Brown, et al v. City of Oneonta
| Decision Date | 04 June 1999 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 98-9375 |
| Citation | 195 F.3d 111 |
| Parties | (2nd Cir. 1999) RICKY BROWN, on behalf of himself and all other persons similarly situated; JAMEL CHAMPEN, on behalf of himself and all other persons similarly situated; SHERYL CHAMPEN, on behalf of herself and all other persons similarly situated; HOPETON GORDON, on behalf of himself and all other persons similarly situated; JEAN CANTAVE, on behalf of himself and all other persons similarly situated; RAISHAWN MORRIS, on behalf of himself and all other persons similarly situated; TIM RICHARDSON, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; DARRYL TAYLOR, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; ROBERT WALKER, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; CLEMENT MALLORY, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; RONALD SANCHEZ, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; DARNELL LEMONS, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; JOHN BUTLER, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; JASON CHILDS, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; PAUL HEYWARD, JR., on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; RONALD JENNINGS, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; PAUL HOWE, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; BUBU DEMASIO, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; WILSON ACOSTA, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; CHRIS HOLLAND, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; JERMAINE ADAMS, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; FELIX FRANCIS, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; DANIEL SONTAG, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; RONALD LYNCH, on behalf of themselves and all other persons similarly situated; KENNETH McCLAIN, on behalf of themselves and all other |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Appeal from a judgment in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (McAvoy, Chief Judge), dismissing some claims and granting summary judgment for defendants on other claims arising from plaintiffs' interactions with police authorities during an investigation conducted by the New York State and Oneonta Police Departments based on a victim's description of a suspect that consisted primarily of the suspect's race.
AFFIRMED in part, VACATED in part, and REMANDED.
[Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted] D. SCOTT BASSINSON, Esq., Whiteman Osterman & Hanna, Albany, N.Y., for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
DENISE A. HARTMAN, Assistant Attorney General (Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York, Peter H. Schiff, Acting Solicitor General, Nancy A. Spiegel, Assistant Attorney General, of counsel), Albany, N.Y., for State Defendants-Appellees.
DANIEL J. STEWART, Esq., Dreyer Boyajian LLP, Albany, N.Y., for City Defendants-Appellees.
Charles Stephen Ralston, Esq., NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (Elaine R. Jones, Director-Counsel, Norman J. Chachkin, David T. Goldberg, Paul K. Sonn, on the brief), New York, N.Y., Arthur N. Eisenberg, New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation, New York, N.Y., and William Goodman, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, N.Y., as Amici Curiae in support of Plaintiffs-Appellants.
James B. Tuttle, Esq., Bohl, Della Rocca & Dorfman, P.C., for the Police Conference of New York, Inc., Amicus Curiae in support of City Defendants-Appellees.
Before: OAKES and WALKER, Circuit Judges, and GOLDBERG,* Judge.
Plaintiffs-appellants, black residents of Oneonta, New York, appeal from the September 9, 1998 judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Thomas J. McAvoy, Chief Judge). Plaintiffs' claims arise from their interactions with police authorities during an investigation conducted by the New York State and Oneonta Police Departments based on a victim's description of a suspect that consisted primarily of the suspect's race. Plaintiffs asserted claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983 alleging violations of the Equal Protection Clause and the Fourth Amendment, claims under 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1985(3) and 1986, and other related federal and state causes of action. The district court granted summary judgment for defendants on some of plaintiffs' claims and dismissed others on the pleadings, and the parties stipulated to the discontinuance and dismissal of the remaining claims.
This case bears on the question of the extent to which law enforcement officials may utilize race in their investigation of a crime. We hold that under the circumstances of this case, where law enforcement officials possessed a description of a criminal suspect, even though that description consisted primarily of the suspect's race and gender, absent other evidence of discriminatory racial animus, they could act on the basis of that description without violating the Equal Protection Clause. Accordingly, we affirm the dismissal of plaintiffs' 1983 claims under the Fourteenth Amendment as well as their claims under 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1985(3) and 1986.
Police action is still subject to the constraints of the Fourth Amendment, however, and a description of race and gender alone will rarely provide reasonable suspicion justifying a police search or seizure. In this case, certain individual plaintiffs were subjected to seizures by defendant law enforcement officials, and those individuals may proceed with their claims under the Fourth Amendment.
Oneonta, a small town in upstate New York about sixty miles west of Albany, has about 10,000 full-time residents. In addition, some 7,500 students attend and reside at the State University of New York College at Oneonta ("SUCO"). The people in Oneonta are for the most part white. Fewer than three hundred blacks live in the town, and just two percent of the students at SUCO are black.
On September 4, 1992, shortly before 2:00 a.m., someone broke into a house just outside Oneonta and attacked a seventy-seven-year-old woman. The woman told the police who responded to the scene that she could not identify her assailant's face, but that he was wielding a knife; that he was a black man, based on her view of his hand and forearm; and that he was young, because of the speed with which he...
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