NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 16 2020 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT JANE DOE, an individual; et al., No. 18-56436 Plaintiffs-Appellants, D.C. No. 2:18-cv-00905-PA-FFM v. PASADENA UNIFIED SCHOOL MEMORANDUM* DISTRICT; et al., Defendants-Appellees. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Percy Anderson, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted February 3, 2020 Pasadena, California Before: IKUTA and LEE, Circuit Judges, and MARBLEY, Chief District Judge.** Jane Doe, an undocumented immigrant, and her children sued Pasadena Unified School District and school principal Juan Ruelas for numerous constitutional violations. Doe alleges that Ruelas threatened to call immigration if she complained about his school lunch policy to the school board. The district court granted * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Algenon L. Marbley, Chief United States District Judge for the Southern District of Ohio, sitting by designation. 1 Pasadena Unified School District’s and Ruelas’ summary judgment motion. We review de novo the district court’s summary judgment decision. See Devereaux v. Abbey, 263 F.3d 1070, 1074 (9th Cir. 2001) (en banc). We affirm. 1. Equal Protection Claim. While Ruelas’ threat may be unseemly and unbecoming of a school principal, Doe has not presented evidence that his threat — which was never acted upon — denied her or her children equal protection of the law. Doe claims that Ruelas’ threat caused her children emotional distress, interfering with their equal education opportunities. She relies on Brown v. Board of Education to argue that psychological impact on children can violate the equal protection clause. But Ruelas’ single instance of a threat — no matter how inappropriate — cannot compare to the shameful chapter in our nation’s history of sustained and systematic segregation. Moreover, the Brown court relied on expert evidence that long-standing segregation policies had a psychological effect on minority students and hindered their ability to learn. See Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 494 (1954), supplemented 349 U.S. 294 (1955). Doe, on the other hand, has not presented any such evidence. Doe’s Equal Protection claim also fails because it amounts to a First Amendment retaliation claim, not an Equal Protection claim. Doe has not shown that Ruelas threatened her because of her immigration status. “To state a claim 2 under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment a plaintiff must show that the defendants acted with an intent or purpose to discriminate against the plaintiff based upon membership in a protected class.” Barren v. Harrington, 152 F.3d 1193, 1194 (9th Cir. 1998) (emphasis added); Serrano v. Francis, 345 F.3d 1071, 1082 (9th Cir. 2003) (“Intentional discrimination means that a defendant acted at least in part because of a plaintiff’s protected status.”) (quoting another source). Here, Ruelas threatened Doe not because of her immigration status, but rather because of her threat to ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals