Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff, a white male, filed suit against the County and others, contending that a Hispanic voting bloc on the Caldwell County Commissioners Court eliminated his position due to his race, age, and age-related protected activities, violating his due-process rights along the way. The district court granted defendants' motion to dismiss the 42 U.S.C. 1983 claim and their subsequent motion for summary judgment on claims for race discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq., and retaliation under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. 623(d). The district court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiff's state-law whistleblower claim. The court affirmed the dismissal of the Title VII claim because plaintiff failed to show he was treated less favorably than a similarly situated comparator; affirmed as to the ADEA claim where the period of twenty-one months between plaintiff’s complaint and his termination is simply too substantial a gap to support an inference of causation; and affirmed as to the section 1983 claim where the complaint failed to properly state a cause of action. Finally, the court concluded that the district court acted within its discretion to dismiss the pendant state-law claims. View "Heggemeier v. Caldwell Cnty., TX" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against Officer Huerta under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging illegal detention, false arrest, and excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Plaintiff was arrested while waiting for his wife, an employee of the school, as he sat in his car in the school's parking lot. The district court granted Huerta qualified immunity. The court concluded that Huerta did not have reasonable suspicion to detain plaintiff. However, even assuming that Huerta violated plaintiff’s constitutional rights by detaining him without reasonable suspicion, the detention was not objectively unreasonable in light of clearly established law. Huerta was not put on notice that detaining an individual for a failure to provide identification on school property is definitively unlawful. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Gonzalez v. Huerta" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a resident of Texas and an honorably discharged veteran of the United States Army, challenged the constitutionality of the residency requirements in the Hazlewood Act, Tex. Educ. Code 54.341. The Act provides tuition waivers at public universities for certain Texas veterans who enlisted in Texas or were residents of Texas at the time they enlisted. The district court granted summary judgment for plaintiff. Texas advances the program as a means of incentivizing behavior taking place before entry into the military. It is sufficient that Texas has a rational basis for offering benefits to Texas residents (promoting Texans’ education and enlistment by Texans); that offering the same benefit to citizens who are residents of other states would not advance those interests; and that the financial burden of offering the benefit to residents of other states would reduce Texas’s capacity to advance those same interests. The court concluded that Texas has provided reasonable justifications for the qualifications used in the Hazlewood Act to advance its interests in promoting education and military service. Without a clearer indication from the Supreme Court that Texas’s decisions violate constitutional provisions, the court is hesitant to impose further restrictions on the sovereign power of the State to regulate its own education system. Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment of the district court. View "Harris v. Texas Veterans Comm'n" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against J.B. Hunt, alleging that he was terminated in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq. The district court dismissed the claim for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court concluded that no statute requires that an ADA plaintiff exhaust the 49 C.F.R. 391.47 process before filing a lawsuit and thus the district court should not have dismissed this ADA claim for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court affirmed the district court's dismissal on alternative grounds, concluding that plaintiff could not establish a prima facie case of discrimination on the basis of disability. At the time he was terminated, plaintiff was not certified under DOT medical standards; therefore, he was not qualified for his job under the ADA and summary judgment is appropriate. View "Williams v. J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, the author of several books regarding the Kennedy assassination, filed suit against the city under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs. of City of New York, alleging that the City was liable for plaintiff's unconstitutional arrest. Plaintiff claimed that the city adopted an unconstitutional policy of retaliating against unpopular-but constitutionally-protected speech and that, acting under this policy, plaintiff was illegally arrested. The district court dismissed plaintiff's claims against the city of Dallas under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), primarily because his complaint did not name the specific municipal policymaker. The court held that, for purposes of Rule 12(b)(6), a plaintiff is not required to single out the specific policymaker in his complaint. Instead, a plaintiff need only plead facts that show that the defendant or defendants acted pursuant to a specific official policy, which was promulgated or ratified by the legally authorized policymaker. In this case, the court found that the statutorily authorized policymaker is the Dallas city council. The court concluded that plaintiff pled sufficient facts to show that the city council promulgated or ratified the illegal-arrest