In Demarest v. City of Vallejo, published August 16, 2022, the 9th Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the defendant city and defendant police officer in a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 case. The plaintiff was suffering from a staph infection on his back. He encountered a DUI and driver's license checkpoint. Under the checkpoint plan, all vehicles were stopped unless backup exceeded five minutes. Officers were to screen drivers for DUI, verify they had a license, and provide an educational handout. Although drivers' licenses were to be checked, the checkpoint's purpose was to remove intoxicated drivers from the road and deter intoxicated driving, not to remove unlicensed drivers. The plaintiff refused to show his driver's license at the checkpoint. The defendant officer opened the door of his car, grabbed his left wrist, removed him from the vehicle, handcuffed him, and told him he was under arrest. The arrest process, which took one to two seconds, exacerbated the plaintiff's back pain. When he was booked, a utility knife was discovered hanging around the plaintiff's neck. He was charged with resisting arrest and carrying a concealed dirk or dagger. He participated in a diversion program and the charges were dismissed. He then sued the officer for violating his 4th Amendment rights by demanding to see his license and refusing to let him proceed; detaining him without reasonable suspicion; arresting him without probable cause; and using excessive force. He sued the city for municipal liability for an alleged official policy of conducting driver's license checks at DUI checkpoints; and for failure to train. The district court ruled that neither the officer nor the city violated the 4th Amendment.
The court of appeals agreed. A municipality may set up a checkpoint to stop cars without reasonable suspicion of committing a crime, if it passes a two-part test. First, the court must determine whether the checkpoint is per se invalid because its primary purpose is to advance the general interest in crime control. If not, the court determines the checkpoint's reasonableness (and therefore constitutionality) based on the individual circumstances. Here, the checkpoint satisfied the first step. The primary purpose of the checkpoint was the proper one of reducing the danger of drunk driving. Although removing unlicensed drivers from the road was not a purpose of the checkpoint, that did not detract from the checkpoint's proper purpose. Further, if removing unlicensed drivers from the road was a purpose, that highway safety purpose would have been proper. On the second step, stopping the plaintiff's car based on the sobriety checkpoint was proper under the 4th Amendment. The court rejected the argument that the purpose of having a sobriety checkpoint rendered checking licenses improper. The subjective intent behind the stop is not relevant to the second step. The systematic addition of driver's licenses checks to the DUI checkpoint was objectively reasonable. The check only minimally interfered with liberty of the sort the 4th Amendment seeks to protect. It was not an investigation of a crime; the contribution to the length of the stop was minimal; and the programmatic guidelines of the stop minimized discretion of officers at the scene. The plaintiff's detention and arrest did not violate the 4th Amendment, because the officer had probable cause the plaintiff violated Vehicle Code section 12951 by refusing to show his license. Finally, the excessive force claim fails, because the use of force incidental to the arrest was reasonable, and the plaintiff failed to show evidence the officer using the force was aware of the plaintiff's back injury when the force was used.
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