Court Opinion

ID: 9499478
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:49:11.283367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:31.587454
License: Public Domain

SUTTON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Officer Robinson had probable cause to arrest Leonard for violating any one of four Michigan statutes: Michigan Compiled Laws § 750.103 (“Cursing and swearing”); § 750.167 (“Disorderly person”); § 750.170 (“Disturbance of lawful meetings”); and § 750.337 (“Women or children, improper language in presence”). While I am prepared to accept the majority’s judgment that the application of all four statutes to Leonard violated his First Amendment rights, I am not prepared to accept its judgment that the Supreme Court, our court or the Michigan courts had clearly established the unconstitutionality of all four of these duly enacted laws before this incident.
The Michigan courts, it is true, had declared one of the four statutes facially unconstitutional six-and-a-half months before this arrest. See Mich. Comp. Laws § 750.337 (criminalizing the “use [of] any indecent, immoral, obscene, vulgar or insulting language in the presence or hearing of any woman or child”), invalidated by People v. Boomer, 250 Mich.App. 534, 655 N.W.2d 255, 259 (2002) (holding § 750.337 “facially vague”). But the other three have been on the books since 1931, see Mich. Pub. Act No. 328, §§ 103, 167, 170 (Sept. 18, 1931), were enacted by a state legislature sworn to uphold the United States Constitution, see U.S. Const, art. VI, cl. 3, and accordingly receive a presumption of constitutionality, Illinois v. Krull, 480 U.S. 340, 351, 107 S.Ct. 1160, 94 L.Ed.2d 364 (1987).
Put yourself in the shoes of Officer Robinson when it comes to enforcing just one of these statutes, § 750.170 (“Disturbance of lawful meetings”), on the evening of October 15, 2002. Let us assume (improbably) that Robinson had looked at the statute before attending the meeting. Let us assume (even more improbably) that Robinson had looked at judicial interpretations of the statute before the meeting. And let us assume (most improbably) that Robinson had read Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 91 S.Ct. 1780, 29 L.Ed.2d 284 (1971), before the meeting.
The statute, he would have learned, says that “[a]ny person who shall make or excite any disturbance ... at any election or other public meeting where citizens are peaceably and lawfully assembled, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” Nothing about the case law enforcing the provision would have tipped him off that he was clearly forbidden from applying it here. One of *364the cases defines “disturbance” as “[a]ny act ... contrary to the usages of a sort of meeting and class of persons assembled that interferes with its due progress or irritates the assembly in whole or in part.” People v. Weinberg, 6 Mich.App. 345, 149 N.W.2d 248, 251 (1967) (internal quotation marks omitted); id. at 252-53 (upholding a conviction under the law on the grounds that the defendants “hindered and interfered” with a savings and loan association’s “right to conduct [its] business in an orderly, quiet, decorous manner” when they sat on the floor and were “requested to leave” but “refused to do so”). Another case upholds a conviction where the evidence showed that the defendants had “failed to leave the building when requested” and that their presence interfered with janitorial service. People v. Mash, 45 Mich.App. 459, 206 N.W.2d 767, 770 (1973). And both of these cases uphold the statute in the face of constitutional challenges. Mash, 206 N.W.2d at 770 (holding that “ § 750.170 is not void for vagueness nor constitutionally infirm for overbreadth”); Weinberg, 149 N.W.2d at 255-56 (holding that § 750.170 was not “unconstitutionally broad” and upholding convictions in the face of a First Amendment challenge). As for Cohen v. California, it would have taught him that the First (and Fourteenth) Amendment prohibits a State from making “a single four-letter expletive a criminal offense.” 403 U.S. at 26, 91 S.Ct. 1780.
All Robinson would have learned, in other words, is that the statute had been enforced several times during its 75-year existence; it had not sunk into desuetude as shown by the fact that it had been enforced within the last decade, People v. Walker, No. 198893, 1998 WL 1989516 (Mich.Ct.App. Oct. 27, 1998); it had withstood two constitutional challenges, one of them on First Amendment grounds; and Cohen prevented him only from arresting someone on the sole ground that the individual had uttered an expletive. Even had Robinson been equipped with this uncommonly extensive knowledge of Michigan and federal law* indeed even had Robinson carried a laptop equipped with Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis to the meeting, I am hard pressed to understand how he would have known that it was “clearly established” that he could not enforce this law in this setting.
