DAVID DEMAREST V. CITY OF VALLEJO, No. 20-15872 (9th Cir. 2022)
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Plaintiff brought a 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 alleging that the City of Vallejo violated the Fourth Amendment, by adding license checks to what was concededly a sobriety checkpoint. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s summary judgment for Defendants.
Reviewing a line of relevant Supreme Court decisions, the court derived a “two-step analysis” for assessing the validity of a checkpoint under the Fourth Amendment. Applying that two-step analysis to this case, the panel first held that because the City’s checkpoint did not have any impermissible primary purpose of advancing the general interest in crime control, it was not per se invalid. The panel then applied the factors for assessing reasonableness set forth in Lidster and concluded that the City’s systematic addition of driver’s license checks to an otherwise valid sobriety checkpoint was objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
The court held that, once Plaintiff refused to produce his license for examination at the checkpoint, the officer had probable cause to believe that plaintiff was committing an offense in violation of California Vehicle Code Section 12951(b), and his continued detention and arrest were therefore reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, the officer’s action of physically removing Plaintiff from his car by grabbing his arm was objectively reasonable as a matter of law given Plaintiff’s lack of cooperation with her commands up to that point and the modest nature of the force used.
Court Description: Civil Rights. The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment for defendants in an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when he was arrested after declining a police officer’s repeated demands to show his driver’s license at a sobriety checkpoint and that the officer used excessive force in effectuating the arrest. Plaintiff alleged that the City of Vallejo violated the Fourth Amendment by adding license checks to what was concededly a sobriety checkpoint. Reviewing a line of relevant Supreme Court decisions, the panel derived a “two- step analysis” for assessing the validity of a checkpoint under the Fourth Amendment. At the first step, a court must determine, in accordance with City of Indianapolis v. DEMAREST V. CITY OF VALLEJO 3 Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 40 (2000), and Illinois v. Lidster, 540 U.S. 419 (2004), whether a checkpoint is “per se invalid” because its “primary purpose” is “to advance the general interest in crime control” with respect to the occupants of the vehicles being stopped. If the answer to that question is no, then the court must determine the checkpoint’s reasonableness, hence, its constitutionality, on the basis of the individual circumstances. Applying that two-step analysis to this case, the panel first held that because the City’s checkpoint did not have any impermissible primary purpose of advancing the general interest in crime control, it was not per se invalid. The panel then applied the factors for assessing reasonableness set forth in Lidster and concluded that the City’s systematic addition of driver’s license checks to an otherwise valid sobriety checkpoint was objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Given that the Supreme Court has said that removing unlicensed drivers from the road serves a “vital interest” in “highway safety” that would itself justify a traffic checkpoint, a request to produce licenses at an otherwise valid sobriety checkpoint clearly served an equally weighty interest. On this record, the license check interfered only minimally with liberty of the sort the Fourth Amendment seeks to protect and was justified by the important interest in road safety. Therefore, the request that plaintiff produce his license while he was briefly seized at the checkpoint did not entail a Fourth Amendment violation. The panel held that, once plaintiff refused to produce his license for examination at the checkpoint, Officer Brown had probable cause to believe that plaintiff was committing an offense in violation of California Vehicle Code § 12951(b), and his continued detention and arrest were therefore reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. 4 DEMAREST V. CITY OF VALLEJO Moreover, Officer Brown’s action of physically removing plaintiff from his car by grabbing his arm was objectively reasonable as a matter of law given plaintiff’s lack of cooperation with her commands up to that point and the modest nature of the force used. Under the relevant circumstances, Officer Brown’s use of force in effectuating the arrest was not excessive. Because plaintiff failed to show that he suffered any underlying constitutional violation, his cause of action asserting municipal liability also necessarily failed.
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