Williams v. Town of Greenburgh

Decision Date22 July 2008
Docket NumberDocket No. 06-4897-cv.
Citation535 F.3d 71
PartiesCharles WILLIAMS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. TOWN OF GREENBURGH, and Hopeton White and William Bland, sued in their individual capacities, Defendants-Appellees.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Stephen Bergstein, Bergstein & Ullrich, LLP, Chester, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant Charles Wiliams.

Paul E. Svensson, Boeggeman, George, Hodges & Corde, P.C., White Plains, NY, for Defendants-Appellees Town of Greenburgh, Hopeton White, and William Bland.

Before: MINER and CABRANES, Circuit Judges, and BERMAN, District Judge.1

JOSÉ A. CABRANES, Circuit Judge:

Charles Williams appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Lisa Margaret Smith, Magistrate Judge)2 that dismissed, as a matter of law, his claims against the Town of Greenburgh and two municipal officials. On appeal, Williams contends that the District Court erred in awarding judgment to defendants because (1) his desire to use a town community center constituted a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, (2) his speech was protected under the First Amendment, and (3) the individual defendants, who alerted police to Williams's potential trespass, were not protected by qualified immunity. We agree that the District Court erred in certain respects, but we nevertheless affirm the judgment of the District Court for the reasons set forth below.

BACKGROUND

The Town of Greenburgh, New York (the "Town") operates the Theodore D. Young Community Center (the "Center") and employed Williams to work in the Center until June 2002, when he was laid off. On December 27, 2002, Williams—after exercising in the Center—obtained access to a secured locker room in order to use the Center's sauna. Meanwhile, William Bland, the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Community Resources for the Town, was providing a tour of the Center to two guests; upon entering the secured locker room, they found Williams in the sauna. A confrontation ensued. Although the sequence of events is unclear, the parties agree that Bland told Williams to leave the locker room, and Williams called Bland a "Junior Mussolini" and criticized Bland's "intimidation tactics." Some physical contact between Williams and Bland occurred, but the extent of that contact and the circumstances giving rise to it are in dispute. Bland then called the police, who escorted Williams to the parking lot but did not arrest him. The police warned Williams that if he did not obtain permission before returning to the Center, "he would be subject to arrest."

The next day, December 28, Williams returned to the Center to retrieve a watch that he had left in the locker room. Later that day, he contacted a member of the Center's Advisory Board who, he believed, gave him permission to use the facility. On December 30, 2002, Williams again entered the Center. He saw Bland but said nothing to him, believing that there was no need to explain his return. Bland called the police, who arrested Williams for trespass. In a letter sent to Williams on the same day, Hopeton White, the Commissioner of the Department of Community Resources for the Town, barred Williams from the Center "until further notice" because of his "improper conduct."

Williams was prosecuted for trespass in the Town Court of Greenburgh (Doris T. Friedman, Greenburgh Town Justice) and, following a bench trial, was found not guilty on March 21, 2003. The Town Court concluded that on December 30 Williams lacked adequate notice that he was barred from the Center because the oral notice he had received on December 27 lacked "a definitive time." The letter sent on December 30 cured that defect, in the Court's view, because it specified that the ban was "until further notice." Accordingly, the Court found Williams not guilty of trespass but observed that he was "on notice that he [was] barred" from the Center and must obtain permission before returning. Five days later, Commissioner White sent Williams a letter confirming that he was barred from the Center and its "associate grounds" for one year. On March 27, 2003, Williams filed a Notice of Claim against the Town, alleging false arrest, defamation, slander, and malice, which the Town Court subsequently dismissed for failure to prosecute. Prior to the dismissal of that claim, Williams made a written request of the Town Supervisor for permission to use the Center. In response, the Town Board invited Williams to meet with it, but later withdrew that invitation upon learning of Williams's then-pending lawsuit.

Over a year and a half later, Williams asked again about using the Center. His application was granted in November 2005.

The following month, Williams commenced this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the District Court. Williams alleged that his expulsion from the Center on December 27, 2002 and subsequent arrest and prosecution for trespass violated (1) the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, (2) his right to free speech under the First Amendment, and (3) his Fourth Amendment right to be free of false arrest and malicious prosecution. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the District Court ruled in favor of defendants and closed the case. Wiliams v. Town of Greenburgh, No. 05 CV 10564(LMS), dkt. no. 32 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 12, 2006). This appeal followed.

