Opinion ID: 789967
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ehrlich

Text: 22 Of course, I was outvoted in Horne, and the Ehrlich panel sought to salvage what it could of Horne in light of the Supreme Court's holding in Saucier that the threshold constitutional inquiry is mandatory rather than simply the better approach. Whatever misgivings I may have about Ehrlich 's treatment of Saucier, Ehrlich is the law in the Circuit and must be met on its own terms. Even working within the confines of Ehrlich, however, I cannot agree with the majority because Ehrlich does not provide authority to allow us to decline to reach the constitutional issue in this case. 23 Ehrlich states that in those situations in which one can conclude that the Supreme Court did not intend to make the Saucier sequence mandatory, the Horne principles are relevant to determining whether we should avoid the constitutional question. Ehrlich, 348 F.3d at 57. Those principles indicate, for example, that this Court: (1) should address particularly egregious constitutional violations before deciding the qualified immunity issue; (2) may pass over particularly difficult constitutional questions and move directly to the qualified immunity issue; and (3) when defendants are entitled to qualified immunity, may pass over the constitutional inquiry to avoid constitutional dicta. Id. at 56. 24 The Ehrlich panel identified two situations in which it may frequently be appropriate to conclude that the Saucier sequence is inapplicable and the Horne principles are relevant. Id. at 57-58. First, we need not follow the Saucier inquiry if there is no `likelihood that the [constitutional] question will escape federal court review over a lengthy period' because federal courts will not repeatedly rely on qualified immunity to decide cases. Koch v. Town of Brattleboro, 287 F.3d 162, 166 (2d Cir.2002) ( quoting Horne, 191 F.3d at 249); see Ehrlich, 348 F.3d at 57. Second, we need not follow Saucier if the existence of a constitutional violation depends on the resolution of uncertain state law, meaning that a federal court would have to first interpret state law and then decide whether its interpretation presents a constitutional problem. Ehrlich, 348 F.3d at 58. 25 Neither of these exceptions from Saucier apply to this case. First, this is precisely the type of constitutional issue that will repeatedly escape review by federal courts. As the majority opinion demonstrates, numerous New York state courts have upheld the constitutionality of § 240.30(1) or have applied the law as if it was constitutional. Thus, police officers — like the defendants in this case — will always lack fair notice of the law's unconstitutionality and will always be entitled to qualified immunity. Federal courts reviewing arrests under § 240.30(1), like the majority here, will repeatedly rely on qualified immunity and thus this issue will `escape federal court review over a lengthy period.' Koch, 287 F.3d at 166 ( quoting Horne, 191 F.3d at 249). 26 Second, this is plainly not an unsettled or ambiguous state law that we would need to interpret. When state law is unclear, adopting our own interpretation of state law would actually subvert Saucier, by inducing state actors to rely on our rule when that rule might change altogether upon subsequent review by the relevant state courts. Ehrlich, 348 F.3d at 58. No such concern is present here. The majority concedes that § 240.30(1) is over 40 years old and that numerous state courts have found it constitutional. The statute's plain language defines the crime of aggravated harassment in the second degree as communicat[ing] with a person anonymously or otherwise, by telephone, or by telegraph, mail or any other form of written communication, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm [the other] person. 9 State courts have applied this provision to mean exactly what it says: that in order to obtain a conviction for aggravated harassment in the second degree, the state need only prove that a person, like Vives, invaded substantial privacy interests by communicating in an annoying or alarming manner. See, e.g., People v. Goldstein, 196 Misc.2d 741, 747-48, 763 N.Y.S.2d 390 (N.Y.App. Term 2003); People v. Cooper, 4 Misc.3d 788, 792-94, 781 N.Y.S.2d 201 (Nassau County Ct.2004); People v. Miguez, 147 Misc.2d 482, 484-86, 556 N.Y.S.2d 231 (N.Y.City Crim.Ct.1990), aff'd, 153 Misc.2d 442, 590 N.Y.S.2d 156 (N.Y.App. Term 1992). 10 27 The meaning of this law is straightforward and unambiguous, and the state courts have given us no cause to think otherwise. Indeed, since state courts have interpreted the meaning of this law consistently over the past 40 years, there is no realistic possibility that state courts are suddenly going to reinterpret § 240.30(1). There is, of course, always a chance that the New York State Court of Appeals will reverse several lower state courts and hold the law unconstitutional, but this does not mean that the meaning of the law is unsettled. And, in any event, such a possibility is not an adequate reason for a federal court to decline to exercise its responsibility to determine what the federal Constitution requires. 28 The majority states no rationale for deciding that Saucier is inapplicable. Instead, it relies solely on the Horne factors as a reason to disregard Saucier, an approach that we explicitly rejected in Ehrlich. See Ehrlich, 348 F.3d at 56 (These principles cannot, of course, make discretionary what the Supreme Court has deemed mandatory. They do, however, affect the choice in those cases in which the underlying rationale in Saucier does not apply.) (emphases omitted).