Judge’s Jurisdiction – Judicial Ethics for Pro Se Litigants

Piercing a Judges’ Qualified Immunity 

You can’t But he can, and many do………..

JUDGE’S’ PIERCING THEIR OWN IMMUNITY OF PROTECTION OPENING THEMSELVES UP TO CIVIL RETALIATION

NOT ALWAYS IMMUNE WHEN THEY PIERCE IT THEMSELVES

 

after reading this article learn more on the subject Jurisdiction vs Venue below:

What Is Jurisdiction? Jurisdition vs Venue? (click here)

 

 

How Far Does Judicial Immunity & Where it End$ Click Here to Learn More

NO IMMUNITY 

“Sovereign immunity does not apply where (as here) government is a lawbreaker or jurisdiction is the issue.” Arthur v. Fry, 300 F.Supp. 622 “Knowing failure to disclose material information necessary to prevent statement from being misleading, or making representation despite knowledge that it has no reasonable basis in fact, are actionable as fraud under law.” Rubinstein v. Collins, 20 F.3d 160, 1990

[a] “Party in interest may become liable for fraud by mere silent acquiescence and partaking of benefits Bransom v. Standard Hardware, Inc., 874 S.W.2d 919,1994

Ex dolo malo non oritur actio. Out of fraud no action arises; fraud never gives a right of action. No court will lend its aid to a man who founds his cause of action upon an immoral or illegal act. As found in Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, page 509.  “Fraud destroys the validity of everything into which it enters,” Nudd v. Burrows, 91 U.S 426. “Fraud vitiates everything” Boyce v. Grundy, 3 Pet. 210

“Fraud vitiates the most solemn contracts, documents and even judgments.” U.S. v. Throckmorton, 98 US 61

When a Citizen challenges the acts of a federal or state official as being illegal, that official cannot just simply avoid liability based upon the fact that he is a public official. In United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220, 221, 1 S.Ct. 240, 261, the United States claimed title to Arlington, Lee’s estate, via a tax sale some years earlier, held to be void by the Court. In so voiding the title of the United States, the Court declared:“No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at  defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government, and every man who by accepting office participates in its functions is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the authority which it gives. “Shall it be said… that the courts cannot give remedy when the citizen has been deprived of his property by force, his estate seized and converted to the use of the government without any lawful authority, without any process of law, and without any compensation, because the president has ordered it and his officers are in possession? If such be the law of this country, it sanctions a tyranny which has no existence in the monarchies of Europe, nor in any other government which has a just claim to well-regulated liberty and the protection of personal rights.”

See Pierce v. United States (“The Floyd Acceptances”), 7 Wall. (74 U.S.) 666, 677
(“We have no officers in this government from the President down to the most subordinate agent, who does not hold office under the law, with prescribed duties and limited authority”);
Cunningham v. Macon, 109 U.S. 446, 452, 456, 3 S.Ct. 292, 297 (“In these cases he is not sued as, or because he is, the officer of the government, but as an individual, and the court is not ousted of jurisdiction because he asserts authority as such officer. To make out his defense he must show that his authority was sufficient in law to protect him… It is no answer for the defendant to say I am an officer of the government and acted under its authority unless he shows the sufficiency of that authority”); and Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U.S. 270, 287, 5 S.Ct. 903, 912 WHEREAS, officials and even judges have no immunity (See, Owen vs. City of Independence, 100 S Ct. 1398; Maine vs. Thiboutot, 100 S. Ct. 2502; and Hafer vs. Melo, 502 U.S. 21; officials and judges are deemed to know the law and sworn to uphold the law; officials and judges cannot claim to act in good faith in willful deprivation of law, they certainly cannot plead ignorance of the law, even the Citizen cannot plead ignorance of the law, the courts have ruled there is no such thing as ignorance of the law, it is ludicrous for learned officials and judges to plead ignorance of the law therefore there is no immunity, judicial or otherwise, in matters of rights secured by the Constitution for the United States of America. See: Title 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983.

WHEREAS, officials and even judges have questioned immunity (See, Owen vs. City of Independence, 100 S Ct. 1398; Maine vs. Thiboutot, 100 S. Ct. 2502; and Hafer vs. Melo, 502 U.S. 21; officials and judges are deemed to know the law and sworn to uphold the law; officials and judges cannot claim to act in good faith in willful deprivation of law, they certainly cannot plead ignorance of the law, even the Citizen cannot plead ignorance of the law, the courts have ruled there is no such thing as ignorance of the law, it is ludicrous for learned officials and judges to plead ignorance of the law therefore there is no immunity, judicial or otherwise, in matters of rights secured by the Constitution for the United States of America. See: Title 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983.

“When lawsuits are brought against federal officials, they must be brought against them in their “individual” capacity not their official capacity. When federal officials perpetrate constitutional torts, they do so ultra vires (beyond the powers) and lose the shield of immunity.” Williamson v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 815 F.2d. 369, ACLU Foundation v. Barr, 952 F.2d. 457, 293 U.S. App. DC 101, (CA DC 1991).“Personal involvement in deprivation of constitutional rights is prerequisite to award of damages, but defendant may be personally involved in constitutional deprivation by direct participation, failure to remedy wrongs after learning about it, creation of a policy or custom under which unconstitutional practices occur or gross negligence in managing subordinates who cause violation.” (Gallegos v. Haggerty, N.D. of New York, 689 F. Supp. 93 (1988). (HEAD DISTRICT ATTORNEY & HEADMASTER JUDGE)

“The law requires proof of jurisdiction to appear on the record of the administrative agency and all administrative proceedings.” Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U. S. 533

“Judge acted in the face of clearly valid statutes or case law expressly depriving him of (personal) jurisdiction would be liable.” Dykes v. Hosemann, 743 F.2d 1488 (1984).  “In such case the judge has lost his judicial function, has become a mere private person, and is liable as a trespasser for damages resulting from his unauthorized acts.”

“Where there is no jurisdiction there is no judge; the proceeding is as nothing. Such has been the law from the days of the Marshalsea, 10 Coke 68;
also Bradley v. Fisher, 13 Wall 335,351.” Manning v. Ketcham, 58 F.2d 948.

“A distinction must be here observed between excess of jurisdiction and the clear absence of all jurisdiction over the subject-matter any authority exercised is a usurped authority and for the exercise of such authority, when the want of jurisdiction is known to the judge, no excuse is permissible.” Bradley v.Fisher,13 Wall 335, 351, 352.

The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth.  A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to him from whose punishments they cannot protect us.  All human constitutions which contradict his cannot protect us.  All human constitutions which contradict his (God’s) laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey.  1772, Robin v. Hardaway, 1 Jefferson 109. Supreme court cases from digging around Robin v. Hardaway 1790. Biblical Law at “Common Law” supersedes all laws, and “Christianity is custom, custom is Law.”

(I, Me, Myself am a “state”, with standing, standing in “original jurisdiction” know as the common law, Gods Law, a neutral traveling in itinerary, demanding all of my rights under God’s Natural Law, recorded in part in the Bible, which law is recognized in US Public Law 97-280 as “the word of God and all men are admonished to learn and apply it” so I demand anyone and everyone to notice God’s Laws, which are My Makers Laws and therefore My Laws!)

• – Article 1 of the Bill of Rights – guarantees freedom of religion-
  Constitution for the United States of America ARTICLE IV, sect. 1, Full faith and credit among states. (Self-executing constitutional provisions) Section 1.  Full faith and Credit shall be given in each state to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other state.

And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

Zeller v. Rankin, 101 S.Ct. 2020, 451 U.S. 939, 68 L.Ed 2d 326 When a judge knows that he lacks jurisdiction, or acts in the face of clearly valid statutes expressly depriving him of jurisdiction, judicial immunity is lost. 

JURISDICTION: NOTE: It is a fact of law that the person asserting jurisdiction must, when challenged, prove that jurisdiction exists; mere good faith assertions of power and authority (jurisdiction) have been abolished.

Albrecht v. U.S. Balzac v. People of Puerto Rico, 258 U.S. 298 (1922) “The United States District Court is not a true United States Court, established under Article 3 of the Constitution to administer the judicial power of the United States therein conveyed. It is created by virtue of the sovereign congressional faculty, granted under Article 4, 3, of that instrument, of making all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory belonging to the United States. The resemblance of its jurisdiction to that of true United States courts, in offering an opportunity to nonresidents of resorting to a tribunal not subject to local influence, does not change its character as a mere territorial court.”

“Jurisdiction of court may be challenged at any stage of the proceeding, and also may be challenged after conviction and execution of judgment by way of writ of habeas corpus.” [U.S. v. Anderson, 60 F.Supp. 649 (D.C.Wash. 1945)]

“No judicial process, whatever form it may assume, can have any lawful authority outside of the limits of the jurisdiction of the court or judge by whom it is issued; and an attempt to enforce it beyond these boundaries is nothing less than lawless violence.” Stump v. Sparkman, id., 435 U.S. 349. 

Some Defendants urge that any act “of a judicial nature” entitles the Judge to absolute judicial immunity. But in a jurisdictional vacuum (that is, absence of all jurisdiction) the second prong necessary to absolute judicial immunity is missing. A judge is not immune for tortious acts committed in a purely Administrative, non-judicial capacity. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (2 Cranch) 137, 180 (1803) “… the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.”

“In declaring what shall be the supreme law of the land, the Constitution itself is first mentioned; and not the laws of the United States generally, but those only which shall be made in pursuance of the Constitution, have that rank”. “All law (rules and practices) which are repugnant to the Constitution are VOID”. Since the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states “NO State (Jurisdiction) shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the rights, privileges, or immunities of citizens of the United States nor deprive any citizens of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, … or equal protection under the law“, this renders judicial immunity unconstitutional. Piper v. Pearson, 2 Gray 120, cited in Bradley v. Fisher, 13 Wall. 335, 20 L.Ed. 646 (1872)

“Where there is no jurisdiction, there can be no discretion, for discretion is incident to jurisdiction.” Chandler v. Judicial Council of the 10th Circuit, 398 U.S. 74, 90 S. Ct. 1648, 26 L. Ed. 2d 100 Justice Douglas, in his dissenting opinion at page 140 said, “If (federal judges) break the law, they can be prosecuted.” Justice Black, in his dissenting opinion at page 141) said, “Judges, like other people, can be tried, convicted and punished for crimes… The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution”.

Davis v. Burris, 51 Ariz. 220, 75 P.2d 689 (1938) A judge must be acting within his jurisdiction as to subject matter and person, to be entitled to immunity from civil action for his acts.

“Jurisdiction, once challenged, cannot be assumed and must be decided.” Maine v. Thiboutot, 100 S. Ct. 250

Elliot v. Piersol, 1 Pet. 328, 340, 26 U.S. 328, 340 (1828) Under federal Law, which is applicable to all states, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that “if a court is without authority, its judgments and orders are regarded as nullities. They are not voidable, but simply void, and form no bar to a recovery sought, even prior to a reversal in opposition to them. They constitute no justification and all persons concerned in executing such judgments or sentences are considered, in law, as trespassers.”

JUDICIAL IMMUNITY: See also, 42 USC 1983 – Availability of Equitable Relief Against Judges. Note: [Copied verbiage; we are not lawyers.] Judges have given themselves judicial immunity for their judicial functions. Judges have no judicial immunity for criminal acts, aiding, assisting, or conniving with others who perform a criminal act or for their administrative/ministerial duties, or for violating a citizen’s constitutional rights. When a judge has a duty to act, he does not have discretion – he is then not performing a judicial act; he is performing a ministerial act. Nowhere was the judiciary given immunity, particularly nowhere in Article III; under our Constitution, if judges were to have immunity, it could only possibly be granted by amendment (and even less possibly by legislative act), as Art. I, Sections 9 & 10, respectively, in fact expressly prohibit such, stating, “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States” and “No state shall… grant any Title of Nobility.” Most of us are certain that Congress itself doesn’t understand the inherent lack of immunity for judges. Article III, Sec. 1, “The Judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior.” Tort & Insurance Law Journal, Spring 1986 21 n3, p 509516, “Federal tort law: judges cannot invoke judicial immunity for acts that violate litigants’ civil rights.” – Robert Craig Waters.

“Ignorance of the law does not excuse misconduct in anyone, least of all in a sworn officer of the law.”   In re McCowan (1917), 177 C. 93, 170 P. 1100.

“All are presumed to know the law.”  San Francisco Gas Co. v. Brickwedel (1882), 62 C. 641; Dore v. Southern Pacific Co. (1912), 163 C. 182, 124 P. 817; People v. Flanagan (1924), 65 C.A. 268, 223 P. 1014; Lincoln v. Superior Court (1928), 95 C.A. 35, 271 P. 1107;  San Francisco Realty Co. v. Linnard (1929), 98 C.A. 33, 276 P. 368.

“It is one of the fundamental maxims of the common law that ignorance of the law excuses no one.”  Daniels v. Dean (1905), 2 C.A. 421, 84 P. 332.

Griffin v. Mathews, 310 Supp. 341, 423 F. 2d 272 Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U.S. 528 Howlett v. Rose, 496 U.S. 356 (1990) Federal Law and Supreme Court Cases apply to State Court Cases.  Sims v. Aherns, 271 SW 720 (1925) “The practice of law is an occupation of common right.” Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1 Mookini v. U.S., 303 U.S. 201 (1938) “The term ‘District Courts of the United States’ as used in the rules without an addition expressing a wider connotation, has its historic significance. It describes the constitutional courts created under Article 3 of the Constitution. Courts of the Territories are Legislative Courts, properly speaking, and are not district courts of the United States. We have often held that vesting a territorial court with jurisdiction similar to that vested in the district courts of the United States (98 U.S. 145) does not make it a ‘District Court of the United States’.

“Not only did the promulgating order use the term District Courts of the United States in its historic and proper sense, but the omission of provision for the application of the rules the territorial court and other courts mentioned in the authorizing act clearly
shows the limitation that was intended.“

In Leiberg v. Vitangeli, 70 Ohio App. 479, 47 N.E. 2d 235, 238-39 (1942) “These constitutional provisions employ the word ‘person,’ that is. anyone whom we have permitted to peaceably reside within our borders may resort to our courts for redress of an injury done him in his land, goods, person or reputation. The real party plaintiff for whom the nominal plaintiff sues is not shown to have entered our land in an unlawful manner. We said to her, you may enter and reside with us and be equally protected by our laws so long as you conform thereto. You may own property and our laws will protect your title. “We, as a people, have said to those of foreign birth that these constitutional guaranties shall assure you of our good faith. They are the written surety to you of our proud boast that the United States is the haven of refuge of the oppressed of all mankind.”

Court will assign to common-law terms their common-law meaning unless legislature directs otherwise. People v. Young (1983) 340 N.W.2d 805,418 Mich. 1.

Common law, by constitution, is law of state. Beech Grove Inv. Co. v. Civil Rights Com’n (1968) 157 N.W.2d 213, 380 Mich. 405. “Common law” is but the accumulated expressions of various judicial tribunals in their efforts to ascertain what is right and just between individuals in respect to private disputes. Semmens v. Floyd Rice Ford, Inc. (1965) 136 N.W.2d 704,1 Mich.App. 395.

Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power. For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another. seems to be intolerable on any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery.

Mattox v. U.S., 156 US 237,243. (1895) “We are bound to interpret the Constitution in the light of the law as it existed at the time it was adopted.” Carolina v. U.S., 199 U.S. 437, 448 (1905). “The Constitution is a written instrument. As such, its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when it was adopted, it means now.”

When there is substantive issues to the court’s findings, and the court abused  its discretion (see In re M.R. (2017) 7 Cal.App.5th 886, 902; Bridget A. v. Superior Court (2007) 148 Cal.App.4th 285, 300) in terminating jurisdiction and issuing the custody orders.

THIS CLARIFY YOU DON’T GET TO GO AROUND CHANGING IT FOR YOURSELF 

28 U.S. Code § 144 – Bias or prejudice of judge

Rule 2.3: Bias, Prejudice, and Harassment

(A) A judge shall perform the duties of judicial office, including administrative duties, without bias or prejudice.

(B) A judge shall not, in the performance of judicial duties, by words or conduct manifest bias or prejudice, or engage in harassment, including but not limited to bias, prejudice, or harassment based upon race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, marital status, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation, and shall not permit court staff, court officials, or others subject to the judge’s direction and control to do so.

(C) A judge shall require lawyers in proceedings before the court to refrain from manifesting bias or prejudice, or engaging in harassment, based upon attributes including but not limited to race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, marital status, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation, against parties, witnesses, lawyers, or others.

(D) The restrictions of paragraphs (B) and (C) do not preclude judges or lawyers from making legitimate reference to the listed factors, or similar factors, when they are relevant to an issue in a proceeding.

Standing on YOUR rights as a citizen to use my rights as a citizen

Hale v. Henkel was decided by the united States Supreme Court in 1906. The opinion of the court states:
“The “individual” may stand upon “his Constitutional Rights” as a CITIZEN. He is entitled to carry on his “private” business in his own way. “His power to contract is unlimited.” He owes no duty to the State or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation, so far as it may tend to incriminate him. He owes no duty to the State, since he receives nothing there from, beyond the protection of his life and property. “His rights” are such as “existed” by the Law of the Land (Common Law) “long antecedent” to the organization of the State”, and can only be taken from him by “due process of law”, and “in accordance with the Constitution.” “He owes nothing” to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights.”

HALE V. HENKEL 201 U.S. 43 at 89 (1906)
Hale v. Henkel is binding on all the courts of the United States of America until another Supreme Court case says it isn’t. No other Supreme Court case has ever overturned Hale v. Henkel

None of the various issues of Hale v. Henkel has ever been overruled Since 1906, Hale v. Henkel has been cited by the Federal and State Appellate Court systems over 1,600 times! In nearly every instance when a case is cited, it has an impact on precedent authority of the cited case.  Compared with other previously decided Supreme Court cases, no other case has surpassed Hale v. Henkel in the number of times it has been cited by the courts. Basso v. UPL, 495 F. 2d 906 Brook v. Yawkey, 200 F. 2d 633

Miller v. U.S., 230 F.2d. 486,489 “The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime.”

Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 78 S.Ct. 1401 (1958). “No state legislator or executive or judicial officer can war against the Constitution without violating his undertaking to support it.” The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents.”

Before we place the stigma of a criminal conviction upon any such citizen the legislative mandate must be clear and unambiguous. Accordingly that which Chief Justice Marshall has called ‘the tenderness of the law Page 11 of 48 for the rights of individuals’ [FN1] entitles each person, regardless of economic or social status, to an unequivocal warning from the legislature as to whether he is within the class of persons subject to vicarious liability. Congress cannot be deemed to have intended to punish anyone who is not ‘plainly and unmistakably’ within the confines of the statute. United States v. Lacher, 134 U.S.  624, 628, 10 S. Ct. 625, 626, 33 L. Ed. 1080; United States v. Gradwell, 243 U.S. 476,485, 37 S. Ct. 407, 61 L. Ed. 857. FN1 United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95, 5 L.Ed. 37.

People v. Superior Court (Jones ) (1998) 18 Cal.4th 667, 680-681, 76 Cal.Rptr.2d 641, 958 P.2d 393.) “Findings of fact are reviewed under a ‘substantial evidence’ standard.” ( Ibid. )

Under this standard, ” ‘a trial court’s ruling will not be disturbed, and reversal of the judgment [or order] is not required, unless the trial court exercised its discretion in an arbitrary, capricious, or patently absurd manner that resulted in a manifest miscarriage of justice.’ ” ( People v. Hovarter (2008) 44 Cal.4th 983, 1004, 81 Cal.Rptr.3d 299, 189 P.3d 300 ; see People v. Kipp (1998) 18 Cal.4th 349, 371, 75 Cal.Rptr.2d 716, 956 P.2d 1169 [“[a] court abuses its discretion when its ruling ‘falls outside the bounds of reason’

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (2 Cranch) 137, 180 (1803) “… the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.” Since the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states “NO State (Jurisdiction) shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the rights, privileges, or immunities of citizens of the United States nor deprive any citizens of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, … or equal protection under the law”, this renders judicial immunity unconstitutional.

State v. Sutton, 63 Min 147, 65 NW 262, 30 LRA630, AM ST 459 When any court violates the clean and unambiguous language of the Constitution, a fraud is perpetuated, and no one is bound to obey it.

Norton vs. Shelby County, 118 US 425 p. 442. “An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.”

Bell v. Hood, 71 F.Supp., 813, 816 (1947) U.S.D.C. — So. Dist. CA. History is clear that the first ten amendments to the Constitution were adopted to secure certain common law rights of the people, against invasion by the Federal Government.”

SIMMONS v US, supra. “We find it intolerable that one constitutional right should have to be surrendered in order to assert another”

Judicial Ethics for Pro Se Litigants

Justice is the waying of facts presented in the case.  Most judges will eventually hear a case with pro se parties. With pro se parties, in the interest of assuring them the same access to justice as represented parties, even if that comes at times at the expense of procedural efficiency. As a result, cases with a pro se party can be more time-consuming and require more patience

In an advisory opinion, the California Judges Association Judicial Ethics Committee encouraged judges to “understand the difficulties encountered by self-represented litigants” and “to exercise discretion to treat them differently.”  California Judges Association Advisory Opinion 76 (2018).  The opinion emphasized that a “judge may make reasonable procedural accommodations that will provide a diligent self-represented litigant acting in good faith the opportunity to have his or her case fairly heard.”

The committee explained:

Some judges take the position that the job of the judge is to call the balls and strikes, not to throw the pitches.  Is this an accurate statement of the role of the judge?  Not necessarily. . . .  Fundamental justice should not be sacrificed to procedural rules and cases should be decided on their merits.  Exercising discretion – not just calling balls and strikes – is the nature of judging, from granting motions for extensions of time to handing out sentences.

Frequently, there is tension between the represented party and the self-represented litigant.  One side is ready to proceed, has done the legal work, and would like to complete the proceeding as soon as possible.  The self-represented litigant often is struggling with legal terms, time limits, and court procedures.  The judge must decide what reasonable accommodation is proper and when it is unreasonable.  Judges may grant continuances, explain legal terms, refer a litigant to self-help services or the library, or refer him or her to the local bar association for a low-cost meeting with an attorney.  Whether the judge should take any of these or other steps is a matter of judicial discretion.

The committee concluded:

The adversary system is not embedded in the Code of Judicial Ethics, nor is it the primary purpose of the code to protect the formalities of the adversary system.  Reasonable procedural accommodations for self-represented litigants do not change the facts, the law, or the burden of proof, nor do they ensure a victory for the unrepresented.  Such accommodations simply mean that both sides will have a fair opportunity to tell their stories.

The committee applied its analysis to several courtroom situations.  For example, the committee stated, a judge may, at the beginning of a civil case in which one litigant is unrepresented by counsel and the other is represented, explain how the proceedings will be conducted, including that the party bringing the action has the burden to present evidence in support of the relief sought, the kind of evidence that may be presented, and the kind of evidence that cannot be considered.  In addition, the opinion advised:

• A judge may give a self-represented litigant a neutral explanation of how to respond to a motion for summary judgment.
• A judge may provide a self-represented litigant information about the requirements for entry of a default judgment.
• A judge may ask a self-represented litigant if she wants a continuance to bring a witness to court.
• During a trial, a judge may ask witnesses neutral questions to clarify testimony and develop facts.
• A judge may sign a settlement agreement prepared by the attorney for 1 party and signed by an unrepresented party, but, as a best practice, should ask the parties if they understand the document and ask the unrepresented party if she understands her responsibilities under the agreement.
• When a self-represented litigant refers to information after being instructed not to, a judge is not required to grant a motion for a mistrial but may instruct the jury to disregard the testimony.
• If an unrepresented plaintiff makes no specific claim for damages at the close of her case, the judge may ask the plaintiff, “Are you asking for damages in this case? If so, what is the amount you are asking for?  And why are you asking for this amount?”
• In a criminal case, if a prosecutor tries to take advantage of a defendant’s unrepresented status to introduce the defendant’s prior drug-related arrest and the factual basis for a search, the judge should immediately intervene even if the defendant does not object.

In domestic violence cases, the committee stated, a judge:

• May give the self-represented plaintiff a short continuance to learn about the relevant rules of evidence and the procedural requirements for the admission of hospital records,
• Should permit a support person to accompany a self-represented moving party to counsel table, and
• Should inform a self-represented respondent that he could present oral testimony.

Commentary to the California Code of Judicial Ethics states:  “[W]hen a litigant is self-represented, a judge has the dis­cretion to take reasonable steps, appropriate under the circumstances and con­sistent with the law and the canons to enable the litigant to be heard.”  Comment 4 to Rule 2.2 of the American Bar Association Model Code of Judicial Conduct states:  “It is not a violation of this Rule [requiring that a judge be fair and impartial] for a judge to make reasonable accommodations to ensure pro se litigants the opportunity to have their matters fairly heard.”  34 states and the District of Columbia have added comment 4 or a version of comment 4 to their codes of judicial conduct.

https://ncscjudicialethicsblog.org/category/pro-se-litigants/

Government / Public Servants / Officers / Judges Not Immune from suit!

“The officers of the law, in the execution of process, are required to know the requirements of the law, and if they mistake them, whether through ignorance or design, and anyone is harmed by their error, they must respond in damages.” Roger v. Marshall (United States use of Rogers v. Conklin), 1 Wall. (US) 644, 17 Led 714.

“It is a general rule that an officer, executive, administrative, quasi-judicial, ministerial, or otherwise, who acts outside the scope of his jurisdiction, and without authorization of law may thereby render himself amenable to personal liability in a civil suit.”  Cooper v. O`Conner, 69 App DC 100, 99 F (2d)

“Public officials are not immune from suit when they transcend their lawful authority by invading constitutional rights.      “AFLCIO v. Woodard, 406 F 2d 137 t.

“Immunity fosters neglect and breeds irresponsibility while liability promotes care and caution, which caution and care is owed by the government to its people.”   (Civil Rights) Rabon vs Rowen Memorial Hospital, Inc. 269 N.S. 1, 13, 152 SE 1 d 485, 493.

Government Immunity – “In  Land  v.  Dollar, 338 US 731 (1947), the court noted, “that when the government entered into a commercial field of activity, it left immunity behind.”  Brady  v.  Roosevelt, 317 US 575 (1943);  FHA  v.  Burr, 309 US 242 (1940);  Kiefer  v.  RFC, 306 US 381 (1939).

The high Courts, through their citations of authority, have frequently declared,  that  “…where  any  state  proceeds  against  a  private individual in a judicial forum it is well settled that the state, county, municipality, etc. waives any immunity to counters, cross claims and complaints, by direct or collateral means regarding the matters involved.”  Luckenback v. The Thekla, 295 F 1020, 226 Us 328; Lyders v. Lund, 32 F2d 308;

“When  enforcing mere statutes, judges of all courts do not act judicially (and thus are not protected by “qualified” or “limited immunity,” – SEE: Owen v. City, 445 U.S. 662;  Bothke  v.  Terry, 713 F2d 1404)

– – “but merely act as an extension as an agent for the involved  agency  —  but  only  in  a  “ministerial”  and  not  a “discretionary capacity…”  Thompson  v.  Smith, 154 S.E. 579, 583; Keller v. P.E., 261 US 428; F.R.C. v. G.E., 281, U.S. 464.

Thompson v. Clark 2022 Holding: Larry Thompson’s showing that his criminal prosecution ended without a conviction satisfies the requirement to demonstrate a favorable termination of a criminal prosecution in a Fourth Amendment claim under Section 1983 for malicious prosecution; an affirmative indication of innocence is not needed.

Immunity for judges does not extend to acts which are clearly outside of their jurisdiction.  Bauers v. Heisel, C.A. N.J. 1966, 361 F.2d 581, Cert. Den. 87 S.Ct. 1367, 386 U.S. 1021, 18 L.Ed. 2d 457 (see also Muller v. Wachtel, D.C.N.Y. 1972, 345 F.Supp. 160;  Rhodes v. Houston, D.C. Nebr. 1962, 202 F.Supp. 624 affirmed 309 F.2d 959, Cert. den 83 St. 724, 372 U.S. 909, 9 L.Ed. 719, Cert. Den 83 S.Ct. 1282, 383 U.S. 971, 16 L.Ed. 2nd 311, Motion denied 285 F.Supp. 546).

“Judges not only can be sued over their official acts, but could be held liable for injunctive and declaratory relief and attorney’s fees.” Lezama v. Justice Court, A025829.

“The immunity of judges for acts within their judicial role is beyond cavil.” Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547 (1957). Keyword within their role, outside of that role they are not.

At least seven circuits have indicated affirmatively that there is no immunity bar to such relief, and in situations where in their judgment an injunction against a judicial officer is necessary to prevent irreparable injury to a petitioner’s constitutional rights, courts will grant that relief.  “There is no common law judicial immunity.” Pulliam v. Allen, 104S.Ct. 1970; cited in Lezama v. Justice Court, A025829.

“Judges, members of city council, and police officers as well as other public officials, may utilize good faith defense of action for damages under 42-1983, but no public official has absolute immunity from suit under the 1871 civil rights statute.” (Samuel vs University of Pittsburg, 375 F.Supp. 1119, ‘see also, White vs Fleming 374 Supp. 267.)

NO IMMUNITY
“Sovereign immunity does not apply where (as here) government is a lawbreaker or jurisdiction is the issue.” Arthur v. Fry, 300 F.Supp. 622 “Knowing failure to disclose material information necessary to prevent statement from being misleading, or making representation despite knowledge that it has no reasonable basis in fact, are actionable as fraud under law.” Rubinstein v. Collins, 20 F.3d 160, 1990

[a] “Party in interest may become liable for fraud by mere silent acquiescence and partaking of benefits of fraud.” Bransom v. Standard Hardware, Inc., 874 S.W.2d 919, 1994

Ex dolo malo non oritur actio. Out of fraud no action arises; fraud never gives a right of action. No court will lend its aid to a man who founds his cause of action upon an immoral or illegal act. As found in Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, page 509.

“Fraud destroys the validity of everything into which it enters,” Nudd v. Burrows, 91 U.S 426.

“Fraud vitiates everything” Boyce v. Grundy, 3 Pet. 210

“Fraud vitiates the most solemn contracts, documents and even judgments.” U.S. v. Throckmorton, 98 US 61

U.S. v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 1 S. Ct. 240, 261, 27 L. Ed 171 (1882) “No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it. “

When a Citizen challenges the acts of a federal or state official as being illegal, that official cannot just simply avoid liability based upon the fact that he is a public official. In United States v. Lee, 106 U.S.196, 220, 221, 1 S.Ct. 240, 261, the United States claimed title to Arlington, Lee’s estate, via a tax sale some years earlier, held to be void by the Court. In so voiding the title of the United States, the Court declared:
“No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with impunity. All the officers of the government, from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it. It is the only supreme power in our system of government, and every man who by accepting office participates in its functions is only the more strongly bound to submit to that supremacy, and to observe the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the authority which it gives. “Shall it be said… that the courts cannot give remedy when the citizen has been deprived of his property by force, his estate seized and converted to the use of the government without any lawful authority, without any process of law, and without any compensation, because the president has ordered it and his officers are in possession? If such be the law of this country,
it sanctions a tyranny which has no existence in the monarchies of Europe, nor in any other government which has a just claim to well-regulated liberty and the protection of personal rights.”

See Pierce v. United States (“The Floyd Acceptances”), 7 Wall. (74 U.S.) 666, 677 (“We have no officers in this government from the President down to the most subordinate agent, who does not hold office under the law, with prescribed duties and limited authority”);
Cunningham v. Macon, 109 U.S. 446, 452, 456, 3 S.Ct. 292, 297 (“In these cases he is not sued as, or because he is, the officer of the government, but as an individual, and the court is not ousted of jurisdiction because he asserts authority as such officer. To make out his defense he must show that his authority was sufficient in law to protect him… It is no answer for the defendant to say I am an officer of the government and acted under its authority unless he shows the sufficiency of that authority”); and Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U.S. 270, 287, 5 S.Ct. 903, 912

WHEREAS, officials and even judges have questioned immunity (See, Owen vs. City of Independence, 100 S Ct. 1398; Maine vs. Thiboutot, 100 S. Ct. 2502; and Hafer vs. Melo, 502 U.S. 21; officials and judges are deemed to know the law and sworn to uphold the law; officials and judges cannot claim to act in good faith in willful deprivation of law, they certainly cannot plead ignorance of the law, even the Citizen cannot plead ignorance of the law, the courts have ruled there is no such thing as ignorance of the law, it is ludicrous for learned officials and judges to plead ignorance of the law therefore there is no immunity, judicial or otherwise, in matters of rights secured by the Constitution for the United States of America. See: Title 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983.

“When lawsuits are brought against federal officials, they must be brought against them in their “individual” capacity not their official capacity. When federal officials perpetrate constitutional torts, they do so ultra vires (beyond the powers) and lose the shield of immunity.” Williamson v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 815 F.2d. 369, ACLU Foundation v. Barr, 952 F.2d. 457, 293 U.S. App. DC 101, (CA DC 1991).

“Personal involvement in deprivation of constitutional rights is prerequisite to award of damages, but defendant may be personally involved in constitutional deprivation by direct participation, failure to remedy wrongs after learning about it, creation of a policy or custom under which unconstitutional practices occur or gross negligence in managing subordinates who cause violation.” (Gallegos v. Haggerty, N.D. of New York, 689 F. Supp. 93 (1988).

“The law requires proof of jurisdiction to appear on the record of the administrative agency and all administrative proceedings.” Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U. S. 533

“If you’ve relied on prior decisions of the Supreme Court you have a perfect defense for willfulness.” U.S. v. Bishop, 412 U.S. 346

Before we place the stigma of a criminal conviction upon any such citizen the legislative mandate must be clear and unambiguous. Accordingly that which Chief Justice Marshall has called ‘the tenderness of the law Page 11 of 48 for the rights of individuals’ [FN1] entitles each person, regardless of economic or social status, to an unequivocal warning from the legislature as to whether he is within the class of persons subject to vicarious liability. Congress cannot be deemed to have intended to punish anyone who is not ‘plainly and unmistakably’ within the confines of the statute. United States v. Lacher, 134 U.S.  624, 628, 10 S. Ct. 625, 626, 33 L. Ed. 1080; United States v. Gradwell, 243 U.S. 476,485, 37 S. Ct. 407, 61 L. Ed. 857. FN1 United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95, 5 L.Ed. 37.

We do not overlook those constitutional limitations which, for the protection of personal rights, must necessarily attend all investigations conducted under the authority of Congress. Neither branch of the legislative department, still less any merely administrative body, established by Congress, possesses, or can be invested with, a general power of making inquiry into the private affairs of the citizen. Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U. S. 168,196 [26: 377, 386].
We said in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630 [29: 746, 751]—and it cannot be too often repeated—that the principles that embody the essence of constitutional liberty and security forbid all invasions on the part of the government and its employes of the sancity of a man’s home, and the privacies of his life.
As said by Mr. Justice Field in Re Pacific R. Commission, 32 Fed. Rep. 241,250, “of all the rights of the citizen, few are of greater importance or more essential to his peace and happiness than the right of personal security, and that involves, not merely protection of his person from assault, but exemption of his private affairs, books, and papers from the inspection and scrutiny of others. Without the enjoyment of this right, all others would lose half their value.”

Zeller v. Rankin, 101 S.Ct. 2020, 451 U.S. 939, 68 L.Ed 2d 326 When a judge knows that he lacks jurisdiction, or acts in the face of clearly valid statutes expressly depriving him of jurisdiction, judicial immunity is lost.

