Hane V Cedar Rapids

Key Facts

Issues

• The court must decide whether Hane's Section 1983 claims against State of Iowa, Attorney General Bird, Deputy Attorney General Fletchall, and Director of Transportation Marler in their official capacities are barred by the Eleventh Amendment, which prevents suits against states and state entities unless immunity has been waived or Congress has overridden it.
• The court must evaluate whether government officials including police officers and city officials are entitled to qualified immunity, which shields them from liability unless they violated clearly established federal statutory or constitutional rights that a reasonable official would have known at the time of the alleged violation.
• The court must determine whether plaintiff Kyle Mark Hane's claims based on sovereign citizen theory, alleging an absolute constitutional right to intrastate travel that precludes compliance with motor vehicle licensing and registration laws, state a plausible claim under Section 1983 or violate any right secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
• The court must determine whether Hane's proposed second amended complaint cures the deficiencies in his previous complaints or whether allowing the amendment would be futile, unduly delay the proceedings, prejudice defendants, and waste judicial resources, and whether the claims would still fail on multiple legal grounds.

Holdings

• The court granted the Cedar Rapids Defendants' motion to dismiss.
• The court denied the plaintiff's motion to amend his complaint as a second amended complaint.
• The court granted the plaintiff's motion to withdraw his prior motion to amend and directed the Clerk's office to terminate Document 42.
• The court granted the Linn County Defendants' motion to dismiss.
• The court granted the State Defendants' motion to dismiss.
• The court dismissed the case with prejudice because the order disposes of all claims against all defendants.
• The court granted the Marion Defendants' motion to dismiss.

Remedies

• The court granted the plaintiff's motion (Doc. 50) to withdraw his prior motion (Doc. 42) to amend the complaint. The Clerk's office was directed to terminate Doc. 42. However, the motion to amend the complaint itself was denied as futility would prejudice defendants and waste judicial resources.
• All defendants' motions to dismiss were granted: Cedar Rapids Defendants (Doc. 36), Marion Defendants (Doc. 35), Linn County Defendants (Doc. 32), and State Defendants (Doc. 33). The court found that the plaintiff's claims were frivolous sovereign citizen type claims that failed to state a plausible claim, and that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity.
• The court granted all four defendants' motions to dismiss (Cedar Rapids, Marion, Linn County, and State Defendants). The motion to withdraw the previous amendment motion (Doc. 42) was granted, but the motion to amend (Doc. 50) was denied. The case is dismissed with prejudice because all claims against all defendants have been disposed of.

Legal Principles

• Government officials are entitled to qualified immunity unless they violated a clearly established federal right. The court applies a two-prong test: (1) whether the official violated a federal statutory or constitutional right, and (2) whether that right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation. The court may analyze either prong first.
• The Rooker-Feldman doctrine provides that lower federal courts lack subject matter jurisdiction over challenges to state court judgments. Federal courts cannot act as 'super' appeals courts for state court decisions unless the state court decision has been invalidated.
• Rule 15 governs amendments to pleadings. Courts may deny leave to amend where there are compelling reasons such as undue delay, bad faith, dilatory motive, repeated failure to cure deficiencies, undue prejudice to the non-moving party, or futility of the amendment. Determining futility is a question of law.
• Under Younger abstention, federal courts should abstain from exercising jurisdiction when there is an ongoing state proceeding that implicates important state interests and provides adequate opportunity to raise federal questions. This prevents prospective injunctive relief against state actors carrying out court ordered decisions.
• Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face. Courts assess plausibility by drawing on judicial experience and common sense, reviewing the claim as a whole rather than individual allegations.
• The Eleventh Amendment bars suits against states and state entities in their official capacities under § 1983 unless immunity has been waived or Congress has overridden it. States and state officials in their official capacities are not 'persons' under § 1983, and claims against them are barred by Eleventh Amendment immunity.

Precedent Name

• Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co.
• Harlow v. Fitzgerald
• Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife
• Klum v. City of Davenport
• Monell v. Department of Social Services
• Younger v. Harris
• Will v. Michigan Department of State Police
• Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly

Cited Statute

• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
• 28 U.S.C. § 1915
• Eleventh Amendment

Judge Name

Passage Text

• Hane fails to satisfy either prong of the qualified immunity test. As discussed above, the federal statutory or constitutional rights that Hane claims have been violated do not exist. Thus, Hane has not satisfied the first prong. He also fails to satisfy the second prong. The "rights," as Hane asserts them, were not clearly established at the time of the various claims. "For a right to be 'clearly established,' the law must have been sufficiently clear, at the time of the official's conduct, to put every reasonable official on notice that what he was doing violated that right." Id. (quoting Cole ex rel. Est. of Richards v. Hutchins, 959 F.3d 1127, 1134 (8th Cir. 2020)). The Supreme Court has "repeatedly stressed that courts must not define clearly established law at a high level of generality." D.C. v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 63–64 (2018).
• The premise of Plaintiff's Complaint is that the Nebraska statute requiring an operator's license in order to drive a vehicle does not apply to him—commonly known as a "sovereign citizen" claim based on the idea that statutes and laws do not apply him as a sovereign citizen. Sovereign-citizen claims have repeatedly been rejected as frivolous. See United States v. Jagim, 978 F.2d 1032, 1036 (8th Cir. 1992) (referring to the sovereign-citizen argument as "completely without merit, patently frivolous and... rejected without expending any more of this Court's resources"); United States v. Hart, 701 F.2d 749, 750 (8th Cir. 1983) (rejecting "sovereign citizen" as a status); Hansen v. Nebraska, No. 8:20CV203, 2020 WL 3100101, at *2 (D. Neb. June 11, 2020) (premise of plaintiff's claims that he is not subject to state law or authority has been repeatedly rejected as frivolous; collecting cases); Meyer v. Pfeifle, No. 4:18-CV-04048, 2019 WL 1209776, at *5 (D.S.D. Mar. 14, 2019), aff'd, 790 F. App'x 843 (8th Cir. 2020) ("[the plaintiff's] allegations regarding rights as a 'sovereign citizen' are frivolous and fail to state a claim"); Yisrael-Bey v. O'Toole, No. 4:17-CV-2631, 2018 WL 10425462, at *1 (E.D. Mo. Feb. 5, 2018) (plaintiff's Fourth Amendment false arrest and false imprisonment claims were frivolous when plaintiff claimed that neither state nor federal government had ability to bring criminal charges against her; "Arguments based on the 'sovereign citizen' or 'private citizen' movement cannot establish subject matter jurisdiction in this action under the Fourth Amendment.")
• Section 1983 provides a federal forum to remedy many deprivations of civil liberties, but it does not provide a federal forum for litigants who seek a remedy against a State for alleged deprivations of civil liberties. The Eleventh Amendment bars such suits unless the State has waived its immunity . . . or unless Congress has exercised its undoubted power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to override that immunity. Will, 491 U.S. at 66. There is no indication that the State of Iowa has waived its immunity or that its immunity has been overridden by Congress. In fact, the State Defendants expressly assert this immunity. Doc. 33-1 at 15. Hane's § 1983 claims against the State of Iowa, as well as those against Bird, Fletchall and Marler in their official capacities, are barred by the Eleventh Amendment.