Justia U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

This case involves challenges to five provisions of the Grants Pass Municipal Code (“GPMC”). The provisions can be described as an “anti-sleeping” ordinance, two “anticamping” ordinances, a “park exclusion” ordinance, and a “park exclusion appeals” ordinance.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part the district court’s summary judgment and its permanent injunction in favor of Plaintiffs; affirmed certification pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(2), of a class of “involuntary homeless” persons; and remanded in an action challenging municipal ordinances which, among other things, preclude homeless persons from using a blanket, a pillow, or cardboard box for protection from the elements while sleeping within the City’s limits.   The panel stated that this court’s decision in Martin v. City of Boise, 902 F.3d 1031 (9th Cir. 2018), which held that “the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter” served as the backdrop for this entire litigation. The panel held that there was abundant evidence in the record establishing that homeless persons were injured by the City’s enforcement actions in the past and it was undisputed that enforcements have continued. The panel further held that the relief sought by plaintiffs, enjoining enforcement of a few municipal ordinances aimed at involuntary homeless persons, was redressable within the limits of Article III. The panel held that based on the record in this case, the district court did not err by finding plaintiffs satisfied the requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a) such that a class could be certified under Rule 23(b)(2). View "GLORIA JOHNSON, ET AL V. CITY OF GRANTS PASS" on Justia Law

The Oregon facility where Plaintiff is housed has regulations that include these limitations: inmates are limited to having no more than four grievances pending at the same time, each of which must be limited to a specific event (i.e., repeated events involving the same subject matter must be separately grieved). Due to safety concerns, prison officials also placed a ban on inmate receipt of postage-prepaid mail inserts.   The Ninth Circuit vacated the district court’s order on summary judgment dismissing Plaintiff’s action for failure to exhaust available administrative remedies, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The panel held that Plaintiff had pointed to specific circumstances in the case that made administrative remedies practically unavailable. When the evidence was viewed in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, it was apparent that Plaintiff was left with the choice to pursue his mail-related grievance at the expense of another viable claim or forfeit his mail-related grievance—a conundrum resulting, in part, from Two Rivers Correctional Institution’s failure to process an earlier grievance within the usual timeframe prescribed by regulation. On the current record, Defendants were not entitled to summary judgment and accordingly, the panel vacated and remanded. View "AARON EATON V. T. BLEWETT, ET AL" on Justia Law

Five deputies responded to a 911 call reporting that P.M. was acting erratically and threatening someone with a firearm. The deputies asserted that P.M. ignored their warnings, picked up a gun, and began raising it toward them. Two of the deputies shot and killed P.M. His wife claimed that eyewitness testimony and ballistics analysis proved that P.M. was not moving toward the gun, never touched the gun, and did not pose an immediate threat to himself or others. Plaintiff brought this action asserting that the deputies violated P.M.’s Fourth Amendment rights and her own Fourteenth Amendment right to a familial relationship.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s denial of Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. On the excessive-force claim, the panel concluded that the deputies who shot P.M. were not entitled to qualified immunity. The panel concluded a jury could conclude that Defendants fired at an unarmed man who, although in the presence of a gun, never picked it up and in fact was moving away from it when he was shot. Officers may not kill suspects simply because they are behaving erratically, nor may they kill suspects who do not pose an immediate threat to their safety or to the safety of others simply because they are armed. Nevertheless, even under this court’s case law relating to familial-association claims asserted by parents and children, Plaintiff’s claim failed because no showing of a purpose to harm had been made or even attempted. View "SUSAN PECK, ET AL V. ANTHONY MONTOYA, ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a serial ADA litigant, moved for an award of over $34,000 in attorney’s fees and costs under 42 U.S.C. Section 12205. The district court reduced this award significantly, finding that factors such as the routine nature of the work performed by Plaintiff’s attorneys and the lack of meaningful opposition by Defendants warranted the use of a $300/hour “blended billing rate” for all the work performed by counsel, as well as a 65% downward multiplier to the total amount of fees.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order awarding a reduced amount of attorney’s fees and costs following the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Plaintiff on a claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The panel held that the district court provided an adequate “concise but clear explanation” of the grounds for its decision and did not abuse its broad discretion because, given the repetitive nature of high-frequency ADA litigation, there was nothing irrational about the district court’s conclusions that, in effect, much of the work here could have been performed by junior associates or even paralegals, or that much of the motion practice in the case was superfluous. View "JAMES SHAYLER V. 1310 PCH, LLC" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs-Appellants Cariene Cadena and similarly situated employees (Appellants) are employed by Customer Connexx LLC (Connexx) to operate a call center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Appellants’ primary responsibilities are to provide customer service and scheduling to customers over a “softphone,” operated only through their employer-provided computers.   The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of Defendant Customer Connexx LLC and remanded for further proceedings in a collective action brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act by call center workers. The panel concluded that the district court correctly identified the workers’ principal duties as answering customer phone calls and scheduling appliance pickups. Agreeing with the Tenth Circuit, the panel held that the workers’ duties could not be performed without turning on and booting up their work computers, and having a functioning computer was necessary before the workers could receive calls and schedule appointments. Accordingly, turning on the computers was integral and indispensable to the workers’ duties and was a principal activity under the FLSA. It, therefore, was compensable.   The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment on the FLSA claim and remanded to the district court for consideration of whether time spent shutting down computers was compensable, whether the time spent booting up and down the computers was not compensable under the de minimis doctrine, and whether Connexx had no knowledge of the alleged overtime such that it was not in violation of the FLSA’s overtime requirements. View "CARIENE CADENA, ET AL V. CUSTOMER CONNEXX LLC, ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs brought a putative class action under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 alleging that tire chalking violated the Fourth Amendment. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s summary judgment for Defendants and held that municipalities are not required to obtain warrants before chalking tires as part of enforcing time limits on city parking spots. The panel held that even assuming the temporary dusting of chalk on a tire constitutes a Fourth Amendment “search,” it falls within the administrative search exception to the warrant requirement. Complementing a broader program of traffic control, tire chalking is reasonable in its scope and manner of execution. It is not used for general crime control purposes. And its intrusion on personal liberty is de minimis at most. View "ANDRE VERDUN, ET AL V. CITY OF SAN DIEGO, ET AL" on Justia Law

