, and Fourth Amendments are violated if a state official removes children from their parents without their consent or a court order, unless, after reasonable investigation, the available information establishes reasonable cause to believe the child is in imminent danger of serious bodily injury; and the scope, degree, and duration are reasonably necessary to avert the specific injury at issue. Detaining a minor and removing her from her mother's custody merely because the mother does not have health insurance and is reluctant to pay for inpatient treatment is not an emergency that permits removing a child without a warrant. The court upheld dismissal of the complaint against the other CPS workers named, because the allegations of their involvement did not state a plausible case that they were sufficiently involved to render them liable.
In Contest Promotions v. San Francisco, amended October 23, 2017, the 9th Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 challenge to the constitutionality of a city's billboard ordinance. The city's planning code differentiated between general signs (which direct attention to business that takes place elsewhere than on the premises where the sign stands) and business signs (which direct attention to business conducted on the premises where the sign is located). The code bars all general signs erected after March 2002. The planning code differentiates between commercial and non-commercial signs, setting forth a non-exclusive list of types of noncommercial signs; and provides that the provisions concerning general and business signs do not apply to non-commercial signs. Plaintiff, which posts commercial signs, challenged the code's differentiation between commercial and non-commercial signs as violating the First Amendment.
The 9th Circuit ruled that the code did not violate the First Amendment. Since the portions differentiating between business and general signs excluded non-commercial signs, the level of scrutiny that applies to commercial speech--intermediate--applies. The code met the requirements of intermediate scrutiny, because it directly served the governmental interests in promoting traffic safety and aesthetics, and was no more extensive than necessary to serve that interest.
In Entler v. George, published October 6, 2017, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed in part and affirmed in part a district court's dismissal of a pro se prisoner's lawsuit under FRCP 12(c). The Washington State Department of Corrections established an offender grievance program that encourages prisoners to try to informally resolve their issues before filing a formal grievance, by submitting a "kite" (a letter on a pre-printed form) to the officer implicated in the issue. The plaintiff prisoner sent multiple kites to various prison employees, threatening to sue them for various issues, and in one case threatening to file criminal charges against the penitentiary superintendent and a manager if they did not fire an employee. Prison officials punished the plaintiff with discipline. The plaintiff sued prison officials for First Amendment retaliation. The district court judge ruled that the kites were not protected by the First Amendment, and that in the alternative the officials were protected by qualified immunity.
The 9th Circuit ruled that grievances, whether formal or informal, and threats to sue were protected by the First Amendment, and that legitimate penological interests did not permit prison officials to punish that speech. Further, existing precedent clearly established that the punishment would violate the First Amendment. The officials were therefore not entitled to qualified immunity for punishing the threats to sue. The court also ruled, as a matter of first impression, that the First Amendment also protected the threat to file criminal charges from punishment. But because the law did not clearly establish that right, the officials were entitled to qualified immunity as to that portion of the plaintiff's claim.
In Sharp v. County of Orange, published September 19, 2017, a divided 9th Circuit panel affirmed in part and reversed in part denial of the defendant deputies' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. Deputies had an arrest warrant for a suspect. They went to the suspect's parents' house, listed on his probation documents as his residence. The suspect's parents had kicked him out of the house, but he was there that night to pick up belongings. When deputies knocked, a person matching the suspect's description was reported to have rushed out of the house, then reentering. Two defendant deputies arrived at the house without having seen a photo of the warrant subject or knowing his name. They did hear a description of the suspect's clothing. As they approached the house, the suspect's father walked out of the house wearing different clothes. He contended he walked toward them calmly. The deputies were uncertain whether the father was the warrant subject, but they arrested him. One shoved the father's arm up when handcuffing him, allegedly injuring the father's shoulder. Shortly after the arrest, the warrant subject's mother informed the deputies that they had arrested the wrong suspect. The deputies realized their mistake, but kept the father handcuffed and locked in their patrol car as they questioned him about his son's whereabouts. The father protested, swore, and threatened to sue the deputies. In response, a defendant deputy told the father, "If you weren't being so argumentative, I'd probably just put you on the curb." The father was detained about 20 minutes. The deputies searched the house. The father sued the deputies for violating the Fourth Amendment by arresting him, by detaining him in the car, the search of his person, and use of excessive force. He asserted a First Amendment claim for retaliatory arrest based on failure to release him. The father and mother sued for search of their home. They also asserted California law claims.
The 9th Circuit held that the deputies' initial arrest of the father was unconstitutional, because the mistake of the father's identity for that of the son's was unreasonable. The father did not match the son's description, was wearing different clothes, and was walking toward them. The arrest therefore violated the Fourth Amendment. But the majority concluded that the deputies were entitled to qualified immunity, because the Fourth Amendment violation was not "obvious" and because no binding case law at the time indicated that arresting the wrong person as a warrant subject by deputies arriving late on the scene in a dynamic and evolving scene with a fleeing subject prone to act violently violated the Fourth Amendment. The majority opined that finding an "obvious" violation of the law that did not require existing case law establishing unconstitutionality was "problematic" for Fourth Amendment violations. The 9th Circuit also ruled that the detention could not be justified by extending to an arrest warrant the authority that a search warrant allows the police to detain the occupants of a home subject to the warrant. But again, the deputies were entitled to qualified immunity on that point, because the law did not clearly establish that arrest warrants would not be treated like search warrants. The court also concluded that continuing to detain the father after the mistake was discovered was unreasonable. But the majority concluded that no case law clearly established the unconstitutionality, so the officers were entitled to qualified immunity on the claim that the detention without probable cause violated the Fourth Amendment. The qualified immunity for the arrest also applied to the search of the father's person. Because the son had a probation condition that permitted warrantless arrests of his residences, and he listed the home as his residence, the deputies' search of the house did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
The court ruled, however, that the retaliatory detention of the suspect in the car (as shown by the officer's statement) did violate the father's First Amendment rights, and that case law at the time clearly established that the detention in retaliation for the father's statements would violate the First Amendment. The officers were therefore not entitled to qualified immunity on that claim.
