Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

The Eleventh Circuit reversed the grant of summary judgment to defendants on plaintiff's suit alleging unlawful discrimination because plaintiffs could not effectively communicate with hospital staff in the absence of auxiliary aids or services. The Eleventh Circuit held that plaintiffs had Article III standing to seek prospective injunctive relief; rejected the district court's substantive standard for liability; and concluded that for an effective-communication claim brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq., and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (RA), 29 U.S.C. 794, there is no requirement that a plaintiff show actual deficient treatment or to recount exactly what plaintiff did not understand. Rather, the relevant inquiry is whether the hospitals' failure to offer an appropriate auxiliary aid impaired the patient's ability to exchange medically relevant information with hospital staff. In this case, plaintiffs have offered sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment where the record demonstrated that plaintiffs' ability to exchange medically relevant information was impaired. On remand, the district court was directed to consider the deliberate-indifference issue in regards to monetary damages. View "Silva v. Baptist Health South Florida" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment to defendants in plaintiff's suit seeking damages for civil rights violations and claims arising under state law. Plaintiffs filed suit after two officers shot and killed Michael Knight and injured Latasha Cure. The Eleventh Circuit held that the trial court did not abuse its considerable discretion in any of the challenged trial rulings regarding the inclusion of defendants' police-practices expert; the exclusion of plaintiffs' ballistics and reconstruction experts; the exclusion of evidence showing violations of the Police Department's pursuit policy; the refusal to give a specific jury instruction; the admission of some criminal-history evidence; and the failure to address the prejudicial nature of defendants' opening and closing statements. Furthermore, the trial court did not err in granting summary judgment to the County, the supervising officers, or the detectives. View "Knight v. Miami-Dade County" on Justia Law

The Eleventh Circuit reversed the dismissal of a federal habeas petition and remanded for further proceedings, holding that petitioner's motion under Rule 3.800(c), Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, tolled the limitations period for a federal habeas petition. The Eleventh Circuit explained that a Rule 3.800(c) motion is an application for collateral review that tolls the time a petitioner could petition for federal habeas relief because it is an application for judicial reexamination of a judgment or claim in a proceeding outside of the direct review process. View "Rogers v. Secretary, Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of five sex-related crimes involving minors. When defense counsel returned a few minutes late from a lunch break on the third day of defendant's six-day trial, he missed a small part of the testimony of the 12th of 13 government witnesses. Counsel had missed 7 minutes of a trial that lasted 31.4 hours. In this case, the parties agreed that it was Sixth Amendment error for inculpatory testimony to be taken in the absence of defense counsel. The court held that the harmless error rule was applicable to this brief absence of counsel from the courtroom. The court explained that the error that occurred when the trial resumed before counsel returned from lunch was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because overwhelming evidence offered while counsel was present went to and proved the charges in Counts 2–5, which were the only counts relevant to the testimony given during counsel's absence; the same questions were repeated and not objected-to after counsel returned to the courtroom; and there was no reasonable doubt that counsel's brief absence was harmless. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Roy" on Justia Law