JURISDICTION: NOTE: It is a fact of law that the person asserting jurisdiction must, when challenged, prove that jurisdiction exists; mere good faith assertions of power and authority (jurisdiction) have been abolished.

Albrecht v. U.S. Balzac v. People of Puerto Rico, 258 U.S. 298 (1922) “The United States District Court is not a true United States Court, established under Article 3 of the Constitution to administer the judicial power of the United States therein conveyed. It is created by virtue of the sovereign congressional faculty, granted under Article 4, 3, of that instrument, of making all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory belonging to the United States. The resemblance of its jurisdiction to that of true United States courts, in offering an opportunity to nonresidents of resorting to a tribunal not subject to local influence, does not change its character as a mere territorial court.”

“Jurisdiction of court may be challenged at any stage of the proceeding, and also may be challenged after conviction and execution of judgment by way of writ of habeas corpus.” [U.S. v. Anderson, 60 F.Supp. 649 (D.C.Wash. 1945)]

Stump v. Sparkman, id., 435 U.S. 349. Some Defendants urge that any act “of a judicial nature” entitles the Judge to absolute judicial immunity. But in a jurisdictional vacuum (that is, absence of all jurisdiction) the second prong necessary to absolute judicial immunity is missing. A judge is not immune for tortious acts committed in a purely Administrative, non-judicial capacity.

Piper v. Pearson, 2 Gray 120, cited in Bradley v. Fisher, 13 Wall. 335, 20 L.Ed. 646 (1872) “Where there is no jurisdiction, there can be no discretion, for discretion is incident to jurisdiction.”

Chandler v. Judicial Council of the 10th Circuit, 398 U.S. 74, 90 S. Ct. 1648, 26 L. Ed. 2d 100 Justice Douglas, in his dissenting opinion at page 140 said, “If (federal judges) break the law, they can be prosecuted.” Justice Black, in his dissenting opinion at page 141) said, “Judges, like other people, can be tried, convicted and punished for crimes… The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution“.

Davis v. Burris, 51 Ariz. 220, 75 P.2d 689 (1938) A judge must be acting within his jurisdiction as to subject matter and person, to be entitled to immunity from civil action for his acts.

“Jurisdiction, once challenged, cannot be assumed and must be decided.” Maine v. Thiboutot, 100 S. Ct. 250

Elliot v. Piersol, 1 Pet. 328, 340, 26 U.S. 328, 340 (1828) Under federal Law, which is applicable to all states, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that “if a court is without authority, its judgments and orders are regarded as nullities. They are not voidable, but simply void, and form no bar to a recovery sought, even prior to a reversal in opposition to them. They constitute no justification and all persons concerned in executing such judgments or sentences are considered, in law, as trespassers.”

JUDICIAL IMMUNITY: See also, 42 USC 1983 – Availability of Equitable Relief Against Judges.

Note: [Copied verbiage; we are not lawyers.] Judges have given themselves judicial immunity for their judicial functions. Judges have no judicial immunity for criminal acts, aiding, assisting, or conniving with others who perform a criminal act or for their administrative/ministerial duties, or for violating a citizen’s constitutional rights. When a judge has a duty to act, he does not have discretion – he is then not performing a judicial act; he is performing a ministerial act. Nowhere was the judiciary given immunity, particularly nowhere in Article III; under our Constitution, if judges were to have immunity, it could only possibly be granted by amendment (and even less possibly by legislative act), as Art. I, Sections 9 & 10, respectively, in fact expressly prohibit such, stating, “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States” and “No state shall… grant any Title of Nobility.” Most of us are certain that Congress itself doesn’t understand the inherent lack of immunity for judges. Article III, Sec. 1, “The Judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior.”

Tort & Insurance Law Journal, Spring 1986 21 n3, p 509-516, “Federal tort law: judges cannot invoke judicial immunity for acts that violate litigants’ civil rights.” – Robert Craig Waters.

TAKE DUE NOTICE ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, SERVANTS, JUDGES, LAYERS, CLERKS, EMPLOYEES:

“Ignorance of the law does not excuse misconduct in anyone, least of all in a sworn officer of the law.”   In re McCowan (1917), 177 C. 93, 170 P. 1100.

“All are presumed to know the law.”  San Francisco Gas Co. v. Brickwedel (1882), 62 C. 641; Dore v. Southern Pacific Co. (1912), 163 C. 182, 124 P. 817; People v. Flanagan (1924), 65 C.A. 268, 223 P. 1014; Lincoln v. Superior Court (1928), 95 C.A. 35, 271 P. 1107;  San Francisco Realty Co. v. Linnard (1929), 98 C.A. 33, 276 P. 368.

“It is one of the fundamental maxims of the common law that ignorance of the law excuses no one.”  Daniels v. Dean (1905), 2 C.A. 421, 84 P. 332.

Jurisdiction challenged to all, at any and all times

“Judge acted in the face of clearly valid statutes or case law expressly depriving him of (personal) jurisdiction would be liable.” Dykes v. Hosemann, 743 F.2d 1488 (1984).  “In such case the judge has lost his judicial function, has become a mere private person, and is liable as a trespasser for damages resulting from his unauthorized acts.”

“Where there is no jurisdiction there is no judge; the proceeding is as nothing. Such has been the law from the days of the Marshalsea, 10 Coke 68;
also Bradley v. Fisher, 13 Wall 335,351.” Manning v. Ketcham, 58 F.2d 948.

“A distinction must be here observed between excess of jurisdiction and the clear absence of all jurisdiction over the subject-matter any authority exercised is a usurped authority and for the exercise of such authority, when the want of jurisdiction is known to the judge, no excuse is permissible.” Bradley v.Fisher,13 Wall 335, 351, 352.

The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth.  A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to him from whose punishments they cannot protect us.  All human constitutions which contradict his cannot protect us.  All human constitutions which contradict his (God’s) laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey.  1772, Robin v. Hardaway, 1 Jefferson 109. Supreme court cases from digging around Robin v. Hardaway 1790. Biblical Law at “Common Law” supersedes all laws, and “Christianity is custom, custom is Law.”

(I, Me, Myself am a “state”, with standing, standing in “original jurisdiction” know as the common law, Gods Law, a neutral traveling in itinerary, demanding all of my rights under God’s Natural Law, recorded in part in the Bible, which law is recognized in US Public Law 97-280 as “the word of God and all men are admonished to learn and apply it” so I demand anyone and everyone to notice God’s Laws, which are My Makers Laws and therefore My Laws!)

• – Article 1 of the Bill of Rights – guarantees freedom of religion-
  Constitution for the United States of America ARTICLE IV, sect. 1, Full faith and credit among states. (Self-executing constitutional provisions) Section 1.  Full faith and Credit shall be given in each state to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other state.

And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

for true knowledge of how sophisticated the legal minds of our forefathers were read how intricate their minds worked absent of all modern inventions including modern internet free schooling.

Interference by threat, intimidation or coercion with exercise or enjoyment of individual rights
The Bane Civil Rights Act (California Civil Code Section 52.1) forbids anyone from interfering by
force or by threat of violence with your federal or state constitutional or statutory rights.
The acts forbidden by these civil laws may also be criminal acts, and can expose violators to criminal penalties.
California Civil Code Section 52.1 - Interference by threat, intimidation or coercion with exercise or enjoyment of individual rights read here
california-civil-code-section-52-1/

42 U.S. Code § 1983 – Civil action for deprivation of rights

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person
within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable
to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.

Secret Canons of Judicial Conduct 

ECONOMIC STATUS ATTACKS!

GRANDPARENT CASE LAW 

Do Grandparents Have Visitation Rights? If there is an Established Relationship then Yes

Third “PRESUMED PARENT” Family Code 7612(C) – Requires Established Relationship Required

Cal State Bar PDF to read about Three Parent Law –
The State Bar of California family law news issue4 2017 vol. 39, no. 4.pdf

Distinguishing Request for Custody from Request for Visitation

Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000) – Grandparents – 14th Amendment

S.F. Human Servs. Agency v. Christine C. (In re Caden C.)

9.32 Particular Rights – Fourteenth Amendment – Interference with Parent / Child Relationship

Child’s Best Interest in Custody Cases

When is a Joinder in a Family Law Case Appropriate? – Reason for Joinder

Joinder In Family Law Cases – CRC Rule 5.24

GrandParents Rights To Visit
Family Law Packet OC Resource Center
Family Law Packet SB Resource Center

Motion to vacate an adverse judgment

Mandatory Joinder vs Permissive Joinder – Compulsory vs Dismissive Joinder

When is a Joinder in a Family Law Case Appropriate?

Kyle O. v. Donald R. (2000) 85 Cal.App.4th 848

Punsly v. Ho (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 1099

Zauseta v. Zauseta (2002) 102 Cal.App.4th 1242

S.F. Human Servs. Agency v. Christine C. (In re Caden C.)

Ian J. v. Peter M

Can I Use Text Messages in My California Divorce?

Two-Steps And Voila: How To Authenticate Text Messages

How Your Texts Can Be Used As Evidence?

California Supreme Court Rules:
Text Messages Sent on Private Government Employees Lines
Subject to Open Records Requests

case law: City of San Jose v. Superior Court – Releasing Private Text/Phone Records of Government  Employees

Public Records Practices After the San Jose Decision

The Decision Briefing Merits After the San Jose Decision

Here is the Public Records Service Act Portal for all of CALIFORNIA Click Here

Rules of Admissibility – Evidence Admissibility

Confrontation Clause – Sixth Amendment

Exceptions To The Hearsay Rule – Confronting Evidence

Prosecutor’s Obligation to Disclose Exculpatory Evidence

Successful Brady/Napue Cases – Suppression of Evidence

Cases Remanded or Hearing Granted Based on Brady/Napue Claims

Unsuccessful But Instructive Brady/Napue Cases

ABA – Functions and Duties of the Prosecutor – Prosecution Conduct

Frivolous, Meritless or Malicious Prosecution – fiduciary duty

Federal judges reject officer’s claim of qualified immunity in 2017 shooting

BY: Tim Carpenter source

Court denies new hearing for Wichita police officer Justin Rapp in Andrew Finch killing

CHANCE SWAIM, MATTHEW KELLY source

Wichita Police Detective Justin Rapp was denied a rehearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals on Monday, after lawyers hired by the city argued the court should have granted him qualified immunity in the shooting death of Andrew Finch.

Rapp shot and killed Andrew Finch, 28, in December 2017 after a California serial hoaxer reported a bogus murder-hostage situation at Finch’s address.

Finch, who was unarmed and unaware of the phony emergency call to law enforcement, stepped onto his porch after it had been surrounded by police officers. Within 10 seconds, Rapp shot Finch in the chest from 40 yards away.

It was the nation’s first deadly swatting call.

Finch’s family is suing Rapp — whose defense is being paid by the city of Wichita — in federal court.

The U.S. Court District of Kansas had already denied qualified immunity to Rapp. That legal theory is meant to shield public officials from liability when they are performing their official duties.

U.S. District Judge John W. Broomes wrote in a June 2020 decision that “a reasonable officer would have known that using deadly force when Finch displayed no weapon and made no overtly threatening movement was unlawful.”

He added that there “is enough evidence in the record which, if believed by a jury, contradicts or casts doubt on Rapp’s testimony about what he saw when he fired the shot.”

A panel of federal appellate judges affirmed Broomes’s decision last month.

In response, Rapp’s lawyers — Steven Pigg and Samuel Green — filed a petition asking the appellate court to rehear the case or to bring additional jurists to overrule the decision. Pigg and Green argued that a panel of three circuit judges failed to account for the “split-second nature” of Rapp’s decision to shoot Finch.

Rapp told detectives he thought Finch had a gun and planned to use it on officers. He later testified in a separate federal court case that he did not see a gun in Finch’s hand and shot him based on his hand motions.

LOOK HOW THIS PIGG FUCK MURDERING COP NAMED RAPP “alternative explanation, one that Rapp never said factored into his decision to shoot Finch: that he shot Finch to stop him from going back inside his house.” SO HE WANTS TO USE A REASON THAT HIS BRAIN ITSELF NEVER USED AT THE TIME OF THE INCIDENT BUT INSTEAD LATER COMES UP WITH TO COVER HIS ASS. HE SHOULD BE DONT IN THE SAME MANNER AS HE DID THAT POOR INNOCENT VICTIM

“The district court and the panel opinion failed to address this alternative objectively reasonable justification for the use of force but instead relied solely on Rapp’s subjective explanation for using force,” Pigg and Green wrote in their petition.

In a decision issued Monday by Chief Judge Timothy Tymokovich, Senior Circuit Judge Carlos Lucero and Circuit Judge Nancy Moritz, the U.S. Court of Appeals denied a rehearing and rejected the city’s petition for a rehearing before the entire Court of Appeals.

The rejection is three sentences long:

“Appellant’s petition for rehearing is denied,” the decision says. “The petition for rehearing en banc was transmitted to all of the judges of the court who are in regular active service. As no member of the panel and no judge in regular active service on the court requested that the court be polled, that petition is also denied.”

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett declined to bring criminal charges against Rapp, citing the state’s stand-your-ground self-defense law. The Wichita Police Department recently promoted Rapp to detective, against objections by some City Council members and Mayor Brandon Whipple.

Rapp’s lawyers did not want to comment on the decision Monday afternoon.

Andrew M. Stroth, lawyer for the Finch family, celebrated the decision Monday, and said the civil lawsuit could be the last chance for Rapp or the city to be held accountable in Finch’s death.

“Given the Tenth Circuit’s decision today, the Finch family will finally have the opportunity to seek justice with a jury trial in Kansas,” Stoth said.

Stroth also indicated the case could be settled out of court.

“I would welcome the opportunity to speak to Mayor Whipple and his council to work to resolve the case,” Stroth said. “Either way, we’re fully prepared to go to trial so the world can see what happened to Andrew Finch.” source

2017 Wichita swatting

On December 28, 2017, a fatal swatting incident occurred in Wichita, Kansas, United States. During an online dispute between Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill, regarding the video game Call of Duty: WWII, Viner threatened to have Gaskill swatted. Gaskill responded by giving him a false address for his residence, one that was occupied by an uninvolved person, Andrew Finch. Viner then asked Tyler Barriss to make the required fraudulent call to initiate the swatting. Wichita Police responded to the address, and as Finch was exiting his house, police officer Justin Rapp fatally shot him.

Barriss pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and many other charges from unrelated incidents for which he was wanted. In March 2019, Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.^[1] Viner was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment and 2 years supervised release for his involvement, while Gaskill was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. Rapp was not charged for Finch’s death.

Tyler Barriss

At the time of the incident, Tyler Raj Barriss was a 25-year-old homeless man living in Los Angeles, California. Known online as “SWAuTistic”, he had a criminal record including domestic violence,^[2] and had served 16 months in Los Angeles County Jail for making false bomb threats against KABC-TV, an elementary school in Los Angeles, and a middle school in Granada Hills. He was wanted by police in Panama City, Florida, for calling approximately 30 other bomb threats, including one to a high school,^[3] and on fraud and mischief charges in Canada for harassing a woman in Calgary.^[4]

Events of December 28

Reports surfaced that the deadly series of events reportedly began with an online argument over a $1.50 wager in an online match of Call of Duty: WWII on UMG Gaming, which operates online tournaments, including one involving said game. Two men, Casey Viner (known by pseudonym Baperizer) and Shane Gaskill^[5] (known by pseudonym Miruhcle), fought over friendly fire in the Call of Duty: WWII match, causing them to lose both the match and $1.50 in wagers. The two gamers took to Twitter in an argument about the loss.

Viner threatened to swat Gaskill over the loss. Gaskill intentionally gave Viner the wrong address: a place in Wichita where he previously resided with his family, and where he said he would “be waiting”. Gaskill’s family had been evicted in 2016.^[6] Viner then contacted Barriss and provided him with the address given to swat Gaskill. Finch was not a known gamer and had nothing to do with the Call of Duty match.^[7]

Using voice over IP through the free Wi-Fi provided by a South Los Angeles library, Barriss called the Wichita police department. Because the call was transferred from Wichita City Hall to 911, the dispatcher believed the call was coming from the Wichita area. Barriss, identifying himself as “Brian”, claimed that he was at the residence at 1033 West McCormick Street, had fatally shot his father, and was holding family members at gunpoint. He asked if police were coming to the house, saying he had already poured gasoline all over the house and was threatening to set it on fire.^[8]

Shooting

Wichita Police Department officers, who were not SWAT team members, untrained for tactical situations or hostage rescues,^[9] responded to Barriss’ call and surrounded Finch’s residence. Andrew Finch is reported by his mother Lisa Finch, who was at the scene, to have seen the police lights outside and opened the front door to see what was happening. Mrs. Finch reports that her 28-year-old son “screamed and then they shot him.” Moments after Finch stepped onto his front porch, police ordered him to put his hands up. According to officer testimony, he began to do so and then stopped. A Wichita police officer standing on the other side of the street fired a single round^[10] striking Finch and piercing his heart and right lung.^[11] Finch was transported to Ascension Via Christi St. Francis, where he was pronounced dead 17 minutes after he was shot.^[8][12]

Finch’s mother reports the police then ordered her and other family members to exit the residence. The family was handcuffed and taken to the police station for questioning. Initial reports from Deputy Wichita Police Chief Troy Livingston stated that “A male came to the front door. As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.” Livingston did not initially state if Finch was armed, or what caused the officer to fire his weapon. In a later statement on December 30, the Wichita Police Department stated the shooting was caused by Finch “reaching into his waistband”.^[12] The officer involved was eventually identified as Justin Rapp, a seven-year veteran of the force.^[13]

In court, Rapp testified in May 2018 that he was given no information when he arrived at the scene, including when Finch was given his first verbal command, when the 911 call ended, or whether officers at the scene were aware the caller was still on the phone with 911.^[14] Sedgwick County Department of Emergency Communications has also denied an open-records request pertaining to the 911 call, stating the police department had asked that no more records be released.^[15]

Aftermath

Many Wichita residents and other U.S.-based commentators have expressed concern over the death of Finch.^[16][17] Wichita residents used the opportunity of a city council meeting on January 9, 2018 to voice concerns on the subject, including questioning the release of only seven seconds of the police body cam footage, and arguing that the city should assume full responsibility to avoid a lengthy struggle by the Finch family for justice. The council did not comment directly, but indicated a willingness to consider training procedures at a later time.^[18]

Nearly a week after the shooting, Andrew Finch’s mother Lisa Finch wrote to the Wichita mayor and police chief, stating that she did not know where her son’s body was being kept, and that she wanted to give him a “proper funeral service and burial.” “Please let me see my son’s lifeless body,” she wrote in a letter dated January 3, 2018. In the same letter, Mrs. Finch asked why the police officer who killed her son had not, at that time, been identified, why the family was handcuffed, and when police will return their belongings, including two cell phones and a computer, seized from the house. The family attorney, Andrew M. Stroth, has also called for the city, police department, and officer involved in the shooting to be held liable “for the unjustified shooting of Andrew Finch.”^[19]

Finch’s 18-year-old niece Adelina died by suicide by gunshot on January 11, 2019. Adelina was raised by Lisa and Andrew Finch after her own mother had died; she was 17 at the time of the shooting, and witnessed her uncle’s death.^[20] Lisa Finch blames Adelina’s death on the events of December 28.^[21]

Parties involved

Shooting victim

• Andrew Thomas Finch, aged 28; father of two, who had no affiliation with either the three men or the Call of Duty game.

