Opinion ID: 807042
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Injury to Individual Plaintiffs

Text: We agree with the district court that plaintiff David Kennedy faces a 7 Case: 11-13044 Date Filed: 08/20/2012 Page: 8 of 33 “credible threat of application” of section 7. Socialist Workers Party, 145 F.3d at 1245. Kennedy is a civil immigration attorney who has alleged and declared that he regularly transports undocumented immigrants to and from court hearings, meets with immigrant clients in his law office, gives legal advice to undocumented immigrants who wish to remain in Georgia, and helps undocumented immigrants to enter Georgia for court business and hearings. These actions fall within the plain language of the section 7 prohibitions on transporting, harboring, and inducing undocumented immigrants. Although section 7 contains an exception for transportation to or from judicial proceedings that require the undocumented individual’s presence, O.C.G.A. § 16-11-200(d)(2), that does not exempt Kennedy’s activities undertaken pursuant to representation of undocumented individuals in civil immigration matters where presence is not required. See also id. § 16-11-201(a)(1) (exempting from the harboring provision an attorney providing services “for the purpose of representing a criminal defendant”); id. § 16-11-201(d) (exempting from the harboring provision certain government employees or persons acting at the express direction of a government employee). Similarly, we agree that plaintiff Jane Doe #2 satisfies the standing requirement to challenge section 8. Jane Doe #2 is an undocumented immigrant 8 Case: 11-13044 Date Filed: 08/20/2012 Page: 9 of 33 currently classified under “deferred action” status.2 As a result of this status, Jane Doe #2 remains permissibly in the United States but has not acquired the requisite documentation to stave off the investigatory detention permitted by section 8. See O.C.G.A. § 17-5-100(b) (listing acceptable documentation to prove lawful status and thereby prevent further detention). Thus, Jane Doe #2 faces a credible threat of detention under section 8, as she possesses none of the listed documentation to prove that she has permission to remain temporarily in the United States. See id. § 17-5-100(e) (authorizing peace officers, after verification of illegal status, to “take any action authorized by state and federal law,” including “detaining [the] suspected illegal alien”). This is sufficient to meet the injury requirement. The State Officers, relying on City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 103 S. Ct. 1660 (1983), argue that the underlying probable cause requirement of sections 7 and 8 renders their application sufficiently speculative to deprive the individual plaintiffs of a realistic danger of injury. In Lyons, the plaintiff sought to enjoin the use of a chokehold technique that police officers allegedly used to restrain arrestees. Id. at 97–98, 103 S. Ct. at 1662–63. However, in order to be 2 “Deferred action status, also known as ‘non-priority status,’ amounts to, in practical application, a reprieve for deportable aliens. No action (i.e., no deportation) will be taken . . . against an alien having deferred action status.” Pasquini v. Morris, 700 F.2d 658, 661 (11th Cir. 1983) (internal citation omitted). 9 Case: 11-13044 Date Filed: 08/20/2012 Page: 10 of 33 subject to the chokehold at issue, the Court explained that Lyons would have to allege a future police encounter along with “the incredible assertion either (1) that all police officers in Los Angeles always choke any citizen with whom they happen to have an encounter, whether for the purpose of arrest, issuing a citation, or for questioning, or (2) that the City ordered or authorized police officers to act in such manner.” Id. at 106, 103 S. Ct. at 1667 (emphases omitted). We do not agree with the State Officers that the probability of an officer’s finding of probable cause for any violation of state or federal law is comparable to the likelihood of the “sequence of individually improbable events” held to be speculative in Lyons. See Fla. State Conference of the NAACP v. Browning, 522 F.3d 1153, 1162 (11th Cir. 2008). The uncontradicted declarations from three experienced law enforcement officers support this conclusion, as they confirm that any minor traffic violation such as failure to use a turn signal or failure to come to a complete stop can provide the requisite probable cause to trigger application of either section.3 The State Officers further contend that we must assume that Plaintiffs “will conduct their activities within the law and so avoid prosecution and conviction.” 3 Collectively, the relevant declarants have close to one-hundred years of law enforcement experience that informs their sworn statements in support of Plaintiffs’ contention. 10 Case: 11-13044 Date Filed: 08/20/2012 Page: 11 of 33 O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 497, 94 S. Ct. 669, 677 (1974). Whereas in Littleton the alleged unconstitutional conduct could only result from an actual legal violation, prosecution, and conviction for that crime, here all that is necessary for application is an officer’s finding of probable cause that a legal violation has occurred. See id. at 497, 94 S. Ct. at 676 (“[T]he proposition is that if respondents proceed to violate an unchallenged law and if they are charged, held to answer, and tried in any proceedings before petitioners, they will be subjected to the discriminatory practices that petitioners are alleged to have followed.”). As with Lyons, we find that the possible injury facing Plaintiffs is not sufficiently similar to the attenuated chain of events required prior to the alleged injury in Littleton so as to preclude an individual plaintiff from having standing.4