Justia U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff filed suit against his employer, NS, alleging that NS suspended him on the basis of his race in violation of 42 U.S.C. 1981. The district court granted summary judgment to NS and then plaintiff filed a second suit, claiming that NS in fact suspended him for reporting rail safety offenses, in violation of the whistleblower protection provision of the Federal Railroad Safety Act (FRSA), 49 U.S.C. 20109. The district court again granted summary judgment to NS. The court concluded, however, that the Election of Remedies provision in the FRSA does not bar plaintiff's second suit. The court explained that a suspension on the basis of race is not “the same allegedly unlawful act” as a suspension in retaliation for FRSA whistleblowing. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Lee v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against his former employer, Carilion, alleging wrongful termination for engaging in protected activity, including opposing an unlawful employment practice, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq. The district court dismissed the complaint, holding that no individual activity in which plaintiff engaged by itself constituted protected oppositional conduct and that the so called “manager rule,” in any event, prevented an employee whose job responsibilities included reporting discrimination claims from seeking protection under Title VII’s anti-retaliation provision. The court held, however, that the proper test for analyzing oppositional conduct requires consideration of the employee’s course of conduct as a whole and that the “manager rule” has no place in Title VII jurisprudence. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "DeMasters v. Carilion Clinic" on Justia Law

After charges against plaintiff were dismissed for alleged violations of South Carolina's anti-robocall statute, S.C. Code Ann. 16-17-446(A), plaintiff filed suit challenging the statute on First Amendment grounds. The statute prohibits only those robocalls that are “for the purpose of making an unsolicited consumer telephone call” or are “of a political nature including, but not limited to, calls relating to political campaigns.” The court found that, under the content-neutrality framework set forth in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, that the anti-robocall statute is a content-based regulation that does not survive strict scrutiny; plaintiff lacks standing to bring compelled-speech and vagueness challenges; and plaintiff's other claims fail due to the presence of probable cause to arrest him. Therefore, the court affirmed the district court’s judgment except for the compelled-speech claim, which the court vacated and remanded with instructions to dismiss it. View "Cahaly v. LaRosa, III" on Justia Law

John Doe 2 and Mother Doe, on behalf of John Doe 2's younger brother, filed suit against defendant, the president of the Citadel, under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that defendant violated an affirmative duty to protect them under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Louis “Skip” ReVille provided childcare for the Doe family and sexually abused the two minor boys. ReVille, a graduate of the Citadel, previously worked as a counselor at the Citadel's youth summer camp. Plaintiffs contend that defendant did not report a complaint that a counselor at the summer camp - later identified as ReVille - had molested a child attending the camp. Plaintiffs argued that defendant's actions allowed ReVille to continue his abuse of Doe 2 and Doe 3. The court granted summary judgment in favor of defendant. The court affirmed, concluding that the state-created danger doctrine does not impose liability on defendant for ReVille’s ongoing abuse of the Does; while defendant's undisputed failure to act brought dishonor to him and The Citadel, it did not create a constitutional cause of action; and defendant's alleged conduct neither created nor increased the danger ReVille already posed to the Does, and in any event, did not constitute cognizable affirmative acts with respect to ReVille’s abuse of the Does. View "Doe 2 v. Rosa" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a Title VII employment discrimination suit, seeking to recover for sexual harassment she allegedly experienced while working at a Drive factory. Drive argued that plaintiff was actually employed by a temporary staffing agency, ResourceMFG, and therefore Drive was not an “employer” subject to Title VII liability. Although the district court acknowledged that in some instances an employee can have multiple “employers” for Title VII purposes, it concluded that in this case ResourceMFG was plaintiff’s sole employer. The court agreed with the district court and its sister circuits and concluded that Title VII provides for joint employer liability. The court also concluded that the so-called “hybrid” test, which considers both the common law of agency and the economic realities of employment, is the correct means to apply the joint employment doctrine to the facts of a case. In this case, the district court did not explicitly use the "hybrid" test in its opinion and thus the court articulated the hybrid test for the joint employment context and applied it to the facts of this case, concluding that Drive was indeed plaintiff's employer. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to Drive and remanded for further consideration of plaintiff's Title VII claims. View "Butler v. Drive Automotive Indus." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an inmate, appealed from the dismissal of his pro se claims against the VDOC, alleging that defendants violated his free exercise rights under the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq., by prohibiting him from consuming wine during communion, requiring him to work on Sabbath days, and assigning him non-Christian cellmates. Plaintiff also alleged that defendants were deliberately indifferent to his medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court dismissed sua sponte plaintiff's Sabbath claims, cell assignment claims, and deliberate indifference claim, and granted defendants summary judgment on the communion wine claim. The court reversed the district court's summary dismissal of the First Amendment wine communion claim where, as the parties agree, plaintiff did not have the opportunity to brief the issue of whether the wine ban substantially burdened his religious exercise and the record is insufficient to support the conclusion that the wine ban is the least restrictive means to address the government’s purported security interest. The court further concluded that plaintiff has successfully alleged facts supporting his remaining claims. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded. View "Jehovah v. Clarke" on Justia Law