Call of Duty: WWII players

• Casey “Baperizer” Viner,^[5] 18; of North College Hill, Ohio^[6] (sentenced to 15 months in prison and 2 years supervised release)
• Shane “Miruhcle” Gaskill,^[5] 19; of Wichita, Kansas^[6] (sentencing hearing pending)

911 hoax caller

• Tyler Raj “SWAuTistic” Barriss, 25; of Los Angeles, California^[22] (sentenced to 20 years in federal prison)

Officer who fatally shot Finch

• Justin Rapp, Officer, Wichita Police Department; originally stated he believed Finch had a gun, but testified in May 2018 that he merely saw Finch make a motion with his hand^[14] (not charged with any crime)

Legal proceedings

Legal proceedings

Barriss was arrested on December 29, 2017, in Los Angeles on a fugitive warrant stemming from a 2015 charge of making false bomb threats to KABC-TV, and was charged with false alarm, a felony. On January 12, 2018, Barriss was extradited to Kansas, where he was charged with involuntary manslaughter and held in Sedgwick County Jail.^[1]

Barriss, Viner, and Gaskill were indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas on May 23 on charges related to the swatting. Barriss was charged with false information and hoaxes, cyberstalking resulting in death, making threats of death or damage to property by fire, interstate threats, conspiracy to make false reports, and wire fraud. Viner was charged with wire fraud, conspiracy to make false/hoax reports, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Gaskill was charged with obstruction of justice, wire fraud, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Gaskill was re-indicted in July on additional charges, after it was discovered that he goaded Barriss to “try again” after the fatal shooting.^[23][24]

On October 26, 2018, forty-six additional charges against Barriss were added, which included financial fraud, and fake threats of bombs and shootings made to police and schools; some of these charges involved unindicted co-conspirators residing in Des Plaines, Illinois; Gulf Breeze, Florida; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Greenwood, Missouri. On November 13 he pleaded guilty to 51 federal charges, for which U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister recommended a sentence of 20 years’ incarceration. Under the terms of the plea agreement, Barriss has also been required to formally apologize to Finch’s family and pay $10,100 in fines and restitution, and has agreed to five years of supervised release.^[25]

Barriss’ sentencing was held March 29, 2019; he received 90 months’ imprisonment for the California charges, and 150 months for the Kansas charges, to be served consecutively. Barriss also paid a $5,000 fine, the full amount of which was awarded by the Kansas Crime Victims Compensation Board to Finch’s family as restitution.^[26] He is scheduled to be released from FCI Phoenix on January 14, 2035.

In April 2019, Viner pleaded guilty to conspiracy and obstruction of justice, and was sentenced in September to a 15-month prison sentence in addition to two years’ probation, during which time he would be banned from playing video games.^[27][28] Viner was released from custody at USP Big Sandy on November 14, 2020.

In September 2019, it was reported that Gaskill struck a deal for deferred prosecution that could allow the charges against him to be dropped.^[28] Under terms of Gaskill’s pretrial diversion agreement, the government agreed not to pursue prosecution for at least 18 months. Gaskill agreed to waive any speedy trial defenses and pay $1,000 in restitution, costs and penalties.^[29] In September 2021, it was reported that Gaskill had violated the terms of his pretrial diversion and the trial against Gaskill resumed.^[30] Gaskill pled guilty to one count of wire fraud in May 2022,^[31] and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in September 2022.^[32]

As of July 2022, Officer Rapp faces civil trial. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit agreed with a lower federal court in Kansas a family could pursue a lawsuit against a Wichita police officer but not the city of Wichita for a fatal shooting of an innocent, unarmed man who was targeted in a hoax emergency call to law enforcement.^[33]

Legislative response

In response to Finch’s slaying, the Kansas state legislature approved a bill in March 2018 to establish creating a false alarm resulting in injury or death as a class-one felony, carrying a prison sentence between 10 and 41 years. The bill was signed into law by Governor Jeff Colyer on April 12.^[34]

The Andrew T. Finch Memorial Act of 2018 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Ron Estes in March 2018. The bill, also known as the Preventing Swatting and Protecting Our Communities Act of 2018, would make providing false information with the intent to cause an emergency response punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment, up to 20 years’ imprisonment if serious injury results, and up to life imprisonment if the act results in death. The bill was referred to the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations,^[35] but was never taken up for a vote and died in committee.

Rep. Eliot Engel introduced a bill in January 2019 to amend the Communications Act of 1934, to provide for enhanced penalties for the transmission of misleading or inaccurate caller identification information with the intent to trigger an emergency response. As of March 2019, it has been referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.^[36]

References

Eleventh Amendment – XI Amendment

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer (1976)– The Supreme Court has the power to override a state’s sovereign immunity for the purpose of enforcing civil rights on the state.

Other Interesting Facts About the Eleventh Amendment

States may always “consent” to lawsuits that are barred by the Eleventh Amendment. If the state consents, any case may be heard.

Lawsuits can be brought in federal court against a state’s cities, counties, and municipalities, but usually not against the state itself.

When a state violates federal law, the state itself can’t be sued in federal court. However, a federal court can order state officials (by their own name) to follow the law.

Suits against states by other states or by the United States government to enforce federal laws are allowed. source

State Immunity under the 11th Amendment

Remember the Eleventh Amendment? You know, the constitutional amendment that prohibits the federal courts from hearing certain lawsuits against states? If you clear out the cobwebs that have formed since your 1L year, you’ll remember that the Eleventh Amendment ensures that states retain their sovereign status within the federal system. As a result, states are generally immune from suits brought by private parties and foreign governments in federal court. This immunity also extends to suits brought against a state official for violating a federal law—with some exceptions (see table below).

However, Eleventh Amendment immunity does not extend to any of the following:

• suits brought by the United States or another state
• suits asserted against a local government (e.g., city, county)
• suits initiated in bankruptcy court.

UWorld condensed the nuances of state immunity under the Eleventh Amendment into the following table:

Remember that Congress cannot override a state’s Eleventh Amendment immunity through its enumerated powers (e.g., power to regulate interstate commerce, power to protect copyrights and patents). However, it can abrogate or repeal a state’s immunity by clearly acting to enforce any of the Civil War Amendments, which are described in the following table:

source

What is the 11th Amendment?

The 11th Amendment of the Constitution reads as follows: “The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”

This has two explicit meanings.

First, it means that the Supreme Court can’t hear cases against a state if it is sued by either a citizen who lives in another state or a non-citizen who lives in a foreign country.

Second, it means that because states don’t have “sovereign immunity,” states can sue other states, and the federal government can sue states.

But there are some exceptions.

What are some exceptions to the 11th Amendment?

History has some specific examples of exceptions to the 11th Amendment.

In the 1890 case of Hans vs. Louisiana, the Supreme Court ruled that citizens of states cannot sue their states for cases that the federal courts need to hear.

This case was controversial because it left open whether citizens could sue their state in state courts.

This case was ultimately resolved in 1999, in the case of Alden vs. Maine.

In the Alden case, it was ruled that “state’s sovereign immunity forecloses suits against a state government in state court.”

In this case, the Seminole Native American tribe sued the state of Florida for violating the good faith negotiations requirement of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

But in this case, the courts ruled in a 5-4 decision that the state of Florida did have sovereign immunity from a lawsuit.

source

Amdt11.5.1 General Scope of State Sovereign Immunity

Eleventh Amendment:

Eleventh Amendment:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

In its 1890 decision, Hans v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court adopted Justice James Iredell’s position in Chisholm v. Georgia, that the states, as sovereigns, were immune from suit by their citizens under long-standing principles grounded in the common law.¹ In Hans v. Louisiana,² a resident of Louisiana brought a suit against that state in federal court under federal question jurisdiction, alleging a violation of the Contract Clause in the state’s repudiation of its obligation to pay interest on certain bonds. Admitting that the Amendment on its face prohibited only entertaining a suit against a state by citizens of another state, or citizens or subjects of a foreign state, the Court reasoned that the scope of the Eleventh Amendment was informed by the scope of Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, which provided federal courts jurisdiction over suits between a state and citizens of another state and foreign States, citizens or subjects. The court noted that the Eleventh Amendment was a result of the shock of surprise throughout the country at the Chisholm decision, which contravened long-established common law precedent that a sovereign cannot be sued absent its consent, and reflected the general consensus that the decision was wrong, and that federal jurisdiction did not extend to making defendants of unwilling states in lawsuits brought by individuals.³

In the Hans Court’s view, the Eleventh Amendment reversed an erroneous decision and restored the proper interpretation of the Constitution. Delivering the Court’s opinion, Justice Joseph Bradley stated: The truth is, that the cognizance of suits and actions unknown to the law, and forbidden by the law, was not contemplated by the Constitution when establishing the judicial power of the United States. The suability of a State without its consent was a thing unknown to the law.⁴ The Court reasoned that the Eleventh Amendment’s silence on whether a citizen of a state could sue that state should not be construed as permitting such suits. Instead the manner in which [Chisholm] was received by the country, the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, the light of history and the reason of the thing,⁵ led the Court unanimously to hold that states could not be sued by their own citizens on grounds arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States.

In line with Hans, the Court held, in Ex parte New York (No. 1),⁶ that, absent its consent, a state was immune to suit in admiralty, the Eleventh Amendment’s reference to any suit in law or equity notwithstanding. Writing for the Court, Justice Mahlon Pitney stated: That a State may not be sued without its consent is a fundamental rule of jurisprudence . . . of which the Amendment is but an exemplification . . . . It is true the Amendment speaks only of suits in law or equity; but this is because the Amendment was the outcome of a purpose to set aside the effect of the decision of this court in Chisholm v. Georgia from which it naturally came to pass that the language of the Amendment was particularly phrased so as to reverse the construction adopted in that case.⁷ Just as Hans v. Louisiana had demonstrated the impropriety of construing the Amendment so as to permit federal question suits against a state, Justice Mahlon Pitney reasoned, it seems to us equally clear that it cannot with propriety be construed to leave open a suit against a State in the admiralty jurisdiction by individuals, whether its own citizens or not.⁸

The Court has continued to rely on Hans⁹ although support for it has not been universal.¹⁰ In 1996, the Court further solidified Hans in Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida,¹¹ holding that Congress lacks power under Article I to abrogate state immunity under the Eleventh Amendment. And, in 1999, the Court ruled in Alden v. Maine¹² that the broad principle of sovereign immunity reflected in the Eleventh Amendment bars suits against states in state courts as well as federal.

Having previously reserved the question of whether federal statutory rights could be enforced in state courts,¹³ the Court in Alden v. Maine¹⁴ held that states could also assert Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity in their own courts. Recognizing that the application of the Eleventh Amendment, which limits only the federal courts, was a misnomer¹⁵ as applied to state courts, the Court nonetheless concluded that the principles of common law sovereign immunity applied absent compelling evidence that the states had surrendered such by ratifying the Constitution. Although this immunity is subject to the same limitations as apply in federal courts, the Court’s decision effectively limited applying significant portions of federal law to state governments.¹⁶ Both Seminole Tribe and Alden were 5-4 decisions with four dissenting Justices maintaining that Hans was wrongly decided.

This split continued with Federal Maritime Commission v. South Carolina State Ports Authority,¹⁷ which held that state sovereign immunity also applies to quasi-judicial proceedings in federal agencies. In this case, the operator of a cruise ship devoted to gambling had been denied entry to the Port of Charleston, and subsequently filed a complaint with the Federal Maritime Commission, alleging a violation of the Shipping Act of 1984.¹⁸ Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the four dissenting Justices, emphasized the executive (as opposed to judicial) nature of such agency adjudications, noting that the ultimate enforcement of such proceedings in federal court was exercised by a federal agency (as is allowed under the doctrine of sovereign immunity). The majority, however, while admitting to a relatively barren historical record, presumed that when a proceeding was unheard of at the time of the founding of the Constitution, it could not subsequently be applied in derogation of a State’s dignity within our system of federalism.¹⁹

Footnotes

1. Footnotes

   1.  Jump to essay-1134 U.S. 1 (1890).
   2.  Jump to essay-2Id. at 11.
   3.  Jump to essay-3Id. at 13–14.
   4.  Jump to essay-4Id. at 15, 16.
   5.  Jump to essay-5134 U.S. at 18. The Court acknowledged that Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 382–83, 406–07, 410–12 (1821), was to the contrary, but observed that the language was unnecessary to the decision and thus dictum, and though made by one who seldom used words without due reflection, ought not to outweigh the important considerations referred to which lead to a different conclusion. 134 U.S. at 20.
   6.  Jump to essay-6256 U.S. 490 (1921).
   7.  Jump to essay-7Id. at 497–98.
   8.  Jump to essay-8Id. at 498. See also Florida Dep’t of State v. Treasure Salvors, 458 U.S. 670 (1982); Welch v. Texas Dep’t of Highways and Transp., 483 U.S. 468 (1987).
   9.  Jump to essay-9E.g., Pennhurst State School & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 97–103 (1984) (opinion of the Court by Justice Lewis Powell); Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 237–40, 243–44 n.3 (1985) (opinion of the Court by Justice Lewis Powell); Welch v. Texas Dep’t of Highways & Pub. Transp., 483 U.S. 468, 472–74, 478–95 (1987) (plurality opinion of Justice Lewis Powell); Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1, 29 (1989) (Justice Antonin Scalia concurring in part and dissenting in part); Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223, 227–32 (1989) (opinion of the Court by Justice Anthony Kennedy); Hoffman v. Connecticut Dep’t of Income Maintenance, 492 U.S. 96, 101 (1989) (plurality opinion of Justice Byron White); id. at 105 (concurring opinions of Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia); Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp. v. Feeney, 495 U.S. 299, 305 (1990) (opinion of the Court by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor).
   10.  Jump to essay-10E.g., Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 246 (1985) (dissenting); Welch v. Texas Dep’t of Highways & Pub. Transp., 483 U.S. 468, 496 (1987) (dissenting); Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223, 233 (1989) (dissenting); Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp. v. Feeney, 495 U.S. 299, 309 (1990) (concurring). Joining Justice William Brennan were Justices Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, and John Stevens. See also Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1, 23 (1989) (Justice Stevens concurring).
   11.  Jump to essay-11517 U.S. 44 (1996).
   12.  Jump to essay-12527 U.S. 706 (1999).
   13.  Jump to essay-13Employees of the Dep’t of Public Health and Welfare v. Department of Public Health and Welfare, 411 U.S. 279, 287 (1973). 16. 527 U.S. 706 (1999).
   14.  Jump to essay-14527 U.S. 706 (1999).
   15.  Jump to essay-15527 U.S. at 713.
   16.  Jump to essay-16Note, however, that at least one subsequent decision has seemingly enhanced the applicability of federal law to the states themselves. In PennEast Pipeline Co. v New Jersey (595 U.S. —), the Court held that a private company that was granted authority to exercise eminent domain by the federal government could exercise that authority to take possession of property interests owned by a state.
   17.  Jump to essay-17535 U.S. 743 (2002). Justice Breyer’s dissenting opinion describes a need for continued dissent from the majority’s sovereign immunity holdings. 535 U.S. at 788.
   18.  Jump to essay-1846 U.S.C. §§ 40101 et seq.
   19.  Jump to essay-19535 U.S. at 755, 760.

source

Amdt11.5.2 Nature of States’ Immunity

Eleventh Amendment:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Hans v. Louisiana and Ex parte New York note that Chisholm was erroneously decided and that the Amendment’s intent was to restore the original understanding that a state could not be sued without its consent, and that nothing in the Constitution, including Article III’s grants of federal court jurisdiction, was intended to provide otherwise. In Edelman v. Jordan,¹ the Court held that a state could properly raise its Eleventh Amendment defense on appeal after having defended and lost on the merits in the trial court. The Court stated: [I]t has been well settled . . . that the Eleventh Amendment defense sufficiently partakes of the nature of a jurisdictional bar so that it need not be raised in the trial court.² But that the bar is not wholly jurisdictional seems established as well.³