Defendant kidnapped Jane Doe, then age 12 years old, and drove her from California to Nevada knowing that she would engage in prostitution. The defendant entered into a written plea agreement pursuant to which, in exchange for the government’s promise to drop five serious criminal charges, he would plead guilty to two lesser crimes (interstate travel in aid of unlawful activity, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1952(a)(3)(A)) and would pay Doe restitution.   The panel granted Jane Doe’s petition for a writ of mandamus pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 3771(d)(3), a provision of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, in a case in which the district court concluded that it lacked statutory authority to order Defendant to pay restitution to Jane Doe. The panel published the opinion to reiterate what this court held in two cases decided three decades ago: 18 U.S.C. Section 3663(a)(3) grants statutory authority to district courts to award restitution whenever a defendant agrees in a plea agreement to pay restitution. The panel instructed the district court to address, in the first instance, Defendant’s evidentiary challenges and other arguments concerning the appropriate amount of restitution View "JANE DOE V. USDC-NVL" on Justia Law

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment, after a bench trial, in favor of Doctors Medical Center of Modesto, Inc., in an action brought by two deaf Plaintiffs who alleged that the hospital failed to afford them effective communication during a series of hospital stays, in violation of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.   The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal as moot of Plaintiffs’ ADA claims for injunctive relief, which were resolved by a third plaintiff’s acceptance of an offer of judgment under which the district court issued an injunction against the hospital concerning its practices for communicating with deaf patients. Further, the court wrote that because Plaintiffs did not establish that the hospital engaged in any disability discrimination, their California Unruh Act claims also failed. View "MARK BAX, ET AL V. DOCTORS MED. CTR. OF MODESTO, ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought suit pursuant to the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. Section 2000cc et seq., the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and Arizona state law. He claimed he is unable to pray five times a day, as the Qur’an requires because he is housed with people who harass him as he prays; and who had asked the prison to accommodate his religious practice by housing him exclusively with other prisoners based on their religious beliefs and practices.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment on the pleadings. The panel held that Al Saud’s RLUIPA claim failed because denying his request to be housed only with Muslims was the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest. The panel concluded that the outcome of this case was largely controlled by Walker v. Beard, 789 F.3d 1125 (9th Cir. 2015), which held that a prison could deny a prisoner’s religious accommodation when he sought to be housed with only white people.   The panel held that Defendants did not violate Plaintiff's First Amendment free exercise rights because denying Plaintiff’s request was also reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest—avoiding the potential legal liability of housing inmates based on their religious beliefs and practice. Denying the request was rationally related to avoiding liability because by denying Plaintiff’s requested accommodation, the Arizona Department of Corrections Rehabilitation and Reentry completely eliminated its risk of litigation from other prisoners based on that claim. View "SHAYKH MUHAMMAD AL SAUD V. PANNAN DAYS, ET AL" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs are a married couple who have each been deaf since early childhood. They appealed the district court’s judgment, entered following a three-day bench trial, on their claims under (1) the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), (2) Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504), (3) Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and (4) California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act (Unruh Act) against Defendant Doctors Medical Center of Modesto, Inc. (DMC), an acute care hospital. Plaintiffs alleged that DMC failed to afford them effective communication during a series of hospital stays between 2015 and 2017.   The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment, after a bench trial, in favor of Defendants. The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal as moot of plaintiffs’ ADA claims for injunctive relief.   As to the Section 504 Rehabilitation Act claims, the panel held that the district court properly ruled that Plaintiffs failed to show that they were denied program benefits on the basis of their disabilities because they did not show that the hospital failed in its affirmative obligation to provide the auxiliary aids necessary to afford them effective communication. The panel held that the district court did not err by failing to apply “primary consideration,” an ADA Title II rule, to the Section 504 claims, because there is no evidence that Section 504 contains an implicit requirement that a covered entity give primary consideration to the requests of the individual with disabilities when determining what types of auxiliary aids to use. Because Plaintiffs did not establish that the hospital engaged in any disability discrimination, their California Unruh Act claims also failed. View "MARK BAX, ET AL V. DOCTORS MED. CTR. OF MODESTO, ET AL" on Justia Law