Alliance to End Repression v. City of Chicago, 74 C 3268.
| Decision Date | 30 September 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 74 C 3268.,No. 75 C 3295.,74 C 3268.,75 C 3295. |
| Citation | 66 F.Supp.2d 899 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
| Parties | ALLIANCE TO END REPRESSION, et al., Plaintiffs, v. The CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants. American Civil Liberties Union, et al. Plaintiffs, v. The City of Chicago, et al., Defendants. |
Edward J. Koziboski, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs.
Edward W. Feldman, Thomas M. Staunton, Miller, Shakman, Hamilton, Kurtzon & Shlifke, Chicago, IL, Harry Joshua Nelson, Butler, Rubin, Saltarelli & Boyd, Chicago, IL, Paul Anthony Tanzillo, McBreen, Kopko, McKay & Nora, Chicago, IL, Imani Chiphe, Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU, Inc., Chicago, IL, Edward M. Ordonez, Davida Kay Forrest, Sanchez & Daniels, Chicago, IL, Howard Patrick Morris, Margaret A. Unger, Johnson & Bell, Ltd., Chicago, IL, Kenneth Paul Dobbs, Law Offices of Kenneth P. Dobbs, Chicago, IL, Roger Sanford Hutchison, Chicago, IL, Bruce William Melton, Ellen M. Babbitt, Babbitt & Melton, Chicago, IL, for defendant Albert J. Heitman.
R. Joseph Sher, Torts Branch Civil Division, Washington, DC, for F.B.I.
Before the court are the parties objections to a Report and Recommendation ("R & R") issued by Magistrate Judge Bobrick on March 9, 1999. Defendant City of Chicago ("City") asks the court to modify a consent decree entered into nearly twenty years ago. Both sets of plaintiffs, the Alliance to End Repression ("Alliance") and the American Civil Liberties Union ("ACLU") filed a motion with the court to enforce the consent decree. In his R & R, Judge Bobrick denied defendant's motion. For the reasons set forth below, the court adopts Judge Bobrick's R & R as modified and denies defendant's motion to modify the consent decree.
Magistrate Bobrick does an excellent job detailing the long history of this case and the facts involved. Therefore, the court will not burden the parties, long familiar with this litigation, with a protracted review of what has happened thus far. Instead, the court will simply summarize the points most salient to the issues presented by the current motions.1
The consent decree at issue here stems from two prior class action suits in which a number of organizations claimed the City and its agents abridged their First Amendment rights through use of various investigative practices. The consent decree provides extensive regulations intended to govern the City's investigation of political and other activities engaged in by plaintiffs. As Judge Bobrick noted,
the heart of the decree pertains to police department investigations that are directed toward First Amendment activity, setting out procedures for such investigations (citation omitted) ... It prohibits the gathering of First Amendment information unless it is so necessary to and inseparable from an investigation that its gathering cannot be avoided.... Investigations will be terminated when there is no longer reasonable suspicion of a crime, the investigation's purpose has been achieved, or written authorization has expired... At the conclusion of the investigation, all First Amendment information shall be purged — that is, placed in sealed files — unless there remains reasonable suspicion of a crime and there is a nexus between that and the exercise of First Amendment rights.
(Mag. Bobrick's R & R at 10.) ("R & R"); see also Alliance, 561 F.Supp. 537 (N.D.Ill. 1982) ("Alliance I") The decree also provided various procedures whereby the police would obtain authorizations to investigate protected First Amendment activity. It permits the criminal investigation of First Amendment conduct to obtain evidence of ongoing, past or potential criminal activity where reasonable suspicion exists and a variety of conditions, intended as procedural safeguards, are met. Furthermore, when the police discover that a group is advocating the use of unlawful force in furtherance of the First Amendment, the consent decree permits the City to conduct a brief preliminary investigation that can be extended where use of violence is a credible threat. The decree requires independent audits of police activity and compliance is monitored by the Chicago Police Board.
The City now asks the court to modify the consent decree under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). Arguing that Magistrate Bobrick incorrectly recommends denial of its motion, the City urges the court to permit modification of the decree. Plaintiffs of course ask the court to adopt Magistrate Bobrick's R & R and continue enforcement of the consent decree.
