Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff y filed suit under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, alleging violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights when he was arrested as a terrorist for a post on Facebook. The district court granted Detective Randall Iles and Sheriff Mark Wood’s motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds and dismissed Bailey’s claims with prejudice.   The Fifth Circuit reversed the grant of summary judgment. The court held that Plaintiff’s post was constitutionally protected speech and that the grant of summary judgment was improper. The court explained that regardless of the unnamed deputy’s comment, Iles admitted that he arrested Plaintiff at least in part because of the content of his Facebook post, rather than for some other conduct, i.e. Iles admitted that the arrest was at least “substantially motivated” by Plaintiff’s speech. Further, there is t no dispute as to the second element, as Plaintiff’s speech was chilled when he deleted his Facebook post in response to the arrest. Thus, when Iles arrested Plaintiff, he violated Plaintiff’s clearly established First Amendment right to engage in speech even when some listeners consider the speech offensive, upsetting, immature, in poor taste, or even dangerous. View "Bailey v. Iles" on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued two Texas state officials, asserting that they violated his right to procedural due process when they notified him that he was required to register as a sex offender under Texas law. After a bench trial, the district court entered judgment in Plaintiff’s favor.   The Fifth Circuit vacated and remanded. The court concluded that Plaintiff’s suit is barred by sovereign immunity. The court explained that Sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment precludes suits by private citizens against states in federal court. This bar extends not only to the state itself, but also to claims against “state officials” in their official capacity when the state is the real party in interest. The court explained that here, Plaintiff is suing state officials who have not waived sovereign immunity. Accordingly, his claims are barred in federal court unless an exception to sovereign immunity applies. Moreover, the court explained that because the district court’s order invalidated a federal statute—instead of affirming it—invoking the exception here would not advance Ex parte Young’s aim of “promoting the vindication of federal rights.” View "Tawakkol v. Vasquez" on Justia Law

Defendant was indicted for knowingly possessing “material”— a cell phone—that contained child pornography. Even though the phone had thousands of such images, the indictment specifically described only four. Defendant pleaded guilty under a plea agreement. After sentencing, the district court ordered Defendant to pay restitution to several individual victims whose likenesses appeared in some images from Defendant’s phone. But these images were among those that the indictment did not specifically describe. Defendant argued that restitution is available only to victims who appeared in the four images specified in the indictment.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the indictment charged Defendant with a crime, but Defendant has identified no rule or statute that would require the indictment to also include descriptions of all the images or all the victims. The court explained that, on the contrary, the indictment tracks the statute’s language: “Specifically, Defendant possessed one Motorola Moto G Stylus android cellular phone that contained the following described image files visually depicting a prepubescent minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct . . . .” The object of the possession in the indictment is clearly the “Motorola Moto G Stylus,” not any of the images. The court wrote that the statute criminalizes possession of material containing child pornography. The phone was that “material,” no matter whether it contained one image or twenty thousand. Thus, the court concluded that there was no error with the district court’s finding and amount of restitution. View "USA v. Bopp" on Justia Law

Louisiana challenged the district court’s grant of habeas relief to an inmate who had been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 2009. The district court held that the ineffective assistance of trial counsel prejudiced the defense. The State argued that the district court applied the incorrect standard of review under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and that the district court improperly granted habeas relief due to ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that in reviewing an ineffectiveness claim, the court must weigh the evidence that was unaffected by the alleged error, along with the evidence that was affected by the error and the degree to which it was affected, and then assess whether the petitioner “has met the burden of showing that the decision reached would reasonably likely have been different absent the errors.”   Here, the State argued that because a jury might have found that Petitioner shot at law enforcement vehicles during the police chase, it would have imputed specific intent to kill the victim. The court wrote that it agreed with Petitioner that this theory is not supported by Louisiana law. Further, the court explained that the three key pieces of evidence, at the very least, create a “reasonable probability that, absent the errors, the factfinder would have had a reasonable doubt respecting guilt.” Accordingly, the court concluded that Petitioner has carried his burden of proving there is a reasonable probability that his convictions and death sentence were prejudiced as a result of his counsel’s deficient performance. View "Neal v. Vannoy" on Justia Law

Defendant was one of Pizza Hut L.L.C.’s largest franchisees in Pennsylvania, operating 43 restaurants there (plus one in Connecticut). Ultimately, though, Defendant failed to fulfill his contractual obligations, so Pizza Hut terminated the parties’ various franchise agreements. Hoping to keep the restaurants open, Pizza Hut entered into two post-termination agreements with Defendant for him to continue operating the restaurants while the parties tried to find a buyer. The first agreement was unsuccessful. The second ended in this litigation. After several rounds of pleading, Defendant demanded a jury trial. Pizza Hut moved to strike the request under the second post-termination agreement’s bilateral jury waiver. The district court enforced the waiver, and the case continued to a bench trial in which Pizza Hut prevailed. The only issue on appeal is whether the district court erred in striking Defendant’s jury demand.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial is unassailable but not unwaivable. Courts have long honored parties’ agreements to waive the jury right if the waiver is knowing and voluntary. The court explained that it follows its sister circuits in holding that general allegations of fraud do not render contractual jury waivers unknowing and involuntary unless those claims are directed at the waiver provision specifically. Because Defendant failed to show that the jury waiver was unknowing and involuntary. View "Pizza Hut v. Pandya" on Justia Law

