United States Ninth Circuit

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action alleging defendants, police officers, an event's organizers, a police department, and city, violated plaintiff's First Amendment right to free speech by preventing her from collecting signatures for a political petition, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed in part and reversed in part where: 1) defendants' conduct resulting in a complete exclusion of plaintiff on one day, for no reason other than the asserted right of the permittees to exclude anyone expressing a political message, violated the First Amendment; 2) nevertheless, summary judgment on the claim was proper as to all defendants except one officer, for whom a remand was required for a qualified immunity determination; and 3) on another claim, no reasonable juror could find from the undisputed facts that defendants acted in retaliation for plaintiff's First Amendment activities when an officer gave her a traffic citation.

Appellate Information

• Argued 06/10/2008
• Decided 12/01/2008
• Published 12/01/2008

Judges

• GRABER, Circuit Judge:, Before:  J. CLIFFORD WALLACE and SUSAN P. GRABER, Circuit Judges, and ROBERT J. TIMLIN, District Judge.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Martin G. Crowley, American Legal Services, Reno, NV, for the plaintiff-appellant.


• For Appellees:
  
• Stanley H. Brown, Jr., Reno, NV, and Nicholas F. Frey and Stephen S. Kent, Woodburn and Wedge, Reno, NV, for the defendants-appellees.