The United States Magistrates Act, as amended, allows district court judges to refer pre-trial motions to magistrate judges, who read the submissions of the parties, hold hearings if necessary, and prepare reports and recommendations. See 28 U.S.C. § 631 et seq. The appropriate standard of review of the magistrate judge's recommendation is defined by 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1). For dispositive motions, such as this one, the statute requires that the district court judge "make a de novo determination of those portions of the [magistrate judge's] ... recommendations to which objection is made." 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1). "A district judge may accept, reject, or modify, in whole or in part, the findings or recommendations made by the magistrate." Id.
Referring motions to magistrate judges is intended to help ease the heavy workloads of the district courts and to aid in the efficient resolution of the disputes. Anna Ready Mix, Inc. v. N.E. Pierson Constr. Co., 747 F.Supp. 1299, 1302-03 (S.D.Ill.1990). Efficiency in judicial administration requires that all arguments be presented to the magistrate judge in the first instance. Anna Ready Mix, 747 F.Supp. at 1303. The court need not conduct a new hearing, but must give "fresh consideration to those issues to which specific objections have been made." Continental Bank, N.A. v. Everett, No. 90 C 1476, 1994 WL 171660, *1 (N.D.Ill. Mar. 30, 1994), citing 12 Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure, § 3076.8. It is with these principles in mind that the court reviews each party's objections.
In essence, Magistrate Judge Bobrick ruled that the City's motion must be denied because it fails to meet the burdens established by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b).2 Under Rule 60(b)(5), "the court may relieve a party ... from a final judgment, order, or proceeding for the following reasons ... (5) the judgment has been satisfied, released, or discharged, or a prior judgment upon which it is based has been reversed or otherwise vacated, or it is no longer equitable that the judgment should have prospective application" Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b)(5). The Supreme Court has construed Rule 60(b) to require a party seeking modification of a consent decree to Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367, 382, 112 S.Ct. 748, 116 L.Ed.2d 867 (1992).
Judge Bobrick suggests that defendant's motion can be denied on two separate bases: (1) the City's motion is untimely and therefore the court has no jurisdiction to consider it and (2) under Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367, 112 S.Ct. 748, 116 L.Ed.2d 867 (1992), the City cannot establish that modification is warranted. (R & R at 17, 21.) The following objections have been submitted to the court.
I. City's Objections
According to the City, Judge Bobrick has wrongly concluded that it fails to satisfy the requirements of Rule 60(b). Defendant maintains that in light of the circumstances, its filing of the Rule 60(b) motion is timely and that it has met the burdens established by Rufo.
Magistrate Bobrick rightly points out that Federal Rule of Procedure 60(b) provides that a motion brought under this provision "shall be made within a reasonable time." Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b). The City's principal argument on the merits is that a Seventh Circuit opinion issued in 1984 warrants a modification of the consent decree. Judge Bobrick arrives at the very reasonable conclusion that thirteen years (from 1984 to 1997 when the City filed its motion to modify the consent decree) "is not just an unreasonable delay in filing such a motion, but an incredibly unreasonable delay." (R & R at 14.) Citing several cases in which the court denies a party's request to modify judgment for unreasonable delay, Judge Bobrick suggests that dismissal of the City's request would be appropriate here as well. U.S. v. Deutsch, 981 F.2d 299, 302 (7th Cir.1992) (two-year delay unreasonable); Lee v. Village of River Forest, 936 F.2d 976, 980 (7th Cir.1991) (); Kagan v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 795 F.2d 601, 610 (7th Cir.1986) (four month delay).
In response to Magistrate Bobrick's concerns, the City asserts that its delay was reasonable "both because it wished to establish that its prior and quite egregious investigation practices had been completely eliminated before seeking modification of the doctrine, and because the law governing the modification of the decree in 1984 contained a significantly more onerous standard for modification than the standard subsequently adopted by the Supreme Court in Rufo." (Def's Mem. at 2.) While courts tend to find multi-year delays inexcusable, "[t]here is no hard and fast rule as to how much time is reasonable for the filing of a Rule 60(b)(6) motion; courts have found periods of as little as a few months unreasonable, and have found periods of as long as three years reasonable."...
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