Brown v. Cooke , 362 F. App'x 897 ( 2010 )

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
January 22, 2010
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court
WESLEY R. BROWN,
Plaintiff–Appellant,
v. No. 09-1144
(D.C. No. 1:06-CV-01092-MSK-CBS)
M. MICHAEL COOKE, Exec. Dir. (D. Colo.)
CO. Div. of Motor Vehicles; and
ROBERT MORGAN, Office Manager,
Aurora Driver’s License Office,
Defendants–Appellees.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before LUCERO, GORSUCH, and HOLMES, Circuit Judges.
Wesley R. Brown, proceeding pro se, appeals from the grant of summary
judgment to defendants on his civil rights claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.
*
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist the determination of
this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is
therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is
not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata,
and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value
consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
I
Brown claims that his rights to due process and equal protection under the
Fourteenth Amendment were violated when the Colorado Division of Motor
Vehicles (the “Division”) refused to issue him a Colorado identification card in
his common-law name of “Wesley R. Brown.” As summarized by the district
court in its summary judgment order, the salient facts underlying Brown’s claims
are as follows:
[A]lthough Mr. Brown was given the name “Wesley Ray
Brown” at birth, since at least age 17, he has primarily identified
himself as “Wesley R. Brown,” and has obtained a variety of
identification and other documents bearing his chosen name over the
years. Mr. Brown contends that these actions are sufficient to
constitute a legal change of his name at common law.
On February 6, 2006, Mr. Brown applied for an identification
card from the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles. Although he
produced a California driver’s license with the name “Wesley R.
Brown” as proof of his identity, the Division of Motor Vehicles
insisted that he verify his identity with his birth certificate. C.R.S.
§ 42-2-302(2)(a). When he returned to the office to do so on March
16, 2006, he again requested that the identification card bear his
chosen name. However, relying on C.R.S. § 42-2-302(1)(a)(I), which
requires that identification cards be issued in the “true name” of an
applicant, the Division of Motor Vehicles presented Mr. Brown with
a card bearing the name “Wesley Ray Brown,” the name shown on
Mr. Brown’s birth certificate. Mr. Brown refused the tendered card
and commenced this action.
In March 2009, in accordance with the extremely thorough and
well-reasoned recommendations of the magistrate judge, the district court entered
an opinion and order granting summary judgment in favor of defendants and
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denying Brown’s motion to amend his complaint. Specifically, the district court
concluded that: (1) Brown did not demonstrate that the Colorado Division of
Motor Vehicles’ refusal to acknowledge his common-law name change deprived
him of a liberty or property interest sufficient to support a due process claim;
(2) the strict scrutiny standard did not apply to Brown’s equal protection claim
because the Division’s actions did not implicate a fundamental right or categorize
persons based on a suspect classification; (3) Brown could not establish a
violation of his equal protection rights under the controlling rational basis
standard because he failed to show that the Division’s policies and actions were
not rationally related to a legitimate government interest; (4) Brown’s
constitutional challenges to Colorado’s ban on the use of judicial name-changing
procedures and the use of certain provisions of the federal REAL ID Act of 2005
by convicted felons were without merit; and (5) Brown would not be granted
leave to file a second amended complaint because, inter alia, his proposed
amendments were futile.
II
We acknowledge the magistrate judge and district court’s thorough work in
this case, and we affirm the entry of summary judgment in favor of defendants for
substantially the same reasons stated by the district court. Nevertheless, we feel
it is necessary to elaborate on three matters pertaining to Brown’s due process
claim.
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First, we note that the district court did not specifically state in its opinion
and order whether it considered a procedural due process claim, a substantive due
process claim, or both. This omission is relevant because the court appeared to
inject the more demanding “fundamental rights and liberties” analysis from the
substantive due process sphere into the “liberty interest” analysis that pertains to
the procedural due process inquiry. We need not decide whether this was error,
however, because Brown has failed to adequately assert a procedural due process
claim in his opening brief (even construing his pro se arguments liberally), and
thus any such claim is waived. 1
Second, the district court concluded that “there is [no] fundamental right of
citizens to compel the Government to accept a common-law name change and
reform its records accordingly.” We agree with this conclusion, but the
substantive due process analysis requires further inquiry. If a proper substantive
due process challenge to Colorado’s identification card statutes was before the
1
In his fifty-one page opening brief, Brown makes only two statements that
could pertain to a procedural due process claim. First, he quotes In re Knight,
537 P.2d 1085, 1086 (Colo. Ct. App. 1975), for the proposition that “‘[b]efore a
court denies a request for a change of name under the statute, it should conduct an
evidentiary hearing to determine if good and sufficient cause exists to deny the
application.’” Second, he notes that Colo. Rev. Stat. § 42-2-302(3)(b) “gives ‘due
process’ by ‘denial hearing’ and/or ‘judicial review.’” However, Brown makes no
effort to tie these references to his own specific circumstances or to the specific
conduct of the defendants in this case, and thus completely fails to articulate a
procedural due process claim on his own behalf. As a result, even if Brown had
asserted a procedural due process claim below, he has waived the claim in this
appeal. See Adler v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 F.3d 664, 679 (10th Cir. 1998).
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district court, the court would have been required to examine those statutes under
the rational basis test. See Dias v. City & County of Denver, 567 F.3d 1169,
1182 (10th Cir. 2009) (“Even if [a legislative enactment] does not implicate a
fundamental right, it must nonetheless bear a rational relationship to a legitimate
government interest.”). Nevertheless, the district court’s disposition of Brown’s
due process claim was correct because Brown was challenging the Division’s
policies and actions in his particular case rather than the underlying legislation.
Finally, to the extent the district court analyzed a substantive due process
challenge to the Division’s policies and actions in refusing to recognize a name
change effected at common law, it considered a challenge to executive action. As
a result, Brown could have established a substantive due process violation in two
ways. First, he could have relied on the “shocks the conscience” standard. See
Seegmiller v. Laverkin City, 528 F.3d 762, 769 (10th Cir. 2008). Second, he
could have proceeded under the two-part “fundamental liberty” test. Id.; see also
Dias, 567 F.3d at 1182 (“We held in Seegmiller that application of a ‘shocks the
conscience’ standard in cases involving executive action is not to the exclusion of
the . . . two-part framework for analyzing substantive due process challenges to
legislation.”). Although the district court did not specifically acknowledge these
distinct tests, such an omission does not rise to the level of reversible error
because Brown’s claim fails under either test.
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III
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED. Brown’s “Notice and
Request for Conference” and “Motion for Action in Interest of Justice” are
DENIED. We further DENY Brown’s request that this court and/or the district
court enter the “Decree” attached to his opening brief.
Entered for the Court
Carlos F. Lucero
Circuit Judge
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