Plaintiff is a member of the nation of Gods and Earths (NOGE), a group whose adherents are also known as "Five Percenters." Plaintiff participated in a prison riot in 1995 with other Fiver Percenters and was placed in solitary confinement, where he has remained for 20 years. Plaintiff challenged his confinement under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc-1, claiming that a Department policy required him to renounce his affiliation with the NOGE, which he alleges is a religion, before the Department will release him from solitary confinement. Plaintiff also argued that defendants violated his rights to procedural due process. The district court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment. The court held that plaintiff's 20-year period of solitary confinement amounts to atypical and significant hardship in relation to the general population and implicates a liberty interest in avoiding security detention. Further, there is a triable dispute as to whether the Department’s process for determining which inmates are fit for release from security detention meets the minimum requirements of procedural due process. Accordingly, the court reversed as to this claim and affirmed as to the RLUIPA claim. View "Incumaa v. Stirling" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, an African-American flight attendant, filed suit alleging that United Airlines failed to adequately respond to a racist death threat left in her company mailbox. The district court concluded that plaintiff was subjected to a racially hostile work environment, but granted summary judgment to the airline after deciding that it was not liable for the offensive conduct. The court concluded that the district court properly concluded that a reasonable jury could properly construe the notes at issue as racially-tinged death threats so severe that it does not matter they were not pervasive. The court concluded that the anonymous nature of severe threats or acts of harassment may, in fact, heighten what is required of an employer, particularly in circumstances where the harassment occurs inside a secure space accessible to only company-authorized individuals. In this case, the conduct at issue is some of the most serious imaginable in the workplace – an unmistakable threat of deadly violence against an individual based on her race, occurring in the particularly sensitive space of an airport. Given the severity of the threat, a reasonable jury could find that United’s response was neither prompt nor reasonably calculated to end the harassment. Indeed, a reasonable jury could find that United’s response was instead reluctant and reactive, intended to minimize any disruption to day-to-day operations instead of identifying a perpetrator and deterring future harassment. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded for further proceedings. View "Pryor v. United Air Lines, Inc." on Justia Law

Petitioner, a native and citizen of El Salvador, seeks review of the BIA's decision dismissing her appeal from an IJ's order of removal. At issue is the IJ's denial of petitioner's motion to suppress certain evidence and to terminate the removal proceeding. The court held that the exclusionary rule applies to egregious violations of the Fourth Amendment. The court joined the Second, Third, and Eighth Circuits and applied a totality of the circumstances test to determine the egregiousness standard. The court rejected petitioner's claim that her Fourth Amendment rights were violated when the search warrant at issue was invalid because it identified the premises as single-family home as oppose to a multi-unit dwelling. The court rejected petitioner's alternative arguments, concluding that petitioner's claims do not make out a constitutional violation, let alone an egregious one. The court held, however, that the nighttime execution of a daytime warrant violates the Fourth Amendment, absent consent or exigent circumstances. In this case, the 5:00 a.m. search of the premises violated the Fourth Amendment. The court held that, although the nighttime execution of the daytime warrant violated petitioner’s Fourth Amendment rights, such violation was not egregious under the totality of the circumstances. The court rejected petitioner's remaining claims and denied the petition for review. View "Yanez-Marquez v. Lynch" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against the Board, alleging that it violated his rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), 29 U.S.C. 2601 et seq., and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq. Plaintiff was involved in an incident with a student at the high school where he was employed as an assistant principal. Plaintiff subsequently filed for medical leaves due to his post-traumatic stress disorder which was related to the CPS investigation that occurred after the incident. Plaintiff was also transferred to a different school. The court concluded that the evidence demonstrated that the Board did not interfere with plaintiff's FMLA rights and did not retaliate against plaintiff for exercising such rights. The court also rejected plaintiff's ADA claim, concluding that evidence demonstrated that the Board did not discriminate nor retaliate against him based on his disability. Further, the Board did not fail to accommodate plaintiff's condition. View "Adams v. Anne Arundel Cnty. Pub. Sch." on Justia Law