Justia U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Appellant, a journalist, appealed from the district court's entry of an order barring communication with the media and its denial of his motion to intervene in a case involving charges of terrorism. The government indicted defendant for attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and the day that the indictment was filed, the district court entered an order barring the parties, their representatives, and their attorneys of record from communicating with the news media about the case. On appeal, appellant argued that the district court wrongly found that he had no right to intervene and that the district court's gag order violated his First and Fifth Amendment rights. The court concluded that FRCP 4(a) controlled this appeal and that notice was timely; that the gag order affected appellant's right to gather news and therefore, he had standing to challenge it; but, on the merits, appellant had not shown that the gag order violated the First Amendment where the gag order was not overly broad on its face and the gag order did not violate the Fifth Amendment because the denial of his motion to intervene did not limit his right to earn a living through news gathering in violation of his due process rights. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "United States v. Aldawsari" on Justia Law

PLN, a non-profit corporation, brought a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action against the TDCJ and three individual TDCJ officials (collectively, defendants) for alleged First Amendment and due process violations with TDCJ's censorship of five books PLN wished to distribute to inmates in the Texas prison system. The district court granted summary judgment to defendants. The court concluded that PLN had not presented sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment on its First Amendment claims where PLN had, at most, demonstrated that reasonable minds might differ on whether to permit certain books into a general prison population, which was very different from demonstrating that TDCJ's practices and exclusions had no reasonable relation to valid penological objectives. The court also rejected PLN's due process claim, concluding that TDCJ's procedures were reasonable. Because TDCJ had not violated PLN's due process rights, the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Prison Legal News v. Livingston, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiffs filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 for claims arising out of their son's death. The district court granted summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity against their claims that law enforcement personnel used excessive force in restraining him. Plaintiffs appealed and argued that the use of a four-point restraint in this case was excessive force and defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity. The court held that the treatment of plaintiffs' son did not violate a clearly established right and consequently, defendants were protected by qualified immunity even if their conduct constituted excessive force. View "Khan, et al. v. Normand, et al." on Justia Law

Plaintiff sued defendants, the City and the Zoning Board, for violations of the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause and for denying her procedural due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Board had decided to revoke the permits it had given her to operate her Sno Cone hut at a certain intersection. The court held that the district court was justified in dismissing plaintiff's equal protection claim where plaintiff failed to state a viable equal protection claim. The court held, however, that the district court erred in dismissing plaintiff's procedural due process claim where plaintiff's property right in the business permits the Board granted to her merited the protection of procedural due process before the Board revoked it. View "Bowlby v. City of Aberdeen, Mississippi, et al." on Justia Law

A Texas jury found that a corporate staffing company violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq., when it refused to allow a deaf woman to apply for a warehouse job, awarding her back pay, compensatory, and punitive damages. On appeal the company raised several issues. The court held that the district court had subject matter jurisdiction over the dispute; the district court's finding - that the company's failure to account for its delay was dispositive, outweighing the other three factors for assessing good cause - was well supported and squarely within its sound discretion; the court rejected the company's claim that because the EEOC failed to provide computations for compensatory and punitive damages, the EEOC should have been precluded from seeking any damages whatsoever; the district court's analysis of punitive damages was considered, fair, and in no way an abuse of discretion; and the court rejected the company's challenges to the district court's imposition of injunctive relief. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "EEOC v. Service Temps Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a law enforcement park ranger, was transferred to a staff ranger position based on the conclusion of a medical review board constituted by the National Park Service that his uncontrolled diabetes could prevent him from safely performing his duties. Plaintiff filed suit under the Rehabilitation Act, claiming that his transfer amounted to discrimination on the basis of his alleged disability. The district court granted summary judgment for the Department and plaintiff appealed. The court held that the record supported the district court's conclusion that there was no genuine issue of material fact regarding the business necessity defense and its grant of summary judgment in favor of the Department was proper. View "Atkins v. Salazar" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought suit against the Board, arguing that the fee charged at the conclusion of his public intoxication and public inhabitation case violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment because it discouraged public defenders from exonerating their clients. Louisiana's funding mechanism for indigent defense required indigent defendants who were found guilty, or plead nolo contendere, to pay a $35 fee at the conclusion of their cases, but it did not require defendants who were exonerated to pay the fee. The district court ruled that abstention was required under the Younger doctrine and, alternatively, that plaintiff did not state a claim for relief under the Sixth or Fourteenth Amendment. Because the court held that the district court did not err in abstaining from exercising jurisdiction over plaintiff's lawsuit, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Bice v. Louisiana Public Defender Bd" on Justia Law

Plaintiff asserted federal claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq., and under 42 U.S.C. 1981, as well as a state-law claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, asserting that his employer subjected him to racial discrimination. At the time plaintiff filed both his EEOC charge and his complaint initiating the instant case, plaintiff was a debtor in a Chapter 13 proceeding, having filed a petition for bankruptcy. The employer subsequently moved for summary judgment, arguing that plaintiff should be judicially estopped from pursuing his claims against the employer because he failed to disclose those claims to the bankruptcy court. The district court granted the motion, dismissing plaintiff's case, and plaintiff appealed. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in applying judicial estoppel to plaintiff's claims after finding that plaintiff failed to create a fact issue regarding his purported inadvertence. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "Love v. Tyson Foods, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff and his mother sued the county under 42 U.S.C. 1983. Plaintiff's sister shot her husband and plaintiff, then thirteen-years-old, confessed to the murder. Plaintiff claimed that the county actors coerced a confession and plaintiff's mother claimed separation from her son while he was confessing violated her rights. The court held that, viewed under the totality of the circumstances, plaintiff's confession was voluntarily given and its introduction at trial did not offend the Fifth Amendment. Although a thirteen-year-old's separation from his mother, his desire to please adults, and his inexperience with the criminal justice system all weigh against voluntariness, his express desire to help his sister decided the issue. There was no evidence that, absent plaintiff's resolve to reduce his sister's punishment, the deputies' interrogation tactics would have produced a confession. The sister may have used her brother's love to make him lie on her behalf, but there was no evidence that the deputies knew of her plan. Looking back on his interrogation after he was released from prison, plaintiff told a national television audience, on the "Dr. Phil" show, that the deputies did not coerce him into confessing. The court rejected the remaining challenges and affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the county. View "Edmonds, et al. v. Oktibbeha County, Mississippi" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, nine children in the custody of PMC, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against three Texas officials, in their official capacities, seeking to represent a class of all children who were now, and all those who will be, in the State's long-term foster care. The gravaman of plaintiffs' complaint is that various system-wide problems in Texas's administration of its PMC subjected all of the children in PMC to a variety of harms. Applying the standards announced in the Supreme Court's recent opinion, Wal-mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, the court held that the district court failed to conduct the "rigorous" analysis required by Rule 23 in deciding to certify the proposed class. The court also held that the district court abused its discretion by certifying a class that lacked cohesiveness under Rule 23(b)(2). Accordingly, the court vacated the district court's class certification order and remanded for further proceedings. View "M.D., et al. v. Rick Perry, et al." on Justia Law