Summary of recent federal court decisions

Enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a group of folks at the Institute of Justice.

Clean! This week, the Michigan Supreme Court agreed to hear an IJ appeal on two crucial Fourth Amendment questions: Can the government fly a drone around your property, without a warrant, to keep an eye on you and your family? And assuming the Fourth Amendment forbids that (it does), shouldn’t the government use what it got from your warrantless surveillance to punish you in court? (Should not). Read all about it.

• Maine law requires that healthcare workers who do not work remotely get vaccinated against COVID-19 and has no religious exceptions. Seven of these workers lose their jobs after refusing to be vaccinated for religious reasons. First Circuit: The case can advance against the government because the medical exemption that is in law is comparable to the religious exemption plaintiffs want, but we’re going to suggest several ways the government can prove they’re not comparable on a full record. Meanwhile, their claims against their former employers fail because it is too much hardship to require employers to break the law and thus risk fines and losing their licenses.
• New York man is arrested and charged with both drug sale and possession with intent to sell drugs. Convicted solely of criminal possession, he sues the police, alleging that they violated his rights by lying about seeing him selling drugs. Second Circuit: That is a valid claim; The police shouldn’t do that kind of thing. Dissidence: Where is the interest in depriving him of his liberty? He went through the same things (arrest, detention, prosecution) because of the possession charge he was convicted of.
• If your life is turned upside down for several years because an FBI agent accused you of being a Chinese spy based on information you knew (or should have known) to be false, is that something you can sue for? District Court: No. Third Circuit: Indeed, the Federal Tort Claims Act provides a remedy, and the District Court erred in importing “clearly established” evidence of qualified immunity into the “discretionary function” analysis of the FTCA (a ruling that this IJ amicus brief urged the court to make). J. Bibas, concurring: There is a division in the circuit on this and some other important issues about the discretionary exception that the Supreme Court may want to investigate.
• An executive at Flynn Intel Group, a consulting and lobbying firm co-founded by retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, is accused of covertly acting as an agent for Turkey to try to discredit the public image of a known Turkish dissident in the United States. United States, with the ultimate goal of having the dissident extradited to Turkey. A jury convicts him, but the district court grants an acquittal or, conditionally, a new trial. Fourth Circuit (2021): Acquittal goes too far, district court, but might be entitled to a new trial if better explained. Fourth Circuit (2023, by dissent): You explained yourself better.
• Allegation: The two largest providers of inmate calling services colluded to fix prices and falsely told government agencies that the high prices were due to unavoidable transaction costs while pocketing the money. Fourth Circuit: You could be a RICO, and the plaintiffs, who paid the inflated prices to call their loved ones, are enough victims to file a claim.
• Consistently ranked as one of the best public high schools in the country, the Alexandria, Va. high school requires students to apply and take rigorous entrance exams, and is extremely difficult to get into. To diversify the student body, the school drops standardized tests and the percentage of Asian American students admitted falls sharply. A coalition of parents is suing, alleging that the new admissions procedures were enacted with racially discriminatory intent. Fourth Circuit: Policy is racially neutral and fine. Dissent: Policy enacted to decrease Asian American enrollment; it is unconstitutional.
• Houston narcotics officer gets an arrest warrant for lying about a heroin sale at a house. The officers break into the home and kill a husband, wife, and her dog. Four officers are seriously injured. No heroin found. Fifth Circuit: The charge that the officers fired first and without provocation makes the plaintiffs’ claim of excessive force trump qualified immunity. Dissent: But a supervisor should be free because there is no prior case that clearly states that a supervisor can be held liable if he knows that an officer is in the habit of lying on search warrant affidavits and does nothing about it. (This has been in the news.)
• Homeowners aggrieved by the Environmental Court (Kangaroo) in Shelby County, Tennessee, are suing in federal court, alleging that the Environmental Court’s procedures violate due process. The district court dismisses, applying the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Sixth Circuit: For the love of God and all that is holy, stop applying the Rooker-Feldman doctrine to each case that you wish to eliminate from your file. Case not dismissed. (This is a case of IJ.)
• The Sterling Heights, Michigan officer tackles the teen, shoves his head into the pavement, then arrests him after he refused to show identification quickly enough. Qualified immunity? Sixth Circuit (unreleased): Depends on whether there was probable cause to suspect that the teen, who was waiting for his father to pick him up on a dark and stormy night near a sandwich shop where he had just finished work, was doing something illegal . To a jury this must go.
• Police in Peoria, Illinois respond to gunfire and find a man shot in the face. Somehow, his day is about to get even worse. Using his key fob, the police identify his car near him and discover a gun in it. He is a criminal and is accused of illegal possession of the weapon. He says the gun must be suppressed because using the key fob was an illegal search. Will this Fourth Amendment argument play out in Peoria? Seventh Circuit: We don’t have to decide because the police obtained a search warrant without mentioning the key fob and would have found the gun anyway, based on other subtle clues like bullet holes and blood in the car, and the barrel of the gun being visible . Through the window.
• After a plane crash in 1985, the widow of a victim receives a payment from the airline and sets aside $200,000 for the benefit of her son in an account with her new husband as custodian. They divorce in 1999. The son claims that his now-ex-stepfather never said anything about the money, and now it’s all gone. 11th Circuit (after certification to the Georgia Supreme Court): A jury could find that the then-stepfather had a duty to disclose the account when there was money still in it and the son had a right to control it. (Meanwhile, the son’s mother is in prison for defrauding Dennis Rodman and other professional athletes.)
• Accusation: Georgia inmate misses his daily anti-seizure medication for four days, suffers two seizures and brain damage. Nurses: The guards didn’t tell us! Guards: We wrote it down! Eleventh Circuit: No need to point fingers; no one acted with more than gross negligence. (And previous panels that applied a more than-Mere-The negligence standard was incorrect.) Concurrence: I am with Judge Friendly and Judge Posner. The Eighth Amendment does not protect inmates against the negligence of prison officials, even if it is more than serious.
• And in banc news, by a vote of 7 to 7 and more than two votes against, the Fourth Circuit will not reconsider its decision to affirm a sentence increase against a man who led police on a high-speed chase and then was Found in possession of a firearm. Although prosecutors changed their theory of which crime the firearm “facilitated” at the sentencing phase of their trial, the panel found the error harmless.
• And in more news en banc, the Ninth Circuit will not reconsider its decision that a California law that prohibits honking a vehicle horn except when necessary to warn of a safety hazard No violate the First Amendment by prohibiting honking in support of political protests.

Greetings to the state of Minnesota, which this week repealed laws that prohibited the sale of gasoline and dairy products at prices below the minimum required by the state. “Markup floor laws are the result of outsized influence by special interests with a vested interest in keeping prices higher,” says Meagan Forbes, IJ’s director of legislation and senior legislative counsel, who testified on behalf of the repeal. “These laws protect individual competitors, not competition, and discourage pro-competitive price cutting.” Click here to find out more.