Justia U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Mount Rushmore played host to Fourth of July fireworks shows. Unfortunately, visitor safety and fire-danger concerns put the practice on hold. The Park Service later changed course and granted a permit that said it was for the “year 2020 and [did] not mean an automatic renewal of the event in the future.” South Dakota tried again. This time, the Park Service denied the request, citing COVID-19 risks, concerns about tribal relationships, effects on other Mount Rushmore visitors, a then-in-progress construction project, and ongoing monitoring of water-contamination and wildfire risks. The denial led South Dakota to sue the agency on two grounds. South Dakota asked the court to convert its order denying a preliminary injunction into a final judgment. Despite having doubts about whether the continuing dispute over the permit denial was still live (given that the Fourth of July had already passed), the court went ahead and granted the request because the non-delegation issue presented a “non-moot appealable issue.   On appeal, the Eighth Circuit vacated the district court’s judgment and dismissed the appeal. The court explained that it cannot change what happened last year, and South Dakota has not demonstrated that deciding this otherwise moot case will impact any future permitting decision. The court explained that the problem for South Dakota is redressability. The declaration it seeks is that “the statutes granting [the Park Service] permitting authority are unconstitutional for want of an intelligible principle.” But it cannot identify how the “requested relief will redress [its] alleged injury,” which is not being able to hold a Fourth of July fireworks show at Mount Rushmore. View "Kristi Noem v. Deb Haaland" on Justia Law

Plaintiff was removed from a political rally and arrested for violating a St. Louis, Missouri ordinance that prohibits disturbing the peace. After Plaintiff was acquitted of that charge in state court, he brought claims against, as pertinent to this appeal, three St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officers. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the officers, and Plaintiff appealed.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed holding that it was objectively reasonable for the officers to mistakenly believe, under the totality of the circumstances that Plaintiff was engaged in acts or conduct inciting violence or intended to provoke others to violence. The court explained that two of the officers had arguable probable cause to arrest and then initiate prosecution against Plaintiff meaning that it was not clearly established that doing so would violate Plaintiff’s right to be free from unlawful seizure, malicious prosecution, or First Amendment retaliation. Thus, the court affirmed the district court’s grant of qualified immunity to those officers. Further, the court wrote that the district court properly granted qualified immunity to the remaining officer because it was not clearly established that initiating prosecution against Plaintiff would violate his Fourth Amendment right to be free from malicious prosecution or his corresponding right under Missouri law. View "Rodney Brown v. Matthew T. Boettigheimer" on Justia Law

College of the Ozarks, a private Christian college in Missouri, brought this action to challenge the lawfulness of a memorandum issued by an acting assistant secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The College moved for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. The district court ruled that the College lacked standing to establish a case or controversy and dismissed the action for lack of jurisdiction. The College appealed and the Eighth Circuit affirmed.   The court explained that the College’s alleged injury is too speculative to establish Article III standing. The College, in effect, asked the court to assume that the following series of events is imminent: a sex-discrimination complaint will be filed against the College based on claims involving sexual orientation or gender identity; following an investigation, HUD will charge the College with sex discrimination, even though HUD has never enforced the Fair Housing Act’s sex-discrimination prohibition against a college whose housing policies have been exempted from the prohibition on sex discrimination under Title IX; HUD will determine, pursuant to the Memorandum, that the College is not entitled to an exemption under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or the Free Exercise Clause as discussed in Bostock; and the College will therefore be subject to penalties. This is the kind of “highly attenuated chain of possibilities” that “does not satisfy the requirement that threatened injury must be certainly impending.” Further, the court explained that the complaint thus fails to allege either an actual chilling of speech or a credible threat of enforcement that justifies self-censorship. View "The School of the Ozarks, Inc. v. Joseph Biden, Jr." on Justia Law

