Secsys, LLC v. Vigil

666 F.3d 678, 2012 WL 171876, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 1240
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedJanuary 23, 2012
Docket11-2006
StatusPublished
Cited by104 cases

This text of 666 F.3d 678 (Secsys, LLC v. Vigil) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Secsys, LLC v. Vigil, 666 F.3d 678, 2012 WL 171876, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 1240 (10th Cir. 2012).

Opinions

GORSUCH, Circuit Judge.

Public officials using the power of their perches to wring money and favors from those they are supposed to serve is a problem as old as government itself. But the problem hardly persists for a lack of effort to eradicate it. Cicero tried to expunge extortion from the public arena when he prosecuted the plundering Roman governor Gaius Verres, and we do much the same today when we prosecute plundering governors of our own (see, e.g., United States v. Blagojevich, 1:08-cr00888-1 (N.D.Ill.2011)). The common law contains many and ancient proscriptions against extortion. Diverse and modern statutes against the practice can be found on the books of our federal and state governments alike. There are criminal laws against extortion and civil ones, too. But until now, nearly 150 years after the Fourteenth Amendment’s adoption, it’s never been thought that extortion also violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause as a matter of course. That, however, is the novel theory the plaintiff asks us to endorse in this case. It is a theory the district court rejected and one this court must as well.

The shakedown at the heart of this case is simple enough. Robert Vigil served as New Mexico’s state treasurer. According to the complaint, he wanted to make sure a political rival didn’t challenge him in the next election. So he and his deputy, Ann Marie Gallegos, allegedly hatched a plan to find work for the rival’s wife, Samantha Sais, as a sort of payoff. When Mr. Vigil and Ms. Gallegos solicited bids for a state contract, the complaint says, they insisted that any interested contractor hire Ms. Sais on any terms she wished. The plaintiff, SECSYS, agreed to the plan in principle but ultimately found it couldn’t close the deal with Ms. Sais — she wanted 40% of SECSYS’s gross income from the state contract; SECSYS was only willing to give her 40% of the net. When negotiations broke down, Mr. Vigil and Ms. Gallegos allegedly went with another contractor who agreed to pay Ms. Sais what she wanted. For his role in this scheme, Robert Vigil eventually found himself indicted, then convicted, and then serving prison time. See United States v. Vigil, 523 F.3d 1258 (10th Cir.2008).

While the scheme that gave rise to this suit is simple enough, SECSYS’s theory of recovery is anything but. SECSYS seeks damages from Mr. Vigil and Ms. Gallegos not for violating state contracting law, not for violating state common law, not for violating any federal statute. Instead, SECSYS says the pair must pay because they violated the company’s Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the laws.

How is equal protection implicated? According to SECSYS, Mr. Vigil and Ms. Gallegos unlawfully discriminated against the company when they refused to give the state contract to bidders who refused to pay Ms. Sais’s full demand. To be sure, SECSYS admits (as it must) that it was willing to meet the defendants’ extortionate demand at least half way — after all, the company offered Ms. Sais most of what she sought. So that leaves SECSYS with the remarkable argument that it was discriminated against in violation of the federal Constitution not because it was unwilling to pay, but because it was willing to pay only some of an allegedly extortionate demand.

SECSYS pursues its unusual claim by way of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. That statute, of course, allows citizens to sue those who violate their constitutional rights while act[684]*684ing “under color of’ state law. One might wonder how Mr. Vigil’s and Ms. Gallegos’s alleged acts of extortion — acts that no doubt violate many state laws — might be characterized as taken “under color of’ state law. But, of course, that’s exactly how § 1983 has been long read (though over the occasional objection). See Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961); id. at 224-58, 81 S.Ct. 473 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting); Crawford-El v. Britton, 523 U.S. 574, 611, 118 S.Ct. 1584, 140 L.Ed.2d 759 (1998) (Scalia, J., dissenting). The defendants before us do not seek to revisit the site of that battle or dispute their conduct was state action for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. Neither do they invoke the defense of qualified immunity, which would shield them from liability for their official acts unless they violated clearly established federal law.

Instead, the parties come to us fighting only over the question whether Mr. Vigil’s and Ms. Gallegos’s actions, accepting them as state action under color of law, violated the Equal Protection Clause. And on that question SECSYS not only complains that the district court erred when it granted summary judgment to the defendants on its equal protection claim. The company also complains that the court erred in how it went about analyzing the case. In SEC-SYS’s view, the district court erred by refusing to apply “traditional” class-based equal protection principles and applying instead so-called “class of one” doctrine. But as it happens there’s nothing to any of the company’s complaints. However analyzed, the district court’s disposition was undoubtedly the right one. Why this is so, however, takes some explanation.

Equal protection is the law’s keystone. Without careful attention to equal protection’s demands, the integrity of surrounding law all too often erodes, sometimes to the point where it becomes little more than a tool of majoritarian oppression. Cf. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 19 How. 393, 15 L.Ed. 691 (1857); Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256 (1896). But when equal protection’s demands are met, when majorities are forced to abide the same rules they seek to impose on minorities, we can rest much surer of the soundness of our legal edifice. “[N]o better measure [exists] to assure that laws will be just than to require that laws be equal in operation.” Railway Exp. Agency v. New York, 336 U.S. 106, 112-13, 69 S.Ct. 463, 93 L.Ed. 533 (1949) (Jackson, J., concurring).

At the same time, it is of course important to be precise about what equal protection is and what it is not. “Equal protection of the laws” doesn’t guarantee equal results for all, or suggest that the law may never draw distinctions between persons in meaningfully dissimilar situations — two possibilities that might themselves generate rather than prevent injustice. Personnel Adm’r of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 271-73, 99 S.Ct. 2282, 60 L.Ed.2d 870 (1979). Neither is the equal protection promise some generic guard against arbitrary or unlawful governmental action, merely replicating the work done by the Due Process Clause or even the Administrative Procedure Act. See Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U.S. 1, 8, 64 S.Ct. 397, 88 L.Ed. 497 (1944). Instead, the Equal Protection Clause is a more particular and profound recognition of the essential and radical equality of all human beings.

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Bluebook (online)
666 F.3d 678, 2012 WL 171876, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 1240, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/secsys-llc-v-vigil-ca10-2012.