Wednesday, December 26, 2018
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Ninth Circuit:
Can’t Impound Vehicle Because Driver Lacks California License
Opinion Affirms Judgments in Civil Rights Action Brought by Persons Who Held Mexican Drivers’ Licenses; Says Vehicles Were Unlawfully Seized
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has declared that law enforcement agencies improperly impounded vehicles based on the drivers lacking a California driver’s license where each had a license issued in Mexico.
Senior Circuit Judge J. Clifford Wallace wrote Friday’s majority opinion and Circuit Judge Paul added thoughts in a concurring opinion.
The plaintiffs, Rafael M. Sandoval and Simeon Ruiz, each got pulled over in a separate incident in Sonoma County, Sandoval by a county sheriff’s deputy and Ruiz by Santa Rosa police officers. Both men had previously been issued a Mexican driver’s license (though Ruiz’s was expired) and had California-licensed friends willing to take possession of their vehicles, but in both cases, the law enforcement officers making the stop caused the vehicles to be impounded for 30 days.
Vehicle Code §14602.6(a)(1) says, in part:
“Whenever a peace officer determines that a person was…driving a vehicle without ever having been issued a driver’s license, the peace officer may…immediately arrest that person and cause the removal and seizure of that vehicle….”
The plaintiffs maintained that the law enforcement agencies were unreasonable in interpreting “driver’s license” to mean a California driver’s license.
Proceedings Below
Sandoval and Ruiz sued in the Northern District of California for civil rights violations, under 42 USC §1983. Senior District Court Judge Thelton E. Henderson (now inactive) agreed that the interpretations of §14602.6 adopted by the defendants were unreasonable, and granted the plaintiffs summary judgment based on Fourth Amendment breaches, awarding each roughly $4,000.
Henderson denied their requests for class certification. He also granted summary judgment to the defendants on the plaintiffs’ action under California’s Bane Act (Civil Code §52.1), which prohibits interfering “by threat, intimidation, or coercion, with the exercise or enjoyment by any individual or individuals of rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or of the rights secured by the Constitution or laws of this state….”
The defendants appealed from summary judgment in the plaintiffs’ favor, while the plaintiffs cross-appealed from the denial of certification and the Bane Act judgment.
Wallace’s opinion affirms the summary judgments and the denial of class certification.
‘Driver’s License’ Defined
The jurist pointed to California Vehicle Code §310 which defines a “driver’s license” as “a valid license to drive the type of motor vehicle or combination of vehicles for which a person is licensed under this code or by a foreign jurisdiction.”
He declared:
“Accordingly, a driver who has been issued a driver’s license in a foreign jurisdiction for the type of vehicle seized has not driven that vehicle ‘without ever having been issued a driver’s license,’ and section 14602.6 does not authorize impounding their vehicles. The impoundment of plaintiffs’ vehicles was thus not caused by state law, but by the defendants’ policies of impounding vehicles when the driver had never been issued a California driver’s license. The district court did not err by granting summary judgment to the plaintiffs on this issue.”
Wallace went on to say:
“The City argues, at great length that section 14602.6 applies to any driver who has never been issued a California driver’s license. But the City’s arguments cannot overcome the plain language of section 310. which includes licenses by a foreign jurisdiction….Moreover, conspicuously absent from the City’s briefs are any California court decisions applying its definition, which would change our analysis.”
2017 Decision
Wallace pointed to the Ninth Circuit’s decision last year in Brewster v. Beck. There, then-Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, now retired, said the Los Angeles Police Department properly seized a vehicle being driven by a borrower of it who had a suspended license, but that once the need to get the vehicle off the street was satisfied, there was no justification for continuing to remove it from the possession of the owner, who had a valid license.
Kozinski wrote:
“The 30-day impound of Brewster’s vehicle constituted a seizure that required compliance with the Fourth Amendment.”
Wallace rejected Santa Rosa’s argument that holding onto Ruiz’s vehicle for 30 days was reasonable because Ruiz did not have a current license. He said:
“But, even if Ruiz could not have driven his vehicle on California s roads, he could have lent the truck to a friend, sold the truck, used it for storage, or taken any other innumerable possible actions that a property owner can lawfully take with his or her property. The City has not provided us with any reason that a government may warrantlessly interfere with private possessory interests in this way, beyond its general argument that such impounds are justified as a deterrent or penalty. Because we reject those arguments, at least on the facts of this case, the district court did not err by entering summary judgment in favor of Ruiz.”
He added that once Ruiz was able to provide a licensed driver who could take lawfully drive the truck, “the City’s community caretaking function was discharged,” and its retention of the vehicle was unlawful.
Other Issues
Denial of class certification was appropriate, Wallace wrote, for lack of commonality of interests among those whose vehicles were warehoused. A 30-day impounding of a vehicle is not in every instance unreasonable, but only “is only unconstitutional when it continues in the absence of a warrant or any exception to the warrant requirement.”
Turning to the Bane Act, the jurist said:
“[T]he district court correctly denied the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment because the plaintiffs are incorrect that proving a Fourth Amendment violation vicariously triggers Bane Act liability. Instead, proving a Bane Act claim here requires specific intent to violate protected rights, meaning the plaintiffs must have shown that the County and City impounded their vehicles with specific intent to violate their Fourth Amendment rights.”
Watford’s Concurrence
In his concurring opinion, Watford agreed that the current case is controlled by Brewster v. Beck, in which he had joined. Watford remarked:
“After giving the matter further consideration, I am now of the view that we reached the right result in Brewster but for the wrong reason.”
The statute permits an “opportunity for a storage hearing to determine the validity of, or consider any mitigating circumstances attendant to, the storage”—but Watford pointed out that “this hearing may be conducted by an officer or employee of the police department responsible for seizing the vehicle.”
The jurist said the statute “is constitutionally deficient not because it runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment, as we held in Brewster, but because the post-seizure hearing it affords does not comply with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
He went on to say:
“Due process does not demand a full-blown jury trial in this context, but it surely entitles an owner to a hearing before a neutral decision-maker….The plaintiff in Brewster did not receive such a hearing, and neither did the plaintiffs in this case. That fact alone renders the impoundment of their vehicles unlawful.”
The case is Sandoval v. City of Santa Rosa, No. 16-16122.
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