Farm Lab. Organizing Comm. v. Ohio Hwy. Patrol

• Decision Date: 08 December 1997
• Docket Number: No. 3:96CV7580.,3:96CV7580.
• Parties: FARM LABOR ORGANIZING COMMITTEE, et al., Plaintiffs, v. The OHIO STATE HIGHWAY PATROL, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

Page 895

991 F.Supp. 895

FARM LABOR ORGANIZING COMMITTEE, et al., Plaintiffs, v. The OHIO STATE HIGHWAY PATROL, et al., Defendants.

No. 3:96CV7580.

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Western Division.

December 8, 1997.

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William B. Senhauser, John Mark Finnegan, Equal Justice Foundation, Toledo, OH, for plaintiffs.

Allen P. Adler, Office of the Attorney General, Columbus, OH, for defendants.

Order

CARR, District Judge.

This is a civil rights case in which plaintiffs seek preliminary relief from allegedly unlawful and unconstitutional practices by defendants. This court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331. Pending is plaintiffs' renewed motion for a preliminary injunction. (Doc. 37). Defendants filed a memorandum in opposition (Doc. 47), and plaintiffs filed a reply. (Doc. 49). For the following reasons, plaintiffs' motion shall be granted in part and denied in part.

Background

Plaintiffs are Hispanic migrant workers who claim that the Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) has violated their constitutional rights by stopping, searching, and detaining them on the basis of race or national origin, interrogating them about their immigration status, and confiscating immigration documents without either justification or providing substitute documents. Plaintiffs seek a preliminary injunction ordering the OSHP to stop these practices. Plaintiffs' earlier motion for a preliminary injunction was denied without prejudice on June 24, 1997, because none of the named plaintiffs had ever been stopped, and therefore no named plaintiff had standing. (Doc. 31). An amended complaint was filed adding plaintiffs Aguilar and Esparza, who have been stopped by the OSHP and questioned about their immigration status and had their immigration documents seized. (Doc. 44).

A. Standing

The first step in the preliminary injunction analysis is standing. To establish standing the plaintiffs must show: 1) injury in fact; 2) traceability; and 3) redressibility. Kardules v. City of Columbus, 95 F.3d 1335, 1346 (6th Cir.1996).

The injury in fact prong requires that the plaintiff has suffered a concrete or particularized injury that is actual or imminent. Id. Plaintiffs are aliens. As such, they possess alien registration receipt cards, also known as "green cards." All aliens over the age of eighteen must at all times have possession of their green cards. 8 U.S.C. § 1304(e). An alien failing to possess his or her green card faces a fine of not more than $100 or imprisonment not to exceed thirty days, or both. Id.

Plaintiffs allege unjustified seizure and retention of green cards by OSHP troopers. If this allegation is proven, defendants have exposed plaintiffs to criminal penalties including possible imprisonment. Thus, if plaintiffs prove an unjustified seizure and retention of green cards, they have shown a concrete particularized injury.¹

These actions are clearly traceable to the defendant, whose troopers are accused of stopping the plaintiffs, questioning them about immigration status, and confiscating their immigration documents. If issued, an injunction against these practices will clearly redress plaintiffs' grievances. Therefore, plaintiffs meet the three requirements of standing and can proceed with their motion for a preliminary injunction.

B. Requirements For Injunctive Relief

Before issuing a preliminary injunction, a district court must consider:

1) the likelihood that the party seeking the preliminary injunction will succeed on the merits of the claim; 2) whether the party seeking the injunction will suffer irreparable harm without the injunction; 3) the probability that granting the injunction will cause substantial harm to others; and 4) whether the public interest is advanced by the issuance of the injunction.

Dayton Area Visually Impaired Persons v. Fisher, 70 F.3d 1474, 1480 (6th Cir.1995) (citing Washington v. Reno, 35 F.3d 1093, 1099 (6th Cir.1994)). Those four considerations are "factors to be balanced, not prerequisites that must be met." In re DeLorean Motor Co., 755 F.2d 1223, 1229 (6th Cir. 1985). Thus, "[n]ot all of these factors fully need to be established for an injunction to be proper," and no single factor is to be "given controlling weight." Michigan State AFLCIO v. Miller, 103 F.3d 1240, 1249 (6th Cir. 1997). Accord, Blue Cross & Blue Shield Mutual of Ohio v. Columbia/HCA Healthcare et al., 110 F.3d 318, 334 (6th Cir.1997) ("none of the four factors is to be deemed conclusive on its own [and] each need not be viewed in isolation from the others, solely as an independent variable").

