Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Because of zoning by Upper Arlington, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, Tree of Life Christian Schools could not use its otherwise-unused land and building to operate a religious school. The government denied a rezoning application because such a use would not accord with provisions of the government’s Master Plan, which call for maintaining commercial use zoning to maximize tax revenue. TOL filed suit under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc– 2000cc-5, alleging that the government illegally failed to treat TOL Christian Schools on equal terms with nonreligious assemblies or institutions. The district court granted the government summary judgment. The Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded for resolution of the factual issue: whether the government treated nonreligious assemblies or institutions that would fail to maximize income-tax revenue in the same way it has treated the proposed religious school. View "Tree of Life Christian Schools v. City of Upper Arlington" on Justia Law

Nashville detectives went to Church’s home to serve him with a warrant for violating probation. Church arrived, carrying food. The detectives placed Church under arrest, agreed to allow him to enter the house and call his girlfriend, then accompanied Church inside with his consent. They stated that they smelled burnt marijuana. Church admitted that he had recently smoked marijuana and displayed a marijuana blunt. Church called his girlfriend, who arrived and told police that Church regularly smoked marijuana at the house. Detective Moseley left to prepare a search-warrant affidavit while Bowling stayed with Church. In his affidavit, Moseley recounted the detectives’ visit and conversations with Church and his girlfriend. The detectives executed a warrant for “controlled substances, [and] controlled substances paraphernalia” that afternoon. In a closet, they found 4.8 grams of marijuana and 8 dilaudid (hydromorphone) pills, plus a safe. Church refused to provide the code, so police used a prying ram to break in. The safe contained 800 dilaudid pills, a handgun, and ammunition. Church unsuccessfully sought to suppress the evidence, then pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute hydromorphone and to being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to 170 months’ imprisonment. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. The affidavit established probable cause and the police did not break open the safe capriciously: they had probable cause to believe there might be drugs inside. View "United States v. Church" on Justia Law

Pawlak sold firearms to an undercover officer on four occasions. He pled guilty to four counts of possessing a firearm as a felon, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). The court calculated a base offense level of 26 (U.S.S.G. 2K2.1(a)(1)) because the offenses involved a “semiautomatic firearm that is capable of accepting a large capacity magazine,” and Pawlak had two prior “felony convictions of either a crime of violence or a controlled substance offense.” One of Pawlak’s qualifying convictions was an Ohio third-degree burglary offense. Absent that conviction, his base level would have been 22. The court added two levels because Pawlak possessed six firearms and applied a four-level enhancement for trafficking in firearms. After deducting three levels for acceptance of responsibility, Pawlak’s total offense level was 29 with a criminal history category of IV, resulting in a Guidelines range of 121−151 months. The court varied downward by four levels and sentenced Pawlak to 105 months. The Sixth Circuit vacated, holding that the Supreme Court’s 2015 holding in Johnson v. United States, that the Armed Career Criminal Act’s “residual clause” is unconstitutionally vague, compels the same result for an identical “residual clause” in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The court expressly overruled its prior decisions as no longer consistent with Supreme Court precedent. View "United States v. Pawlak" on Justia Law

The plaintiffs, Ohio “exotic dancers” who have been arrested on charges ranging from prostitution to drug distribution to assault to witness intimidation, alleged that court clerks in Mahoning County issued arrest warrants that violate the Warrant Clause. To satisfy this clause, a neutral and detached magistrate must independently determine that probable cause exists after weighing the evidence supplied by the police. They claim that the sole “evidence” that the clerks received in their cases “consist[ed] only of the officer[s’] [bare] conclusion[s] that the accused committed the offense[s].” They also argued that clerks lack the constitutional power to issue warrants. The Sixth Circuit affirmed dismissal of their 42 U.S.C. 1983 suit. While they were correct in asserting that the warrants lacked probable cause, the plaintiffs never alleged that the officers arrested them without probable cause—the key allegation needed to show an unconstitutional arrest under the Fourth Amendment. View "Graves v. Mahoning County" on Justia Law

Michigan charged and tried the named plaintiffs as adults for acts they committed while under the age of 18. Each received a conviction for first-degree murder and a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2010, plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the Michigan statutory scheme that barred them from parole eligibility. Since then, the Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama (2012), “that mandatory life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’” Michigan amended its juvenile offender laws in light of Miller, but made some changes contingent upon either the Michigan Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court announcing that Miller applied retroactively, and the U.S. Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), that Miller’s prohibition on mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders is retroactive. The district court held, in 2013, that Miller should apply retroactively and issued an injunction requiring compliance with Miller. The Sixth Circuit vacated and remanded for consideration of remedies in the context of the new legal landscape and to determine whether class certification is required to extend relief to non-plaintiffs. View "Hill v. Snyder" on Justia Law