The undisputed facts (undisputed because the record contains a video of the incident) show that Robinson observed Leonard at a “public meeting where citizens were peaceably and lawfully assembled,” Mich. Comp. Laws § 750.170, yelling, swearing and answering requests with the words “I’ll do what I want.” JA 152. What starts as a pointed, but seemingly controlled, exchange between Leonard and a board member turns into Leonard speaking over the board member and degenerates into Leonard losing control and simply yelling at the board member. At that stage, when Robinson stepped in, Leonard not only had created a “disturbance” at this public meeting but also had lost control of himself. One can only wonder where the verbal confrontation was heading, and it is doubtful that a single one of the 25 or so people in attendance (save the Leonards) regretted Robinson’s decision to take action. A reasonable police officer could fairly believe that Leonard had “excite[d][a] disturbance,” Mich. Comp. Laws § 750.170, either by “interfering]” with the council meeting’s “due progress” by “refusing” to abide by the council member’s requests, Weinberg, 149 N.W.2d at 251; see also Mash, 206 N.W.2d at 770, or by “hindering]” the meeting from “eonduct[ing][its] business” by yelling and cursing during the meeting, Weinberg, 149 N.W.2d at 252.
It may be true that Robinson did not wait for the chair to call Leonard “out of *365order.” See Maj. Op. at 361. But I am not aware of any requirement — under Michigan law, the First Amendment or any other law — -that an officer may restore order to such a gathering only by following Robert’s Rules of Order.
Nor does People v. Purifoy, 34 Mich. App. 318, 191 N.W.2d 63 (1971), alter this conclusion. While one of the three judges reviewing that case stated that activity punished under § 750.170 must present a “clear and present danger of riot,” id. at 65, two of the three judges in Purifoy expressly rejected this language, id. (Danhof and V.F. Brennan, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“We cannot agree, however, that all prosecutions under the statute ... would require that the activity to be punished must be shown to present a clear and present danger of riot....”). Two years later, Mash removed all doubt about the point. See 206 N.W.2d at 770 (noting that “the other members of the [Purifoy] panel .... declined to adopt the qualifying language cited by the Chief Judge,” and holding that “[w]e also respectfully decline to follow this dicta in Purifoy”).
In Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31, 99 S.Ct. 2627, 61 L.Ed.2d 343 (1979), the Supreme Court addressed the problem raised by this case — namely, how can the courts fairly require police officers to anticipate constitutional rulings?- — in the context of ruling on a suppression motion filed under the Fourth Amendment:
At that time, of course, there was no controlling precedent that this ordinance was or was not constitutional, and hence the conduct observed violated a presumptively valid ordinance. A prudent officer, in the course of determining whether respondent had committed an offense under all the circumstances shown by this record, should not have been required to anticipate that a court would later hold the ordinance unconstitutional.
Police are charged to enforce laws until and unless they are declared unconstitutional. The enactment of a law forecloses speculation by enforcement officers concerning its constitutionality — with the possible exception of a law so grossly and flagrantly unconstitutional that any person of reasonable prudence would be bound to see its flaws. Society would be ill-served if its police officers took it upon themselves to determine which laws are and which are not constitutionally entitled to enforcement.
Id. at 37-38, 99 S.Ct. 2627. Similar reasoning ought to apply here. DeFillippo, it is true, applied what came to be known as the “Leon good faith” exception to the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 38, 99 S.Ct. 2627. But “the Leon good-faith inquiry and the qualified-immunity inquiry are one and the ‘same,’ ” Baranski v. Fifteen Unknown Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, 452 F.3d 433, 448 (6th Cir.2006) (en banc) (quoting Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 565 n. 8, 124 S.Ct. 1284, 157 L.Ed.2d 1068 (2004)); see also United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 911— 12, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984) (“We have not required suppression of the fruits of a search incident to an arrest made in good-faith reliance on a substantive criminal statute that subsequently is declared unconstitutional.”) (citing DeFil-lippo ).