Defendants, game wardens with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, appealed the district court’s denial of qualified immunity as to Plaintiff’s Section 1983 claims against them.   The Fifth Circuit reversed and rendered judgment for Defendants. The court concluded that Plaintiff has not plausibly alleged that Defendant violated his constitutional rights. The court explained that because Plaintiff does not allege that Defendants knowingly withheld relevant, material information from the grand jury, he has not shown that the independent intermediary’s deliberations or decisions were tainted. Accordingly, the independent-intermediary doctrine defeats Plaintiff’s allegations that there was no probable cause to prosecute him and insulates Defendants from liability. The court wrote that this conclusion applies with equal force to Plaintiff’s claims for both retaliatory prosecution and prosecution without probable cause. View "Trevino v. Iden" on Justia Law

Louisiana State University (“LSU”) (collectively “the Professors”) appealed the district court’s denial of qualified immunity after Plaintiff alleged that they violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process by conspiring to prevent his continued enrollment in Louisiana State University’s (“LSU”) theatre program.   The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court’s determination that they were not entitled to qualified immunity and dismissed Plaintiff’s claims. The court held that the Professors lacked adequate notice that their conduct was violative of Plaintiff’s constitutional rights, and because they did not have this notice, they are entitled to qualified immunity. The court explained that the clearly established standard requires more than that—there must be a “high degree of specificity” between the alleged misconduct and the caselaw purporting to clearly establish the violation. Without it, the requisite “fair warning” required under the clearly established inquiry is absent. View "Babinski v. Sosnowsky" on Justia Law

The Satanic Temple and one of its members sued the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (“THHSC”), its Executive Commissioner, and the Planned Parenthood Center for Choice, Inc., seeking injunctive and declaratory relief against several Texas abortion laws.Plaintiffs moved for a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) and a preliminary injunction against the Commissioner; the district court denied the motion. The Satanic Temple appealed.While the appeal was pending, the litigation continued in district court. Defendants moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim. The district court granted the motion and dismissed the suit without prejudice but without leave to replead.On appeal, the Fifth Circuit affirmed, finding that the district court had jurisdiction to proceed on the merits of the case. An appeal from a grant or denial of a preliminary injunction does not divest the district court of jurisdiction or restrain it from taking other steps in the litigation. The district court, therefore, had jurisdiction to dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims despite the pending appeal. Thus, the Fifth Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. View "Satanic Temple v. TX Hlth and Human" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress on two grounds: (1) that officers lacked reasonable suspicion to initiate a traffic stop of his vehicle, and (2) that Defendant did not voluntarily consent to the search of his home and truck during the stop. Defendant also appealed his sentencing, arguing that the district court erred in relying on the Pre-Sentence Investigation Report (“PSR”) to sentence him under the Armed Career Criminal Act (“ACCA”) rather than any evidence required by Shepard v. United States 544 U.S. 13 (2005).The Fifth Circuit affirmed the denial of Defendant’s motion to suppress but reversed the district court’s application of the ACCA, vacated his sentence, and remanded for further proceedings. The court explained that the Shepard-documents do not conclusively show that Defendant’s predicate offenses occurred on three separate occasions. Thus, the district court’s error affected a substantial right, and the court wrote that it must vacate the sentence. Further, given the fact that Wooden was decided after the notice of appeal was filed, the court remanded the case for a full resentencing, at which time the Government may introduce any additional Shepard evidence into the record. View "USA v. Alkheqani" on Justia Law

Defendant a federal prisoner, appeals the denial of this 28 U.S.C. Section 2255 motion alleging breach of his plea agreement based on serious allegations against Assistant U.S. Attorneys and ineffective assistance of counsel.   The Fifth Circuit disagreed with the district court’s application of the procedural bar to the breach-of-plea agreement claim and reversed and remanded but affirmed its disposition of the ineffective assistance of counsel claim. The court explained that further factfinding is necessary to decide whether Defendant was prejudiced. To show prejudice, “the petition must show ‘not merely that the errors . . . created a possibility of prejudice, but that they worked to his actual and substantial disadvantage, infecting his entire trial with error of constitutional dimensions.’” Here, the court explained that the government argues that Defendant cannot establish prejudice because the Louisiana USAO did not breach the plea agreement and because Defendant would have pled guilty even if he knew of the second indictment. The court reasoned that the district court is in the best position to determine the veracity of these claims. But the district court grounded its ruling on the cause and never addressed the arguments regarding prejudice. Therefore, the court remanded to the district court with instructions to determine (1) whether Defendant or his counsel knew or should have known of the Texas indictment before Defendant’s sentencing and (2), if not, whether Defendant was prejudiced. View "USA v. Cuff" on Justia Law