Des Moines detectives arrested Plaintiff on her porch after she refused to comply with their requests to check on her daughter’s welfare. Plaintiff sued them under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and Iowa tort law. The district court granted summary judgment to Plaintiff on her Section 1983 claim and denied qualified immunity to the detectives.   Defendants appealed and the Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court explained state officials are entitled to qualified immunity in Section 1983 lawsuits unless they violated a federal “statutory or constitutional right that was clearly established at the time.”  Here, because the detectives did not have arguable probable cause to arrest Plaintiff for interference with official acts, and they likewise didn’t have arguable or actual probable cause to arrest her for another offense, her Fourth Amendment right to be free from warrantless arrests under these circumstances was clearly established. And because the detectives subjected Plaintiff to a warrantless arrest that was unsupported by probable cause, they violated her clearly established rights. The detectives are not entitled to qualified immunity. View "Trenisha Webster v. Jennifer Westlake" on Justia Law

This is the third appeal to the Eighth Circuit involving litigation arising from police response to protest activity in St. Louis on September 17, 2017. In this case, as in the others, Plaintiffs allege that St. Louis police officers boxed civilians into a downtown intersection in a maneuver characterized as a “kettle.” Some persons caught in this kettle allegedly were beaten, pepper sprayed, handcuffed with zip-ties, and arrested. The Eighth Circuit has issued two decisions in cases brought by different plaintiffs against the same six police officers.   The Eighth Circuit reversed the district court’s order denying the officers’ motion to dismiss with respect to Plaintiffs’ claims alleging use of excessive force and conspiracy to deprive civil rights. The court affirmed the order with respect to the claims alleging unlawful arrest.   The court explained that the case-at-hand arises in the same procedural posture and includes the same relevant factual allegations as Baude v. Leyshock, 23 F.4th 1065 (8th Cir. 2022), and Baude precludes a grant of qualified immunity on the arrest claims in this case as well. Thus, the court concluded that the allegations, in this case, are insufficient to establish a plausible claim that the defendant officers violated any Plaintiffs clearly established right against the use of excessive force. View "Alicia Street v. Gerald Leyshock" on Justia Law

A jury convicted Defendant of being a felon in possession of ammunition-nine cartridge cases found at the scene of a shooting. The district court1 sentenced Defendant to 120 months’ imprisonment, the statutory maximum sentence, to be served consecutively to any undischarged term of state court sentences Defendant was serving for offenses arising out of the same incident.   He appealed the conviction and sentence, arguing the district court (i) abused its discretion in admitting lay opinion testimony by a detective of the Des Moines Police Department about what the detective saw on convenience store surveillance videos; (ii) erred at sentencing in cross-referencing to the guidelines base offense level for attempted second-degree murder, USSG Section 2A2.1; and (iii) abused its discretion in imposing a consecutive sentence.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment convicting and sentencing Defendant to 120 months’ imprisonment. The court held that Rule 701 permits the introduction of lay opinion testimony in just such circumstances. Here, there was no clear error. Defendant intervened in an altercation, firing a gun nine times at close range and striking a victim seven times. Like the conduct in United States v. Comly, this unprovoked attack with a deadly weapon “demonstrated an intent to kill or, at the very least, an act in callous and wanton disregard of the consequences to human life.”  Finally, the court concluded that it agrees with the government that the district court did not abuse its “broad discretion to order a consecutive sentence to an undischarged sentence.” View "United States v. Ceeron Williams" on Justia Law