To my knowledge, the Supreme Court has never rejected a claim of qualified immunity to a police officer who enforced a statute that had not been declared unconstitutional at the time of the citizen-police encounter. While DeFillippo acknowledges “the possible exception of a law so grossly and flagrantly unconstitutional that any person of reasonable prudence *366would be bound to see its flaws,” 443 U.S. at 38, 99 S.Ct. 2627, the exception remains just that — a theoretical possibility, one that can be imagined but that the Court has never enforced.
Adhering to DeFillippo’s guidance that the combination of legislative action and judicial inaction generally “forecloses speculation by enforcement officers concerning [a statute’s] constitutionality,” 443 U.S. at 38, 99 S.Ct. 2627, the Sixth Circuit has resisted imposing liability on police officers and other officials who fail to anticipate each twist and turn of judicial review. See Risbridger v. Connelly, 275 F.3d 565, 574 (6th Cir.2002) (granting qualified immunity to an officer who had arrested plaintiff for refusing to identify himself because “a reasonable officer would not have known that the ordinance would be found to be unconstitutionally vague as applied in this situation”); Wolfel v. Morris, 972 F.2d 712, 720 (6th Cir.1992) (“[Sjince the defendants reasonably relied on and applied valid regulations, they are entitled to qualified immunity for their actions. The fact that these regulations were subsequently held unconstitutionally vague as applied in a court case addressing a fairly complex legal matter cannot serve to strip these individuals of their immunity....”); Hanna v. Drob-nick, 514 F.2d 393, 397 (6th Cir.1975) (“[The building inspectors’] actions at the time were presumptively valid under a city ordinance which they had no part in adopting and which had not been declared unconstitutional .... [W]e perceive no duty on the part of the building inspectors to defy their city’s ordinance and their supervisors’ instructions by asserting the invalidity of the penalty clause of the ordinance which had not yet been attacked.”), repudiated on other grounds by Thomas v. Shipka, 818 F.2d 496 (6th Cir.1987); see also Prose v. Wendover, 96 Fed.Appx. 358, 364 (6th Cir.2004) (“Because the only court to have considered the ordinance in question, a federal district court, concluded that it was not ‘patently and flagrantly unconstitutional,’ the officers were entitled to qualified immunity from a claim that they violated the First Amendment by attempting to enforce it.”).
The other courts of appeals have taken the same path. See Vives v. City of New York, 405 F.3d 115, 117-18 (2d Cir.2005) (granting qualified immunity to officers because no case established “the proposition that [the statute] is facially unconstitutional”); Cooper v. Dillon, 403 F.3d 1208, 1220 (11th Cir.2005) (granting qualified immunity to officers because “[a]t the time of Cooper’s arrest, the statute had not been declared unconstitutional, and therefore it could not have been apparent to Dillon that he was violating Cooper’s constitutional rights”); Blumenthal v. Crotty, 346 F.3d 84, 104-05 (2d Cir.2003) (granting qualified immunity to state officials because “enforcement of a presumptively valid statute creates a heavy presumption in favor of qualified immunity”); Doe v. Heck, 327 F.3d 492, 516 (7th Cir.2003) (granting qualified immunity to state officials who enforced corporal-punishment statute later declared unconstitutional because they had acted within their “statutory authority”); Lederman v. United States, 291 F.3d 36, 45, 47 (D.C.Cir.2002) (granting qualified immunity to officers who arrested plaintiff for distributing leaflets in a “no-demonstration zone” on the Capitol Grounds because while the law contained “profound flaws” and was “astonishing[ly]” broad it was not “so grossly and flagrantly unconstitutional that the officers should have recognized its flaws”) (internal quotation marks omitted); Grossman v. City of Portland, 33 F.3d 1200, 1210 (9th Cir.1994) (granting qualified immunity to officer who arrested plaintiff for demonstrating without a permit because “an officer who reasonably relies on the legislature’s determi*367nation that a statute is constitutional [and arrests with probable cause] should be shielded from personal liability”); Swanson v. Powers, 937 F.2d 965, 968-69 (4th Cir.1991) (granting qualified immunity to state revenue secretary who enforced a tax later declared unconstitutional because she “was enforcing a long-standing statute” that is presumptively constitutional).
