Court Opinion

ID: 9964604
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-30 15:01:31.622716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:25:37.913513
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 23-13766   Document: 31-1    Date Filed: 04/30/2024   Page: 1 of 6

                                                [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                 In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                         ____________________

                              No. 23-13766
                         Non-Argument Calendar
                         ____________________

       LOUIS MATTHEW CLEMENTS,
                                                   Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
       versus
       GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA,
       ATTORNEY GENERAL OF FLORIDA,
       SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
       COMMISSIONER OF THE FDLE,

                                                Defendants-Appellees.

                         ____________________
USCA11 Case: 23-13766        Document: 31-1         Date Filed: 04/30/2024        Page: 2 of 6

       2                         Opinion of the Court                      23-13766

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Northern District of Florida
                    D.C. Docket No. 4:23-cv-00024-AW-MAF
                            ____________________

       Before NEWSOM, BRASHER, and ABUDU, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
               Louis Clements appeals the district court’s denial of his
       amended Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) motion for relief from its judgment
       dismissing his complaint asserting constitutional challenges to Fla.
       Stat. § 741.0405 and Florida’s sex-offender registration require-
       ments, Fla. Stat. §§ 943.0435 and 775.21. Clements argues on ap-
       peal that (1) the district court erred by denying his amended Rule
       60(b) motion because he erroneously included a broken hyperlink
       in his pleadings to an article that he claimed supported his claims,
       and (2) the district court erroneously failed to construe his claims
       as arising under the Equal Protection Clause, the Ex Post Facto
       Clause, the Double Jeopardy Clause, and the Eighth Amendment.
       After careful consideration, we hold that the district court didn’t
       err, so we affirm. 1

       1 We review the denial of a motion for relief from a judgment or order under

       Rule 60(b) for abuse of discretion. Maradiaga v. United States, 679 F.3d 1286,
       1291 (11th Cir. 2012). “That review is narrow in scope, addressing only the
       propriety of the denial or grant of relief and does not raise issues in the un-
       derlying judgment for review.” Id. (quotation marks and citation omitted).
       “The losing party must do more than show that a grant of the motion might
       have been warranted; he must demonstrate a justiﬁcation for relief so
USCA11 Case: 23-13766         Document: 31-1         Date Filed: 04/30/2024         Page: 3 of 6

       23-13766                   Opinion of the Court                                3

               Under Rule 60(b), a district court “may relieve a party . . .
       from a ﬁnal judgment, order, or proceeding for,” among other rea-
       sons, “mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect” and
       “any other reason that justiﬁes relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(1), (6).
       The term “mistake” in Rule 60(b)(1) includes legal errors made by
       judges. Kemp v. United States, 596 U.S. 528, 535 (2022). “It is not an
       abuse of discretion for the district court to deny a motion under
       Rule 60(b) when that motion is premised upon an argument that
       the movant could have, but did not, advance before the district
       court entered judgment.” Maradiaga v. United States, 679 F.3d 1286,
       1294 (11th Cir. 2012). “Nor is it an abuse of discretion for the dis-
       trict court to deny a motion under Rule 60(b) when the judgment
       or order from which the movant seeks relief was entered as a result
       of the movant’s choice to rely on an unsuccessful legal theory.” Id.
              Here, the district court did not abuse its discretion by deny-
       ing Clements’s amended Rule 60(b) motion. See Id. at 1291. The
       mistakes that Clements asserted warranted relief from the court’s
       judgment included his own mistake in attaching a non-functioning
       link to an article that he contended had supported his claims in his
       amended complaint and the court’s failure to construe his pro se
       pleadings to state a variety of diﬀerent legal theories.2 As to the

       compelling that the district court was required to grant the motion.” Id. (quo-
       tation marks and citation omitted and alterations adopted).
       2 We “give liberal construction to the pleadings of pro se litigants, [but] we

       nevertheless have required them to conform to procedural rules.” Albra v. Ad-
       van, Inc., 490 F.3d 826, 829 (11th Cir. 2007) (quotation marks and citation omit-
       ted). “[I]ssues not briefed on appeal by a pro se litigant are deemed
USCA11 Case: 23-13766         Document: 31-1         Date Filed: 04/30/2024         Page: 4 of 6

