Trump backers likely to get court OK to sue
Supporters of presidential candidate Donald Trump, who were roughed up by protesters after a June 2016 rally in San Jose, appear likely to win a federal appeals court’s approval to proceed with a suit accusing police of putting them in harm’s way.
Suits challenging police handling of demonstrations typically face an obstacle in a Supreme Court doctrine known as qualified immunity. That doctrine shields officers from liability for violating specific rights of private citizens, such as the right to be protected from foreseeable violence, unless those rights have been clearly established by past rulings.
Lawyers for San Jose argue that the current suit must be dismissed because no previous ruling has set standards for police management of hostile groups at political rallies.
But two members of a three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to hold a different view at a hearing Monday in San Francisco.
Judge William Fletcher noted that the lawsuit accused the officers of forcing Trump rallygoers to use an exit that led to a crowd of protesters. Assuming that description is accurate, as the court is required to do at this stage of the case, Fletcher said, “we have an affirmative act by the police that produces danger.”
“The police did not make the (pro-Trump) plaintiffs go to that rally,” replied Matthew Pritchard, a deputy city attorney.
“But they made the rally people run a gauntlet,” responded Judge Andrew Kleinfeld. The Trump supporters contend they could have escaped safely by using another exit, he told Pritchard, and “the only reason they didn’t was that the cops forced them.”
Judge Dorothy Nelson, the third panel member, said the police response seemed unreasonable, but she hadn’t found a past ruling “that would clearly say to an officer, ‘You can’t do that.’ ”
After the rally at the McEnery Convention Center, police directed those in attendance to leave from a single exit. There, according to the lawsuit, they were ordered to head out onto a street with hundreds of anti-Trump protesters, even though a safer route and other exits were available. Twenty plaintiffs said they were beaten or struck by objects thrown by the protesters, and one plaintiff said an officer told her that police had been instructed not to intervene.
In March 2017, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh dismissed claims against San Jose and Police Chief Edgardo Garcia for alleged policy decisions that caused the injuries, but allowed suits accusing officers at the scene of “deliberate indifference” to the dangers the Trump supporters faced. The rallygoers’ lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon, defended that decision at Monday’s hearing.
“They had the right to go to a rally,” she said. “Once (police) put them in harm’s way, forcing them into a particular route, not allowing them to flee, they put the plaintiffs in danger.”
That was 20/20 hindsight, contended Pritchard, the city’s lawyer.
“There were lawenforcement reasons for the officers to stick with a single-exit plan,” he said. “Police often protect people in (free) speech activity” and shouldn’t be secondguessed when something goes wrong, he said.