Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Milwaukee ordinances required certain licenses before a business was permitted to offer nude or partially nude entertainment. Six Star, which applied for a license, and Ferol, which did not apply challenged these ordinances, seeking injunctive relief and damages. Once the ordinances were repealed, they dropped their requests for injunctive relief but continued to pursue damages. The district court held that the ordinances addressed time, place, and manner of expression, but did not include the necessary procedural safeguards. A jury then decided that but for the unconstitutional ordinances, Ferol would have opened a club providing nude entertainment. It awarded Ferol compensatory damages in the form of lost profits, and gave Six Star nominal damages. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting the city’s argumens that Ferol had no injury and therefore no standing to challenge the ordinances, and its challenge to Ferol’s theory of causation and the award of nominal damages to Six Star. View "Six Star Holdings, LLC v. City of Milwaukee" on Justia Law

In 2011 Wisconsin enacted a statute requiring voters to present photographic identification. A federal district judge found violation of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act and enjoined its application. The Seventh Circuit reversed. After the Supreme Court declined review, the state amended Act 23 to require acceptance of veterans’ IDs. The district court declined to address plaintiffs' remaining argument that some persons qualified to vote are entitled to relief because they face daunting obstacles to obtaining acceptable photo ID. The Seventh Circuit vacated in part; it did not previously hold that persons unable to get a photo ID with reasonable effort lack a serious grievance. The right to vote is personal and is not defeated by the fact that 99% of other people can secure the necessary credentials easily. Under Wisconsin’s law, people who do not have qualifying photo ID cannot vote, even if it is impossible for them to get such an ID. Plaintiffs want relief from that prohibition, not from the general application of Act 23. The district court should permit the parties to explore how the state’s system works today before considering plaintiffs’ remaining substantive contentions. View "Frank v. Walker" on Justia Law

Acting on information that drugs were being sold from a certain Madison apartment, law enforcement obtained permission from the apartment property manager and brought a narcotics- detecting dog to the locked, shared hallway of the apartment building. The dog alerted to the presence of drugs at a nearby apartment door and then went to the targeted apartment where Whitaker lived. After the officers obtained a search warrant, Whitaker was arrested and charged with drug and firearm crimes based on evidence found in the apartment. At the time, Whitaker was serving a term of supervised release for a conviction as a felon in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). After the district court denied his pretrial motions challenging the search and the dog’s reliability, Whitaker entered a conditional guilty plea that preserved his right to appeal. The Seventh Circuit reversed, holding that the use of the dog was a search under the Fourth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision, Florida v. Jardines. No “good faith” exception applied. View "United States v. Whitaker" on Justia Law

Mays left the scene of a fight, followed by an investigating officer who wanted to interview him about the altercation. Mays repeatedly declined to stop and talk to the officer, using “colorful and abusive language.” Observing Mays’s demeanor and suspecting that he might be armed, the officer told him to stop and touched his shoulder in order to keep a distance between the two. Mays’s manner of turning made the officer concerned for his safety, and he employed his already drawn Taser. A semi-automatic firearm fell to the ground. Mays ultimately was prosecuted for possession of a firearm by a felon, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). He pleaded guilty reserving the right to appeal the court’s denial of his motions to suppress the firearm, which he contended was the product of an illegal seizure, and to suppress a statement he had made to while he was in pretrial confinement. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The officer’s stop was supported by reasonable suspicion as required by the Fourth Amendment. With respect to the statement, there was no independent violation of Mays’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel; there was no evidence that his waiver of his right to counsel was not voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. View "United States v. Mays" on Justia Law

In September 2008 Dixon was sent to the Cook County jail as a pretrial detainee. A month later, he developed severe and persistent pain in his back and abdomen. In December, he had a CT scan that revealed a paratracheal mass. Over the next few weeks, the mass grew rapidly. Medical personnel at the jail were aware of the problem, but accused Dixon of malingering, gave him over-the-counter analgesics, and ordered him to seek psychiatric care. By January 2009, Dixon’s condition had deteriorated severely. He was finally taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died two months later. Dixon’s mother sued Cook County and the doctor and nurse who had overseen Dixon’s care at the jail, asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983 for deliberate indifference to Dixon’s serious medical condition in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment, and state-law claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The district court dismissed the claims. The Seventh Circuit vacated. A reasonable jury could find that pervasive systemic deficiencies in the detention center’s health-care system were the moving force behind Dixon’s injury. View "Kevin Dixon v. Cook County, Illinois" on Justia Law

