Justia Constitutional Law Opinion Summaries

The Town of Castle Rock, Colorado enacted a 7:00 p.m. curfew on commercial door-to-door solicitation. Aptive Environmental, LLC sold pest-control services through door-to-door solicitation and encouraged its salespeople to go door-to-door until dusk during the traditional business week. When Aptive came to Castle Rock in 2017, it struggled to sell its services as successfully as it had in other nearby markets. Blaming the Curfew, Aptive sued Castle Rock for violating its First Amendment rights and sought an injunction against the Curfew’s enforcement. After a bench trial, the district court permanently enjoined Castle Rock from enforcing the Curfew. Castle Rock appealed. After review, the Tenth Circuit concluded Castle Rock failed to demonstrate the Curfew advanced its substantial interests in a direct and material way. View "Aptive Environmental v. Town of Castle Rock" on Justia Law

Petitioner James Coddington sought collateral review of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals’ (OCCA) resolution of his constitutional challenges to his conviction and sentence. Coddington argued: (1) the trial court deprived him of his constitutional right to present a defense when it refused to allow his expert to testify that he was unable to form the requisite intent for malice murder; and (2) his confession to the murder should have been suppressed because he did not knowingly and voluntarily waive his Miranda rights. The OCCA denied relief, and, applying AEDPA deference, the district court below did the same. After its review, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s denial of Coddington’s petition because Coddington failed to show that the OCCA’s rejection of his challenges involved an unreasonable application of federal law. View "Coddington v. Sharp" on Justia Law

Plaintiff-appellant Nancy Marks was serving a prison term in Colorado when she obtained entry into a community corrections program operated by Intervention Community Corrections Services (Intervention). To stay in the program, plaintiff needed to remain employed. But while participating in the program, she aggravated a previous disability and Intervention deemed her unable to work. So Intervention terminated plaintiff from the program and returned her to prison. Plaintiff sued, blaming her regression on two Colorado agencies,: the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) and the Colorado Department of Criminal Justice (CDCJ). In the suit, plaintiff sought damages and prospective relief based on: (1) a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act; and (2) a denial of equal protection. The district court dismissed the claims for prospective relief and granted summary judgment to the CDOC and CDCJ on the remaining claims, holding: (1) the Rehabilitation Act did not apply because Intervention had not received federal funding; (2) neither the CDOC nor the CDCJ could incur liability under the Americans with Disabilities Act or Rehabilitation Act for Intervention’s decision to regress plaintiff; and (3) plaintiff did not show the regression decision lacked a rational basis. After review, the Tenth Circuit agreed that (1) claims for prospective relief were moot and (2) neither the CDOC nor CDCJ violated plaintiff's right to equal protection. However, the Court reversed on the award of summary judgment on claims involving the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, finding the trial court mistakenly concluded the Rehabilitation Act did not apply because Intervention had not received federal funding, and mistakenly focused on whether the CDOC and CDCJ could incur liability under the Rehabilitation Act and Americans with Disabilities Act for a regression decision unilaterally made by Intervention, "This focus reflects a misunderstanding of Ms. Marks’s claim and the statutes." The matter was remanded for further proceedings. View "Marks v. Colorado Dept. of Corrections" on Justia Law

Plaintiff-Appellant W. Clark Aposhian filed an interlocutory appeal of a district court’s denial of his motion for a preliminary injunction. The court concluded plaintiff did not show a likelihood of success on the merits of his challenge to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rule classifying bump stocks as machine guns under the National Firearms Act (NFA). Aposhian purchased a Slide Fire bump stock before the Final Rule was promulgated. He filed suit against various governmental officers and agencies challenging the Final Rule as unconstitutional and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), arguing that the Final Rule contradicted an unambiguous statute, 26 U.S.C. 5845(b), and mistakenly extended its statutory definition of “machinegun” to cover bump stocks. The government argued the statute was unambiguous but that the Final Rule was merely interpretive and, as so, reflected the best interpretation of the statutory text. For its part, the district court did not specifically opine on whether the statute was ambiguous or not. The Tenth Circuit concurred plaintiff failed to demonstrate the threatened injury to him outweighed the harm that the preliminary injunction might cause to the government, or that the injunction would not adversely affect the public interest. Accordingly, denial of the injunction was affirmed. View "Aposhian v. Barr" on Justia Law

In 2018, the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) obtained a search warrant to review the contents of Defendant–Appellant Joshua Richards' Tumblr account. During the search and subsequent investigation, DCI agents discovered Defendant had re-blogged videos and images of child pornography to his private Tumblr so he could later access and view the materials. Defendant ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of accessing with intent to view child pornography. He was sentenced to twenty-four months’ imprisonment followed by five years of supervised release. The district court imposed several special conditions of supervised release, which, as relevant here, related to drugs and alcohol and required Defendant to submit to polygraph testing. On appeal, Defendant argued the district court erred in imposing these special conditions. He also challenged the length of his prison sentence as substantively unreasonable. The Tenth Circuit determined the alcohol and drug conditions did not directly conflict with the relevant policy statement in the sentencing guidelines, so the district court's decision to impose the conditions was not manifestly unreasonable. And given the circumstances of the case, the Court determined the trial court did not abuse its discretion in imposing Defendant's twenty-four month sentence. View "United States v. Richards" on Justia Law

