Opinion ID: 1446440
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Qualified Immunity and Plaintiff's First Amendment Claims

Text: Plaintiff additionally alleged violations of his rights under the First Amendment. Before the district court, Plaintiff denied asserting a First Amendment retaliation action. Rather, he claimed to challenge Defendants' actions in removing him from the public sidewalk, when he had done nothing wrong, [as] a per se violation of his First Amendment freedoms. Logsdon, 2006 WL 1793243, at . As the district court correctly noted, Plaintiff's First Amendment claims are grounded in the theory that his arrests impeded his freedom of expression and of assembly. Id. The district court therefore concluded that [s]hould the arrests be supported by probable cause, then none of Plaintiff's constitutional claims survive. Id. Because the district court erred in granting Defendants' motion to dismiss Plaintiff's Fourth Amendment claims, the district court's basis for dismissing Plaintiff's First Amendment claims is no longer valid. Examining Plaintiff's First Amendment claims de novo, with reference to other plausible theories, we reverse the district court's dismissal of Plaintiff's First Amendment claims. We begin by considering whether Defendants violated Plaintiff's constitutional rights. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151. On appeal, Plaintiff does little to clarify how Defendants violated his First Amendment rights. Plaintiff does not argue that Defendants arrested him in retaliation for his exercise of speech, nor could he, having disavowed this argument before the district court. [7] Rather, Plaintiff cites Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 108 S.Ct. 2495, 101 L.Ed.2d 420 (1988) and Pouillon v. City of Owosso, 206 F.3d 711 (6th Cir.2000), apparently in support of an argument that the state impermissibly regulated speech conducted in a public forum. Frisby v. Schultz concerned a facial First Amendment challenge to a city ordinance that banned all picketing `before or about' any residence. 487 U.S. at 476, 108 S.Ct. 2495. There, the plaintiffs were abortion protestors who sought to picket on a public street in front of an abortion provider's home, and who were prevented from picketing after the city adopted the prohibitive ordinance. Id. The Supreme Court in Frisby analyzed the plaintiff's challenge under the public forum doctrine, first acknowledging that the ordinance restricted speech in a traditional public forum inasmuch as it prevented protest on public streets and sidewalks. Id. at 479-81, 108 S.Ct. 2495. The Frisby court next observed that the appropriate level of scrutiny depends on whether the ordinance is content-neutral in marking the bounds of permissible speech. Id. at 481, 108 S.Ct. 2495. Finding the city's ordinance to be content-neutral, the court went on to consider whether the ordinance is `narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest' and whether it `leave[s] open ample alternative channels of communication.' Id. at 482, 108 S.Ct. 2495 (quoting Perry Educ. Ass'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass'n, 460 U.S. 37, 45, 103 S.Ct. 948, 74 L.Ed.2d 794 (1983)). Construing the ordinance narrowly, the court ultimately upheld the ordinance, finding that it preserved adequate alternative channels of communication, and that it served the significant government interest of protecting residential privacy. Id. at 484, 108 S.Ct. 2495. In Pouillon v. City of Owosso , police arrested the plaintiff, an anti-abortion protestor, purportedly for `refusing a lawful police order' to move, and `obstructing passage to a public building.' 206 F.3d 711, 713 (6th Cir.2000). There, the plaintiff had been protesting abortion on the steps of city hall when officers instructed him to move because he was obstructing entry to and egress from city hall. Id. at 714. Plaintiff refused. Id. Police then arrested him, took him into custody, and subsequently booked and charged him under a city ordinance that prohibits interference with police in the conduct of their duties. Id. The plaintiff in Pouillon brought a § 1983 suit against the officers alleging violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights. Id. at 713-14. With respect to his First Amendment claim, the plaintiff argued that in arresting him for refusing to move his protest off the city hall steps, the officers' restriction of his freedom of speech, even if construed as a time, place, and manner regulation, was not a reasonable one. Id. at 714. We concluded in Pouillon that the city hall steps were a traditional public forum and, accordingly, that protest on the steps of city hall could not be prohibited altogether. Id. at 717. We then went on to consider whether requiring [the plaintiff] to move to the sidewalk was a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction that . . . left open ample alternative channels of communication. Id. at 717-18. Because the plaintiff had previously been harassed while protesting on the streets, and allegedly had stopped protesting on the street for that reason, we found that a question of fact remained as to whether the requirement to move to the sidewalk left open ample alternative channels of communication to the plaintiff, or alternatively inhibit[ed] his protest. Id. at 718. We additionally noted an open question of fact as to whether [the plaintiff's] protest . . . was impeding access to city hall such that it was reasonable to require him to move. Id. at 717. In the instant case, Plaintiff averred that he engaged in anti-abortion protest and counseling from the public sidewalk and public park adjoining the CWS property, both quintessentially public fora. See Perry Educ. Ass'n, 460 U.S. at 45, 103 S.Ct. 948 ([S]treets and parks . . . `have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public, and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions.') (quoting Hague v. Comm. for Indus. Org., 307 U.S. 496, 515, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423 (1939)). On the facts alleged in Plaintiff's complaint, Defendants each removed Plaintiff from the public fora, thereby causing him to cease his protest and counseling, ostensibly for violating Ohio's criminal trespass law. In public fora, [r]easonable time, place and manner regulations are permissible, and a content-based prohibition must be narrowly drawn to effectuate a compelling state interest. Perry Educ. Ass'n, 460 U.S. at 46, 103 S.Ct. 948. Plaintiff's complaint alleges that Defendants each [d]emonstrat[ed] a blatant bias against [Plaintiff] and in favor of doing whatever CWS wanted. (J.A. at 11, 13) Construing Plaintiff's complaint liberally, Plaintiff alleges that Defendants were motivated by the content of his speech in removing him from the public forum, and not by any purported criminal trespass. Accordingly, Plaintiff has stated a claim that Defendants violated his First Amendment rights by restricting his speech on the basis of content. [8] Next, we consider whether qualified immunity applies to the alleged First Amendment violation, and we specifically look to whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151. It has long been the case that content-based regulations of the citizen's right to engage freely in speech in quintessential public fora presumptively violate the First Amendment. See Perry Educ. Ass'n, 460 U.S. at 46, 103 S.Ct. 948; see also R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 382, 112 S.Ct. 2538, 120 L.Ed.2d 305 (1992) (The First Amendment generally prevents government from proscribing speech . . . because of disapproval of the ideas expressed. Content-based regulations are presumptively invalid.) (internal citations omitted). The contours of the First Amendment public forum doctrine are sufficiently clear. Here, Defendants ostensibly arrested Plaintiff for violating Ohio's criminal trespass law. However, if instead, as Plaintiff appears to allege, Defendants arrested him because of the content of his speech, then Defendants acted in violation of the First Amendment in ways that should have been clear to a reasonable officer. Viewing the allegations in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, the district court erred in dismissing Plaintiff's First Amendment claims. We reverse because Plaintiff stated a claim, but express no opinion as to whether Plaintiff will ultimately succeed on his claim following discovery.