Opinion ID: 718819
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Lack of Any Supported Claim Against the State Defendants

Text: 29 While the statute of limitations did not bar the claims against the state defendants, an appellate court may affirm a grant of summary judgment on any alternative ground fairly supported by the record. E.g., Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n v. Southern Ry. Co., 860 F.2d 1038 n. 2 (11th Cir.1988) (citation omitted). Here, we find as an alternative ground the complete absence of any showing of discriminatory conduct by the state defendants, coupled with the apparent abandonment of any such claims by concession during oral argument before us. We recognize, of course, that an appellate court's authority to affirm summary judgment on an alternative ground is limited by the principle that the parties must have 30 had a full and fair opportunity to develop facts relevant to the decision.... Where summary judgment is granted on one issue, an appellate court may not extend that judgment to another issue under the guise of affirming the result below when the effect is to preclude the losing party from disput(ing) facts material to that claim. 31 Heirs of Ude C. Fruge v. Blood Servs., 506 F.2d 841, 844 n. 2 (5th Cir.1975) (citing Fountain v. Filson, 336 U.S. 681, 683, 69 S.Ct. 754, 755-756, 93 L.Ed. 971 (1949)) (remanding on question of negligence, where plaintiffs were never called upon to produce any Rule 56(c) materials on the merits of their claim). 32 In the present case, two considerations lead us to conclude that we properly may and should affirm the district court's order granting summary judgment to the state defendants, on the alternative ground that plaintiffs have clearly failed to demonstrate the existence of any viable claim against the state defendants. First, the evidentiary hearing on plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction against all the defendants, which forms a part of the record in this appeal, provided at least partial opportunity and inducement for plaintiffs to present whatever facts they could in support of their claims against the state defendants. At that hearing, plaintiffs had an opportunity--and to obtain an injunction were required--to show a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their claims (including equal protection and due process) against the various defendants. The evidence they adduced not only failed to show a probability of success against the state defendants but, more to the point here, was wholly insufficient as a matter of law to support a finding that the state defendants had engaged in intentional racial discrimination including the pattern or practice of discrimination in the siting of landfills asserted as to the county defendants. It was the county, not the state, defendants who selected the site. The principal responsibility of the state defendants lay in ascertaining the technical suitability of an already chosen site. While plaintiffs and others opposed the state's granting of a permit for the county's choice on various technical grounds, they did not at that time charge the county with discrimination, raising the question of how state authorities would even know that discrimination was an issue. It remains unclear to this moment on what factual basis plaintiffs now charge that the state defendants' granting of the permit was racially motivated. See Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Devel. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 266, 97 S.Ct. 555, 563-564, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977) (evidence of both discriminatory intent and discriminatory impact are required to show an equal protection violation, absent an unusually stark pattern); Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 242, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 2049, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976); see also Terry Properties, Inc. v. Standard Oil Co., 799 F.2d 1523, 1535 (11th Cir.1986) (no equal protection violation where the record did not show discriminatory intent, but rather showed that legitimate decisionmaking factors were used in the siting of an industrial plant). 33 Having said this, we recognize that the hearing on the preliminary injunction was not the full equivalent of an opportunity to make submissions in response to a summary judgment motion based on an allegation that plaintiffs lacked a valid claim against the state defendants. If this were all, we would be reluctant to find that the injunctive hearing, standing alone, sufficed for present purposes. But there was more. At oral argument, appellants' counsel conceded, in response to panel inquiry, that, As to the state defendants, I'm not aware of anything [relative to violating the Fourteenth Amendment], in all candor with the court at this point. 10 Adding this concession to the failed opportunity to present evidence against the state defendants at the preliminary injunction hearing, we can see no unfairness in affirming the judgment in favor of the state defendants without affording plaintiffs a further opportunity on remand. We conclude that the summary judgment granted against the state defendants should stand for the independent reasons just stated.