Smith v. City of Minneapolis

Background

Brenda Ann Smith alleged that she and her daughter attended a protest in Minneapolis on May 30, 2020, during a city curfew issued after fires and unrest following George Floyd’s death. According to the amended complaint, police officers used tear gas and less-lethal 40mm foam projectiles to disperse protesters. Smith alleged that officers shot her in the right foot while she was trying to leave, causing an ankle injury and broken toe, and that she later required ankle surgery.

The amended complaint asserted 11 claims against the City of Minneapolis and unidentified Minneapolis Police Department officers. The City moved to dismiss four claims brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983: procedural due process, freedom of movement and presence in public, substantive due process and equal protection, and freedom of speech and assembly. The City also moved to dismiss Smith’s municipal-liability claim to the extent it depended on those § 1983 claims.

Court’s analysis

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), the court considered whether the amended complaint alleged enough plausible facts to support relief, accepting plausible factual allegations as true at this stage.

Procedural due process. Smith alleged that officers violated procedural due process by failing to tell her that she was being seized before using force. She relied on Minnesota statutes concerning the minimum restraint allowed during an arrest and when officers may use force to make an arrest. The court held that those statutes did not apply because Smith did not allege that officers attempted to arrest her or that she was arrested. The court also found that Smith offered no support for treating one statute as creating an independent liberty interest and concluded that the claim duplicated an excessive-force claim that was not at issue in this motion. The court granted the City’s motion as to this claim.

Freedom of movement and speech and assembly. Smith challenged Minneapolis’s curfew under the Fourteenth Amendment and the First Amendment. The court held that Smith lacked standing, meaning she did not establish the required connection between the City’s challenged conduct, her injury, and a possible court remedy. Minnesota had imposed a concurrent, identical curfew, but Smith did not challenge that state curfew. The court therefore concluded that she could not show that her injury was traceable to Minneapolis’s curfew or that a favorable ruling against the City would remedy it. The court also stated that, regardless, Smith had not plausibly alleged that the City’s curfew was not narrowly tailored or that it failed to leave alternative channels for expression. The court granted the City’s motion as to these claims.

Substantive due process and equal protection. Smith alleged that the curfew was enforced based on race and the content of expression. The court explained that a substantive-due-process claim requires an identifiable liberty or property interest, and that Smith identified the liberty interest allegedly affected by being shot in the foot. But the court held that Smith did not allege that any racial, ideological, or other group of protesters received better treatment than she did, or that she was treated differently from similarly situated people. The court granted the City’s motion as to this claim.

Municipal liability. The court understood Smith’s municipal-liability claim to rely on her other claims, including allegations concerning the curfew and excessive force. The court granted the City’s motion as to the municipal-liability claim to the extent it relied on the § 1983 claims addressed in the motion. It denied the motion without prejudice to the extent the municipal-liability claim relied on other claims against the unidentified officers that had not yet been litigated.

Disposition

The court ordered that the City’s partial motion to dismiss was granted in part and denied without prejudice in part. The opinion did not identify the unnamed officers, who had not entered an appearance. Judge Paul A. Magnuson signed the memorandum and order.