Davila v. N. Reg'l Joint Police Bd.
| Decision Date | 28 July 2014 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 2:14-00070,Civil Action No. 2:13-cv-00070 |
| Parties | ANGELICA DAVILA, Plaintiff, v. NORTHERN REGIONAL JOINT POLICE BOARD, et al, Defendants. ANGELICA DAVILA, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania |
OPINION
This dispute is back front-and-center on the Court's docket with the filing of a second lawsuit against the United States and another round of Motions, some new, others travelling old ground. Angelica Davila ("Ms. Davila") originally filed suit against the Northern Regional Joint Police Board ("Police Board"), two Police Board officers, a Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") officer, and the Allegheny County Jail ("the Jail"), alleging the violation of her rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, actionable via 42 U.S.C. § 1983. She claimed that those parties violated her federalconstitutional rights in conjunction with a traffic stop which she somewhat generally asserted was based on her Hispanic heritage and led to her seizure and custody without probable cause.
On October 21, 2013, in a lengthy Opinion1, the Court dismissed Ms. Davila's claims against Police Board Sergeant John Sicilia and the Jail for failing to plausibly state a cause of action, and against ICE Agent Brianna Tetrault ("Agent Tetrault") under the doctrine of qualified immunity. See ECF No. 84; Davila v. N. Joint Reg'l Police Bd., 979 F.Supp.2d 612 (W.D. Pa. 2013) . Then, on January 16, 2014, Ms. Davila filed suit against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA"), 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2671 et seq., making claims of false arrest, false imprisonment, and negligence, based on ICE agents' alleged role in her detention and imprisonment. 2:14-cv-00070-MRH, ECF No. 1. Due to the cases' shared factual nexus, the Court consolidated them, and Ms. Davila later filed an Amended Complaint ("AC") against the United States. ECF No. 109.
Then came our Court of Appeals' decision in Galarza v. Szalczyk, 745 F.3d 634 (3d Cir. 2014) . In Galarza, the district court dismissed Section 1983 municipal liability claims against a county jail on the grounds that the jail's alleged custom or practice of enforcing all immigration detainers it received from ICE could not be unconstitutional, because such a policy was "consistent with federal statutes and regulations." Galarza v. Szalczyk, 2012 WL 1080020, at *18 (E.D. Pa. Mar. 30, 2012). More specifically, the district court concluded that the language of 8 C.F.R. § 287.7 - which provides that, upon a determination by a federal officer to issue an immigration detainer to a local government agency, such agency "shall maintain custody of the alien for a period not to exceed 48 hours" - required state and local law enforcement agencies to hold persons subject to an ICE detainer in custody. Id. at * 19.
The Third Circuit directly refuted that conclusion, holding that the regulatory language the district court focused on was not a mandatory command that deprived a local law enforcement agency of all discretion in determining whether to detain a suspected alien, but merely an indication that if the agency held that individual pursuant to the detainer, any such detention could not exceed 48 hours. Galarza, 745 F.3d at 639-42. According to the majority for a divided court of appeals, other, more relevant provisions in the Regulation described immigration detainers as serving to "advise" other agencies and as being in the nature of "requests," and other circuits had uniformly classified such detainers as "requests." Id. The court found that construction to be additionally supported by the anti-commandeering principle of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers not explicitly conferred to the federal government for the states.2 Id. at 643-45.
A barrage of motions in this case followed Galarza in short order. First, Ms. Davila filed a Motion for Reconsideration of the portion of the Court's Order dismissing her claims against the Jail. ECF No. 111. In its previous Opinion, the Court, citing the Galarza district court's opinion, wrote:
Davila, 979 F.Supp.2d at 635. Due to the Third Circuit's clarification of the discretionary nature of immigration detainers in Galarza, a basis does now exist for district courts to conclude that a local jail's policy of detaining individuals solely on ICE detainers, including those unsupported by probable cause, could be an unconstitutional practice creating municipal liability under Section 1983. See Miranda-Olivares v. Clackamas Cty., 2014 WL 1414305, at *4-11 (D. Ore. Apr. 11, 2014) ().
If that were not enough to grant Plaintiff's Motion, she also now produces new information, which she credibly demonstrates had previously eluded her reasonable efforts to discern, indicating that the Jail knew or should have known that Ms. Davila was wrongfully detained approximately eight (8) hours before her actual release. That information, contained in documents produced early in the discovery process3, indicates that the Jail received a fax from ICE at 11:05 p.m. on the night of Ms. Davila's arrest, ordering her release approximately two and a half hours after she was transported to the Jail, and that the Jail had a copy of her lawful permanent resident ("LPR") card and other proof of her legal residence. See ECF Nos. 112-1 - 112-5.
A court should grant reconsideration of a prior order if the moving party demonstrates (1) an intervening change in the controlling law; (2) the existence of new evidence that was unavailable when the court issued its order; or (3) the need to correct a clear error of law or fact or to prevent a manifest injustice. Max's Seafood Cafe by Lou-Ann, Inc. v. Quinteros, 176 F.3d669, 677 (3d Cir. 1999) (internal citation omitted). Ms. Davila has identified a change in the controlling law (Galarza) and produced new and previously unavailable evidence which, considered separately or together, plainly alter the calculus of the issue that was then before the Court, as demonstrated by the reasoning of the Court's own prior Opinion. The Court will therefore grant the Plaintiff's Motion for Reconsideration and vacate its Order dismissing the claims against the Jail. She will be allowed to amend her Complaint to reassert claims against the Jail.
Defendant Police Board Officer Andrew Bienemann ("Officer Bienemann") also filed a Motion for Reconsideration, contending that Galarza constituted a change in the controlling law as to the claims against him, and that the Court made a clear error of law in failing to dismiss Ms. Davila's claims against him on qualified immunity grounds. ECF No. 121.
A government official sued under Section 1983 is entitled to qualified immunity unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated a statutory or constitutional right that was "clearly established" at the time of his alleged conduct. Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2080 (2011). A right is "clearly established" when the statutory or constitutional question confronting the official is "beyond debate" - that is, when every reasonable official in the defendant's shoes would have understood that he was violating that right. Id. at 2083. See also Lane v. Franks, 2014 WL 2765285, at *10 (2014). Officer Bienemann claims Galarza demonstrates that there was no clearly established precedent indicating that he could or should have refused to arrest Ms. Davila on the ICE detainer, and that he is therefore entitled to qualified immunity.
While Officer Bienemann is correct as to the lack of clarity in the law on immigration detainers, Ms. Davila does not ground her claims against him on any alleged violation of a clearly established right related to such detainers. Instead, she claims that Officer Bienemannviolated her right to equal protection, which prohibits selective enforcement of the law, and her right to be free from arrest without probable cause. It is well settled and beyond debate that both of those rights were clearly established at the time of the events at issue. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813; Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 479-80 (1963).
Officer Bienemann points to the language of Plumhoff v. Richard, 134 S.Ct. 2012, 2023 (2014) - which instructs that courts should not define "clearly established" law generally and must instead scrutinize whether the official acted reasonably in the particular circumstances he faced - arguing that had this Court so scrutinized the circumstances he dealt with during the traffic stop in question, event by event, it should have granted him the benefit of qualified immunity. The Court disagrees. Ms. Davila alleges that, right off the bat, Officer Bienemann committed a constitutional violation by pulling her over because of her Hispanic ethnicity. In its prior opinion, the Court concluded that a plausible, reasonable inference could be drawn from the facts pled that Officer Bienemann "acted with a...
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