NAACP of San Jose/ Silicon Valley v. City Of San Jose

Background

This civil-rights case arose from protests in San Jose on May 29 and 30, 2020. The plaintiffs included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People of San Jose/Silicon Valley, the San Jose Peace and Justice Center, and eleven individual plaintiffs. They alleged violations of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments, including excessive force, retaliation for protected speech, and failure to intervene. They also asserted claims under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, California’s Bane Act and Ralph Act, and state-law claims for assault and battery and negligence.

The defendants moved for summary judgment on all claims. Summary judgment is a decision before trial that is appropriate when the evidence shows no genuine dispute over facts that could affect the outcome and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

Fourth Amendment excessive-force claims

The court rejected defendants’ general argument that force used to disperse protesters could not be a seizure because officers intended to disperse rather than restrain them. Relying on Ninth Circuit precedent, the court held that the relevant question is objective: officers’ subjective intent to disperse the crowd does not prevent intentionally fired projectiles or other force from constituting a seizure.

The court denied summary judgment on Acosta’s excessive-force claim against Yuen. Although the evidence did not establish that Nguyen or Grodin fired the projectile that struck Acosta, it created a factual issue concerning Yuen. The court also found a triable issue over whether the force was reasonable and held that qualified immunity did not protect Yuen because Ninth Circuit precedent clearly established that an officer could not fire a projectile posing a risk of serious harm toward non-threatening people who had committed, at most, minor offenses.

The court denied summary judgment on Swift’s excessive-force claims against Curry and Ayala, finding factual disputes about whether their baton strikes and shoves were reasonable. It denied summary judgment on Vasquez’s claim against Simonini, Allen’s claim against Yuen, and Flores’s claim against Gaona. The court concluded that the evidence could support findings that these plaintiffs were subjected to excessive force while protesting and that qualified immunity did not resolve those claims.

The court granted summary judgment on all claims brought by Maldonado, Naemeh, Cañas, Riles, and Cuellar. Among other reasons, the court found that the plaintiffs could not adequately identify the officers who caused their injuries, or that the claims were otherwise unsupported. The court also granted judgment on particular claims against defendants who were not properly included, were not tied to the alleged force, or were not supported by the plaintiffs’ evidence. Cartwright’s Fourth Amendment, Americans with Disabilities Act, and Rehabilitation Act claims also failed because she could not identify the officers who allegedly used force and did not provide evidence that the treatment was because of her disability.

Supervisory and municipal liability

The court granted summary judgment on all claims against Garcia, Knopf, and Matchett. The plaintiffs did not provide sufficient evidence that those defendants were personally involved in the alleged uses of force. The court denied summary judgment on some claims against Dwyer, who acknowledged authorizing the use of certain impact rounds, but granted it for the claims by Swift and Allen because their viable claims did not arise from impact projectiles. The court denied summary judgment on Vasquez’s claim against Tassio, who directed Simonini to use impact projectiles, but granted judgment on Tassio-related claims by Acosta, Swift, Allen, and Flores. The court denied summary judgment on Acosta’s and Allen’s claims against Lopez and granted it on Vasquez’s claims against Lopez and Acosta’s claims against Lynch.

Under the municipal-liability rule commonly called a Monell claim, a city may be liable under section 1983 for constitutional violations resulting from an official policy or custom. The court denied summary judgment on the Fourth Amendment municipal-liability claims by Acosta, Vasquez, and Flores, finding a triable issue over whether San Jose had an unconstitutional policy or custom of using impact projectiles against non-threatening protesters. It granted summary judgment on the City’s claims by Swift and Allen because their viable claims did not involve impact projectiles.

First Amendment and state-law claims

The court found that a reasonable jury could conclude that protected protest activity was a substantial or motivating factor in the force used against Acosta, Swift, Vasquez, Allen, and Flores. It therefore denied summary judgment on their First Amendment claims against the specified individual officers: Yuen for Acosta and Allen, Curry and Ayala for Swift, Simonini for Vasquez, and Gaona for Flores. It granted summary judgment on all other First Amendment claims, including those against the supervisors and the City, because the plaintiffs had not shown that viewpoint expression motivated those defendants’ conduct or the City’s policy.

The court granted summary judgment on the failure-to-intervene claim because the evidence did not show that the named officers had a realistic opportunity to prevent the alleged violations. For the plaintiffs whose Fourth Amendment claims survived, the court also denied summary judgment on related Bane Act, assault-and-battery, and negligence claims, and denied summary judgment on their related Ralph Act claims to the extent those claims were based on viewpoint discrimination. The court granted summary judgment on the remaining state-law claims.

Disposition

The court granted in part and denied in part defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The surviving claims are limited to those listed in the order: claims by Acosta, Swift, Vasquez, Allen, and Flores against specified officers, supervisors, and the City under the Fourth Amendment, First Amendment, Bane Act, Ralph Act, and state-law assault-and-battery and negligence theories. As to all other claims asserted by all plaintiffs against all defendants, the motion was granted.