Moreover, if under Article III there is no jurisdiction of suits against states, the settled principle that states may consent to suit⁴ becomes conceptually difficult, as jurisdiction may not be conferred if the state refuses its consent.⁵ And Article III jurisdiction exists for some suits against states, such as those brought by the United States or by other states.⁶ Furthermore, Congress is able, in some instances, to legislate away state immunity,⁷ although it may not enlarge Article III jurisdiction.⁸ The Court has declared that the principle of sovereign immunity [reflected in the Eleventh Amendment] is a constitutional limitation on the federal judicial power established in Art. III, while acknowledging that [a] sovereign’s immunity may be waived.⁹

Another explanation of the Eleventh Amendment is that it merely recognized the continued vitality of the doctrine of sovereign immunity as established prior to the Constitution: a state was not subject to suit without its consent.¹⁰ Modern case law supports this view. In the 1999 Alden v. Maine decision, the Court stated: the States’ immunity from suit is a fundamental aspect of the sovereignty which the States enjoyed before the ratification of the Constitution, and which they retain today¹¹ The Court, in dealing with questions of governmental immunity from suit, has traditionally treated precedents dealing with state immunity and those dealing with Federal Governmental immunity interchangeably.¹² Viewing the Amendment and Article III this way explains consent to suit as a waiver.¹³ The limited effect of the doctrine in federal courts arises from the fact that traditional sovereign immunity arose in a unitary state, barring unconsented suit against a sovereign in its own courts or the courts of another sovereign. But upon entering the Union the states surrendered their sovereignty to some undetermined and changing degree to the national government, a sovereign that does not have plenary power over them but that is more than their coequal.¹⁴

Within the area of federal court jurisdiction, the issue becomes the extent to which the states, upon entering the Union, ceded their immunity to suit in federal court. Chisholm held—and the Eleventh Amendment reversed —that the states had given up their immunity to suit in diversity cases based on common law or state law causes of action; Hans v. Louisiana and subsequent cases held that the Amendment, in effect, recognized state immunity to suits based on federal causes of action.¹⁵ Other cases have held that states ceded their immunity to suits by the United States or by other states.¹⁶

Still another view of the Eleventh Amendment is that it embodies a state sovereignty principle limiting the Federal Government’s power.¹⁷ In this respect, the federal courts may not act without congressional guidance in subjecting states to suit, and Congress, which can act to the extent of its granted powers, is constrained by judicially created doctrines requiring it to be explicit when it legislates against state immunity.¹⁸

Questions regarding the constitutional dimensions of sovereign immunity have arisen in the context of interstate sovereign immunity when a private party institutes an action against a state in another state’s court. In the now-overturned 1979 decision of Nevada v. Hall, the Court held that while states are free as a matter of comity to accord each other immunity or to respect any established limits on liability, the Constitution does not compel a state to grant another state immunity in its courts.¹⁹ In Hall, California residents who were severely injured in a car crash with a Nevada state university employee on official business sued the university and the State of Nevada in California court.²⁰ After considering the scope of sovereign immunity as it existed prior to and in the early days of independence, the doctrine’s effect on the framing of the Constitution, and specific aspects of the Constitution that qualify the sovereignty of the several States, such as the Full Faith and Credit Clause,²¹ the Court concluded that [n]othing in the Federal Constitution authorizes or obligates this Court to frustrate California’s policy of full compensation in its courts for injuries on its highways resulting from the negligence of state or non-state actors out of enforced respect for the sovereignty of Nevada.²²

Forty years later, the Court overruled Hall in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt (Franchise Tax Board III), holding that States retain their sovereign immunity from private suits brought in the courts of other States.²³ Franchise Tax Board III involved a tort action by a private party against a California state agency in Nevada’s courts.²⁴ The sole question before the Court was whether to overrule Nevada v. Hall, a question over which the Court divided in 2016.²⁵ As the majority in Franchise Tax Board III read the historical record, although interstate sovereign immunity may have existed as a voluntary practice of comity at the time of the Founding, the Constitution fundamentally adjust[ed] the States’ relationship with each other and curtail[ed] their ability, as sovereigns, to decline to recognize each other’s immunity.²⁶ The Court reiterated the view embraced in several of its decisions since Hall that in proposing the Eleventh Amendment in response to Chisholm v. Georgia, Congress acted not to change but to restore the original constitutional design.²⁷ Accordingly, the Court explained, the sovereign immunity of the States . . . neither derives from, nor is limited by, the terms of the Eleventh Amendment.²⁸ Moreover, the Court reasoned, [n]umerous provisions in the Constitution support the view that interstate sovereign immunity is embe[dded] . . . within the constitutional design.²⁹ Among other provisions, the Court cited Article I insofar as it divests the States of the traditional diplomatic and military tools that foreign sovereigns possess and Article IV’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, which requires that state-court judgments be accorded full effect in other States and preclude[s] States from ‘adopt[ing] any policy of hostility to the public Acts’ of other States.³⁰ Accordingly, because sovereign immunity was inherent in the constitutional design, the Court concluded that the State of California could not be sued in Nevada absent the former state’s consent.³¹

Footnotes

1.  Jump to essay-1415 U.S. 651 (1974).
2.  Jump to essay-2415 U.S. at 678. The Court relied on Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury of Indiana, 323 U.S. 459 (1945), where the issue was whether state officials who had voluntarily appeared in federal court had authority under state law to waive the state’s immunity. Edelman has been followed in Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U.S. 393, 396 n.2 (1975); Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 278 (1977), with respect to the Court’s responsibility to raise the Eleventh Amendment jurisdictional issue on its own motion.
3.  Jump to essay-3See Patsy v. Florida Board of Regents, 457 U.S. 496, 515–16 n.19 (1982), in which the Court bypassed the Eleventh Amendment issue, which had been brought to its attention, because of the interest of the parties in having the question resolved on the merits. See id. at 520 (Justice Lewis Powell dissenting).
4.  Jump to essay-4Clark v. Barnard, 108 U.S. 436 (1883).
5.  Jump to essay-5E.g., People’s Band v. Calhoun, 102 U.S. 256, 260–61 (1880). See Justice Lewis Powell’s explanation in Patsy v. Florida Board of Regents, 457 U.S. 496, 528 n.13 (1982) (dissenting) (no jurisdiction under Article III of suits against unconsenting states).
6.  Jump to essay-6See, e.g., the Court’s express rejection of the Eleventh Amendment defense in these cases. United States v. Texas, 143 U.S. 621 (1892); South Dakota v. North Carolina, 192 U.S. 286 (1904).
7.  Jump to essay-7E.g., Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976); Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U.S. 1 (1989).
8.  Jump to essay-8The principal citation is Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cr.) 137 (1803).
9.  Jump to essay-9Pennhurst State School & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 98, 99 (1984).
10.  Jump to essay-10As Justice Oliver Holmes explained, the doctrine is based on the logical and practical ground that there can be no legal right as against the authority that makes the law on which the right depends. Kawananakoa v. Polyblank, 205 U.S. 349, 353 (1907). Of course, when a state is sued in federal court pursuant to federal law, the Federal Government, not the defendant state, is the authority that makes the law creating the right of action. See Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 154 (1996) (Souter, J., dissenting). For the history and jurisprudence, see Lewis J. Jaffe, Suits Against Governments and Officers: Sovereign Immunity, 77 Harv. L. Rev. 1 (1963).
11.  Jump to essay-11Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 713 (1999).
12.  Jump to essay-12See, e.g., United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 210–14 (1882); Belknap v. Schild, 161 U.S. 10, 18 (1896); Hopkins v. Clemson Agricultural College, 221 U.S. 636, 642–43, 645 (1911).
13.  Jump to essay-13A sovereign may consent to suit. E.g., United States v. Sherwood, 312 U.S. 584, 586 (1941); United States v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 309 U.S. 506, 514 (1940).
14.  Jump to essay-14See Fletcher, supra.
15.  Jump to essay-15For a while only Justice William Brennan advocated this view, Parden v. Terminal Ry., 377 U.S. 184 (1964); Emps. of the Dep’t of Pub. Health and Welfare v. Dep’t of Pub. Health and Welfare, 411 U.S. 279, 298 (1973) (dissenting), but in time he was joined by three others. See, e.g., Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 247 (1985) (Justice William Brennan, joined by Justices Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, and John Stevens, dissenting).
16.  Jump to essay-16E.g., United States v. Texas, 143 U.S. 621 (1892); South Dakota v. North Carolina, 192 U.S. 286 (1904). See Kansas v. Colorado, 533 U.S. 1 (2001) (state may seek damages from another state, including damages to its citizens, provided it shows that the state has an independent interest in the proceeding).
17.  Jump to essay-17E.g., Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 456 (1976); Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332, 337 (1979).
18.  Jump to essay-18See Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978), in which the various opinions differ among themselves as to the degree of explicitness required. See also Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332, 343–45 (1979). As noted in the previous section, later cases stiffened the rule of construction. The parallelism of congressional power to regulate and to legislate away immunity is not exact. Thus, in Employees of the Dep’t of Pub. Health and Welfare v. Department of Pub. Health and Welfare, 411 U.S. 279 (1973), the Court strictly construed congressional provision of suits as not reaching states, while in Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183 (1968), it had sustained the constitutionality of the substantive law.
19.  Jump to essay-19440 U.S. 410, 426 (1979), overruled by Franchise Tax Bd. v. Hyatt, 139 S. Ct. 1485, 1492 (2019) [hereinafter Franchise Tax Bd. III.] 40. Id. at 411–12.
20.  Jump to essay-20Id. at 411–12.
21.  Jump to essay-21Id. at 414–18.
22.  Jump to essay-22Id. at 426. In the Court’s view, for a federal court to infer from the structure of our Constitution and nothing else, that California is not free in this case to enforce its policy of full compensation, that holding would constitute the real intrusion on the sovereignty of the States—and the power of the people—in our Union. Id. at 426–27.
23.  Jump to essay-23Franchise Tax Bd. III, 139 S. Ct. 1485, 1492 (2019).
24.  Jump to essay-24Id. at 1490–91.
25.  Jump to essay-25Id. at 1491; see also Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Hyatt, 136 S. Ct. 1277, 1279 (2016) (The Court is equally divided on this question, and we consequently affirm the Nevada courts’ exercise of jurisdiction over California.); Franchise Tax Bd. III, 139 S. Ct. at 1490–91 (explaining that the two prior Franchise Tax Board decisions centered on interpretations of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of Article IV of the Constitution).
26.  Jump to essay-26Franchise Tax Bd. III, 139 S. Ct. at 1493, 1497.
27.  Jump to essay-27Id. at 1496 (quoting Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 722 (1999)).
28.  Jump to essay-28Id. (quoting Alden, 527 U.S. at 713). 49. Id. at 1497.
29.  Jump to essay-29Id. at 1497.
30.  Jump to essay-30Id. (citation omitted).
31.  Jump to essay-31Id. at 1499. The Court reasoned that stare decisis did not compel it to follow Hall even though some plaintiffs, such as Hyatt relied on that decision in litigation against states. Id. at1499. In the Court’s view, Hall failed to account for the historical understanding of state sovereign immunity and stood as an outlier in [the Court’s] sovereign immunity jurisprudence. Id.

source

Amdt11.5.3 Suits Against States

Eleventh Amendment:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Despite the apparent limitations of the Eleventh Amendment, individuals may, under certain circumstances, bring constitutional and statutory cases against states. In some of these cases, the state’s sovereign immunity has either been waived by the state (either explicitly or implicitly as a product of their consent to the plan of the Constitutional Convention) or abrogated by Congress. In other cases, the Eleventh Amendment does not apply because the procedural posture is such that the Court does not view them as being against a state. As discussed below, this latter doctrine is most often seen in suits to enjoin state officials. However, it has also been invoked in bankruptcy and admiralty cases, where the res, or property in dispute, is in fact the legal target of a dispute.¹

The application of this last exception to the bankruptcy area has become less relevant, because even when a bankruptcy case is not focused on a particular res, the Court has held that a state’s sovereign immunity is not infringed by being subject to an order of a bankruptcy court. In Central Virginia Community College v. Katz, the Court noted that [t]he history of the Bankruptcy Clause, the reasons it was inserted in the Constitution, and the legislation both proposed and enacted under its auspices immediately following ratification of the Constitution demonstrate that it was intended not just as a grant of legislative authority to Congress, but also to authorize limited subordination of state sovereign immunity in the bankruptcy arena.² Thus, where a federal law authorized a bankruptcy trustee to recover preferential transfers made to state educational institutions,³ the court held that the state’s sovereign immunity was not infringed despite the fact that the issue was ancillary to a bankruptcy court’s in rem jurisdiction.⁴

Because Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity inheres in states and not their subdivision or establishments, a state agency that wishes to claim state sovereign immunity must establish that it is acting as an arm of the state. In Lake County Estates v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the Court stated: [A]gencies exercising state power have been permitted to invoke the [Eleventh] Amendment in order to protect the state treasury from liability that would have had essentially the same practical consequences as a judgment against the State itself.⁵ In evaluating such a claim, courts will examine state law to determine the nature of the entity and whether to treat it as an arm of the state.⁶ The Supreme Court has consistently refused to extend Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity to counties, cities, or towns,⁷ even though such political subdivisions exercise a slice of state power.⁸ Even when such entities enjoy immunity from suit under state law, they do not have Eleventh Amendment immunity in federal court and states may not confer it.⁹ Similarly, entities created pursuant to interstate compacts (and subject to congressional approval) are not immune from suit, absent a showing that the entity was structured so as to take advantage of the state’s constitutional protections.¹⁰

Footnotes

1.  Jump to essay-1See Tennessee Student Assistance Corp. v. Hood, 541 U.S. 440, 446–48 (2004) (exercise of bankruptcy court’s in rem jurisdiction over a debtor’s estate to discharge a debt owed to a state does not infringe the state’s sovereignty); California v. Deep Sea Research, Inc., 523 U.S. 491, 507–08 (1998) (despite state claims over shipwrecked vessel, the Eleventh Amendment does not bar federal court in rem admiralty jurisdiction where the res is not in the possession of the sovereign).
2.  Jump to essay-2Central Virginia Community College v. Katz, 546 U.S. 356, 362–63 (2006). The Court has cautioned, however, that Katz’s analysis is limited to the context of the Bankruptcy Clause. Specifically, the Court has described the Clause as sui generis or unique among Article I’s grants of authority, and, unlike other such grants, the Bankruptcy Clause itself abrogated state sovereign immunity in bankruptcy proceedings. See Allen v. Cooper, 140 S.Ct. 994, 1002–03 (2020) (observing that Katz points to a good-for-one-clause-only holding and does not cast further doubt on Seminole Tribe’s general rule that Article I cannot justify haling a State into federal court).
3.  Jump to essay-3A preferential transfer was defined as the transfer of a property interest from an insolvent debtor to a creditor, which occurred on or within ninety days before the filing of a bankruptcy petition, and which exceeds what the creditor would have been entitled to receive under such bankruptcy filing. 11 U.S.C. § 547(b). 55. 546 U.S. at 373.
4.  Jump to essay-4546 U.S. at 373.
5.  Jump to essay-5Lake County Estates v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U.S. 391, 400–01 (1979), citing Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974), and Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, 323 U.S. 459 (1945). The fact that a state agency can be indemnified for the costs of litigation does not divest the agency of its Eleventh Amendment immunity. Regents of the University of California v. Doe, 519 U.S. 425 (1997).
6.  Jump to essay-6See, e.g., Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 280 (1977) (local school district not an arm of the state based on (1) its designation in state law as a political subdivision, (2) the degree of supervision by the state board of education, (3) the level of funding received from the state, and (4) the districts’ empowerment to generate their own revenue through the issuance of bonds or levying taxes.
7.  Jump to essay-7Northern Insurance Company of New York v. Chatham County, 547 U.S. 189, 193 (2006) (counties have neither Eleventh Amendment immunity nor residual common law immunity). See Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977); Moor v. County of Alameda, 411 U.S. 693 (1973); Workman v. City of New York, 179 U.S. 552 (1900); Lincoln County v. Luning, 133 U.S. 529 (1890). In contrast to their treatment under the Eleventh Amendment, the Court has found that state immunity from federal regulation under the Tenth Amendment extends to political subdivisions as well. See Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997).
8.  Jump to essay-8Lake County Estates v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U.S. 391, 400–01 (1979) (quoting earlier cases).
9.  Jump to essay-9Chicot County v. Sherwood, 148 U.S. 529 (1893).
10.  Jump to essay-10Lake County Estates v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U.S. 391 (1979); Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Comm’n, 359 U.S. 275 (1959)

source

Amdt11.6.1 Waiver of State Sovereign Immunity

Eleventh Amendment:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

The immunity of a state from suit is a privilege which it may waive at its pleasure. Historically, the conclusion that a state has consented or waived its immunity has not been lightly inferred; the Court strictly construes statutes alleged to consent to suit. Thus, a state may waive its immunity in its own courts without consenting to suit in federal court,¹ and a general authorization to sue and be sued is ordinarily insufficient to constitute consent.² A statutory waiver of state Eleventh Amendment immunity is effective only where stated in the most express language or by such overwhelming implication from the text as [will] leave no room for any other reasonable construction.³

Thus, in Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp. v. Feeney,⁴ an expansive consent to suits, actions, or proceedings of any form or nature at law, in equity or otherwise was deemed too ambiguous and general to waive immunity in federal court, because it might be interpreted to reflect only a state’s consent to suit in its own courts. But, when combined with language specifying that consent was conditioned on venue being laid within a county or judicial district, established by one of said States or by the United States, and situated wholly or partially within the Port of New York District, waiver was effective.⁵

There are, however, a few cases in which the Court has found a waiver by implication. For example, in Parden v. Terminal Railway,⁶ the Court ruled that employees of a state-owned railroad could sue the state for damages under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA). One of the two primary grounds for finding lack of immunity was that by taking control of a railroad which was subject to the FELA, enacted some twenty years previously, the state had effectively accepted the imposition of the Act and consented to suit.⁷ Distinguishing Parden as involving a proprietary activity,⁸ the Court later refused to find any implied consent to suit by states participating in federal spending programs; participation was insufficient, and only when waiver has been stated by the most express language or by such overwhelming implications from the text as [will] leave no room for any other reasonable construction, will it be found.⁹ Further, even if a state becomes amenable to suit under a statutory condition on accepting federal funds, remedies, especially monetary damages, may be limited, absent express language to the contrary.¹⁰

Another form of waiver by implication is the waiver by consent to the plan of the Constitutional Convention; that is, that states waived sovereign immunity to litigation on certain matters when they ratified the Constitution. A recent decision seems to have expanded the scope of these sort of implicit waivers. In PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey,¹¹ the Court heard an appeal related to an interstate pipeline approved by the federal government. Under the Natural Gas Act (NGA), parties who receive certificates to construct and operate interstate natural gas pipelines are authorized to exercise eminent domain in order to obtain the necessary rights-of-way to construct and operate the pipeline along the approved route.¹² In this instance, the approved route included lands owned by the State of New Jersey. The certificate holders brought an action in federal district court seeking to condemn those state-owned parcels, and the state responded by asserting its sovereign immunity under the eleventh Amendment. The lower courts sided with the state, rejecting the argument that the federal government had delegated its authority to sue states in the NGA and the certificate proceeding, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that [t]he ‘plan of the Convention’ includes certain waivers of sovereign immunity to which all States implicitly consented at the founding.¹³ The Court concluded that it would be untenable to find that this waiver did not extend to private parties authorized by the federal government to exercise eminent domain authority.¹⁴ In addition, because the waiver of sovereign immunity was based on the states’ implicit consent via the plan of the Convention rather than abrogation or explicit waiver, there was no need to find that the NGA clearly authorized such suits.¹⁵ The Court’s decision in PennEast is one of the only Supreme Court decisions relying on the plan of convention as a basis for consent or waiver, so its impact outside of federal legislation delegating eminent domain power remains to be seen.

