Ifrah Yassin v. Heather Weyker, No. 20-3299 (8th Cir. 2022)
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Defendant, in addition to her full-time position as a St. Paul police officer, was cross-deputized as a federal agent to investigate an interstate sex-trafficking scheme. Many were charged, but none were convicted. The attention soon turned to Defendant, who faced lawsuits from the people she came across during the investigation, including the Plaintiff in this matter.
Plaintiff became involved because of a dangerous encounter with a witness in the federal sex-trafficking investigation. That witness made a call to Defendant, falsely claiming that Plaintiff started the dispute. In Defendant’s affidavit supporting the criminal complaint against Plaintiff, she identified herself as an “FBI Task Force Officer / St Paul MN PD Officer.” Plaintiff sought to recover on a wrongful-arrest theory against Defendant, whom she has sued in two different capacities: as a St. Paul police officer and as a deputized federal agent.
The district court granted Defendant’s motion for summary judgment on the ground that her actions arose under color of federal law. The Eighth Circuit affirmed, finding that without any actual or purported relationship between Defendant’s conduct and her duties as a police officer no section 1983 action is available.
The court wrote that at issue here is whether Defendant acted under color of state law when she allegedly lied to protect a federal witness while serving on a federal task force. The court explained that state law had nothing to do with “the nature and circumstances” of Defendant’s conduct. The court wrote that Defendant acted within the scope of her federal duties while dealing with the situation, and she referenced her federal-task-force role during her conversations with officers.
Court Description: [Stras, Author, with Loken and Shepherd, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Civil rights. For related litigation, see Ahmed v. Weyker, 984 F.3d 564 (8th Cir. 2020) and Farah v. Weyker, 926 F.3d 492 (8th Cir. 2019). The court determined in Ahmed that the claim for wrongful arrest is a Section 1983 action and not a Bivens action; in order to state a Section 1983 claim, plaintiff must show that defendant was acting under color of state law; whether defendant was acting under color of law is a question of law determination and can be resolved in a motion for summary judgment; here the district court properly granted defendant summary judgment because there was no actual or purported relationship between her conduct and her duties as a St. Paul police officer, and no Section 1983 action is available; the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying plaintiff's request for a continuance to conduct further discovery.
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