Jacobson v. USDHS

The Ninth Circuit vacated the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendants in an action challenging plaintiffs' exclusion from an enforcement zone set up around a Border Patrol checkpoint area near their homes in rural Arizona. In this case, the district court entered summary judgment before any discovery had occurred. The panel held that the limited record before the district court did not permit the panel to conclude, as a matter of law, that the enforcement zone was a nonpublic forum or, if it was, that the government satisfied the requirements for excluding plaintiffs from that nonpublic forum. On remand, and after appropriate discovery, the panel noted that the district court will need to determine if there remain genuine issues of material fact regarding whether, and what part of, the enforcement zone was a public forum, and whether the government's exclusion policy was permissible under the principles of forum analysis. View "Jacobson v. USDHS" on Justia Law