Three reversals for the Ninth Circuit
on Mar 22, 2005 at 10:51 am
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Tuesday that individuals seeking to build a wireless telephone tower antenna do not have a right to sue for civil rights damages if they are denied a permit. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Court ruled, provides the only remedies available.
Clearing up a conflict among the Circuit Courts on whether an 1871 civil rights statute provides an alternative remedy to the Telecom Act, the Court overturned a Ninth Circuit ruling that allowed the civil rights case to go forward. The Court ruled in an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia in City of Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams (docket 03-1601).
Reversing another Ninth Circuit ruling, the Court decided by a 5-3 vote that a jury considering a possible death sentence need not be told explicitly that it must consider favorable post-crime evidence as a mitigating factor. If a jury is instructed in sufficiently broad terms to consider all mitigating evidence, that will embrace post-crime as well as pre-crime mitigation, the Court declared in an opinion written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in Brown v. Payton (03-1039).
In a third decision overturning the Ninth Circuit, the Court ruled unanimously that police did not violate the rights of an individual when they detained her in handcuffs while they searched a house where police believed a gang member lived. The Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, also ruled in the case of Muehler v. Mena (03-1423) that the officers did not violate that woman’s rights when they questioned her during the detention about her immigration status.
The Chief Justice, who returned to the bench on Monday for the first time since October, announced his opinion in the Mena case.
