Augustin v. Nassau County Sheriff's Department

639 F. App'x 746
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedFebruary 26, 2016
DocketNos. 14-1388-CV LEAD, 14-1437-CV XAP
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 639 F. App'x 746 (Augustin v. Nassau County Sheriff's Department) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Augustin v. Nassau County Sheriff's Department, 639 F. App'x 746 (2d Cir. 2016).

Opinion

SUMMARY ORDER

Plaintiffs are a class of persons “arrested on misdemeanor charges unrelated to weapons or drugs and thereafter strip searched, without individualized suspicion,” at the Nassau County Correctional Center (the “NCCC”), in accordance with a “blanket policy” in effect at NCCC prior to 1999. See In re Nassau Cty. Strip Search Cases, 461 F.3d 219, 222-23 (2d Cir.2006). In Shain v. Ellison, 53 F.Supp.2d 564 (E.D.N.Y.1999), a district court in the Eastern District of New York held that this policy violated clearly established Fourth Amendment law. We. affirmed, explaining “that persons charged with a misdemeanor and remanded to a local correctional facility like NCCC have a right to be free of a strip search absent reasonable suspicion that they are carrying contraband or weapons.” See Shain v. Ellison, 273 F.3d 56, 66 (2d Cir.2001).

In the wake of Shain, plaintiffs brought the instant action, in which they alleged that their strip searches violated 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and Article 1, Section 12 of the New York State Constitution. See In re Nassau Cty. Strip Search Cases, 461 F.3d at 222. In response to a class-certification motion that plaintiffs filed in 2003, defendants “conceded the one common issue that in their view might be appropriate for class certification[ — ]namely, whether the NCCC’s strip search policy during the class period was constitutional. Specifically, defendants recognized that they are bound by Shain under the doctrine of collateral estoppel.” Id. at 224 (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). The District Court thereafter certified a class as to liability, and — “in light of defendants’ concession of liability to all class members” — “entered summary judgment on liability for all strip searches upon admission to the NCCC” with respect to plaintiffs’ federal and state claims. In re Nassau Cty. Strip Search Cases, 958 F.Supp.2d 339, 341 (E.D.N.Y.2013) (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted).

Almost five-and-a-half 'years after the District Court entered judgment, however, the Supreme Court decided Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, — U.S.-, 132 S.Ct. 1510, 182 L.Ed.2d 566 (2012), in which it considered “whether undoubted security imperatives involved in jail supervision override the assertion that some detainees must be exempt from [strip searches] absent reasonable suspicion of a concealed weapon or other contraband.” Id. at 1518. The Court answered that question in the negative. See id. at 1523 (holding' that the challenged search procedures “struck a reasonable balance between inmate privacy and the needs of the institutions”).

Following the Court’s decision in Florence, defendants “assert[ed] that .,. Flor[749]*749ence represents an intervening change of controlling law that should lead the [District] Court to vacate its prior order granting summary judgment for plaintiffs on the issue of liability and to instead enter summary judgment for defendants dismissing the case.” In re Nassau Cty. Strip Search Cases, 958 F.Supp.2d at 342 (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). In support of this argument, defendants cited Rule 54(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which grants “a district court ... authority to revise an interlocutory order ... at any time before the entry of final judgment,” Bergerson v. N.Y. State Office of Mental Health, Cent. N.Y. Psychiatric Ctr., 652 F.3d 277, 288 (2d Cir.2011), for “cogent and compelling reasons such as an intervening change of controlling law,” Starbucks Corp. v. Wolfe’s Borough Coffee, Inc., 736 F.3d 198, 208 (2d Cir.2013) (internal quotation marks omitted).

In a thorough and well-reasoned decision, the District Court found that Florence represented an intervening change of controlling law with respect to plaintiffs’ federal-law claims, but not with respect to plaintiffs’ state-law claims. See In re Nassau Cty. Strip Search Cases, 958 F.Supp.2d at 354. We agree.

Turning first to the state-law question, the dispositive word from the Rule 54(b) framework described above is “controlling.” We fail to see how Florence — in which .the United States Supreme Court interpreted the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution — could possibly control the meaning of Article I, Section 12 of the New York State Constitution. Indeed, we fail to see how a Supreme Court decision interpreting any federal constitutional provision could ever control the meaning of an analogous state constitutional provision, at least absent extraordinary circumstances not presented here. See California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 43, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988) (“Individual States may surely construe their own constitutions as imposing more stringent constraints on police conduct than does the Federal Constitution.”); McGrath v. Toys “R” Us, Inc., 356 F.3d 246, 250 (2d Cir.2004) (“State courts are not bound to interpret state laws in accordance with federal court interpretations of analogous federal statutes____”); People v. Harris, 77 N.Y.2d 434, 568 N.Y.S.2d 702, 570 N.E.2d 1051, 1053 (1991) (“Our federalist system of government necessarily provides a double source of protection and State courts, when asked to do so, are bound to apply their own Constitutions notwithstanding the holdings of the United States Supreme Court.” (citation omitted)).

Such circumstances might include, for example, a ruling by a state’s highest court that state courts interpreting a particular state constitutional provision were bound by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of an analogous federal constitutional provision. As the District Court in this case correctly observed, however, the New York Court of Appeals has not so ruled. To the contrary, “on many occasions[, it has] interpreted [the New York State] Constitution to provide greater protections when circumstances warrant and ha[s] developed an independent body of state law in the area of search and seizure,” especially “when doing so promotes predictability and precision in judicial review of search and seizure cases and the protection of the individual rights of [New York State’s] citizens.” People v. Weaver, 12 N.Y.3d 433, 882 N.Y.S.2d 357, 909 N.E.2d 1195, 1202 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Turning next to the federal-law question, we begin by noting that the questions presented in Shain and Florence were virtually identical. Compare Shain, [750]

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Bluebook (online)
639 F. App'x 746, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/augustin-v-nassau-county-sheriffs-department-ca2-2016.