February 2016 Federal Civil Practice Newsletter

Plaintiff filed a lawsuit challenging a state law prohibiting instruction on “human sexuality” to grade school children as being facially overboard and vague in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court denied plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction and plaintiff appealed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding that plaintiff had failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits. (JACKSON-AKIWUMI and PRYOR, concurring)

In a case where the plaintiff alleged excessive force, defendant appealed from the district court’s denial of the defendant’s motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The Seventh Circuit concluded that the appeal presented a factual question and dismissed it for want of jurisdiction. (LEE and MALDONADO, concurring)

The Seventh Circuit considered an emergency motion from the State of Indiana seeking to stay a preliminary injunction prohibiting the application of a statutory provision impacting voter eligibility. The Seventh Circuit granted the motion, explaining that lower federal courts should not ordinarily alter election rules on the eve of an election and that to do so would risk disruption of the primary election.

In a lawsuit filed based on state and federal minimum-wage statutes, the defendant employer appealed from a district court order staying proceedings pending arbitration. At issue was whether the plaintiff had agreed to arbitrate any claims during the employee on boarding process. The district court concluded that defendant did not establish that plaintiff agreed to arbitrate where plaintiff submitted an affidavit explaining that human-relations staff filled out the forms and did not explain them to the plaintiff. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, explaining that it could not disturb the district court’s order where the only evidence was plaintiff’s affidavit in which he stated he did not agree to arbitrate so that the evidence in the record did not show that the district court’s conclusion was clearly erroneous. (PRYOR and MALDONADO, concurring)

Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against two local police officers who shared sexually explicit photos of them when they were underage with an “auxiliary police officer” who then retained those images for his own illegal use, alleging that the officers violated their substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment when they gave the auxiliary officer access to their images. The district court granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss the section 1983 claims and plaintiffs appealed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding that the plaintiffs did not allege a viable substantive due process claim. (BRENNAN and RIPPLE, concurring)