Civil Rights Corps. v. Cushman

Background

Civil Rights Corps. and six law professors sued Georgia Pestana, Melinda Katz, Andrea E. Bonina, Hector D. LaSalle, and Diana Maxfield Kearse under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiffs had filed 21 grievance complaints concerning alleged prosecutorial misconduct by current and former assistant district attorneys in the Queens District Attorney’s Office. They published the complaints online and encouraged the public to contact the relevant grievance committee.

New York Judiciary Law § 90(10) provides that papers and records concerning attorney-conduct complaints, investigations, and disciplinary proceedings must be sealed and treated as private and confidential. The plaintiffs alleged that letters from James Johnson, then Corporation Counsel for New York City, and Kearse led to retaliation and other constitutional violations. Their claims included First Amendment retaliation, equal-protection violations, facial and as-applied challenges to Section 90(10), denial of access to government proceedings and records, and a request for access under the statute’s good-cause exception.

Jurisdiction and abstention

The State Defendants and Kearse argued that the court should decline to exercise jurisdiction under three abstention doctrines—Younger, O’Shea, and Pullman. The court rejected all three arguments. It concluded that the plaintiffs were not subjects of the state disciplinary proceedings, that the federal lawsuit would not directly interfere with those proceedings, that the plaintiffs were challenging a statute rather than asking the federal court to supervise state-court procedures, and that Section 90(10) was not unclear in a way requiring state-court interpretation before the constitutional issues could be decided.

The court therefore denied the motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.

Rule 12(b)(6) arguments

The City Defendants argued that the letters were protected by an absolute judicial-proceedings privilege and that they were improper defendants in a challenge to Section 90(10). The court declined to apply the privilege. It reasoned that federal law had not recognized an absolute privilege of this kind and that the need to consider the letters in resolving the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims outweighed the state-law interest in protecting the communications.

The court also declined to dismiss Katz. Although the complaint did not identify actions Katz personally took, it alleged that her attorney acted on her behalf. The court held that those allegations were sufficient at the pleading stage. It further held that the City Defendants were proper defendants because an injunction against them could provide the plaintiffs at least partial relief.

Kearse argued that the Eleventh Amendment, quasi-judicial immunity, and qualified immunity barred the claims against her. The court rejected dismissal based on the Eleventh Amendment because the plaintiffs sought prospective relief against Kearse for an alleged continuing violation of federal law. The court also held that the allegations plausibly suggested Kearse acted outside the scope of her authority, so it could not conclude at that stage that quasi-judicial immunity applied. The court reserved judgment on qualified immunity.

Arguments reserved

The court reserved judgment on the arguments that the plaintiffs failed to state a First Amendment retaliation claim and that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. Those arguments required deciding whether Section 90(10) violated the First Amendment, an issue presented in the plaintiffs’ pending motion for partial summary judgment.

Disposition

The court denied the City Defendants’ motion to dismiss in part, denied the State Defendants’ motion to dismiss, and denied Kearse’s motion to dismiss in part. The court reserved judgment on the remaining arguments by the City Defendants and Kearse pending resolution of the plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment.