Sylvie v. City of Dallas Texas

United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS September 8, 2003
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
_____________________
No. 03-10007
Summary Calendar
_____________________
CHARLIE SYLVIE
Plaintiff - Appellee
versus
CITY OF DALLAS TEXAS; ET AL.
Defendants
TED KILPATRICK; MICHAEL RICKMAN
Defendants - Appellants
_________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Texas
District Court No. 01-CV-1549-K
_________________________________________________________________
Before HIGGINBOTHAM, EMILIO M. GARZA and PRADO, Circuit Judges.1
PRADO, Circuit Judge.
The appellants in this interlocutory appeal challenge the
district court’s denial of their motion for summary judgment on
qualified immunity grounds. In their appeal, the appellants
1
Pursuant to 5th Cir. R. 47.5, this Court has determined
that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent
except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5th Cir. R.
47.5.4.
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maintain the district court misapplied the law for determining
whether a governmental official is entitled to qualified
immunity. After considering the parties’ arguments, this Court
affirms the district court’s order denying the motion for summary
judgment.
Standard of Review
This Court does not have jurisdiction to review
interlocutory appeals from the denial of summary judgment based
on qualified immunity grounds when the appeal challenges the
district court’s ruling that genuine issues exist concerning
material facts. See Jones v. Collins, 132 F.3d 1048, 1051-52
(5th Cir. 1998). The Court, however, has jurisdiction over
appeals that challenge questions of law, such as the materiality
of factual issues. See Bazan v. Hidalgo County, 246 F.3d 481,
490 (5th Cir. 2001). The determination of whether a defendant’s
conduct was objectively reasonable is a question of law, but that
question of law can only be reviewed when there are no underlying
genuine issues of material fact. Id. This Court may consider
this appeal because the appellants contend the district court
misapplied the law in considering whether their conduct was
objectively reasonable.
Whether the District Court Erred
The defendant-appellants first argue that the district court
misapplied the law for determining whether a governmental
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official is entitled to qualified immunity. In considering a
defendant’s entitlement to qualified immunity as grounds for
summary judgment, the district court must first determine whether
the plaintiff alleged a violation of a clearly established right,
and then determine whether the defendant official’s conduct was
objectively reasonable in light of clearly established law at the
time of the alleged violation. See Fontenot v. Cormier, 56 F.3d
669, 673 (5th Cir. 1995); see also Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U.S.
226, 231-33 (1991). On appeal, the appellants contend the
district court misapplied this test because the court did not
first determine whether the plaintiff proved a violation of a
clearly established right. Despite this complaint, the order
denying the motion for summary judgment indicates the district
court correctly applied the law.
The district court initially denied the appellant’s motion
in an order that stated “the Court finds that there are disputed
issues of material fact.” The appellants then filed their notice
of interlocutory appeal. In response, the district court issued
a memorandum opinion clarifying its reason for denying the
appellant’s summary judgment motion. After setting out the test
for qualified immunity, the district court reviewed the
plaintiff-appellee’s summary judgment evidence in support of his
claims that the appellants violated the appellee’s rights to
equal protection under the law by placing the appellee on
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administrative leave and later terminating him for violating a
city employment policy for assessing sexually explicit internet
sites on a city computer. The district court explained that the
appellee claimed the appellants falsely indicated that city
records showed that the appellee was on duty on the particular
dates the sexually explicit material was viewed and that the
appellee was solely responsible for accessing the internet sites
because the appellee was the exclusive user of the computer in
the office. The district court then detailed the appellee’s
evidence supporting his claims.
The district court indicated the plaintiff-appellee
presented summary judgment evidence that: (1) the plaintiff did
not have exclusive use of the computer in his office, (2) other
individuals had a key to the office where the plaintiff’s
computer was located, (3) the plaintiff gave the defendant-
appellants records showing that he was not at the office during
the times of day the computer was used to access sexually
explicit sites, and (4) evidence that the defendant-appellants
accepted without question denials from other employees who had
computers with sexually explicit materials while refusing to
accept the plaintiff’s denial. After detailing this evidence,
the district court concluded, “taking the evidence in the light
most favorable to [the plaintiff-appellee], the facts determining
whether the defendants acted with objective reasonableness are in
dispute. Specifically, it is disputed whether the defendants
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were deliberately indifferent in the investigation leading up to
[the plaintiff-appellee’s] suspension and termination by the
City.” Although the district court’s order did not explicitly
state that the court found the plaintiff alleged the violation of
a clearly established right, that finding is implicit in the
court’s order. In particular, the order recognized that the
plaintiff had sued the appellants “alleging that because of his
race, African-American, he was denied equal employment
opportunities and [was] discriminated against” and that the
appellants “violated his rights to equal protection under the
law.”
Title VII protects an employee from unlawful employment
discrimination. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a); see also McDonnell
Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 801 (1973). The Fourteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees a person
equal protection under the law. See U.S. CONST. amend. 14, § 1;
see also Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 239 (1976). Because
the plaintiff alleged unlawful employment discrimination and the
denial of equal protection, the plaintiff alleged the deprivation
of a clearly established right. Although the appellants maintain
the plaintiff-appellee failed to prove the violation of a clearly
established right, the plaintiff was only required to allege the
violation of a clearly established right. See Siegert, 500 U.S.
at 231-33. The district court may not have explicitly addressed
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the first prong of the qualified-immunity test, but the court’s
order makes it abundantly clear that the district court correctly
applied the law.
The appellants next argue that the genuine issue of material
fact that the district court identified is not material to the
issue of objective reasonableness. In particular, the appellants
argue that no objective unreasonableness exists even if the
plaintiff did not have exclusive use of his office, or of his
computer; even if the plaintiff provided documents indicating he
was not in the office at the time of the alleged misuse; and,
even if appellants believed others over the plaintiff. That
conclusion is especially illogical in light of the plaintiff’s
summary judgment evidence that 24 computers in the same
department showed access to pornographic sites although the
employees using those computers were not disciplined; and that a
white employee in the same department had 312 incidents of access
to sexual materials on his computer, but that he was not
confronted with a claim that he had misused his computer.
The evidence discussed above is material for the following
reason. If a supervisor who disciplined an African-American
employee who did not have exclusive use of a computer in an
office to which other individuals had a key, and that employee
had evidence he was not at the office during the times the
computer was used to access sexually explicit sites, the
supervisor would not act with objective reasonableness if he did
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not discipline other non-African-American employees who had
sexually explicit materials on their computers. Thus, the
plaintiff’s summary judgment evidence was clearly material to
whether the defendant-appellants raised a question of fact about
the entitlement to qualified immunity. As such the district
court properly denied the motion for summary judgment.
Having determined that the district court properly denied
the defendant-appellants’ motion for summary judgment on
qualified immunity grounds, this Court AFFIRMS the district
court’s order and returns this case to the district court for
further proceedings.
AFFIRMED
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