In 2016, after serving a federal prison sentence for having possessed a firearm after a felony conviction, Charles Ramon III began serving a mandatory term of supervised release. Before Ramon completed the term, his probation officer filed a petition, soon followed by two superseding petitions, to revoke Ramon’s supervised release. At the revocation hearing, the district court found three violations—two for possessing a controlled substance and one for again illegally possessing a firearm. Of these, the most serious was Ramon’s illegal possession of a firearm—a Grade B violation. For this, the court imposed the statutory maximum sentence of twenty-four months in prison. During the revocation hearing, the government mentioned that it might seek to indict Ramon for illegally possessing a firearm (the conduct in part underlying the revocation). Mindful of this, the district court ordered that Ramon’s twenty-four-month sentence run “consecutively to any sentences imposed previously or prospectively in federal or state court.” At the hearing, Ramon did not object to the district court’s running his sentence consecutively to future federal sentences. On appeal, Ramon argued that the district court exceeded its sentencing authority under 18 U.S.C. 3584(a) by ordering that Ramon’s sentence run consecutively to future federal sentences. By the terms of 18 U.S.C. 3584(a), the Tenth Circuit determined the district court did err. But Ramon failed to object to this at trial, and on appeal, failed to show that the error was plain, thus, judgment was affirmed. View "United States v. Ramon" on Justia Law

Jack Neugin pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition on the condition that he could appeal the district court's denial of his motion to suppress evidence of the ammunition and firearm police found in the bed of his pickup truck. Officers responded to a reported verbal altercation between Neugin and his girlfriend. One of the officers saw ammunition in the back of the truck after he lifted the truck's camper lit do allow the girlfriend to retrieve her belongings. Neugin argued the officers discovered the evidence during an unconstitutional search; the district court concluded the officer was acting "in a lawful position" as "community caretaker," and found no Fourth Amendment violation. The Tenth Circuit reversed, finding that : (1) the officer conducted the without a warrant or probable cause, (2) the community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement does not apply, and (3) the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule does not apply. The evidence seized should have been suppressed. View "United States v. Neugin" on Justia Law

In consolidated appeals, the issue presented for the Tenth Circuit's review centered on whether a Kansas law requiring documentary proof of citizenship ("DPOC") for voter registration was preempted by the federal National Voter Registration Act, or violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. In a previous decision in this case, the Tenth Circuit determined the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting a preliminary injunction against the documentary proof law because the National Voter Registration Act preempted Kansas's law as enforced against those applying to vote while obtaining or renewing a driver's license. The matter was remanded for trial on the merits in which Kansas' Secretary of State had an opportunity to demonstrate the Kansas law's requirement was not more than the minimum amount of information necessary to perform an eligibility assessment and registration duty. On remand, the district court consolidated that statutory challenge with a related case that raised the question of whether the DPOC unconstitutionally burdened the right to vote because the the Secretary of State's interests were insufficient to justify the burden it imposed. After a bench trial, the district court entered a permanent injunction against the enforcement of the DPOC requirement under both the National Voter Registration law and the Equal Protection Clause. The Tenth Circuit concurred with the district court's judgment and affirmed. View "Fish v. Schwab" on Justia Law

Defendant-Appellant Archie Manzanares appealed a district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion challenging his sentence under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). Under the ACCA, an offense qualified as a violent felony by satisfying at least one of three definitions, which have come to be known as the Elements Clause, the Enumerated Clause, and the Residual Clause. Manzanares asserted that without the Residual Clause, his underlying New Mexico convictions (armed robbery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and aggravated battery) no longer qualified as violent felonies. The district court denied the motion, concluding that all three underlying convictions satisfied the Elements Clause. Manzanares appealed the classification of the armed robbery conviction as a violent felony to the Tenth Circuit, and sought to expand the certificate of appealability to allow him to appeal the decision regarding the aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated battery convictions. After review, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of Manzanares’s 2255 motion, and denied his motion to expand the COA. View "United States v. Manzanares" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs were citizens of the City of Boulder, Colorado and entities with various interests in the sale or possession of firearms within the city. They filed suit against the City of Boulder and several of its officials, alleging that Boulder City Ordinances 8245 and 8259 violate the U.S. Constitution, the Colorado State Constitution, and Colorado state statutes, Colo. Rev. Stat. §§ 29-11.7-102 & 103. The ordinances at issue banned the sale of "assault weapons," and raised the legal age for possessing a firearm from eighteen to twenty-one. The City of Boulder is a home-rule municipality under the Colorado Constitution, which granted the City to pass ordinances in “local and municipal matters” that supersede “any law of the state in conflict therewith.” The district court abstained and stayed the proceedings pending resolution of the state law preemption question in state court. Plaintiffs appealed, and finding that the district court properly abstained as “appropriate regard for the rightful independence of state governments reemphasize[s] that it is a wise and permissible policy for the federal chancellor to stay his hand in absence of an authoritative and controlling determination by the state tribunals,” the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. View "Caldara v. City of Boulder" on Justia Law