A state may also waive its immunity by initiating or participating in litigation. In Clark v. Barnard,¹⁶ the state had filed a claim for disputed money deposited in a federal court, and the Court held that the state could not thereafter complain when the court awarded the money to another claimant. However, the Court is loath to find a waiver simply because an official or an attorney representing the state decided to litigate the merits of a suit, so that a state may at any point in litigation raise a claim of immunity based on whether that official has the authority under state law to make a valid waiver.¹⁷ However, this argument is only available when the state is brought into federal court involuntarily. If a state voluntarily agrees to removal of a state action to federal court, the Court has held it may not then invoke a defense of sovereign immunity and thereby gain an unfair tactical advantage.¹⁸

Footnotes

1.  Jump to essay-1Smith v. Reeves, 178 U.S. 436 (1900); Murray v. Wilson Distilling Co., 213 U.S. 151, 172 (1909); Graves v. Texas Co., 298 U.S. 393, 403–04 (1936); Great Northern Life Ins. Co. v. Read, 322 U.S. 47 (1944).
2.  Jump to essay-2Great Northern Life Ins. Co. v. Read, 322 U.S. 47, 54 (1944); Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, 323 U.S. 459 (1945); Kennecott Copper Corp. v. State Tax Comm’n, 327 U.S. 573 (1946); Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Comm’n, 359 U.S. 275 (1959); Florida Dep’t of Health v. Florida Nursing Home Ass’n, 450 U.S. 147 (1981). Compare Patsy v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 457 U.S. 496, 519 n.* (1982) (Justice White concurring), with id. at 522 and n.5 (Justice Lewis Powell dissenting).
3.  Jump to essay-3Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp. v. Feeney, 495 U.S. 299, 305–06 (1990) (internal citations omitted; emphasis in original). 5. 495 U.S. 299 (1990).
4.  Jump to essay-4495 U.S. 299 (1990).
5.  Jump to essay-5495 U.S. at 306–07. But see Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 241 (1985).
6.  Jump to essay-6377 U.S. 184 (1964). The alternative but interwoven ground had to do with Congress’s power to withdraw immunity. See also Petty v. Tennessee- Missouri Bridge Comm’n, 359 U.S. 275 (1959).
7.  Jump to essay-7The implied waiver issue aside, Parden subsequently was overruled, a plurality of the Court emphasizing that Congress had failed to abrogate state immunity unmistakably. Welch v. Texas Dep’t of Highways and Pub. Transp., 483 U.S. 468 (1987). Justice Lewis Powell’s plurality opinion was joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and by Justices Byron White and Sandra Day O’Connor. Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring, thought Parden should be overruled because it must be assumed that Congress enacted the FELA and other statutes with the understanding that Hans v. Louisiana shielded states from immunity. Id. at 495.
8.  Jump to essay-8Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 671–72 (1974). For the same distinction in the Tenth Amendment context, see National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833, 854 n.18 (1976).
9.  Jump to essay-9Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974) (quoting id. at 673, Murray v. Wilson Distilling Co., 213 U.S. 151, 171 (1909)); Florida Dep’t of Health v. Florida Nursing Home Ass’n, 450 U.S. 147 (1981). Of the four Edelman dissenters, Justices Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun found waiver through knowing participation, 415 U.S. at 688. In Florida Dep’t, Justice John Stevens noted he would have agreed with them had he been on the Court at the time but that he would now adhere to Edelman. Id. at 151.
10.  Jump to essay-10Sossamon v. Texas, 131 S. Ct. 1651 (2011).
11.  Jump to essay-11No. 19-1039 (U.S. June 29, 2021).
12.  Jump to essay-1215 U.S.C. § 717f(h).
13.  Jump to essay-13Alden, 527 U.S. at 755–56.
14.  Jump to essay-14Id.
15.  Jump to essay-15Id.
16.  Jump to essay-16108 U.S. 436 (1883).
17.  Jump to essay-17Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, 323 U.S. 459, 466–467 (1945); Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 677–678 (1974).
18.  Jump to essay-18Lapides v. Board of Regents, 535 U.S. 613 (2002

source

Amdt11.6.2 Abrogation of State Sovereign Immunity

Eleventh Amendment:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

The Constitution grants Congress power to regulate state action by legislation. In some instances when Congress does so, it may subject states to suit by individuals to implement the legislation. The clearest example arises from the Civil War Amendments, which directly restrict state powers and expressly authorize Congress to enforce these restrictions through appropriate legislation.¹ Thus, in Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, the Court stated: the Eleventh Amendment and the principle of state sovereignty which it embodies . . . are necessarily limited, by the enforcement provisions of § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.² The power to enforce the Civil War Amendments is substantive, however, not being limited to remedying judicially cognizable violations of the amendments, but extending as well to measures that in Congress’s judgment will promote compliance.³ The principal judicial brake on this power to abrogate state immunity in legislation enforcing the Civil War Amendments is the rule requiring that congressional intent to subject states to suit be clearly stated.⁴

In the 1989 case of Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co.,⁵ the Court—temporarily at least—ended years of uncertainty by holding expressly that Congress acting pursuant to its Article I powers (as opposed to its Fourteenth Amendment powers) may abrogate the Eleventh Amendment immunity of the states, so long as it does so with sufficient clarity. Twenty-five years earlier the Court had stated that same principle,⁶ but only as an alternative holding, and a later case had set forth a more restrictive rule.⁷ The premises of Union Gas were that by consenting to ratification of the Constitution, with its Commerce Clause and other clauses empowering Congress and limiting the states, the states had implicitly authorized Congress to divest them of immunity, that the Eleventh Amendment was a restraint upon the courts and not similarly upon Congress, and that the exercises of Congress’s powers under the Commerce Clause and other clauses would be incomplete without the ability to authorize damage actions against the states to enforce congressional enactments. The dissenters disputed each of these strands of the argument, and, while recognizing the Fourteenth Amendment abrogation power, took the position that no such power existed under Article I.

Pennsylvania v. Union Gas lasted less than seven years before the Court overruled it in Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida.⁸ Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for a 5-4 majority, concluded that Union Gas had deviated from a line of cases, tracing back to Hans v. Louisiana,⁹ which viewed the Eleventh Amendment as implementing the fundamental principle of sovereign immunity [that] limits the grant of judicial authority in Article III.¹⁰ Because the Eleventh Amendment restricts the judicial power under Article III, . . . Article I cannot be used to circumvent the constitutional limitations placed upon federal jurisdiction.¹¹ Subsequent cases have upheld this interpretation.¹²

Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, of course, is another matter. Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer,¹³ which held, in part, that the Fourteenth Amendment operated to alter the pre-existing balance between state and federal power achieved by Article III and the Eleventh Amendment, remains good law.¹⁴ This ruling led to a number of cases that examined whether a statute that might be applied against non-state actors under an Article I power could also, under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, be applied against the states.¹⁵

In another line of cases, a different majority of the Court focused on language Congress used to overcome immunity rather than the authority underlying the action. Henceforth, the Court held in a 1985 decision, and even with respect to statutes that were enacted prior to promulgation of this judicial rule of construction, Congress may abrogate the States’ constitutionally secured immunity from suit in federal court only by making its intention unmistakably clear in the language of the statute itself.¹⁶

At one time, a plurality of the Court appeared to take the position that Congress had to refer specifically to state sovereign immunity and the Eleventh Amendment for its language to be unmistakably clear.¹⁷ Thus in 1985 the Court held in Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon that general language subjecting to suit in federal court by any recipient of Federal assistance under the Rehabilitation Act was insufficient to satisfy this test, not because of any question about whether states are recipients within the meaning of the provision but because given their constitutional role, the states are not like any other class of recipients of federal aid.¹⁸ As a result of these rulings, Congress began to use words the Court had identified.¹⁹ Since then, however, the Court has accepted less precise language,²⁰ and in at least one context, has eliminated the requirement of specific abrogation language altogether.²¹

Even before the Alden v. Maine decision,²² when the Court believed that Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity did not apply to suits in state courts, the Court applied its rule of strict construction to require unmistakable clarity by Congress in order to subject states to suit.²³ Although the Court was willing to recognize exceptions to the clear statement rule when the issue involved subjection of states to suit in state courts, the Court also suggested the need for symmetry so that states’ liability or immunity would be the same in both state and federal courts.²⁴

Footnotes

1.  Jump to essay-1Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976); Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978); City of Rome v. United States, 446 U.S. 156 (1980). More recent cases affirming Congress’s Section 5 powers include Pennhurst State School & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 99 (1984); Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 238 (1985); and Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223, 227 (1989).
2.  Jump to essay-2Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 456 (1976) (under the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress may provide for private suits against States or state officials which are constitutionally impermissible in other contexts.).
3.  Jump to essay-3In Maher v. Gagne, 448 U.S. 122 (1980), the Court found that Congress could validly authorize imposition of attorneys’ fees on the state following settlement of a suit based on both constitutional and statutory grounds, even though settlement had prevented determination that there had been a constitutional violation. Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1 (1980), held that § 1983 suits could be premised on federal statutory as well as constitutional grounds. Other cases in which attorneys’ fees were awarded against states are Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978); and New York Gaslight Club v. Carey, 447 U.S. 54 (1980). See also Frew v. Hawkins, 540 U.S. 431 (2004) (upholding enforcement of consent decree).
4.  Jump to essay-4Even prior to the tightening of the clear statement rule over the past several decades to require express legislative language (see note and accompanying text, infra), application of the rule curbed congressional enforcement. Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 451–53 (1976); Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678, 693–98 (1978). Because of its rule of clear statement, the Court in Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332 (1979), held that in enacting 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Congress had not intended to include states within the term person for the purpose of subjecting them to suit. The question arose after Monell v. N.Y. City Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978), reinterpreted person to include municipal corporations. Cf. Alabama v. Pugh, 438 U.S. 781 (1978). The Court has reserved the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment itself, without congressional action, modifies the Eleventh Amendment to permit suits against states, Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267, 290 n.23 (1977), but the result in Milliken, holding that the Governor could be enjoined to pay half the cost of providing compensatory education for certain schools, which would come from the state treasury, and in Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232 (1974), permitting imposition of damages upon the governor, which would come from the state treasury, is suggestive. But see Rabinovitch v. Nyquist, 433 U.S. 901 (1977). The Court declined in Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 150 (1908), to view the Eleventh Amendment as modified by the Fourteenth.
5.  Jump to essay-5491 U.S. 1 (1989). The Justice William Brennan wrote the Court’s plurality opinion and was joined by the three other Justices who believed Hans was incorrectly decided. See id. at 23 (Justice Stevens concurring). Justice Byron White provided the fifth vote id. at 45, 55–56 (Justice Byron White concurring), although he believed Hans was correctly decided and ought to be maintained although he did not believe Congress had acted with sufficient clarity in the statutes before the Court to abrogate immunity. Justice Antonin Scalia thought the statutes were express enough but that Congress simply lacked the power. Id. at 29. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy joined relevant portions of both opinions finding lack of power and lack of clarity.
6.  Jump to essay-6Parden v. Terminal Railway, 377 U.S. 184, 190–92 (1964). See also Employees of the Dep’t of Pub. Health and Welfare v. Department of Pub. Health and Welfare, 411 U.S. 279, 283, 284, 285–86 (1973).
7.  Jump to essay-7Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 672 (1974).
8.  Jump to essay-8517 U.S. 44 (1996) (invalidating a provision of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act authorizing an Indian tribe to sue a state in federal court to compel performance of a duty to negotiate in good faith toward the formation of a compact).
9.  Jump to essay-9134 U.S. 1 (1890).
10.  Jump to essay-10517 U.S. at 64 (quoting Pennhurst State School & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 97–98 (1984).
11.  Jump to essay-11517 U.S. at 72–73. Justice David Souter’s dissent undertook a lengthy refutation of the majority’s analysis, asserting that the Eleventh Amendment is best understood, in keeping with its express language, as barring only suits based on diversity of citizenship, and as having no application to federal question litigation. Moreover, Justice Souter contended, the state sovereign immunity that the Court mistakenly recognized in Hans v. Louisiana was a common law concept that had no constitutional status and was subject to congressional abrogation. 517 U.S. at 117. The Constitution made no provision for wholesale adoption of the common law, but, on the contrary, was premised on the view that common law rules would always be subject to legislative alteration. This imperative of legislative control grew directly out of the Framers’ revolutionary idea of popular sovereignty. Id. at 160.
12.  Jump to essay-12Coll. Sav. Bank v. Fla. Prepaid Postsecondary Educ. Expense Bd., 527 U.S. 666 (1999) (the Trademark Remedy Clarification Act, an amendment to the Lanham Act, did not validly abrogate state immunity); Fla. Prepaid Postsecondary Educ. Expense Bd. v. Coll. Sav. Bank, 527 U.S. 627 (1999) (amendment to patent laws abrogating state immunity from infringement suits is invalid); Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000) (abrogation of state immunity in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act is invalid); Allen v. Cooper, 140 S. Ct. 994 (2020) (the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 did not validly abrogate state sovereign immunity).
13.  Jump to essay-13427 U.S. 445 (1976).
14.  Jump to essay-14Seminole Tribe, 517 U.S. at 65–66.
15.  Jump to essay-15See Fourteenth Amendment, Congressional Definition of Fourteenth Amendment Rights, infra.
16.  Jump to essay-16Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 242 (1985) (emphasis added).
17.  Jump to essay-17Justice Anthony Kennedy for the Court in Dellmuth, 491 U.S. at 231, expressly noted that the statute before the Court did not demonstrate abrogation with unmistakable clarity because, inter alia, it makes no reference whatsoever to either the Eleventh Amendment or the States’ sovereign immunity. Justice Antonin Scalia, one of four concurring Justices, expressed an understanding that the Court’s reasoning would allow for clearly expressed abrogation of immunity without explicit reference to state sovereign immunity or the Eleventh Amendment. Id. at 233.
18.  Jump to essay-18Atascadero State Hosp. v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 246 (1985). See also Dellmuth v. Muth, 491 U.S. 223 (1989).
19.  Jump to essay-19In 1986, following Atascadero, Congress provided that states were not to be immune under the Eleventh Amendment from suits under several laws barring discrimination by recipients of federal financial assistance. Pub. L. No. 99-506, § 1003, 100 Stat. 1845 (1986), 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-7. Following Dellmuth, Congress amended the statute to insert the explicit language. Pub. L. No. 101-476, § 103, 104 Stat. 1106 (1990), 20 U.S.C. § 1403. See also the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act, Pub. L. 101-553, § 2, 104 Stat. 2749 (1990), 17 U.S.C. § 511 (making states and state officials liable in damages for copyright violations).
20.  Jump to essay-20Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 528 U.S. 62, 74–78 (2000). In Kimel, statutory language authorized age discrimination suits against any employer (including a public agency), and a public agency was defined to include the government of a State or political subdivision thereof. The Court found this language to be sufficiently clear evidence of intent to abrogate state sovereign immunity. The relevant portion of the opinion was written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices John Stevens, Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and John Stevens. But see Raygor v. Regents of the University of Minnesota, 534 U.S. 533 (2002) (federal supplemental jurisdiction statute which tolls limitations period for state claims during pendency of federal case not applicable to claim dismissed on the basis of Eleventh Amendment immunity).
21.  Jump to essay-21Central Virginia Community College v. Katz, 546 U.S. 356, 363 (2006) (abrogation of state sovereign immunity under the Bankruptcy Clause was effectuated by the Constitution, so it need not additionally be done by statute); id. at 383 (Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting).
22.  Jump to essay-22527 U.S. 706 (1999).
23.  Jump to essay-23Will v. Michigan Dep’t of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989) (holding that states and state officials sued in their official capacity could not be made defendants in § 1983 actions in state courts).
24.  Jump to essay-24Hilton v. South Carolina Pub. Rys. Comm’n, 502 U.S. 197, 206 (1991) (interest in symmetry is outweighed by stare decisis, the FELA action being controlled by Parden v. Terminal Ry

source

Amdt11.6.3 Officer Suits and State Sovereign Immunity

Eleventh Amendment:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Courts may provide relief from government wrongs under the doctrine that sovereign immunity does not prevent suits to restrain individual government officials.¹ The doctrine is built upon a double fiction: that for purposes of the sovereign’s immunity, a suit against an official is not a suit against the government, but for the purpose of finding state action to which the Constitution applies, the official’s conduct is that of the state.² The doctrine is often associated with the decision in Ex parte Young.³

Young arose when a state legislature passed a law reducing railroad rates and providing severe penalties for any railroad that failed to comply with the law. Plaintiffs brought a federal action to enjoin Young, the state attorney general, from enforcing the law, alleging that it was unconstitutional and that they would suffer irreparable harm if he were not prevented from acting. An injunction was granted forbidding Young from acting on the law, an injunction he violated by bringing an action in state court against noncomplying railroads; for this action he was adjudged in contempt.

