Goyette v. City of Minneapolis

Background

The individual plaintiffs were journalists, photographers, and other members of the press. Communications Workers of America, an international labor union representing news-media workers, was also a plaintiff. The defendants relevant to this motion included the City of Minneapolis and Medaria Arradondo, identified as the former Minneapolis Chief of Police. The plaintiffs alleged First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment violations arising from law-enforcement responses to protests following George Floyd’s murder in May 2020.

The plaintiffs sought certification of a class consisting of all members of the news media, as defined in Emergency Executive Order 20-69, who were engaged in news-gathering or reporting activities in Minnesota. They sought certification only for their claims for injunctive relief against the City Defendants. The court noted that fact discovery had closed and that the plaintiffs had not timely served discovery requests on the City Defendants. The court had previously declined to modify the discovery schedule because the plaintiffs had not acted diligently.

Rule 23 Requirements

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a) requires a proposed class to satisfy four prerequisites: numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy of representation. The plaintiffs must also satisfy one of Rule 23(b)’s requirements.

The court found that numerosity was satisfied. Although the plaintiffs offered no evidence for their estimate that the proposed class included hundreds or thousands of people, the City Defendants did not meaningfully dispute that the statewide class definition likely included at least hundreds of journalists.

Commonality

The court held that the plaintiffs failed to establish commonality. Commonality requires claims to depend on a shared factual or legal issue whose resolution could resolve an issue central to all class members’ claims.

The court found that the plaintiffs alleged different types of constitutional injuries and different forms of conduct. Some journalists allegedly were denied access, retaliated against, subjected to excessive force, arrested, or had property seized or destroyed. Others allegedly experienced interference with movement, threats, intimidation, chemical agents, projectiles, or other crowd-control methods. The conduct allegedly occurred at different times, places, and under different circumstances. The plaintiffs did not show that every named plaintiff, or all proposed class members, suffered a common constitutional injury caused by common methods.

The plaintiffs also argued that their injuries resulted from a common unlawful municipal custom or inadequate training. For municipal-custom liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the court described the need to prove a continuing and widespread pattern of unconstitutional conduct, deliberate indifference or tacit authorization by policymakers after notice, and injury caused by that custom. The court found that the plaintiffs primarily relied on vague allegations concerning four incidents from 2002, 2008, 2012, and 2015, with little supporting evidence. It concluded that these incidents, even if true, did not establish a pervasive pattern, policymaker notice, deliberate indifference, or a causal connection to the alleged 2020 violations.

For failure-to-train liability, the court explained that the plaintiffs needed to show inadequate training, deliberate indifference to their rights, and actual injury caused by the training deficiency. The court considered the plaintiffs’ reliance on an After-Action Review and expert opinions but found insufficient evidence of a pattern of similar violations, deliberate indifference, or causation. The court observed that evidence that officers disregarded or violated existing policies could indicate decisions by individual officers rather than a systemic lack of training.

The court therefore concluded that the plaintiffs had not produced the significant proof needed to show a common method or common cause linking the proposed class members’ different constitutional injuries.

Typicality and Class Definition

The court also held that the plaintiffs failed to establish typicality. Their claims arose at different locations and times, involved different officers and agencies, concerned different alleged misconduct and constitutional violations, and could involve different defenses. Resolving the claims would require individualized factual and legal inquiries.

The court further found that the proposed class definition appeared overbroad. It had no time limit and included Minnesota media members who were not engaged in news gathering during the relevant events. Its statewide scope also included people who were not in Minneapolis during the 2020 protests and therefore could not have been harmed by the City Defendants’ alleged conduct. The court stated that narrowing the class to news-media members who gathered or reported news in Minneapolis between May 25 and June 2, 2020, would not cure the other typicality problems.

Other Requirements and Disposition

Because the plaintiffs failed to satisfy commonality and typicality, the court did not address adequacy of representation or the Rule 23(b) requirements.

Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright ordered that the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, docket number 368, was DENIED. The order denied the class-certification motion; it did not state that the underlying case or claims were dismissed.