The only case of which I am aware construing DeFillippo and denying qualified immunity is Carey v. Nevada Gaming Control Board, 279 F.3d 873 (9th Cir. 2002). But in that case “two Ninth Circuit cases [were] directly on point” because they had declared parallel statutes of other States — permitting an arrest for refusing to identify oneself — unconstitutional. Id. at 881. That of course does not remotely describe today’s case. Nor does Sandul v. Larion, 119 F.3d 1250 (6th Cir.1997), offer any refuge to Leonard. It dealt not with the question whether an officer could be denied qualified immunity for failing to predict a judicial ruling declaring a statute unconstitutional but with whether the statute covered the plaintiffs conduct. See id. at 1256 (holding that shouting epithets from a moving car did not provide probable cause to arrest the plaintiff under a disorderly-conduct statute).
In the end, Leonard not only asks us to take a road less traveled but one never traveled. It is one thing to credit police officers with knowledge of all statutory and constitutional rulings potentially bearing on all statutes they enforce; but this necessary requirement needlessly loses any connection with reality when we hold police officers to the standard of anticipating a court’s later invalidation of a statute that was duly enacted by legislators sworn to uphold the Constitution, that is presumed constitutional, that has been on the books for 75 years and that has withstood two constitutional challenges. The First Amendment properly protected Leonard from being prosecuted for his unruly speech and conduct — and for now that is enough. To expose Robinson to money damages for enforcing these laws not only seems unfair (absolute immunity protects the legislature from similar risks, Bogan v. Scott-Harris, 523 U.S. 44, 48-49, 118 S.Ct. 966, 140 L.Ed.2d 79 (1998)) but also risks placing him in the push-me-pull-me predicament of having to decide which duly enacted laws to enforce and which ones not to enforce on the pain of losing either way — because he is charged with dereliction of duty when he opts not to enforce the law and because he is charged with money damages when he does enforce the law. See Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 555, 87 S.Ct. 1213, 18 L.Ed.2d 288 (1967) (“A policeman’s lot is not so unhappy that he must choose between being charged with dereliction of duty if he does not arrest when he has probable cause, and being mulcted in damages if he does.”).
Leonard fares no better under his free-speech retaliation claim. Because probable cause existed to arrest Leonard, as has been shown, our case law forecloses this claim as a matter of law. See Barnes v. Wright, 449 F.3d 709, 720 (6th Cir.2006) (“[T]he defendants had probable cause to seek an indictment and to arrest Barnes on each of the criminal charges in this case. Barnes’s First Amendment retaliation claim accordingly fails as a matter of law....”).
But even had probable cause been missing, this claim still would fail as a matter of law. No evidence shows that Robinson was doing anything but attempting to restore calm to the disrupted board meeting. Robinson gave no indication of a retaliatory motive. Cf. Greene v. Barber, 310 F.3d 889, 892 (6th Cir.2002) (“ T said, “This is the United States of America and we have freedom of speech here”.... [The police *368officer] answered, “Well, not in my building” .... ’ ”) (bracket omitted); Adair v. Charter County of Wayne, 452 F.3d 482, 492 (6th Cir.2006) (noting that the critical issue is “whether the adverse action was motivated at least in part as a response to the exercise of the plaintiffs constitutional rights”). None of Leonard’s speech was directed at Robinson. And no evidence shows that Robinson had any stake in the dispute between the city and the Leon-ards. Prior lawsuits between the city and the Leonards, a feud between the police department and the Leonards and Chief Abraham’s apparent “hatred” of Leonard’s wife thus do not bear on whether Robinson had a retaliatory motive.
The fainthearted suggestion that Chief Abraham had sent Robinson on a retaliatory errand is just that- — if not less than that. “I think,” Leonard initially proposes in his deposition testimony, that Robinson “was probably sent there by the chief.” JA 151. But Leonard then acknowledges that “aside from [his] opinion,” he did not “have any facts or any statements from people to support [that] opinion.” Id. The undisputed evidence reveals that Robinson was asked to “swing through” the meeting for 15 to 20 minutes, that Chief Abraham never said “anything negative to [Robinson] about the Leonards” and that no board member had any conversation with Robinson about Mr. Leonard. JA 138. The majority seeing these issues differently, I respectfully dissent.