Meyers v. Gross ( 1999 )

F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
DEC 16 1999
TENTH CIRCUIT
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
CHARLES M. MEYERS and LINDA
S. MEYERS,
Plaintiffs - Appellants, No. 99-1123
v. (D.C. No. 97-D-1655)
SGT. HANS GROSS, DEPUTY (D. Colo.)
GORDON CARROLL, and DEPUTY
CAREY BACON, all of the Arapahoe
County Sheriff’s Department,
Defendants - Appellees.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before TACHA, McKAY, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
After examining the briefs and the 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.
Plaintiffs Charles M. Meyers and Linda S. Meyers appeal the district
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. The court
generally disfavors the citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order
and judgment may be cited under the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
court’s dismissal of their civil rights action. 1 Filed pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983,
this action arose out of a traffic stop to investigate the driver of the vehicle, Mr.
Meyers, for not having a valid driver’s license in his possession. Plaintiffs sued
several individual police officers, complaining that the traffic stop and subsequent
detention on April 8, 1996, violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights. In
an order filed February 19, 1999, the district court granted summary judgment to
Defendants because it concluded as a matter of law that the record would not
support a finding of either illegal detention or a violation of Plaintiffs’ rights to
free speech. While the court alternatively relied on qualified immunity, we have
no need to reach that issue.
By the very nature of their First Amendment claim and the history of this
case as set out in the extensive record, it is clear that Plaintiffs had set a course
intended to challenge the validity of the Colorado driver’s licensing laws. In July
1995, Mr. Meyers was charged in state court with operating a motor vehicle
without a license or registration. During a preliminary hearing on those charges
on April 8, 1996, Mr. Meyers declared that, approximately a year and a half
before, he had voluntarily revoked his license. This information, when conveyed
to Defendants, was abundant evidence that Mr. Meyers had no valid license and
1
Mr. Meyers is also known as Michael Charles Minors and Ms. Meyers is
also known as Linda Sanders.
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that he therefore had none in his possession while driving as required by Colorado
law. When the matter had recessed for the day, Mr. Meyers drove away from the
courthouse with Ms. Meyers as a passenger. After witnessing this, Defendants
stopped the vehicle because they knew, or at the very least had reasonable
articulable suspicion, that Mr. Meyers was driving without a license.
While citizens are at liberty to challenge the validity of the laws, if they do
so by violating them the police have the right and duty to enforce them until
invalidated by repeal or duly constituted court authority. Until thus invalidated,
an enforcement officer who has reason to believe the plaintiff is violating that
law, whatever the plaintiff’s reasons, does not violate the Fourth Amendment by
detaining the person to investigate the facts reasonably believed to be true.
Because of the prior history of confrontational behavior of these Plaintiffs toward
police officers, which was established as a matter of fact by the state court, the
conduct of Defendants during the April 8, 1996 stop was clearly reasonable. The
district court correctly determined that the officers’ conduct could not form the
basis of either an unreasonable stop or detention, see United States v. Botero-
Ospina, 71 F.3d 783, 787 (10th Cir. 1995), or a claim for violation of a First
Amendment right to protest the state driver’s license laws. Cf. Cotner v.
Hopkins, 795 F.2d 900, 902 (10th Cir. 1986) (affirming dismissal of allegations
of constitutional violations because they were conclusory and unsupported by the
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record).
In their reply brief, Plaintiffs raise for the first time on appeal a Fifth
Amendment claim of unreasonable duration of the stop and detention. While we
generally will not consider an issue on appeal that was not raised below, see
Walker v. Mather (In re Walker), 959 F.2d 894, 896 (10th Cir. 1992), we reject
the Fifth Amendment claim on its merits as having no support in the record, and
we deny Defendants’ motion to strike that portion of the brief.
For these reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court granting
summary judgment to Defendants and dismissing the case.
AFFIRMED.
Entered for the Court
Monroe G. McKay
Circuit Judge
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