Sigal v. Remmers

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: February 28, 2025
• Docket: 23-3347
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FEB 28 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

JEREMY E. SIGAL, No. 23-3347 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellant, 2:20-cv-00755-RFB-DJA v. MEMORANDUM* WENDY REMMERS; NEDZA, Sergeant; MICHAEL SWEETEN; JACKSON, Lieutenant; ANNE CARPENTER; NORDGREN, Officer; WOODWARD, Officer; SHELLEY CARRAO,

Defendants - Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Nevada Richard F. Boulware II, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted December 5, 2024 San Francisco, California

Before: COLLINS, VANDYKE, and MENDOZA, Circuit Judges.

Plaintiff-Appellant Jeremy Sigal appeals from the district court’s judgment in

favor of defendants in a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action alleging Fourth Amendment and

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. Fourteenth Amendment claims against Nevada Department of Corrections

(“NDOC”) and Department of Public Safety (“DPS”) officers. A prior panel of this

court already dismissed the claims related to the NDOC defendants. We have

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review the remaining claims against the

DPS defendants de novo. Judd v. Weinstein, 967 F.3d 952, 955 (9th Cir. 2020).

We affirm.

Because the parties are familiar with the facts of this case, we repeat them

here only as necessary.

The district court properly dismissed Sigal’s Fourth Amendment claims

because Sigal signed a conditional release agreement that subjected him to potential

“state-imposed intrusions on [his] privacy, including mandatory drug tests, meetings

with parole officers, and travel restrictions.” United States v. Johnson, 875 F.3d

1265, 1274 (9th Cir. 2017). Assuming that DPS personnel accessed Sigal’s home

as he’s alleged, he gave them permission to do so. Moreover, Sigal has not pleaded

a prima facie case that a search or seizure occurred, much less an unreasonable one.

See Pike v. Hester, 891 F.3d 1131, 1137 (9th Cir. 2018) (A search is “when the

government violates a subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as

reasonable.”); United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984) (“A ‘seizure’ of

property occurs when there is some meaningful interference with an individual’s

possessory interest in that property.”). At no point does his complaint allege facts

2 23-3347 that suggest DPS personnel searched or seized anything. His complaint therefore

fails to allege a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.

The district court was also right to dismiss Sigal’s Fourteenth Amendment

claim. Even assuming arguendo that Sigal has a cognizable liberty interest in not

having his residential confinement revoked and that the use of deliberately fabricated

evidence to deprive him of that liberty interest would violate due process, he has not

pleaded facts “sufficient … to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’”

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (citation omitted). His allegations

amount only to suspicion that the officers were biased against him or claims that

they exercised their discretion unfairly against him. Sigal has not alleged facts that

would constitute a plausible prima facie argument that accusations against him were

deliberately fabricated.

The district court’s judgment in favor of Defendants-Appellees is

AFFIRMED.

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