Opinion ID: 176682
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Members of the City Council

Text: Although monitoring or administrating a municipal contract is generally an executive function, whether an act is legislative depends not on defined categories of government acts but on the character and effect of the particular act at issue. Cinevision Corp. v. City of Burbank, 745 F.2d 560, 580 (9th Cir.1984). Moreover, the question of the intent of the individual defendants is strictly off-limits in the legislative immunity analysis. As instructed by the Supreme Court, our inquiry into whether the officials' actions were legislative must be stripped of all considerations of intent and motive. Bogan, 523 U.S. at 55, 118 S.Ct. 966. The privilege would be of little value if [legislators] could be subjected to the cost and inconvenience and distractions of a trial upon a conclusion of a pleader, or to the hazard of a judgment against them based upon a jury's speculation as to motives. Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367, 377, 71 S.Ct. 783, 95 L.Ed. 1019 (1951). We consider four factors in determining whether an act is legislative in its character and effect: (1) whether the act involves ad hoc decisionmaking, or the formulation of policy; (2) whether the act applies to a few individuals, or to the public at large; (3) whether the act is formally legislative in character; and (4) whether it bears all the hallmarks of traditional legislation. Kaahumanu, 315 F.3d at 1220 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The first two factors are largely related, as are the last two factors, and they are not mutually exclusive. Kaahumanu, 315 F.3d at 1220; San Pedro Hotel v. City of Los Angeles, 159 F.3d 470, 476 (9th Cir.1998). The third and fourth factors are easily satisfied in this case. The district court acknowledged, and CHI does not dispute, that the City's actions were formally and indisputably legislative in character. Cmty. House II, 654 F.Supp.2d at 1166. In an attempt to sell Community House at the public auction, the City Council passed Ordinances 6402 and 6404. Ordinances must be passed by majority vote, must be published in a city's official newspaper, and must generally be read on three different days. Idaho Code §§ 50-901, 902. In addition to the Ordinances, throughout the period the City was involved with Community House, the City Council passed at least three resolutions: Resolution 12635, which announced the City's partnership with CHI, Resolution 13056, which approved the lease to CHI, and Resolution 18765, which approved the lease to the BRM. Council Resolutions must also be passed by majority vote and, like ordinances, are binding. Idaho Code § 50-902. Resolutions, however, are not subject to the same publication and reading requirements as ordinances. See id. The City's actions were formally legislative and bore all the hallmarks of traditional legislation that implemented City policy. We next consider whether the City's actions applied to merely a few individuals or to the public at large. The district court held that the City's lease and sale of Community House to the BRM affected only CHI, the City, the BRM, and the residents of Community House. Cmty. House II, 654 F.Supp.2d at 1166. With respect, that conclusion was manifestly erroneous. First, the lease and sale actually had an impact on a larger group of peopleBoise's homeless community. An act need not affect a city's entire population in order to be considered legislative. It is sufficient that the act affects a discrete group of people or places. See Kaahumanu, 315 F.3d at 1220 (enactment of a zoning ordinance, unlike the denial of a conditional use permit, is generally a legislative act because it affects all parcels within the covered area). The unchallenged facts arrayed in Part I, sections A, B, C, and D of this opinion demonstrate that the disputed lease and sale were an inseparable part of the City's longstanding and continuing attempt to ameliorate a serious community problem, indeed a city crisis. CHI's Second Amended Complaint itself describes a city-wide problem to which many private as well as public interests responded. CHI would ask us to put on blinders to the context which spawned the sale and lease. Only were we to ignore everything leading up to the dispute could we conclude that the lease and sale affected merely a few people. Our final consideration is whether the actions of the mayor and council members involved the formulation of policy or were merely ad hoc decisions. An ad hoc decision is made with a particular end or purpose, as distinguished from a coordinated policy. Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged 26 (2002). Budgetary decisions, such as a decision to eliminate an employment position, typically involve the formation of policy. See Bechard v. Rappold, 287 F.3d 827, 830 (9th Cir.2002). On the other hand, decisions directed toward specific individuals, such as a decision to indemnify a government employee, are normally considered to be ad hoc. Trevino v. Gates, 23 F.3d 1480, 1482 (9th Cir.1994). Once again, the fact that the lease and sale to the BRM viewed out of context involved only a single building and parcel of land is not dispositive. We have previously held that a denial of public funds for a loan to a single entity for the purchase of a single hotel involved the formation of policy applied to the public at large. San Pedro Hotel Co., 159 F.3d at 476. Because the denial of the loan was a discretionary decision on whether to disburse public funds to a certain party, the decision was not ad hoc: The disbursement of public funds in support of one project necessarily means that other projects are not being funded. A legislator's decision can almost always be criticized for not funding some worthy group. This is precisely the type of decision for which a legislator must be given immunity. To hold otherwise would expose virtually every municipal funding decision to judicial review. Id. We held that the defendant councilman was entitled to absolute immunity for voting or persuading his colleagues to vote one way or another on approval of the loan. Id. CHI's attempt to distinguish San Pedro Hotel is wholly unpersuasive. It argues that the mayor and council members have not produced evidence of any policy to address homelessness that was related to their vote for a facially discriminatory men-only policy and approval of a lease for a below market rent. CHI's cramped formulation of our focus attempts to limit the policy inquiry here only to the men-only stipulation and the rent issue. These two matters are but small subparts of a larger developing universe, and examining the relevant universe and the context of the disputed acts assist us in deciding whether they were essentially legislative or not. First, the actions of the mayor and council members leading up to and including the lease and sale to the BRM