One aspect of the analysis is certain: a preliminary injunction shall not issue where there is no likelihood of success on the merits. Sandison v. Michigan High School Athletic Association, 64 F.3d 1026, 1037 (6th Cir.1995). The certitude of success on the merits need not, however, be absolute. The Sixth Circuit recognizes that a preliminary injunction may be granted where the moving party only shows "sufficiently serious questions going to the merits to make them a fair ground for litigation and a balance of hardships tipping decidedly toward the party requesting the preliminary relief." Friendship Materials, Inc. v. Michigan Brick, Inc., 679 F.2d 100, 103 (6th Cir.1982) (quoting Sonesta Int'l Hotels Corp. v. Wellington Assocs., 483 F.2d 247, 250 (2nd Cir.1973)). As detailed below, I conclude there are "sufficiently serious questions going to the merits" of plaintiffs' allegations and a balance of hardships "tipping decidedly" toward plaintiffs.

1. Likelihood of Success on the Merits

a. The Fourth Amendment Applies to this Situation

A threshold question is whether the Fourth Amendment applies to the case at bar. I have little difficulty in concluding that it does. The Fourth Amendment, which applies to citizens and aliens alike, Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 273, 93 S.Ct. 2535, 37 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973), protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." U.S. Const. amend. IV. State officials must comply with the Fourth Amendment when discharging their official duties; thus, OSHP troopers must act in a manner and under circumstances compatible with the Fourth Amendment.

As its language expressly indicates, the Fourth Amendment "protects two types of expectations, one involving `searches,' the other `seizures.'" United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984). The Fourth Amendment does not bar all contact between the police and citizenry. It does, however, "prevent arbitrary and oppressive interference by enforcement officials with the privacy and personal security of individuals." United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543, 554, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116 (1976). Although "searches and seizures [must] be founded upon an objective justification," no such justification is required where there has been neither a search nor a seizure. United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 551, 100 S.Ct. 1870, 64 L.Ed.2d 497 (1980). As stated in Mendenhall:

As long as a person to whom questions are put remains free to disregard the questions and walk away, there has been no intrusion upon that person's liberty or privacy as would under the Constitution require some particularized and objective justification ... We conclude that a person has been seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment only if, in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave.

Id. 446 U.S. at 553-54. An officer "seizes" an individual only where the officer impairs the individual's right to leave. When a seizure occurs, the Fourth Amendment requires that the seizure have been reasonable. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).

Moreover, even though a seizure was lawful, it can become unlawful by becoming unreasonably intrusive or prolonged. The scope and duration of a seizure must reasonably relate to the underlying justification for the seizure. Once that justification expires, the seizure must end. As stated by the Supreme Court in Terry, 392 U.S. at 1920, "in determining whether the seizure and search were `unreasonable' [the] inquiry is a dual one — whether the officer's action was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." Thus, "the scope of the search must be `strictly tied to and justified by' the circumstances which rendered its initiation possible." Id. 392 U.S. at 19. An officer must confine his or her investigation "strictly to what was minimally necessary" to achieve the justified, proper objective. Id. at 30. See also Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 500, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983) (officer's search must be "tied to and justified by the circumstances which rendered its initiation possible").

In light of the foregoing, the traffic stops giving rise to this lawsuit indisputably were seizures under the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 95 S.Ct. 2574, 45 L.Ed.2d 607 (1975) (traffic stops implicate the Fourth Amendment). Even if the stops complied with the Fourth Amendment, the officers' subsequent activities must also have met Fourth Amendment requirements: i.e., those further actions must have reasonably been related to the purpose — to enforce Ohio's traffic laws — of the stop. Terry, 392 U.S. at 30.

b. Stopping, Detaining, and Searching Motorists Based on Hispanic Origin or Appearance

The first issue — whether the officer was justified in stopping the plaintiffs' vehicle — asks if "the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search `warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief' that the action taken was appropriate." Id. 392 U.S. at 21-22....