Opinion ID: 679995
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Deprivation of Constitutional Magnitude

Text: 14 The crux of the district court's analysis under each of the three theories before us on appeal is that Sherwin's claims failed to demonstrate injuries of constitutional magnitude. Without such an injury, the court reasoned, Sherwin could not recover attorneys' fees as compensatory damages. See Reichenberger, 660 F.2d at 285 (legal fees expended by the plaintiffs in the administrative proceedings cannot qualify as a constitutional injury absent a showing of deprivation of constitutional magnitude). As indicated, the district court purported to base its reasoning on our decisions in Easter House and Reichenberger. In Easter House, a private adoption agency brought a Sec. 1983 action against a former employee and officials of a state licensing agency, alleging a conspiracy to deprive it of its operating license. Easter House's only alleged injuries were the cost of answering the questions of the licensing agency and of making files available to it. Easter House, 910 F.2d at 1407. We concluded that neither of these injuries rose to the level of a procedural due process deprivation, holding that a party cannot maintain a Sec. 1983 action for denial of procedural due process if the alleged violations are committed by state employees acting in a random and unauthorized manner and adequate state remedies are available. Id. at 1408. 15 In Reichenberger the plaintiffs owned nightclubs that featured nude dancing, and the defendants, a minister and a member of the Common Council, allegedly conspired to eliminate the nude dancing. The complaint asserted that the defendants attempted to interfere in various municipal administrative proceedings in order to revoke the plaintiffs' liquor licenses or to make the cost of renewing the licenses prohibitively expensive. Id. at 282. As a result, the plaintiffs alleged both an abridgment of their free speech rights and a procedural due process claim--in that they were deprived of a property interest without due process. 3 The Reichenberger court, however, found that the complaint did not allege either a procedural due process or a First Amendment injury, since the plaintiffs' expressive and business activities were not interrupted or curtailed and since the defendants' opposition to Reichenberger's activities did not require the plaintiffs to respond to inquiries to which they were not otherwise required to respond. Thus, we affirmed the dismissal of the complaint, noting the plaintiffs' threshold inability to allege injury or deprivation of constitutional rights. Id. at 288. Reichenberger stands for the proposition that impermissibly motivated government conduct that does not cause injury is not actionable. 4 Therefore, an individual who is required to respond to inquiries to which everyone else, in ordinary course, is also required to respond has not suffered a constitutional injury of any kind, even if the relevant government actor makes the customary inquiry animated by impermissible prejudice. 16 By dismissing the complaint because Sherwin never lost its license or certification and because Sherwin took advantage of a post-survey remedy, the district court, it appears, mistakenly blurred the distinction between procedural due process injuries and other constitutional injuries. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. A procedural due process claim necessitates a property deprivation of constitutional magnitude and, of course, one effected without due process. Easter House, 910 F.2d at 1407. In comparison with other constitutional claims such as equal protection or free exercise, a cognizable procedural due process claim does not typically arise until the proceedings are at a mature stage and due process has not been furnished, even though a tangible deprivation has occurred. 17 By contrast, simply because they are not procedural due process injuries, other constitutional harms may arise no matter how much process is afforded. For example, an equal protection cause of action accrues whenever a state den[ies] to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. U.S. Const.Amend. XIV, Sec. 1. To state an equal protection claim, a Sec. 1983 plaintiff must allege that a state actor purposefully discriminated against him because of his identification with a particular (presumably historically disadvantaged) group. See Shango v. Jurich, 681 F.2d 1091, 1103-04 (7th Cir.1982); Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 247-48, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 2051, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976). As this court observed recently in Triad Associates, Inc. v. Robinson, governmental disregard of the fundamental dictate of equal treatment is the beginning and end of the equal protection inquiry. 10 F.3d 492, 500 (7th Cir.1993). 5 18 Sherwin presents a cognizable equal protection claim since it alleges that it was subjected to differential treatment by the state surveyors based upon the surveyors' anti-Semitic animus. The district court incorrectly extended the due process injury requirement of Easter House to all Sec. 1983 cases. The defendants' anti-Semitic remarks may not by themselves give rise to an equal protection action by Sherwin. See Bell v. City of Milwaukee, 746 F.2d 1205, 1259 (7th Cir.1984) (derogatory references to racial or ethnic backgrounds by themselves obviously do not rise to the level of a constitutional violation). However, such verbal abuse accompanied by the imposition of a special administrative burden forms the basis of an equal protection claim. Further, unlike the plaintiffs in Reichenberger, Sherwin does have a constitutional right not to endure the complained of administrative burden; the state survey alleged by Sherwin was in no sense ordinary (a description that suggests relatively minor evaluation errors by the defendants) but, as alleged, amounted to a malicious broadside that so threatened Sherwin's interests that it prompted the nursing home to resort to the extraordinary measure of hiring attorneys and appealing directly to supervisors in the Department, rather than awaiting review by the Department's Quality Assurance Division. 19 The Ninth Circuit, in Flores v. Pierce, 617 F.2d 1386 (9th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 875, 101 S.Ct. 218, 66 L.Ed.2d 96 (1980), reached a similar conclusion. In Flores, two Mexican-Americans attempted to open a restaurant and bar in a town that they anticipated would cater in large part to Mexican-Americans. They applied for a liquor license to the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control of the State of California (ABC), prompting an official protest from the town's police chief, mayor and city council. Id. at 1388. Under California law at that time, when a city chose to protest a liquor license application, that protest operated to block issuance of the license until a hearing was held. The Floreses' license was initially denied but was later granted by the ABC Appeals Board. The Floreses then brought suit for damages under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. The court found that the defendants violated the Floreses' equal protection rights by discriminating against them on the basis of race or national origin. Id. at 1390. 20 Like Sherwin, the plaintiffs in Flores were ultimately made whole: the Floreses in the end received the liquor license. Nonetheless, the Ninth Circuit held that there had been a sufficient allegation of injury: 21 The violation here consisted not in the ABC's initial denial of the license, but in the policy of the city officials to force the applicants to undertake extraordinary measures for its issuance. If the rigors of the governmental or administrative process are imposed upon certain persons with an intent to burden, hinder, or punish them by reason of their race or national origin, then this imposition constitutes a denial of equal protection, notwithstanding the right of the affected persons to secure the benefits they seek by pursuing further legal procedures. 22 Id. at 1391. Just as the Floreses were forced to appeal the denial of their liquor license application, so too was Sherwin forced to take extraordinary measures in appealing the biased report to the Department. Because the claims of the Floreses and Sherwin were properly grounded in equal protection rather than in procedural due process, the fact that further legal procedures cured the violation against property--i.e., furnished due process--affects only the quantum of damages, not whether the plaintiffs' equal protection rights were violated.