involved questions of whether to continue making disbursement[s] of public funds to CHI. Id. The City consistently contributed public resources to assist CHI in the operation of Community House: at least $200,000 per year for ten years. When the City took over management and was forced to funnel $80,000 into Community House each month, it determinedunsurprisinglythat transferring management or ownership would provide a long-term solution. Its decision to lease and eventually sell the facility to an organization that does not receive any public funds preserved the City's coffers for other worthy projects. Second, the City had an ongoing policy, since 1994 at the latest, of helping provide shelter for and services to Boise's homeless community. The MOU clearly states the City's intention to enter into a cooperative public/private partnership with the primary objective being to provide housing and comprehensive services for the homeless in our community. The City kept looking for a solution that would keep the doors of the shelter open. When it became clear that CHI's financial difficulties were not improving, the City decided to bring in the Salvation Armywith CHI's blessingto see if a different non-profit group could operate the facility with less difficulty. When the Salvation Army abandoned the project after only 2 weeks, the City itself took over management of Community House. And when a different non-profit organization demonstrated its desire and ability to take over the City's efforts to manage a homeless shelter which would effectuate the City's policy of caring for the homeless while saving the City money at the same timethe City chose that route. Finally, the individuals involved in the decision of what to do with Community House had to weigh important social demands inherent in the City's policy of helping the homeless against significant individual rights. Legislators involved in such balancing are generally entitled to absolute legislative immunity. Kuzinich v. Santa Clara County, 689 F.2d 1345, 1350 (9th Cir.1982). In Kuzinich, a case involving the enactment of an emergency zoning ordinance, we explained why: [T]he manifest need for a rule of absolute immunity is illustrated in this case. Here legislators are involved in balancing social needs against constitutional rights, the kind of balancing which often produces plurality opinions, and almost always dissenting opinions, in the Supreme Court. These legislators now find themselves sued for the total of $2,500,000.00 general damages and $5,000,000.00 punitive damages by a plaintiff whose business, as nearly as we can determine from the record, has not been shut down one day. Id. In other words, it is not the within the province of the courts to second-guess the difficult policy decisions legislators must make simply because a different decision might have been made after weighing the immediate needs of a disadvantaged group of local citizens against the possibility of offending a constitutional or statutory right. The City's ultimate decision in this case unmistakably was not ad hoc. Rather, it was the culmination of the City's repeated efforts to ensure that Boise addressed its homeless crisis and retained a homeless shelter. CHI casts its fate in large measure with our decision in Kaahumanu, 315 F.3d at 1220-24. In that case, we analyzed the Maui City Council's denial of a conditional use permit (CUP) to an applicant who wished to use for commercial purposes her beachfront property located in an area zoned for residential use. Our inquiry was designed ultimately to determine whether the Council's denial was insulated by the doctrine of legislative immunity from lawsuits brought pursuant to § 1983. Accordingly, we examined whether the denial was administrative with respect to settled zoning policy, on one hand, or whether it had the characteristics of a policy laden legislative decision, on the other. Id. at 1220. Because we concluded that the denial was administrative, we decided that the Council and its members were not entitled to legislative immunity, and we did so for two reasons. First, the denial was based on the circumstances of the particular case and did not effectuate policy or create a binding rule of conduct. Id. Second, [i]n denying a single application for a CUP, the Council did not change Maui's comprehensive zoning ordinance or the policies underlying it, nor did it affect the City's budgetary priorities or the services the County provides to residents. Id. at 1223-24. The CUP by its terms applied only to Plaintiff Barker's parcel and did not involve rezoning or an application for rezoning. Id. at 1223 n. 7. To articulate our reasoning in that case is to demonstrate that Kaahumanu is manifestly distinguishable from the case at hand. Here, the actions of which CHI complains were taken specifically to supersede old policy and to effectuate a new approach to a continuing civic problem for which the City was searching for a remedy. The City's final decision had nothing to do with the rote administration of the existing policy. Unlike the disputed decision in Kaahumanu, the discretionary decision here directly affected an important service the City provided to a disadvantaged segment of its residents, and it did so with considerable budgetary implications. Bogan, 523 U.S. at 55-56, 118 S.Ct. 966 (The ordinance [qualifying for legislative immunity for the officials responsible for it] reflected a discretionary, policymaking decision implicating the budgetary priorities of the city and the services the city provides to its constituents.). In effect, although the Maui City Council is normally a legislative body, its decision to deny an isolated CUP to Barker had all the hallmarks of an ad hoc implementing executive decision, not a legislative one. Thus, we conclude that Kaahumanu is distinguishable from both this case, as well as from San Pedro Hotel where the public funds aspect of the decision tipped the scales in favor of legislative immunity. San Pedro Hotel by itself would be enough to support our decision. In discussing the long-standing tradition of legislative immunity, the Supreme Court has emphasized that the freedom of legislators to make decisions without worrying about personal liability is necessary to protect the citizens not just the legislators: These privileges are thus secured, not with the intention of protecting the members against prosecutions for their own benefit, but to support the rights of the people, by enabling their representatives to execute the functions of their office without fear of prosecutions, civil or criminal. Tenney, 341 U.S. at 373-74, 71 S.Ct. 783 (citation and quotation marks omitted). The decisions about how to further the City's laudable goal of fighting homelessness is a prime example of the need to allow city council members the freedom to make important and difficult discretionary decisions without fear of being personally sued for doing so.