HCEA was recognized under the Tennessee Education Professional Negotiations Act (EPNA) as the exclusive representative of Hamilton County Board of Education professional employees. In 2011, HCEA and the Board entered into a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), to expire in June 2014. While this agreement was in effect, Tennessee enacted the Professional Educators Collaborative Conferencing Act, replacing EPNA. PECCA would not govern the parties’ relationship until the expiration of their existing agreement. HCEA and the Board entered into the latest version of their CBA under EPNA in September 2013. PECCA created a new category: “management team” members, including principals and assistant principals, no longer considered “professional employees” entitled to participate in concerted activities as part of professional employee organizations. PECCA also made it unlawful for a professional employee organization to “[c]oerce or attempt to intimidate professional employees who choose not to join a professional employee organization.” Communications following HCEA’s September 2013 monthly meeting resulted in a Board letter, requesting that HCEA “refrain from … negative or coercive statements.” HCEA filed suit, alleging violation of EPNA and the First Amendment. The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment favoring the Board. EPNA claims were not rendered moot by PECCA’s intervening effective date, but the letter did not violate EPNA. It contained no threat of reprisal and did not significantly burden HCEA’s expressive activity. View "Hamilton Cnty. Ed. Ass'n. v. Hamilton Cnty. Bd. of Educ." on Justia Law

Horvath died after being beaten and stabbed by his cellmate, Gillespie, inside the mental-health ward of Michigan’s Wayne County Jail. Richko, as representative of Horvath’s estate, filed suit under 42 U.S.C.1983, 1985, 1986, and 1988, claiming that Wayne County and jail personnel were deliberately indifferent to Horvath’s safety. Richko alleged that the defendants knew or should have known about Gillespie’s dangerous and violent propensities and disregarded the risk by allowing Gillespie to be placed in Horvath’s cell and failing to adequately respond to the ensuing assault. The district court denied summary judgment to all of the defendants. The individual defendants filed an interlocutory appeal on the basis of qualified immunity. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. Faced with competing circumstantial evidence, a jury could reasonably infer that jail personnel were aware of the risk and did in fact hear Gillespie’s assault on Horvath and elected not to respond. View "Richko v. Wayne County" on Justia Law

Smith and Johnston divorced; they had two daughters Tiffany, aged 9-11 and Jasmine, 13-15 years old. In March 2012, police entered, purportedly at the invitation of a guest, after child services reported that Smith was possibly intoxicated and unable to care for her children. Another time, Johnston called 9-1-1 after Tiffany told him, by telephone, that a man was in Smith’s house and was making her uncomfortable. Tiffany opened the door and stated that her mother and the unknown man were in an upstairs bedroom. Smith disputes the officers’ assertion that they were visibly drunk and did not comply with repeated requests to leave the bedroom. The officers arrested Smith for obstructing official business. The criminal charge was later dropped. At a later date, Tiffany called 9-1-1, saying that her mother had threatened to kill her; officers mediated the dispute and left. On another date, Johnston took his daughter to a police station, where he showed a bruise on her head. Tiffany reported that Smith had struck her several times. Smith denied hitting Tiffany, who changed her story. Smith, an attorney, proceeding in forma pauperis, brought suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The Sixth Circuit vacated with respect to claims of an unlawful entry in March 2012, and an unlawful arrest following Johnston’s 9-1-1 call, but otherwise affirmed dismissal. View "Smith v. City of Wyoming" on Justia Law

Police arrested men suspected of committing armed robberies at Detroit-area stores. One confessed that the group had robbed nine stores in Michigan and Ohio in 2010-2011, supported by a shifting collection of 15 drivers and lookouts. He gave the FBI the cell phone numbers of other participants; the FBI reviewed his call records and obtained orders under the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. 2703(d), for release of records for 16 numbers, including “[a]ll subscriber information, toll records and call detail records including listed and unlisted numbers dialed or otherwise transmitted to and from" the phones for relevant dates and “cell site information for the target telephones at call origination and at call termination” to obtain evidence against Sanders, Carpenter and others. The government charged Carpenter with six, and Sanders with two, Hobbs Act counts, 18 U.S.C. 1951, and aiding the use or carriage of a firearm during a crime of violence, 18 U.S.C. 924(c), 1951(a). The records showed that each used his cellphone within one-half-to-two miles of several robberies while the robberies occurred. A jury convicted on all of the Hobbs Act counts and convicted Carpenter on all but one of the gun counts. The court sentenced Carpenter to 1,395 months’ and Sanders to 170 months’ imprisonment. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, rejecting a Fourth Amendment challenge. The content of a communication is protected by the Fourth Amendment; routing information necessary to convey it is not. The court distinguished between GPS tracking and the far less precise phone locational information. View "United States v. Sanders" on Justia Law

Smith pled guilty to two counts of possessing firearms as a felon under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1), and to other federal crimes and was sentenced to 200 months in prison. Smith challenged the enhancement of his sentence under the enumerated-offenses clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), under which a person who violates 18 U.S.C. 922(g) and has three previous convictions for a violent felony shall be imprisoned for a minimum of 15 years, 18 U.S.C. 924(e)(1). Under the ACCA’s enumerated-offenses clause, a “violent felony” includes a crime “punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” and “is burglary, arson, or extortion, [or] involves [the] use of explosives.” Smith argued cited the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision, Johnson v. United States, invalidating a different ACCA clause, the residual clause, as unconstitutionally vague. That clause includes as a “violent felony” a crime that “otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.” The Sixth Circuit rejected his argument. Limiting language in the Johnson opinion makes clear that its holding does not extend to the enumerated-offenses clause. The enumerated-offenses clause gives ordinary people fair notice of the conduct it punishes and does not invite arbitrary enforcement. View "United States v. Smith" on Justia Law