       4                          Opinion of the Court                       23-13766

       ﬁrst alleged mistake, nothing in Rule 60(b) suggests that a plaintiﬀ’s
       own mistake would warrant relief from an adverse judgment. See
       Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(1). Regardless, the relevant article did not in-
       clude any new information that might have changed the court’s
       analysis regarding whether Clements had standing and whether his
       amended complaint had failed to state a claim. Speciﬁcally, it does
       not aﬀect the court’s conclusions that Clements had no grounds to
       challenge § 741.0405, a repealed statute, and that his challenges to
       Florida’s sex-oﬀender registration system were foreclosed by prec-
       edent of this Court and the Supreme Court.
               As to Clements’s second argument, while it’s true that legal
       errors made by a judge ﬁt within the deﬁnition of “mistake” in Rule
       60(b)(1), none of the mistakes that he alleged that the district court
       committed were legal errors. Kemp, 596 U.S. at 535. Although a
       pro se litigant’s pleadings are to be construed liberally, the alterna-
       tive construction that Clements sought to clarify in his Rule 60(b)
       motion was not warranted. See Albra v. Advan, Inc., 490 F.3d 826,
       829 (11th Cir. 2007). Clements’s assertion that the district court
       should have construed his claims as challenges under the Equal
       Protection Clause, the Ex Post Facto Clause, the Double Jeopardy
       Clause, and the Eighth Amendment was an attempt to have the
       district court read into his pleadings claims that he did not state.

       abandoned.” Timson v. Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008). A claim is
       abandoned when an appellant “either makes only passing references to it or
       raises it in a perfunctory manner without supporting arguments and author-
       ity.” Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 681 (11th Cir. 2014).
USCA11 Case: 23-13766     Document: 31-1      Date Filed: 04/30/2024    Page: 5 of 6

       23-13766               Opinion of the Court                        5

       The only exceptions are his arguments regarding the Equal Protec-
       tion Clause and the Ex Post Facto Clause because he did explicitly
       include challenges under those constitutional provisions in his
       amended complaint, which the court resolved in its dismissal.
       Clements’s construction argument was eﬀectively an attempt to
       seek Rule 60(b) relief on the ground that the claims that he asserted
       in his amended complaint were premised on unsuccessful legal the-
       ories, which is not a proper ground for relief under Rule 60(b).
       Maradiaga, 679 F.3d at 1294. Furthermore, even if the district court
       could have construed Clements’s claims in the way that he asserted
       that it should have, that construction would not have aﬀected its
       legal conclusions that he did not have standing to challenge a re-
       pealed law and that his claims were foreclosed by precedent. Lastly,
       even if Clements’s Rule 60(b) arguments had merit, the court’s de-
       nial of his Rule 60(b) motion would still not be an abuse of discre-
       tion because Clements could have brought these arguments before
       the district court had entered judgment, speciﬁcally, in response to
       the magistrate judge’s R&R, which concluded that his constitu-
       tional challenges to Florida’s sex-oﬀender registry were foreclosed
       by precedent. Id.
              As a ﬁnal matter, Clements has abandoned all other claims
       that he sought to raise in the section of his brief titled “Statement
       of Issues Presented for Review” because he did not present argu-
       ments or cite to legal authority supporting them. Timson v.
       Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008); Brief of Appellant at 7.
       Further, this Court has already resolved the merits of Clements’s
       separate appeal from the district court’s dismissal of the complaint
USCA11 Case: 23-13766      Document: 31-1     Date Filed: 04/30/2024     Page: 6 of 6

       6                      Opinion of the Court                 23-13766

       itself in Appeal No. 23-11731, and he cannot relitigate those issues
       anew in this separately docketed appeal simply by incorporating
       those arguments by reference into his appellate brief in this appeal.
               In sum, Clements has failed to “demonstrate a justiﬁcation
       for relief so compelling that the district court was required to grant
       [his] motion.” Maradiaga, 679 F.3d at 1291 (internal quotation
       marks omitted). Therefore, the district court didn’t err—much less
       abuse its discretion—in denying his Rule 60(b) motion.
             AFFIRMED.