In deciding Young, the Court faced inconsistent lines of cases, including numerous precedents for permitting suits against state officers. Chief Justice John Marshall had begun the process in Osborn by holding that suit was barred only when the state was formally named a party.⁴ He modified his position to preclude suit when an official, the governor of a state, was sued in his official capacity,⁵ but relying on Osborn and reading Madrazo narrowly, the Court later held in a series of cases that an official of a state could be sued to prevent him from executing a state law in conflict with the Constitution or a law of the United States, and the fact that the officer may be acting on behalf of the state or in response to a state statutory obligation did not make the suit one against the state.⁶ Subsequently the Court developed another more functional, less formalistic concept of the Eleventh Amendment and sovereign immunity, which evidenced an increasing wariness toward affirmatively ordering states to relinquish state-controlled property⁷ and culminated in the broad reading of Eleventh Amendment immunity in Hans v. Louisiana.⁸

Two of the leading cases concerned suits to prevent Southern states from defaulting on bonds.⁹ In Louisiana v. Jumel,¹⁰ a Louisiana citizen sought to compel the state treasurer to apply a sinking fund that had been created under the earlier constitution for the payment of the bonds after a subsequent constitution had abolished this provision for retiring the bonds. The proceeding was held to be a suit against the state.¹¹ Then, In re Ayers¹² purported to supply a rationale for cases on the issuance of mandamus or injunctive relief against state officers that would have severely curtailed federal judicial power. Suit against a state officer was not barred when his action, aside from any official authority claimed as its justification, was a wrong simply as an individual act, such as a trespass, but if the act of the officer did not constitute an individual wrong and was something that only a state, through its officers, could do, the suit was in actuality a suit against the state and was barred.¹³ That is, the unconstitutional nature of the state statute under which the officer acted did not itself constitute a private cause of action. For that, one must be able to point to an independent violation of a common law right.¹⁴

Although Ayers was in all relevant points on all fours with Young,¹⁵ the Young Court held that the court had properly issued the injunction against the state attorney general, even though the state was in effect restrained as well. The Court stated that [t]he act to be enforced is alleged to be unconstitutional, and, if it be so, the use of the name of the State to enforce an unconstitutional act to the injury of the complainants is a proceeding without the authority of and one which does not affect the State in its sovereign or governmental capacity.¹⁶ Rather, the Court noted, [i]t is simply an illegal act upon the part of a state official in attempting by the use of the name of the State to enforce a legislative enactment which is void because unconstitutional. If the act which the state Attorney General seeks to enforce be a violation of the Federal Constitution, the officer in proceeding under such enactment comes into conflict with the superior authority of that Constitution, and he is in that case stripped of his official or representative character and is subject in his person to the consequences of his individual conduct.¹⁷ Justice John Harlan was the only dissenter, arguing that in law and fact the suit was one only against the state and that the suit against the individual was a mere fiction.¹⁸

Justice John Harlan’s fiction remains a mainstay of Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence.¹⁹ It accounts for much of the litigation brought by individuals to challenge the execution of state policies. Suits against state officers alleging that they are acting pursuant to an unconstitutional statute are the standard device by which the validity of state legislation in federal courts is tested prior to enforcement and thus interpretation by state courts.²⁰ Similarly, suits to restrain state officials from contravening federal statutes²¹ or to compel undertaking affirmative obligations imposed by the Constitution or federal laws²² are common.

For years, the accepted rule was that the Eleventh Amendment did not preclude suits prosecuted against state officers in federal courts upon grounds that they are acting in excess of state statutory authority²³ or that they are not doing something required by state law.²⁴ However, in Pennhurst State School & Hospital v. Halderman,²⁵ the Court held that Young did not permit suits in federal courts against state officers alleging violations of state law. In the Court’s view, Young was necessary to promote the supremacy of federal law, a basis that disappears if the violation alleged is of state law. The Court also still adheres to the doctrine, first pronounced in Governor of Georgia v. Madrazo,²⁶ that some suits against officers are actually suits against the state²⁷ and are barred by the state’s immunity, such as when the suit involves state property or asks for relief which clearly calls for the exercise of official authority.²⁸

For example, a suit to prevent tax officials from collecting death taxes arising from the competing claims of two states as being the last domicile of the decedent foundered upon the conclusion that there could be no credible claim of a constitutional or federal law violation; state law imposed the obligation upon the officials and in reality the action was against the state.²⁹ Suits against state officials to recover taxes have also been made increasingly difficult to maintain. Although the Court long ago held that the state sovereign immunity prevented a suit to recover money in the state treasury,³⁰ the Court also held that a suit would lie against a revenue officer to recover tax moneys illegally collected and still in his possession.³¹ Beginning, however, with Great Northern Life Insurance Co. v. Read,³² the Court has held that this kind of suit cannot be maintained unless the state expressly consents to suits in federal courts. In this case, the state statute provided for payment of taxes under protest and for suits afterward against state tax collection officials for recovery of taxes illegally collected, which revenues were required to be kept segregated.³³

In Edelman v. Jordan,³⁴ the Court appeared to begin to adopt new restrictive interpretations of what the Eleventh Amendment proscribed. The Court announced in dictum that a suit seeking to impose a liability which must be paid from public funds in the state treasury is barred by the Eleventh Amendment.³⁵ The Court held, however, that it was permissible for federal courts to require state officials to comply in the future with claims payment provisions of the welfare assistance sections of the Social Security Act, but that they were not permitted to hear claims seeking, or issue orders directing, payment of funds found to be wrongfully withheld.³⁶ Conceding that some of the characteristics of prospective and retroactive relief would be the same in their effects upon the state treasury, the Court nonetheless believed that retroactive payments were equivalent to imposing liabilities which must be paid from public funds in the treasury, and that this was barred by the Eleventh Amendment. The spending of money from the state treasury by state officials shaping their conduct in accordance with a prospective-only injunction is an ancillary effect which is a permissible and often an inevitable consequence of Ex parte Young, whereas payment of state funds . . . as a form of compensation to those wrongfully denied the funds in the past is in practical effect indistinguishable in many aspects from an award of damages against the State.³⁷

That Edelman, in many instances, may be a formal rather than an actual restriction is illustrated by Milliken v. Bradley,³⁸ in which state officers were ordered to spend money from the state treasury to finance remedial educational programs to counteract effects of past school segregation; the decree, the Court said, fits squarely within the prospective-compliance exception reaffirmed by Edelman.³⁹ Although the payments were a result of past wrongs, the Court did not view them as compensation, inasmuch as they were not to be paid to victims of past discrimination but rather used to better conditions either for them or their successors.⁴⁰ The Court also applied Edelman in Papasan v. Allain,⁴¹ holding that a claim against a state for payments representing a continuing obligation to meet trust responsibilities stemming from a nineteenth century grant of public lands for the benefit of educating the Chickasaw Indian Nation is barred by the Eleventh Amendment as indistinguishable from an action for past loss of trust corpus, but that an Equal Protection claim for present unequal distribution of school land funds is the type of ongoing violation for which the Eleventh Amendment does not bar redress.

In Idaho v. Coeur d’Alene Tribe of Idaho,⁴² the Court further narrowed Ex parte Young. The implications of the case are difficult to predict, because of the narrowness of the Court’s holding, the closeness of the vote (5-4), and the inability of the majority to agree on a rationale. The Court held that the Tribe’s suit against state officials for a declaratory judgment and injunction to establish the Tribe’s ownership and control of the submerged lands of Lake Coeur d’Alene is barred by the Eleventh Amendment. The Tribe’s claim was based on federal law—Executive Orders issued in the 1870s, prior to Idaho statehood. The portion of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion that represented the Court’s opinion concluded that the Tribe’s unusual suit was the functional equivalent of a quiet title action which implicates special sovereignty interests.⁴³ The case was unusual because state ownership of submerged lands traces to the Constitution through the equal footing doctrine, and because navigable waters uniquely implicate sovereign interests.⁴⁴ This was therefore no ordinary property dispute in which the state would retain regulatory control over land regardless of title. Rather, grant of the far-reaching and invasive relief sought by the Tribe would diminish, even extinguish, the State’s control over a vast reach of lands and waters long . . . deemed to be an integral part of its territory.⁴⁵

The Supreme Court faced a novel question related to state sovereign immunity in the 2021 case Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson.⁴⁶ That case involved a challenge to a Texas state law known as the Texas Heartbeat Act or S.B. 8, which allowed private citizens to sue healthcare providers and others who perform or abet abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. Because S.B. 8 banned some pre-viability abortions, it appeared to conflict with the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence at the time it was enacted. However, because the statute was enforced through private civil suits, rather than by state actors, it was not clear whether people challenging the law could bring suit under Ex parte Young to prevent its enforcement. Some opponents of S.B. 8 brought suit under Young against the Texas attorney general, clerks and judges of Texas state courts that could hear S.B. 8 claims, and certain state medical licensing officials. The Supreme Court held that the suit could not proceed against state court judges or clerks because judicial officers are not subject to suit under Young,⁴⁷ and that the plaintiffs could not sue the Texas attorney general because he lacked the power to enforce S.B. 8.⁴⁸ The Court allowed the suit to proceed against the state medical licensing officials, however, concluding that those officials had some authority to enforce S.B. 8.⁴⁹ Whole Woman’s Health did not fully resolve questions about the extent to which states can enact legislation that limits the exercise of constitutional rights but evades federal judicial review under Young.⁵⁰

Thus, as with the cases dealing with suits facially against the states themselves, the Court’s greater attention to state immunity in the context of suits against state officials has resulted in a mixed picture, of some new restrictions, of the lessening of others. But a number of Justices have increasingly turned to the Eleventh Amendment as a means to reduce federal-state judicial conflict.⁵¹

Footnotes

1.  Jump to essay-1See, e.g. Larson v. Domestic and Foreign Corp., 337 U.S. 682 (1949). It should be noted, however, that as a threshold issue in lawsuits against state employees or entities, courts must look to whether the sovereign is the real party in interest to determine whether state sovereign immunity bars the suit. See Hafer v. Melo, 502 U.S. 21, 25 (1991). Court must determine whether the remedy sought is truly against the sovereign, and if an action is in essence against a State even if the State is not a named party, then the State is the real party in interest and is entitled to invoke the Eleventh Amendment’s protections. See Lewis v. Clarke, 137 S. Ct. 1285, 1290–91 (2017). As a result, arms of the state, such as a state university, enjoy sovereign immunity. Id. at 6. Likewise, lawsuits brought against employees in their official capacity may also be barred by sovereign immunity. Id.
2.  Jump to essay-2C. Wright, The Law of Federal Courts § 48 (4th ed. 1983). 3. 209 U.S. 123 (1908).
3.  Jump to essay-3209 U.S. 23 (1908).
4.  Jump to essay-4Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 738 (1824).
5.  Jump to essay-5Governor of Georgia v. Madrazo, 26 U.S. (1 Pet.) 110 (1828).
6.  Jump to essay-6Davis v. Gray, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 203 (1872); Board of Liquidation v. McComb, 92 U.S. 531 (1876); Allen v. Baltimore & Ohio R.R., 114 U.S. 311 (1885); Rolston v. Missouri Fund Comm’rs, 120 U.S. 390 (1887); Pennoyer v. McConnaughy, 140 U.S. 1 (1891); Reagan v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., 154 U.S. 362 (1894); Smyth v. Ames, 169 U.S. 466 (1898); Scranton v. Wheeler, 179 U.S. 141 (1900).
7.  Jump to essay-7Judicial reluctance to confront government officials over government-held property did not extend in like manner in a federal context, as was evident in United States v. Lee, the first case in which the sovereign immunity of the United States was claimed and rejected. United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196 (1882). See Article III, Suits Against United States Officials. However, the Court sustained the suit against the federal officers by only a 5-4 vote, and the dissent presented the arguments that were soon to inform Eleventh Amendment cases.
8.  Jump to essay-8134 U.S. 1 (1890).
9.  Jump to essay-9See J. J. Gibbons, The Eleventh Amendment and State Sovereign Immunity: A Reinterpretation, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1889, 1968–2003 (1983); J. V. Orth, The Interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment, 1798–1908: A Case Study of Judicial Power, 1983 U. Ill. L. Rev. 423.
10.  Jump to essay-10107 U.S. 711 (1882).
11.  Jump to essay-11The relief asked will require the officers against whom the process is issued to act contrary to the positive orders of the supreme political power of the State, whose creatures they are, and to which they are ultimately responsible in law for what they do. They must use the public money in the treasury and under their official control in one way, when the supreme power has directed them to use it in another, and they must raise more money by taxation when the same power has declared that it shall not be done. 107 U.S. at 721. See also Christian v. Atlantic & N.C. R.R., 133 U.S. 233 (1890).
12.  Jump to essay-12123 U.S. 443 (1887).
13.  Jump to essay-13123 U.S. at 500–01, 502.
14.  Jump to essay-14Ayers sought to enjoin state officials from bringing suit under an allegedly unconstitutional statute purporting to overturn a contract between the state and the bondholders to receive the bond coupons for tax payments. The Court asserted that the state’s contracts impliedly contained the state’s immunity from suit, so that express withdrawal of a supposed consent to be sued was not a violation of the contract; but, in any event, because any violation of the assumed contract was an act of the state, to which the officials were not parties, their actions as individuals in bringing suit did not breach the contract. 123 U.S. at 503, 505–06. The rationale had been asserted by a four-Justice concurrence in Antoni v. Greenhow, 107 U.S. 769, 783 (1883). See also Cunningham v. Macon & Brunswick R.R., 109 U.S. 446 (1883); Hagood v. Southern, 117 U.S. 52 (1886); North Carolina v. Temple, 134 U.S. 22 (1890); In re Tyler, 149 U.S. 164 (1893); Baltzer v. North Carolina, 161 U.S. 240 (1896); Fitts v. McGhee, 172 U.S. 516 (1899); Smith v. Reeves, 178 U.S. 436 (1900).
15.  Jump to essay-15Ayers would seem to be decisive of the Young litigation. C. Write, The Law of Federal Courts § 48 at 288 (4th ed. 1983). The Young Court purported to distinguish and to preserve Ayers but on grounds that either were irrelevant to Ayers or that had been rejected in the earlier case. Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 151, 167 (1908). Similarly, in a later case, the Court continued to distinguish Ayers but on grounds that did not in fact distinguish it from the case before the Court, in which it permitted a suit against a state revenue commissioner to enjoin him from collecting allegedly unconstitutional taxes. Georgia R.R. & Banking Co. v. Redwine, 342 U.S. 299 (1952).
16.  Jump to essay-16 Ex parteYoung, 209 U.S. 123, 159–60 (1908). The opinion did not address the issue of how an officer stripped of his official . . . character could violate the Constitution, in that the Constitution restricts only state action, but the double fiction has been expounded numerous times since. Thus, for example, it is well settled that an action unauthorized by state law is state action for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. Home Tel. & Tel. Co. v. City of Los Angeles, 227 U.S. 278 (1913). The contrary premise of Barney v. City of New York, 193 U.S. 430 (1904), though eviscerated by Home Tel. & Tel. was not expressly disavowed until United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 25–26 (1960).
17.  Jump to essay-17 Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 159–60 (1908).
18.  Jump to essay-18Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 173–74 (1908) (Harlan, J., dissenting). In the process of limiting application of Young, a Court majority referred to the Young fiction. Idaho v. Coeur d’Alene Tribe, 521 U.S. 261, 281 (1997).
19.  Jump to essay-19E.g., Ray v. Atlantic Richfield Co., 435 U.S. 151, 156 n.6 (1978) (rejecting request of state officials being sued to restrain enforcement of state statute as preempted by federal law that Young be overruled); Florida Dep’t of State v. Treasure Salvors, 458 U.S. 670, 685 (1982).
20.  Jump to essay-20See, e.g., Home Tel. & Tel. Co. v. City of Los Angeles, 227 U.S. 278 (1913); Truax v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33 (1915); Cavanaugh v. Looney, 248 U.S. 453 (1919); Terrace v. Thompson, 263 U.S. 197 (1923); Hygrade Provision Co. v. Sherman, 266 U.S. 497 (1925); Massachusetts State Grange v. Benton, 272 U.S. 525 (1926); Hawks v. Hamill, 288 U.S. 52 (1933). See also Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365 (1971) (enjoining state welfare officials from denying welfare benefits to otherwise qualified recipients because they were aliens); Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970) (enjoining city welfare officials from following state procedures for termination of benefits); Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267 (1977) (imposing half the costs of mandated compensatory education programs upon state through order directed to governor and other officials). On injunctions against governors, see Continental Baking Co. v. Woodring, 286 U.S. 352 (1932); Sterling v. Constantin, 287 U.S. 378 (1932). Applicable to suits under this doctrine are principles of judicial restraint—constitutional, statutory, and prudential—discussed under Article III.
21.  Jump to essay-21E.g., Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 664–68 (1974); Ray v. Atlantic Richfield Co., 435 U.S. 151 (1978).
22.  Jump to essay-22E.g., Women’s Whole Health v. Jackson, No. 21-463 (2021) (citing Ex Parte Young in refusing to enjoin state court clerks and judges from enforcement of a state law); Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267 (1977); Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 664–68 (1974); Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332, 346–49 (1979).
23.  Jump to essay-23E.g., Pennoyer v. McConnaughy, 140 U.S. 1 (1891); Scully v. Bird, 209 U.S. 481 (1908); Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. v. O’Connor, 223 U.S. 280 (1912); Greene v. Louisville & Interurban R.R., 244 U.S. 499 (1917); Louisville & Nashville R.R. v. Greene, 244 U.S. 522 (1917). Property held by state officials on behalf of the state under claimed state authority may be recovered in suits against the officials, although the court may not conclusively resolve the state’s claims against it in such a suit. South Carolina v. Wesley, 155 U.S. 542 (1895); Tindal v. Wesley, 167 U.S. 204 (1897); Hopkins v. Clemson College, 221 U.S. 636 (1911). See also Florida Dep’t of State v. Treasure Salvors, 458 U.S. 670 (1982), in which the eight Justices who agreed that the Eleventh Amendment applied divided 4-4 over the proper interpretation.
24.  Jump to essay-24E.g., Rolston v. Missouri Fund Comm’rs, 120 U.S. 390 (1887); Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. v. O’Connor, 223 U.S. 280 (1912); Johnson v. Lankford, 245 U.S. 541, 545 (1918); Lankford v. Platte Iron Works Co., 235 U.S. 461, 471 (1915); Davis v. Wallace, 257 U.S. 478, 482–85 (1922); Glenn v. Field Packing Co., 290 U.S. 177, 178 (1933); Lee v. Bickell, 292 U.S. 415, 425 (1934).
25.  Jump to essay-25465 U.S. 89 (1984).
26.  Jump to essay-26Governor of Georgia v. Madrazo, 26 U.S. (1 Pet.) 110 (1828).
27.  Jump to essay-27E.g., Ford Motor Co. v. Department of the Treasury, 323 U.S. 459, 464 (1945).
28.  Jump to essay-28In Frew v. Hawkins, 540 U.S. 431 (2004), Texas, which was under a consent decree regarding its state Medicaid program, attempted to extend the reasoning of Pennhurst, arguing that unless an actual violation of federal law had been found by a court, then such court would be without jurisdiction to enforce such decree. The Court, in a unanimous opinion, declined to so extend the Eleventh Amendment, noting, among other things, that the principles of federalism were served by giving state officials the latitude and discretion to enter into enforceable consent decrees. Id. at 442.
29.  Jump to essay-29Worcester County Trust Co. v. Riley, 302 U.S. 292 (1937). See also Old Colony Trust Co. v. Seattle, 271 U.S. 426 (1926). Worcester County remains viable. Cory v. White, 457 U.S. 85 (1982). The actions were under the Federal Interpleader Act, 49 Stat. 1096 (1936), 28 U.S.C. § 1335, under which other actions against officials have been allowed. E.g., Treines v. Sunshine Mining Co., 308 U.S. 66 (1939) (joinder of state court judge and receiver in interpleader proceeding in which state had no interest and neither judge nor receiver was enjoined by final decree). See also Missouri v. Fiske, 290 U.S. 18 (1933).
30.  Jump to essay-30Smith v. Reeves, 178 U.S. 436 (1900).
31.  Jump to essay-31Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. v. O’Connor, 223 U.S. 280 (1912).
32.  Jump to essay-32322 U.S. 47 (1944).
33.  Jump to essay-33See also Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, 323 U.S. 459 (1945); Kennecott Copper Corp. v. Tax Comm’n, 327 U.S. 573 (1946). States may confine to their own courts suits to recover taxes. Smith v. Reeves, 178 U.S. 436 (1900); Murray v. Wilson Distilling Co., 213 U.S. 151 (1909); Chandler v. Dix, 194 U.S. 590 (1904).
34.  Jump to essay-34415 U.S. 651 (1974).
35.  Jump to essay-35415 U.S. at 663.
36.  Jump to essay-36415 U.S. at 667–68. Where the money at issue is not a state’s, but a private party’s, then the distinction between retroactive and prospective obligations is not important. In Verizon Md. Inc. v. Public Serv. Comm’n of Md., 535 U.S. 635 (2002), the Court held that a challenge to a state agency decision regarding a private party’s past and future contractual liabilities does not violate the Eleventh Amendment. Id. at 648. In fact, three justices questioned whether the Eleventh Amendment is even implicated where there is a challenge to a state’s determination of liability between private parties. Id. at 649 (Justice David Souter, concurring).
37.  Jump to essay-37415 U.S. at 668. See also Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332 (1979) (reaffirming Edelman, but holding that state officials could be ordered to notify members of the class that had been denied retroactive relief in that case that they might seek back benefits by invoking state administrative procedures; the order did not direct the payment but left it to state discretion to award retroactive relief). But cf. Green v. Mansour, 474 U.S. 64 (1985). Notice relief permitted under Quern v. Jordan is consistent with the Eleventh Amendment only insofar as it is ancillary to valid prospective relief designed to prevent ongoing violations of federal law. Thus, where Congress has changed the AFDC law and the state is complying with the new law, an order to state officials to notify claimants that past payments may have been inadequate conflicts with the Eleventh Amendment.
38.  Jump to essay-38433 U.S. 267 (1977).
39.  Jump to essay-39433 U.S. at 289.
40.  Jump to essay-40433 U.S. at 290 n.22. See also Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678, 690–91 (1978) (affirming order to pay attorney’s fees out of state treasury as an ancillary order because of state’s bad faith).
41.  Jump to essay-41478 U.S. 265 (1986).
42.  Jump to essay-42521 U.S. 261 (1997).
43.  Jump to essay-43521 U.S. at 281.
44.  Jump to essay-44521 U.S. at 284.
45.  Jump to essay-45521 U.S. at 282.
46.  Jump to essay-46142 S. Ct. 522 (2021).
47.  Jump to essay-47142 S. Ct. 522 (2021).
48.  Jump to essay-48Id. at 531–34.
49.  Jump to essay-49Id. at 534–35. In addition to their claims against state officials under Young, the S.B. 8 challengers sued a private individual who had threatened to sue under S.B. 8; the Court held that claim could not proceed because the private defendant later disclaimed any intent to sue under S.B. 8. Id. at 537.
50.  Jump to essay-50Id. at 535–37; id. at 544 (Roberts, C.J, dissenting); id. at 545 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).Following remand and certification of a state law question to the Texas Supreme Court, the state court ruled that Texas law did not authorize state medical licensing officials to enforce S.B. 8, Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, 642 S.W. 3d 569 (Tex. 2022), and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed the claims against those officials, Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, 31 F.4th 1004 (Mem) (5th Cir. 2022). The U.S. Supreme Court later overruled key abortion precedents that applied when it decided Whole Woman’s Health, removing the main substantive basis for constitutional challenges to S.B. 8. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19-1392, 2022 WL 2276808 (June 24, 2022). The procedural issues presented in Whole Woman’s Health remain unresolved, as legislation based on S.B. 8 may u See J. J. Gibbons, The Eleventh Amendment and State Sovereign Immunity: A Reinterpretation, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1889, 1968–2003 (1983); J. V. Orth, The Interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment, 1798–1908: A Case Study of Judicial Power, 1983 U. Ill. L. Rev. 423.
51.  Jump to essay-51142 S. Ct. 522 (2021).

