Gilani v. Matthews, No. 16-1689 (8th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff, who is of Turkish and Kurdish descent, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that Officers Mathews and Collins arrested him on account of his ethnicity, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Officers Matthews and Collins came upon plaintiff while investigating a report of a suspicious person casing the neighborhood. Plaintiff matched the description. The district court granted summary judgment on the claims of selective enforcement and failure to intervene against Officers Matthews and Collins. The court affirmed the judgment and concluded that plaintiff failed to establish that the enforcement had a discriminatory effect and that the enforcement had a discriminatory purpose.
Court Description: Shepherd, Author, with Colloton and Melloy, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Civil rights. The district court did not err in granting the defendant police officers' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity on plaintiff's claim that the officers arrested him on account of his ethnicity in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause; plaintiff failed to show the officers exercised their discretion to enforce traffic laws solely because of his ethnicity; plaintiff failed to show both that the enforcement had a discriminatory effect and that the enforcement was motivated by discriminatory intent.
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