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

Plaintiff, a person of color and of mixed heritage, reported to school administrators that she was harassed by her peers on the basis of her race and national origin during her sixth-grade year in the Austin Independent School District. Plaintiff alleged that she was told to "go back where [she] came from" and that, in some cases, the harassment involved physical shoving. There were also incidents in which Plaintiff responded physically to verbal threats and name-calling, resulting in the school requesting she be transferred. Through her parents, Plaintiff sued the District for failure to address the harassment under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.The trial court dismissed Plaintiff's 1983 claim under Rule 12(b)(6) and ultimately granted summary judgment in favor of the district on Plaintiff's Title VI claim.While the Fifth Circuit took issue with some of the district court's findings, the Fifth Circuit concluded that the district court ultimately reached the correct result. Thus, the court affirmed the dismissal of Plaintiff's 1983 claim and the court's grant of summary judgment on the Title VI claim. View "Menzia v. Austin Indep School Dist" on Justia Law

Plaintiff claimed that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated because he was detained without probable cause for driving while intoxicated. He brought suit under Section 1983, seeking damages from the officers who submitted an affidavit and incident reports to a magistrate to support his pretrial detention. The defendants moved for summary judgment, asserting the defense of qualified immunity. The district court determined that fact issues precluded summary judgment, specifically, whether the officers made false statements that Plaintiff was “operating a motor vehicle” in violation of Texas law.The Fifth Circuit reversed. Under Texas law, the inquiry when determining whether a person caused a vehicle to move must take into account “the totality of the circumstances [regarding whether] the defendant took action to affect the functioning of his vehicle in a manner that would enable the vehicle’s use.” The court explained that the officers' allegedly false statements pertained to how far the vehicle moved rather than whether it moved at all. Even if a vehicle only moved six inches, that may be sufficient to establish the operation element. View "Garcia v. Orta" on Justia Law

Defendants were convicted by a jury of conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) by interfering with its lawful functions and evasion of payment of taxes. On appeal, Defendants both challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting their convictions and raise challenges to a number of jury instructions.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court held that the district court’s denial of Defendant’s last-minute continuance request was not an abuse of discretion, and Defendant was not denied the counsel of his choice. Further, because Defendant failed to meaningfully address all four prongs of plain error review either in his opening brief or in reply, his constructive amendment challenge fails.   Further, the court wrote, that viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence showed that Defendant failed to report a substantial amount of income; influenced MyMail to amend its tax return to underreport how much income it distributed to Defendant; converted at least $1 million of income into gold coins; purchased a house with gold coins and transferred it to a trust controlled by a relative; and hid his income in Co-Defendant’s trust accounts and used the concealed funds to pay his living expenses for at least a decade, including during the years that the IRS Agent was contacting Defendants, as Defendant’s IRS power-of-attorney, in an attempt to collect Defendant’s unpaid tax liabilities. Based on the foregoing evidence, a reasonable jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt both willfulness and an affirmative act of evasion. View "USA v. Selgas" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, on behalf of her son, sued District Attorney, Sheriffs, and Clay County under Section 1983 alleging that Defendants violated her son’s Fourteenth Amendment due process rights by unlawfully detaining him for years. The complaint also contends that, at one point, the Sheriff held Defendant down and forced him to take unwanted medication. As to Clay County, Plaintiff argued that Sheriffs were final policymakers, making the county liable under Monell. Defendants sought summary judgment; Plaintiff responded with a motion for partial summary judgment.   After summary judgment, the following claims remained: the detention claim against the Sheriffs and Clay County; the forced medication claim against Clay County alone. The Sheriffs and Clay County appealed. The Fifth Circuit, in treating the petition for rehearing en banc as a petition for panel rehearing, granted the petition for panel rehearing. The court dismissed Clay County’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction and affirmed the district court’s denial of summary judgment as to the Sheriffs.   The court explained that this is not a case about jailers following court orders that turned out to be unconstitutional. These Sheriffs held Plaintiff’s son in violation of a court order that followed Jackson’s commit-or-release rule. The court wrote that it cannot be that the initial detention order in a case overrides subsequent release orders and allows jailers to indefinitely hold defendants without consequence. Thus, taking the evidence in Plaintiff’s favor, the Sheriffs violated Plaintiff’s due process right by detaining him for six years in violation of the commit-or-release rule and qualified immunity thus does not protect the Sheriffs. View "Harris v. Clay County, MS" on Justia Law

The issue before the en banc court was whether the current version of Miss. Const. art. 12, Section 241 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. This provision was upheld in Cotton v. Fordice, 157 F.3d 388 (5th Cir. 1998), which was binding on the district court and the panel decision here, but the court voted to reconsider Cotton en banc.   Plaintiffs are black men in Mississippi who were convicted, respectively, of forgery and embezzlement. Both are disenfranchised under current Mississippi law because of their convictions. They filed suit against the Mississippi Secretary of State under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to restore the voting rights of convicted felons in Mississippi. They contend that the crimes that “remain” in Section 241 from the 1890 Constitution are still tainted by the racial animus with which they were originally enacted.   The Fifth Circuit reaffirmed that the current version of Section 241 superseded the previous provisions and removed the discriminatory taint associated with the provision adopted in 1890. Cotton, 157 F.3d at 391–92. Further, the court held that Plaintiffs failed to establish the 1968 reenactment of Section 241 was motivated by racism. The court explained that contrary to Plaintiffs’ principal assertion, the critical issue here is not the intent behind Mississippi’s 1890 Constitution, but whether the reenactment of Section 241 in 1968 was free of intentional racial discrimination. Accordingly, as a matter of law, Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that Section 241 as it currently stands was motivated by discriminatory intent or that any other approach to demonstrating the provision’s unconstitutionality is viable. View "Harness v. Watson" on Justia Law