policy and thus that this policy was attributable to the city of Dallas. The court further concluded that, in all other relevant respects, plaintiff pled a sufficient complaint to survive a dismissal on the pleadings. Accordingly, the court reversed the dismissal of the Monell claim. View "Groden v. City of Dallas" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that Officer Thompson of the Houston Police Department (HPD) applied excessive force and unreasonable deadly force during his arrest, causing plaintiff to be partially paralyzed. Plaintiff also alleged a claim under Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, against the City of Houston based on the same conduct and injuries. The court affirmed the district court's grant of qualified immunity to Officer Thompson in his individual capacity. The court concluded that, based on the totality of the circumstances - including plaintiff's resistance, intoxication, disregard for the officer's orders, the threat he and the other three men in his truck posed while unrestrained, and his actions leading up to the shooting (including reaching for his waistband) - it is clear that it was not unreasonable for an officer in Officer Thompson’s position to perceive plaintiff's actions to be an immediate threat to his safety. Therefore, it was not “clearly excessive” or “unreasonable” for Officer Thompson to use deadly force in the manner he did to protect himself in such circumstances. Because plaintiff has not shown a violation of his constitutional rights, all of his Monell claims against the City of Houston fail as a matter of law. View "Salazar-Limon v. City of Houston" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit against prison officials within the TDCJ, alleging First Amendment and 42 U.S.C. 1983 claims, challenging TDCJ policies on the wearing of medicine bags, the use of pipes during Native American religious pipe ceremonies, and grooming, based on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq. The district court granted summary judgment to defendants. The court concluded that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment on plaintiffs’ First Amendment claim, medicine-bag RLUIPA claim, and pipe-ceremony RLUIPA claim. The court vacated and remanded in part for further proceedings as to plaintiffs' grooming-policy claim under RLUIPA because the district court did not strike plaintiffs’ summary judgment evidence, including George Sullivan’s expert testimony; genuine issues of material fact remain regarding the legitimacy of TDCJ’s cost and security concerns created by the wearing of a kouplock by plaintiffs as low security risk Native American inmates; and the district court did not consider plaintiffs’ grooming-policy claim in light of plaintiffs’ individual circumstances. The court affirmed in all other respects. View "Davis v. Davis" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against Austin police officers and the City of Austin for violating his constitutional rights after officers arrested plaintiff three times for interfering with police duties while he filmed police department interactions with other citizens. The district court granted summary judgment for defendants. The district court reasoned that, under the court's independent intermediary doctrine, the officers could not be held liable for arrests the grand jury found supported by probable cause. The court declined to overrule its cases applying the independent intermediary doctrine where the doctrine has been a well-settled Fifth Circuit rule of orderliness and plaintiff cites no intervening change. Therefore, the court concluded that, under established circuit law, plaintiff had the burden of affirmatively showing that the grand jury’s deliberations were tainted, and failed to do so. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Buehler v. City of Austin/Austin PD" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and Louisiana tort law against defendants after plaintiff was called as a witness in state court to testify at a bond hearing for a criminal defendant. At issue is whether a state prosecuting attorney is absolutely immune from suit for money damages for (1) ordering a sheriff’s deputy to make a warrantless arrest without probable cause of a witness in retaliation for the witness’s refusal to testify that her boyfriend had struck her in the face during a domestic violence altercation, and (2) subsequently maliciously prosecuting the witness for making a false report of domestic violence. The court concluded that the prosecuting attorney is absolutely immune from liability for initiating an alleged malicious prosecution against the witness but not absolutely immune from liability for ordering the officer to make a warrantless arrest. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the malicious prosecution claim but otherwise vacated the grant of the attorney's motion to dismiss the suit for money damages based on her alleged wrongful arrest. The court remanded plaintiff's federal and state claims in that respect to the district court for further proceedings. View "Loupe v. O'Bannon" on Justia Law

After Ptech terminated plaintiff's employment, he filed suit against PTech claiming that the company violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq. The court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment for PTech on the disability discrimination claim, concluding that plaintiff failed to rebut PTech's legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for firing him. In this case, the company dismissed plaintiff because he violated the company's attendance policy. The court also affirmed summary judgment on the failure to accommodate claim where a reasonable juror could only conclude that plaintiff caused a breakdown in the interactive process by failing to provide the documentation requested. View "Delaval v. PTech Drilling Tubulars, LLC" on Justia Law