source

Amdt11.6.4 Tort Actions Against State Officials

Eleventh Amendment:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

In Tindal v. Wesley,¹ the Court adopted the rule of United States v. Lee,² a tort suit against federal officials, to permit a tort action against state officials to recover real property held by them and claimed by the state and to obtain damages for the period of withholding. State immunity afforded by the Eleventh Amendment has long been held not to extend to actions against state officials for damages arising out of willful and negligent disregard of state laws.³ The reach of the rule is evident in Scheuer v. Rhodes,⁴ in which the Court held that plaintiffs were not barred by the Eleventh Amendment or other immunity doctrines from suing the governor and other officials of a state alleging that they deprived plaintiffs of federal rights under color of state law and seeking damages, when it was clear that plaintiffs were seeking to impose individual and personal liability on the officials. There was no executive immunity from suit, the Court held; rather, the immunity of state officials is qualified and varies according to the scope of discretion and responsibilities of the particular office and the circumstances existing at the time the challenged action was taken.⁵

Footnotes

1.  Jump to essay-1167 U.S. 204 (1897).
2.  Jump to essay-2106 U.S. 196 (1882).
3.  Jump to essay-3Johnson v. Lankford, 245 U.S. 541 (1918); Martin v. Lankford, 245 U.S. 547 (1918).
4.  Jump to essay-4416 U.S. 232 (1974).
5.  Jump to essay-5These suits, like suits against local officials and municipal corporations, are typically brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and typically involve all the decisions respecting liability and immunities thereunder. On the scope of immunity of federal officials, see Article III, Suits Against United States Officials, supra.

source

SCOTUS 2021 in Review: Decisions on Qualified Immunity and Fourth Amendment Seizures

In 2021 the Supreme Court affirmed long-standing truisms that protect the home and that qualified immunity review is not a shield against unconstitutional conduct

This past October 4 began the court’s 2021 term and the first two opinions issued in the new term focused on qualified immunity. It was a fitting opening because a qualified immunity case, Taylor v. Riojas, was among the initial opinions rendered by the court during its 2020 term (October 5, 2020 – October 3, 2021) and another, Lombardo v. St. Louis, was among its final opinions before the 2021 summer recess. In between these October starts were three Fourth Amendment cases.

The fact that there were several qualified immunity cases before the court over the past 14 months is significant for two reasons. The first is that since taking the helm as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 2005, John Roberts has presided over more cases focusing on qualified immunity than any other Chief Justice in the court’s history. During his tenure, the Supreme Court has molded existing jurisprudence in this area to expand the original contours of qualified immunity protection. Qualified immunity has developed to a point wherein constitutional claims against a police officer are difficult, although not impossible, to sustain.

The second reason is tied into the summer of 2020 protests across the United States wherein the protection offered by qualified immunity was one among many grievances lodged against police in the United States. Demands that qualified immunity be removed as a protection from civil lawsuits against officers were heard in every corner of protest and reiterated by many politicians seeking a two-minute sound bite on the evening news. Several state legislatures went so far as to eliminate qualified immunity as a defense to actions initiated in state courts. However, the Supreme Court remained moored to its prior jurisprudence in this area.

USE OF FORCE AND QUALIFIED IMMUNITY

In City of Tahlequah v. Bond and Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna, both issued on October 22, 2021, the court found that the lower federal appellate courts’ findings against the involved officers’ use of force were in error. The Ninth and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeal found that existing precedent within their respective circuits had put the officers on notice that they were violating a “clearly established law.” The force used in Bond was a fatal shooting and in Cortesluna it was the placement of a knee on the back of a suspect who was being disarmed of a knife.

In both opinions, the Supreme Court admonished the lower circuits – the Tenth Circuit in Bond for defining “clearly established law at too high a level of generality” and the Ninth Circuit in Cortesluna for using existing circuit precedent as a “broad general proposition” and not “in light of the specific context of the case.” The court in Cortesluna reiterated its prior position that precedent does not require a case directly on point for there to be a violation of a clearly established law, but case precedent “must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” (Citing White v. Pauly, 137 S.Ct. 548 (2017).)

A few months earlier, in its June 28, 2021, opinion Lombardo v. City of St. Louis, the court overturned an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of officers in a use of force case. The facts of that case centered on the death of a homeless man who was arrested for trespass and failure to appear on a traffic ticket. While in a holding cell the man attempted to hang himself.

The responding officers tried to handcuff him, but he struggled with them. What followed was a scuffle between him and the officers resulting in him hitting his head on a bench and an officer being kicked in the groin. Leg shackles were requested along with additional help. After his legs were shackled, the arrestee continued to struggle and the officers moved him to a prone position face down on the holding cell floor. Three officers restrained him by the shoulders, arms and legs, while a fourth officer placed pressure on his upper body and back area. The individual tried to raise his chest from the floor and told the officers that he was in pain. He struggled for approximately 15 minutes in the prone position and then stopped breathing and moving. Emergency medical aid was administered and the individual was transported to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Upon a subsequent review of the Eastern District of Missouri’s grant of summary judgment, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a reasonable jury could not find that the officers used excessive force, therefore no liability would attach to their actions. The Supreme Court reversed in a short per curiam opinion wherein it said that in determining the reasonableness of use of force under the standard in Graham v. Connor (1989), lower courts “cannot apply this standard mechanically.”

This court cited its 2015 holding in Kingsley v. Hendrickson that outlined several factors for determining objective reasonableness. These factors include “the relationship between the need for the use of force and the amount of force used; the extent of the plaintiff’s injury; any effort made by the officer to temper or to limit the amount of force; the severity of the security problem at issue; the threat reasonably perceived by the officer; and whether the plaintiff was actively resisting.” (Kingsley at 397.)

The Supreme Court’s per curiam opinion referred to the evidentiary record’s inclusion of “well known” police guidance regarding the removal of prone arrestees from their stomach as soon as handcuffed due to the risk of suffocation. The court emphasized that the inquiry in use of force cases requires a “careful, context-specific analysis” under its use of force precedent. Accordingly, the court sent the case back to the Eighth Circuit to review the matter according to the facts and circumstances presented to determine whether the district court’s summary judgment dismissal was appropriate.

While this case focused on the inquiry attendant to use of force claims by reviewing courts, the element of qualified immunity was present because the two lower courts had both found the use of force was not per se unreasonable. The Supreme Court opinion did not comment on the reasonableness of the force used, but it did hold that the level of inquiry applied was not consistent with its prior precedents.

In the court’s other qualified immunity case, Taylor v. Riojas from November 2020, the court took the unusual step in allowing a lawsuit to proceed against correction officers for placing a prisoner in a filthy, feces-covered cell. The prisoner was held in two unsanitary cells for a period of six days. He did not eat for several days for fear his food was contaminated by the conditions and he was without a toilet in the second cell. Despite requests to be brought to a bathroom, he was told to use the drain on the floor. He also was without a bed in one cell and made to sleep naked on the filthy floor.

The Supreme Court held that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals erred in granting the officers qualified immunity because “the particularly egregious facts of this case” would signal to any reasonable officer that the “conditions of confinement offended the Constitution.”

FOURTH AMENDMENT SEIZURE

The Fourth Amendment seizure case of Torres v. Madrid answered the question of whether a person is seized by the police when they apply physical force to the body but do not actually subdue the person?

The facts of the case involved an early morning encounter between two non-uniformed New Mexico State Police officers and a woman standing by a vehicle in front of an Albuquerque apartment complex. The officers were there to execute an arrest warrant and approached the woman as she entered the vehicle. They asked to speak with her but she feared they were carjackers and drove off. The officers fired at her 13 times as she drove off and struck her twice. She continued to drive away from the area and proceeded to a hospital 75 miles away.

The woman eventually sued for excessive force. The district court granted summary judgment and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held that her continued flight after being shot negated her Fourth Amendment excessive force claim.

Prior Supreme Court decisions, most notably California v. Hodari D. (1991), suggested that a seizure only occurred when there was a submission to a show of authority or actual physical control gained over the suspect. A split among the federal appellate courts had some holding that a seizure occurred when physical force is applied, regardless of whether the suspect submits to the force, and others holding that physical control of a suspect is required for a seizure.

The court in Torres sided with the former view. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that “the application of physical force to the body of a person with intent to restrain is a seizure even if the person does not submit and is not subdued.” By vacating and remanding the case the Supreme Court did not address the reasonableness of the force used, the damages caused by the seizure, or if qualified immunity applied, it merely held that the woman was subjected to a Fourth Amendment seizure.

The last two cases reviewed also concern the Fourth Amendment and two well-known exceptions to the warrant requirement – the police community caretaking function and exigent circumstance. Caniglia v. Strom involved a wife’s call to check on the welfare of her husband who she last saw after he placed a handgun on the dining room table and asked her “to shoot [him] and get it over with.” Arriving officers, accompanied by the wife, found the husband on the porch. After talking with him, he agreed to go for a psychiatric evaluation. However, the husband conditioned his voluntary evaluation on the officers not confiscating his firearms.

Once he left in the ambulance the officers entered the home and seized the firearms. The husband sued the officers for Fourth Amendment violations which included the warrantless entry into his home to seize the firearms. The district court granted summary judgment to the officers and the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed on the theory that the officers’ removal of the firearms was justified under the Supreme Court’s community caretaking exception from Cady v. Dombrowski (1973).

Justice Thomas differentiated the facts and holding of Cady from those of the present case since the former involved a vehicle and Caniglia was an intrusion into the home. “Neither the holding nor the logic of Cady justified that approach,” Justice Thomas wrote, “this recognition that police officers perform many civic tasks in modern society was just that – a recognition that these tasks exist, and not an open-ended license to perform them anywhere.”

The case of Lange v. California centered on the pursuit of a fleeing misdemeanor suspect into his garage. A California Highway Patrol officer turned on his overhead lights to pull over a motor vehicle operator who drove past the officer while playing loud music and honking his horn. The motorist did not stop and instead continued a short distance to his home where he pulled into the driveway and into his garage. The officer followed and after brief questioning and observation of intoxication he had the motorist submit to field sobriety tests. A subsequent BAC test revealed the motorist to be three times above the legal limit.

The Fourth Amendment concern, in this case, was the officer’s warrantless entry and the resulting evidence obtained. Justice Kagan, writing for the majority, said there was no categorical rule when it involves a suspect’s flight. While flight can change the “calculus” of an officer’s decision-making, the presence of a minor offense does not usually lead to the same kind of emergency justifying a warrantless home entry. A misdemeanant’s flight has to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, not as a categorical approval of a per se exigency allowing entry into the home.

2021 SCOTUS SUMMARY

The above summary of Supreme Court opinions from 2021 indicates the long-standing truisms that the court is highly protective of the home and that qualified immunity review, while requiring context-specific inquiry, will not shield egregious or blatantly unconstitutional conduct. source