Defendant filed suit against his former employer under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), 29 U.S.C. 2601-2654, alleging that the employer interfered with the exercise of his FMLA rights and later retaliated against him for asserting those rights. The district court granted summary judgment for the employer. Because plaintiff likely waived his FMLA right to reinstatement by taking an additional 30 days of medical leave, because he failed to submit a fitness-for-duty certification by the end of his FMLA leave, and because the record was devoid of proof challenging the employer's contention that its fitness-for-duty certification policy was implemented in a uniform fashion, plaintiff lost the right to be reinstated after failing to comply with this policy. Therefore, the court concluded that plaintiff failed to show that he was denied a benefit to which he was entitled under the FMLA, and the district court properly granted summary judgment as to the interference claim. The court affirmed as to this claim. The court held that temporal proximity, for the purpose of establishing the causation prong of a prima facie case of FMLA retaliation, should be measured from the last day of an employee's FMLA leave until the adverse employment action at issue occurs. In this case, plaintiff has met his burden of raising a genuine dispute as to whether his taking of FMLA leave and his termination were casually related. Therefore, the court reversed the judgment as to the retaliation claim and remanded for further proceedings. View "Jones v. Gulf Coast Health Care of Delaware, LLC" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against Broward Deputy Sheriff Nick DeGiovanni, alleging claims of false arrest and excessive force. The district court granted summary judgment to the sheriff. The court concluded that the district judge correctly granted summary judgment to Deputy DeGiovanni on the false arrest claim where plaintiff's nolo contendere plea established probable cause for his arrest. The court concluded that the injuries plaintiff sustained during his arrest for failing to have a driver's license was not deminimis. Rather, the record demonstrated that plaintiff sustained medically documented severe, permanent injuries from Deputy DeGiovanni's unprovoked and completely unnecessary frontal-body blows to plaintiff's chest and throwing him against the car-door jamb in the course of arresting him. In this case, plaintiff was cooperating with officers and not resisting whatsoever, not even raising his voice. Applying the obvious-clarity method analysis, the court concluded that no particularized preexisting case law was necessary for it to be clearly established that what Deputy DeGiovanni did violated plaintiff's constitutional right to be free from the excessive use of force in his arrest. Therefore, the court vacated as to that claim and also vacated the district judge's dismissal without prejudice of plaintiff's state law assault and battery claim. The court remanded for further proceedings. View "Stephens v. DeGiovanni" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an African-American, filed suit against defendants after her application to lease a space for her hair salon was denied. Plaintiff alleged that the denial infringed her right to freedom from racial discrimination in the making of a contract. The district court granted summary judgment for defendants. The court affirmed the district court's alternative conclusion that plaintiff failed to rebut the legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons defendants proffered for denying her lease application. Defendants' reasons included: odors emanating from the salon would disturb the residential tenants on the upper floors; plaintiff's business would not survive given the number of other salons in the area; a salon would not generate cross-shopping with other commercial tenants; plaintiff's credit score was too low; and defendants would not break even given the high cost of building out the unit. View "Flournoy v. CML-GA WB, LLC" on Justia Law

The Creamery filed suit against the State, contending that the State's refusal to allow it to call its product "skim milk" amounted to censorship in violation of the First Amendment. The district court granted summary judgment for the State, determining that the State's refusal to allow the Creamery to use the term "skim milk" withstood scrutiny under the threshold inquiry of the Central Hudson test for commercial speech regulations. The court held that the State's actions prohibiting the Creamery's truthful use of the term "skim milk" violated the First Amendment. Under the threshold question of Central Hudson, the court concluded that the speech at issue neither concerned unlawful activity nor was inherently misleading. Therefore, the speech merits First Amendment protection and the State's restriction was subject to intermediate scrutiny under Central Hudson. The court concluded that the State's mandate was clearly more extensive than necessary to serve its interest in preventing deception and ensuring adequate nutritional standards. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded. View "Ocheesee Creamery LLC v. Putnam" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to death, suffered strokes in recent years resulting in significant cognitive and physical decline. Petitioner sought habeas relief, arguing that he was mentally incompetent to be executed under Ford v. Wainwright and Panetti v. Quarterman. The Alabama trial court decided that petitioner was competent to be executed. The court agreed with petitioner that the trial court's decision relied on an unreasonable determination of the facts and involved an unreasonable application of Panetti. The court explained that Panetti required courts to look at whether the prisoner was able to rationally understand the connection between the crime he committed and the punishment he was to receive. In this case, one of the experts testified that due to a mental disorder, petitioner was not able to make this connection, and another expert never addressed this question at all. The court concluded that this record was therefore wholly insufficient to support the trial court's decision. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's denial of habeas relief. View "Madison v. Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections" on Justia Law

Petitioner, convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, petitioned for habeas relief, arguing that his earlier motion to vacate was inadequate to test his objection to his sentence enhancement because the court's caselaw about the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924(e), has changed. The court concluded that, because the motion to vacate gave petitioner an opportunity to challenge his sentence enhancement, his remedy was not inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his sentence, regardless of any later change in caselaw. The court joined the Tenth Circuit in applying the law as Congress wrote it and held that a change in caselaw does not make a motion to vacate a prisoner's sentence "inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention," 28 U.S.C. 2255(e). Accordingly, the court overruled the Wofford v. Scott test as applied in Bryant v. Warden, FCC Coleman-Medium and Mackey v. Warden, FCC Coleman-Medium, and affirmed the dismissal of the petition for habeas relief. View "McCarthan v. Director of Goodwill Industries-Suncoast" on Justia Law