The parties to this matter—Plaintiff, on behalf of her son, and the Belton School District—disagree about the appropriate school placement for Plaintiff’s son pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 20 U.S.C. Section 1400 et seq. Plaintiff appealed the decision of the district court granting judgment on the administrative record to the District.   On appeal, Plaintiff asserts that transferring her son to Trails West would violate his right under the IDEA to be educated in the least restrictive environment (LRE). Alternatively, Plaintiff argued, if her son needs additional services, the District should provide them in her son’s current placement. Thus, the question is whether Kentucky Trail or Trails West is the LRE in which Plaintiff’s son can receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE).   The Eighth Circuit affirmed finding no clear error in the district court’s factual findings and agreed that a preponderance of the evidence supports the AHC’s conclusion that placement at Trails West respects Plaintiff’s son's rights under the IDEA. Second, although Plaintiff emphasizes the social benefit her son receives from his more integrated placement at Kentucky Trail, the evidence shows that her son receives all of his instruction in the special education classroom and eats lunch there as well, and he has contact with nondisabled peers only when passing in the hallways or at recess. Further, there was sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that placement at Trails West offers substantial benefits for Plaintiff’s son. View "J.P. v. Belton School District No. 124" on Justia Law

Defendant, a neurosurgeon, chose to use implants distributed by DS Medical, a company wholly owned by his fiancée. Physicians in other practices grew suspicious and filed various claims under the False Claims Act. The jury returned a verdict for the government on two of the three claims. The district court then awarded treble damages and statutory penalties in the amount of $5,495,931.22. Following the verdict, the government moved to dismiss its two remaining claims without prejudice, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(2), on the ground that any recovery would be “smaller and duplicative of what the [c]ourt ha[d] already awarded.”   The Eighth Circuit reversed and remanded for a new trial. The court explained that are several ways to prove that a claim is “false or fraudulent” under the False Claims Act. One of them is to show that it “includes items or services resulting from a violation” of the anti-kickback statute. This case required the court to determine what the words “resulting from” mean. The court concluded that it creates a but-for causal requirement between an anti-kickback violation and the “items or services” included in the claim. Thus, the court reversed and remanded because district court did not instruct the jury along these lines. View "United States v. Midwest Neurosurgeons, LLC, et al" on Justia Law

Appellant, who is not an enrolled member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, pled guilty to one count of wildlife trafficking, in violation of the Lacey Act, 16 U.S.C. Sections 3372(a)(1) and 3373(d)(2) (Count 1), and one count of trespass on Indian land, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1165 (Count 2), for entering the Red Lake Indian Reservation (the Reservation), removing the head of a bear that he had killed two days before, and transporting the bear’s head off the Reservation. The district court sentenced Appellant to 15 months imprisonment and 1 year supervised release.   The Eighth Circuit affirmed concluding that the district court did not commit a procedural error in increasing Appellant’s base offense level pursuant to Section 2Q2.1(b)(1)(B).  The court wrote that assuming arguendo that Section 2Q2.1(b)(1)(B) refers to applicable prior violations, when considering both the offense and relevant conduct, Appellant has committed a pattern of prior violations similar to the instant Lacey Act violation. The court explained Appellant violated Section 1165 when he entered the Reservation for the purpose of hunting a bear, and he again violated Section 1165 when he entered the Reservation on September 3rd to remove the bear’s head from the Reservation. The court, therefore, concluded Appellant’s repeated violation of Section 1165 demonstrates a “pattern of similar violations” sufficient to warrant application of Section 2Q2.1(b)(1)(B). View "United States v. Brett James Stimac" on Justia Law

Defendant entered a guilty plea to being a felon in possession of a firearm. Defendant's pre-sentence report indicated he had committed three violent felonies: a 2004 conviction for burglary; a 2006 conviction for battery; and a 2006 conviction for battery and possession of a firearm. Both 2006 offenses occurred on the same date. At sentencing, the district court found that Defendant was an armed career criminal and sentenced him to 180 months incarceration, the statutory maximum.Defendant appealed, arguing that because both 2006 convictions occurred on the same date, they should be considered a single predicate offense under the ACCA.The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's sentence. After considering (1) the time lapse between offenses, (2) the physical distance between their occurrence, and (3) their lack of overall substantive continuity, the court concluded that, for the purposes of the ACCA, the offenses were not committed on the "same occasion." View "United States v. Christopher Stowell" on Justia Law