Appeals Court Grants Stay on Restrictions Placed on Agents in Minnesota

Appeals Court Grants Stay on Restrictions Placed on Agents in Minnesota

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the DOJ a stay of a lower court’s order that restricted agents in Minnesota, finding the limits were too broad and vague.

Judge Raymond Gruender partially dissented.

The stay will remain in effect until the Eighth Circuit fully reviews the case and issues its final decision. I don’t know when that will happen, but I read that the court expedited the case.

From the opinion (I omitted citations):

For at least two reasons, the government has made “a strong showing” that its challenge to the injunction “is likely to succeed on the merits.” First, the grant of relief to such a broad uncertified class is just a universal injunction by another name. Even if “courts may issue temporary relief to a putative class,” this one has no chance of getting certified. And overlooking the difficulties of certification, as the Supreme Court did in A.A.R.P., is not necessary “to preserve our jurisdiction.”

Six people sued the federal government over Operation Metro Surge, claiming federal agents violated their “First Amendment right to free speech and Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures.”

The preliminary injunction ordered by U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez of the District of Minnesota banned federal agents from arresting or using pepper spray on protesters.

The Eighth Circuit came to its decision from the videos involved in the case (I omitted the citations again):

We accessed and viewed the same videos the district court did. What they show is observers and protestors engaging in a wide range of conduct, some of it peaceful but much of it not. They also show federal agents responding in various ways. Even the named plaintiffs’ claims involve different conduct, by different officers, at different times, in different places, in response to different behavior. These differences mean that there are no “questions of law or fact common to the class,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(2), that would allow the court to decide all their claims in “one stroke” (issuing a temporary injunction because every member of the putative class needed to receive the “same” constitutionally adequate notice before removal from the country).

The judges also found the injunction too broad:

Second, in addition to being too broad, the injunction is too vague. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(d)(1)(B)–(C) (explaining that an injunction must “state its terms specifically” and “describe in reasonable detail . . . the act or acts restrained or required”). Directions not to “[r]etaliat[e] against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity” or “[s]top[] or detain[] drivers . . . where there is no reasonable articulable suspicion” are simply commands to “obey the law,” which are “not specific enough.” Daniels v. Woodbury County, 742 F.2d 1128, 1134 (8th Cir. 1984) (explaining that such injunctions do not provide “a clear idea of what conduct is prohibited”); see Sessler v. City of Davenport, 990 F.3d 1150, 1156 n.3 (8th Cir. 2021) (deciding that a prohibition on “restricting and limiting [the plaintiff’s] rights to peacefully share his message” would be “an obey-the-law injunction”); Elend v. Basham, 471 F.3d 1199, 1210 (11th Cir. 2006) (declining to order an injunction to “ensure there’s no violation of the First Amendment” because it would “merely command the [defendant] to obey the law”).

The judges even targeted a few provisions that specified weapons, such as pepper spray:

Even the provision that singles out the use of “pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools” requires federal agents to predict what the district court would consider “peaceful and unobstructive protest activity.” The videos underscore how difficult it would be for them to decide who has crossed the line: they show a fast changing mix of peaceful and obstructive conduct, with many protestors getting in officers’ faces and blocking their vehicles as they conduct their activities, only for some of them to then rejoin the crowd and intermix with others who were merely recording and observing the scene.

The judges cited Trump v. CASA, which states, “[F]ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch.”

Therefore, “the structural injunction imposed here, given its breadth and vagueness, is too big a step in that direction.”

The judges also noted that the broad injunction could cause the agents “to hesitate in performing their lawful duties” and “threatens to irreparably harm the government and undermine the public interest.”

In other words, chaos would ensue. Dogs and cats living together…mass hysteria!

[Featured image via YouTube]

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