The Indiana Department of Child Services oversees state child protection services, child support enforcement, and the Indiana foster care system. For nine years, Nuñez and Martinez worked as investigators in the DCS Gary office. In 2014, they sued for violations of the overtime provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. 207(a), claiming that DCS required them to work during lunch and to remain on call after their shifts, despite being paid for only 40 hours per week. The district court dismissed based on Eleventh Amendment immunity, rejecting an argument that Indiana had given consent. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. States must explicitly waive sovereign immunity, not explicitly preserve it. Indiana did not do so. View "Nunez v. Ind. Dep't of Child Servs." on Justia Law

Hill, an Indiana inmate, sued prison staff under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that they had violated the Eighth Amendment by failing to protect him from inmates who threw feces at him on four occasions in 2011-2012. The district court granted summary judgment for defendants on the ground that Hill had not exhausted administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 42 U.S.C. 1997e(a). Hill claimed that prison staff had prevented him from filing formal grievances. For the first two incidents, they had improperly refused to process grievance forms. For the third and fourth incidents, they prevented him from filing formal grievances. His counselor refused to give him a grievance form after the third incident, and after the fourth incident, defendant Snyder demanded to know its exact time. Hill is now time-barred by the prison’s grievance policy from further pursuing administrative remedies. The Seventh Circuit concluded that summary judgment was improper for three of the incidents. Evidence of refusals to give Hill an available form was sufficient to permit a finding that Hill was prevented from grieving these incidents. The administrative remedies were not available to him. He was not required to hunt for a form from others. View "Hill v. Snyder" on Justia Law

Gardner was shot to death in front of a Chicago apartment building in 1999. The state charged three men, including Carter, with Gardner’s murder. Carter was tried alongside his brother, Stone. Both were convicted of murder; Carter was sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment. Following an unsuccessful state postconviction proceeding, Carter filed a pro se petition for habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254. The district court denied relief on each of eight grounds presented. The Seventh Circuit granted a certificate of appealability as to a single claim: ineffective assistance of counsel. The claim turned on the potential effect of the testimony of two witnesses who were not called in his defense at trial. The Illinois Appellate Court determined that the proffered testimony would not have changed the outcome. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding that, while trial counsel’s performance may have been deficient in failing to investigate potential witnesses, the state court’s resolution of the prejudice analysis was not unreasonable. The result have been the same even if the witnesses had testified that Carter was unarmed; such testimony would not have illuminated whether Carter was legally accountable for the actions of his co‐defendants. View "Carter v. Duncan" on Justia Law

In 2004, Bianchi was elected as McHenry County, Illinois State’s Attorney and embarked on reforms. In 2006, a secretary resigned and took sensitive documents with her. Working with an Assistant State’s Attorney, whom Bianchi had demoted, the secretary delivered the documents to the media and to Bianchi’s opponent in the next election. Bianchi learned of the theft and persuaded a judge to appoint a special prosecutor. The secretary was charged with several felonies and eventually pleaded guilty to computer tampering. Bianchi’s opponent and other political enemies obtained the appointment of another special prosecutor, to investigate Bianchi. A grand jury was convened. Bianchi and three colleagues were indicted on multiple counts of official misconduct. All were acquitted. Bianchi and his colleagues sought damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the court-appointed special prosecutor (Tonigan), the court-appointed assistant special prosecutor (McQueen) and Quest, a firm of private investigators hired by the special prosecutors, and its investigators. They claimed that the defendants fabricated evidence and withheld exculpatory evidence in violation of the Due Process Clause and Fourth Amendment and political retaliation in violation of the First Amendment. Tonigan settled. The Seventh Circuit affirmed dismissal as to McQueen and the investigators, holding that absolute prosecutorial immunity and qualified immunity foreclose the federal constitutional claims. View "Bianchi v. McQueen" on Justia Law

A drug-dealer-turned-informant (Weil) identified Hernandez and Gonzalez his suppliers. Weil had sold methamphetamine provided by Gonzalez, who lived in California but had designated Hernandez as a local go-between. The men had discussed the arrangement in recorded phone calls. After a controlled buy, arranged by Weil, a search of Hernandez’s apartment revealed four pounds of methamphetamine found in the lining of a cooler. Both Hernandez and Gonzalez were present in the apartment. Gonzalez was convicted of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, 21 U.S.C. 846, 841(a)(1), possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime, 18 U.S.C. 924(c)(1)(A). He was sentenced to concurrent terms of 360 months in prison for the drug crimes plus a consecutive 60 months for the firearm offense. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting a challenge to the sufficiency of evidence that he possessed the methamphetamine. A rational jury could find from the evidence at trial both that the drugs recovered were the same drugs discussed in the recordings—the shipment that Gonzalez planned to send by courier from California ahead of his own his arrival—and that Gonzalez retained control over those drugs after they arrived in Illinois. View "United States v. Gonzalez" on Justia Law