Parada v. Anoka Cnty.
| Decision Date | 30 November 2022 |
| Docket Number | 21-3082 |
| Parties | Myriam Parada Plaintiff - Appellee v. Anoka County; James Stuart, Anoka County Sheriff, All individuals being sued in their individual and official capacity Defendants - Appellants Nikolas Oman, Coon Rapids Police Officer, All individuals being sued in their individual and official capacity; City of Coon Rapids; John Doe, unknown/unnamed defendant s, All individuals being sued in their individual and official capacity; Jane Doe, unknown/unnamed defendant s, All individuals being sued in their individual and official capacity; Coon Rapids Police Department Defendant s State of Minnesota Amicus on Behalf of Appellee(s) |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Submitted: March 17, 2022
Appeal from United States District Court for the District of Minnesota Before GRASZ, STRAS, and KOBES, Circuit Judges.
The Anoka County Jail referred every detainee born outside the United States, including Myriam Parada, to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The district court[1] determined that this policy violates the Equal Protection Clause, and a jury awarded her $30,000 on a false-imprisonment theory. We affirm.
Parada ended up in the Anoka County Jail after an officer discovered that she had been driving without a license. While going through the booking process, she had to disclose her country of birth, which was Mexico. Even after deeming her "[r]eady for [r]elease," Anoka County continued to hold her while a deputy contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE.
The delay was due to Anoka County's "unwritten policy requiring its employees to contact ICE every time a foreign-born individual is detained, irrespective of whether the person is a U.S. citizen." (Emphasis added). The way it works is simple: "If the individual [says] they were born abroad, the jail will send ICE a notification" and "attempt[] to wait to start release procedures . . . until [it] hear[s] back," which "could take between 20 minutes and 6 hours." Eventually, after four hours of waiting, the deputies released Parada into ICE custody.
The delay became the basis for Parada's federal lawsuit against Anoka County. One of her claims alleged that discriminating against her based on her country of origin violated the Equal Protection Clause. See U.S Const. amend. XIV, § 1; 42 U.S.C. § 1983. A second was that she was falsely imprisoned. See Kleidon v. Glascock, 10 N.W.2d 394, 397 (Minn. 1943).
Both claims survived summary judgment. The district court concluded that Anoka County's policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment as a matter of law but left the determination of damages for the jury. The false-imprisonment claim went to the jury on both liability and damages, even though Anoka County filed a preverdict motion for judgment as a matter of law. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a).
The damages were a mixed bag. The jury awarded her $30,000 for false imprisonment but gave her only one dollar for the constitutional violation. Despite getting less than she wanted on the federal claim, she received a sizable attorney-fee award totaling $248,218.13. See 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). At the same time, the district court denied Anoka County's renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(b).
Illegal discrimination is at the heart of both of Parada's claims, including the one alleging that Anoka County violated her equal-protection rights. Our review of it is de novo. See Hosna v. Groose, 80 F.3d 298, 303 (8th Cir. 1996).
The district court's conclusion was correct: Anoka County's policy is a classic example of national-origin discrimination. On its face, it treats people differently depending on where they were born. Espinoza v. Farah Mfg. Co., 414 U.S. 86, 88 (1973) (). Those born abroad must wait anywhere from 20 minutes to 6 hours longer while deputies consult ICE.
For those born in the United States, by contrast, there is no call and release is immediate.
Classifications based on alienage are "suspect," meaning they are subject to strict scrutiny. Knapp v. Hanson, 183 F.3d 786, 789 (8th Cir. 1999); see City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432, 440 (1985). For the policy to survive, Anoka County must demonstrate it is "narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest." Johnson v. California, 543 U.S. 499, 509 (2005). We will assume that Anoka County's interest in serving as a good law-enforcement partner to ICE is compelling, even though we have our doubts about it.[2]
The bigger problem, however, is Anoka County's scattershot approach to accomplishing its interest. By its own statistics, more than half of the foreign-born individuals it referred to ICE turned out to be American citizens. It is not hard to figure out why. For one thing, many who are born elsewhere will have already become American citizens. Consider a few examples. By the strict terms of the policy, it would apply to famous actors like Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger-both long-time American citizens-not to mention six former members of the United States Supreme Court. The policy is also underinclusive: it will miss people who are American-born children of foreign diplomats or who have renounced their citizenship, like American-born Jews who have accepted sole citizenship under Israel's Law of Return. See 8 C.F.R. § 101.3 (); 8 U.S.C. § 1481 (loss of citizenship). The point is that Anoka County's chosen means were not "specifically and narrowly framed to accomplish" its interest. Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899, 908 (1996) (citation omitted).
It is also significant that Anoka County had national-origin-neutral alternatives at its disposal. See Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Educ., 476 U.S. 267, 280 n.6 (1986) ( that narrow tailoring "require[s] consideration" of "lawful alternative and less restrictive means"). Instead of asking a non-targeted question about birthplace, it could have asked detainees directly about their citizenship. Cf. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 223 (1982) (). And for situations in which there was reason to doubt the answer, Anoka County could have adopted a reasonable-suspicion-like requirement for making referrals to ICE based on "specific and articulable facts." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21 (1968). The failure to consider these alternatives provides further evidence that it did not adopt a narrowly tailored policy. See City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 507 (1989) ().
According to the jury, the unwritten policy also led to Parada's false imprisonment. Except now the question is less about fit and more about how Anoka County litigated the case. Its argument is that the district court should have granted judgment as a matter of law. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50. It has several theories why, and we review de novo whether any of them work. See Klingenberg v. Vulcan Ladder USA, LLC, 936 F.3d 824, 830 (8th Cir. 2019).
Procedural history matters, especially in a case like this one. Once Parada finished presenting her case, Anoka County brought its first motion for judgment as a matter of law. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a) (allowing pre-judgment motions). The argument, at least at that point, was that the evidence did not match the complaint. According to Anoka County, Parada had started with a vicarious-liability theory, only to switch to a direct-liability theory at trial. The district court disagreed but invited Anoka County to renew its motion after trial. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(b) (allowing "renewed motion[s]").
In its post-verdict motion, Anoka County took the district court up on its invitation and added two new arguments. One was a request for official immunity, but it came too late. See Hyundai Motor Fin. Co. v. McKay Motors I, LLC, 574 F.3d 637, 640-41 (8th Cir. 2009) ().
The other was a request for statutory immunity. The district court gave Anoka County the benefit of the doubt and reviewed this one on the merits, but only because it was "inextricably intertwined" with the issues that had been raised in the earlier motion. Ultimately, however, the court ruled that statutory immunity was unavailable because the conduct arose out of an "unprotected" operational-level decision. See Holmquist v. State, 425 N.W.2d 230, 232 (Minn. 1988) ().
Hoping that the third time is the charm, Anoka County has appealed. It again argues that Parada changed theories during trial. There are two reasons why this argument fares no better now than it did before.
The first is that, fairly read, Parada's complaint was broad enough to contemplate a direct-liability theory. She brought the false-imprisonment claim against "all [defendants" based on "an unconstitutional policy, practice, or custom, caused by a lack of supervision, failure to train, or other act or omission." (Emphasis added). Although the complaint is hardly a model of clarity, Anoka County is undeniably a defendant and the "other act[s] or omission[s]" could plausibly include what it did to directly harm Parada.
The second is that, even if the complaint was unclear, the district court found that Anoka County had impliedly consented to a trial on a...
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