DISCUSSION

Williams challenges the District Court's entry of judgment in favor of defendants, arguing that the Court erred in determining that (1) he lacked a liberty interest in gaining admission to the Center, (2) his speech was not protected by the First Amendment, and (3) defendants Bland and White were entitled to qualified immunity. We review de novo an award of summary judgment. ITC Ltd. v. Punchgini, Inc., 482 F.3d 135, 145 (2d Cir.2007). Although the District Court's reasoning is flawed in certain respects, we nevertheless affirm the District Court's grant of summary judgment for the reasons set forth below.

A. Williams's Expulsion from the Center Did Not Interfere with his Right to Freedom of Movement.

Williams argues that his expulsion from the Center violated his right under the Fourteenth Amendment to be free from a deprivation of liberty without due process of law. In order to establish a due process violation of this nature, Williams must show that he has a "liberty ... interest which has been interfered with by the State" and that "the procedures attendant upon that deprivation were [not] constitutionally sufficient." Kentucky Dep't of Corrections v. Thompson, 490 U.S. 454, 460, 109 S.Ct. 1904, 104 L.Ed.2d 506 (1989) (internal citations omitted); see also Shakur v. Selsky, 391 F.3d 106, 118 (2d Cir. 2004). Liberty interests "may arise from two sources—the Due Process Clause itself and the laws of the States." Thompson, 490 U.S. at 460, 109 S.Ct. 1904 (quoting Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 466, 103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983)). Williams maintains that he has a liberty interest arising from the first source—the Due Process Clause—to engage in intrastate travel and free movement.3 In support of his position, Williams relies principally on Ramos v. Town of Vernon, a case involving a challenge to a curfew ordinance, in which this Court observed that "[t]he right to intrastate travel, or what we sometimes will refer to as the right to free movement, has been recognized in this Circuit." 353 F.3d 171, 176 (2d Cir.2003). Williams urges that this right to free movement includes the right to gain admittance to the Center. When the Town expelled and barred him from the Center, it did so, in Williams's view, without providing adequate pre-deprivation notice or an opportunity to be heard.

We first recognized a right to intrastate travel in King v. New Rochelle Municipal Housing Authority, 442 F.2d 646, 648 (2d Cir.1971). Relying on the Supreme Court's holding in Shapiro v. Thompson that "moving from State to State or to the District of Columbia" constituted "a constitutional right," 394 U.S. 618, 634, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969), the King Court concluded that "[i]t would be meaningless to describe the right to travel between states as a fundamental precept of personal liberty and not to acknowledge a correlative constitutional right to travel within a state," King, 442 F.2d at 648. Accordingly, in King, we applied strict scrutiny to a five-year residency requirement for municipal public housing because that requirement affected a "fundamental right" of two applicants who had moved to the city from elsewhere within the state. 442 F.2d at 648. More recently, we reinstated a civil rights complaint alleging a violation of the "constitutional right to travel" arising from a brutal attack on a young man riding his bicycle in Coney Island. Spencer v. Casavilla, 903 F.2d 171, 174-75 (2d Cir.1990). Finally, we explained in Ramos that because the curfew in question "limit[ed] the constitutional right to free movement within the [t]own ..., we assume that were this ordinance applied to adults, it would be subject to strict scrutiny." Ramos, 353 F.3d at 176.4

These precedents stand for the proposition that individuals possess a fundamental right to travel within a state. While the parameters of that right have not been sharply defined by our Court, it is clear that the right protects movement between places and has no bearing on access to a particular place. Cf. Johnson v. City of Cincinnati, 310 F.3d 484, 498 (6th Cir.2002) ("[T]he Constitution protects a right to travel locally through public spaces and roadways."). In King and Shapiro, the movement in question was the relocation of a permanent residence from one city to another; in Spencer, it was a bike ride; in Ramos, it was the passage through public places and establishments during certain hours. In each of these cases, the plaintiffs complained of a burden imposed on their freedom to move between...

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