Defendant was found guilty of three counts of making false statements to a federally licensed firearms dealer in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 922(a)(6) and two counts of possession in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(4). Relevant on appeal is whether his convictions were supported by sufficient evidence.   The Fifth Circuit held they were not and reversed Defendant’s convictions and vacated his sentence. The court held that the district court reversibly erred because no rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements beyond a reasonable doubt. The court explained that no reasonable degree of deference could overcome the fact that Defendant never underwent an “adjudication” in the sense contemplated by Section 922(g)(4), and the record lacks anything that resembles judicial process. View "USA v. Tucker" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs petitioned the United States Patent and Trademark Office for federal registration of the mark “THEEILOVE”. That phrase, “Thee I Love,” comes from the alma mater of Jackson State University. They then sued the University’s licensing agent (Collegiate Licensing Company) and a few of the licensees in charge of producing and selling the University’s merchandise (Anthony Lawrence Collection, Defron Fobb, and Thaddeus Reed, together “the Licensees”). But they did not sue the University itself. Collegiate and the Licensees moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(7). The district court granted the motion and dismissed the suit without prejudice.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the University was a required party under Rule 19(a)(1)(B)(i). And because everyone agrees that the University enjoys sovereign immunity, the question becomes whether the district court abused its discretion in dismissing the case rather than proceeding without the University. Here, the University has a non-frivolous claim here. As a practical matter, this suit would impair or impede its ability to protect its interest in the “Thee I Love” mark. That is enough to require dismissal of the action because “there is a potential for injury to” the University’s “interests as the absent sovereign.” Finally, even setting aside the University’s sovereign status, the balance of Rule 19(b) factors weigh in favor of dismissal. As a result, the district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the case. View "Lee, et al v. Anthony Lawrence Collection, et al" on Justia Law

The Grill Holdings, L.L.C. (Khodr) filed suit in the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans seeking a declaratory judgment as to whether CGH (Shwartz) had the right to audit their books and records under the License Agreement. The state district court ruled in CGH’s favor on summary judgment, and the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal denied writ.The parties appealed to the Fifth Circuit. First, the Shwartz parties appealed, arguing that the district court erred in denying the Rooker-Feldman motion to dismiss and in the scope of its permanent injunction. Next, the Khodr parties cross-appealed, arguing that the district court erred in denying the motion for sanctions.The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s rulings, including (1) a ruling denying a motion to dismiss; (2) a ruling entering a permanent injunction; and (3) a ruling denying a motion for Rule 11 and Section 1927 sanctions. The court explained that there was no room on remand for reconsideration of the alleged elements that constituted trade dress. Thus, the district court did not abuse its discretion by leaving wait staff attire out of the injunction. Further, the court held that the Rule 11 safe harbor provision requires identicality. Here, as the district court found, the served motion and the filed motion contained substantial differences. The motions were thus not identical, and the district court properly denied the motion and declined to enter sanctions. View "Uptown Grill v. Camellia Grill Holdings" on Justia Law

Defendant was indicted under 18 U.S.C. Section 666 for two counts of “bribery concerning a local government receiving federal benefits,” plus a conspiracy count under Section 371. The question here was whether federal-programs bribery under Section 666 requires a quid pro quo.   The Fifth Circuit concluded that it does, thus, vacating Defendant’s convictions and remanding. The court explained that because Section 666 requires a quo, there is a problem with the district court’s instructions to the jury. In its view, Section 666 did “not require quid pro quo bribery,” and because the statute does not explicitly distinguish between bribery and mere gratuities, the court did not instruct the jury that a quid pro quo was required. Defendant properly objected to this at that time, arguing that such an instruction was necessary under Section 666(a).   The district court gave no instruction as to the meaning of “intent to influence or reward,” or that it requires a quid pro quo and its definition of “corruptly” said nothing about a formal this-for-that. The lack of such a quid pro quo instruction rendered the jury instructions unclear, as the jurors were permitted to convict on an illegal gratuity theory that does not exist in Section 666.4 The court found that is enough to justify vacating Defendant’s conviction. View "USA v. Hamilton" on Justia Law

State troopers arrested Defendant after finding drugs in his car during a traffic stop. Morton also had three cell phones in the car. A state judge later signed warrants authorizing searches of the phones for evidence of drug crime. The warrants allowed law enforcement to look at photos on the phones. When doing so, troopers discovered photos that appeared to be child pornography. This discovery led to a second set of search warrants. The ensuing forensic examination of the phones revealed almost 20,000 images of child pornography. This federal prosecution for receipt of child pornography followed. Defendant argues the evidence discovered during those searches should be suppressed. Defendant principally tries to defeat good faith by invoking the third exception, which involves what are commonly known as “bare bones” affidavits.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision. The court held that law enforcement is usually entitled to rely on warrants and none of the exceptions that undermine good-faith reliance on a judge’s authorization applies. The court wrote that the affidavits used to search Defendant’s phones are not of this genre. Each is over three pages and fully details the facts surrounding Defendant’s arrest and the discovery of drugs and his phones. They explain where the marijuana and glass pipe was discovered, the number (16) and location of the ecstasy pills, and the affiant’s knowledge that cellphones are used for receipt and delivery of illegal narcotics. The court explained that it decides only that the officers acted in good faith when relying on the judge’s decision to issue the warrants. View "USA v. Morton" on Justia Law