The court also ruled that the district court correctly rejected the state law immunities that the officers asserted to the state law claims. Discretionary immunity under Government Code section 820.2 did not apply to detentions or arrests of suspects or other non-policy decisions. The court declined to follow lower California appellate courts that had expanded application of Government Code section 821.6's prosecution immunity to torts other than malicious prosecution. The immunities for reasonable belief that an arrestee is the subject of a warrant (Civ. Code, § 43.55(a)) and for arrests with reasonable cause (Penal Code, §847(b)(1)) did not apply, because the deputies' arrest and detention of the father was unreasonable.
A dissenting judge opined that the violations of the Fourth Amendment as to the father were obvious, and that qualified immunity should have been denied.
In Moonin v. Tice, published August 22, 2017, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court order denying qualified immunity to a Nevada Highway Patrol supervising officer and granting partial summary judgment to a patrolman. The supervisor sent an e-mail to K9 officers in the patrol barring any direct contact between K9 handlers or line employees and any non-departmental or law-enforcement personnel for the purpose of discussing the patrol's K9 and drug interdiction programs. Any communication was to be directed to the chain of command. Violation of the edict was to be considered insubordination. The plaintiff K9 handler alleged that the purpose of the edict was to prevent problems in the K9 program from being made public. He sued the supervisor and others, alleging they had violated his First Amendment rights by imposing a prior restraint on his communications with the public.
The 9th Circuit agreed that the edict violated the First Amendment. It applied an analysis similar to that under which First Amendment retaliation claims are analyzed, except that the government bears a heavier burden in justifying a prior restraint of employee speech. The edict was drawn broadly enough to bar public employees' speech, outside the scope of their duties, on matters of public concern. The edict therefore violated the employees' First Amendment rights unless it bore a close and rational relationship to the employer's legitimate interests. The edict did not meet that test. The interests articulated were preventing disclosure of sensitive law enforcement information, controlling the department's official communications about the program, and ensuring effective operation of the agency without disruption by outside groups. The first two justifications are legitimate ones, but the broad edict is not tailored to them. To the extent the third purpose is to avoid government accountability, it is an insufficient justification.
The 9th Circuit also concluded that the law was clearly established in 2011, when the edict issued, that a broad prohibition on employees contacting the public about a program violated the First Amendment. U.S. Supreme Court and 9th Circuit case law concerning narrower limitations--notice to superiors before speaking, and requiring clearance from superiors before speaking--suggested the broad ban here was improper. Although there was little Supreme Court and 9th Circuit guidance on broad bans like this one, persuasive authority from other circuits, district courts, and a state court clearly established that the ban would be unconstitutional.
In Reed v. Lieurance, published July 24, 2017, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment, dismissal, and judgment as a matter of law in the defendants' favor in a case alleging wrongful arrest in violation of the 4th and 1st Amendments. The plaintiff, a volunteer with an environmental group, was observing an interagency operation herding buffalo into Yellowstone National Park. Two weeks before, evidence the group had gathered had been used as evidence in a federal environmental lawsuit concerning the herding efforts. The plaintiff was in a vehicle parked on a highway adjacent to the park. A Montana state agent told the plaintiff to move. He moved the vehicle to another location. A defendant sheriff's deputy cited the plaintiff for obstructing a peace officer, a misdemeanor. The plaintiff and the deputy disagreed over whether the plaintiff had a right to park where he was. The deputy told the plaintiff he would be arrested if he did not move farther away. The plaintiff moved where instructed. Other members of the public were allowed to observe the herding from fifty yards away. There were multiple disputes of fact as to where the agent told the plaintiff to move, whether the plaintiff followed those instructions, and whether the plaintiff was in an area the buffalo might enter. The plaintiff sued under 42 U.S.C. section 1983, alleging violation of his 4th and 1st Amendment rights. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment on the plaintiff's unreasonable seizure claim, and sua sponte dismissed his failure-to-train claim. After a jury trial, the district court granted judgment as a matter of law on the 1st Amendment claims.
The 9th Circuit ruled that the district court had erred in granting summary judgment on the 4th Amendment unreasonable seizure claims and the 1st Amendment claims. In light of the multiple issues of fact on what occurred, and whether the plaintiff had the specific intent necessary to establish an interference offense, the district court could not rule that as a matter of law the officers had probable cause to arrest the plaintiff, or that the arrest did not unreasonably interfere with his 1st Amendment rights to observe the buffalo herding from a public place. The district court also erred in dismissing the failure-to-train claim sua sponte without providing the plaintiff with proper notice of its grounds for doing so.

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