Justia U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff, an active genealogist and animal rights activist, claimed that her name had commercial value and that search engines generated revenue as a result of internet searches of her name. She specifically alleges that various features of Google’s search engine violate her right of publicity by using her name to trigger sponsored links, ads, and related searches to medications, including Levitra, Cialis, and Viagra, all of which are trademarks of nationally advertised oral treatments for male erectile dysfunction. The district court dismissed her suit alleging common law misappropriation and violation of the state right-of-privacy law, Wis. Stat. 995.50(2)(b). The Seventh Circuit affirmed, citing the public interest and incidental use exceptions. View "Stayart v. Google Inc." on Justia Law

Indiana Code 35-42-4-12 prohibits certain individuals required to register as sex offenders (Ind. Code 11-8-8) from knowingly using a social networking web site, an instant messaging, or chat room program that the offender knows allows access or use by a person who is less than 18 years of age. Violation constitutes a Class A misdemeanor; subsequent violations constitute Class D felonies. The law does not differentiate based on the age of victim, the manner in which the crime was committed, or the time since the predicate offense. It provides a defense if the individual did not know the website allowed minors or upon discovering it does, immediately ceased use, and exempts persons convicted of consensual “Romeo and Juliet relationships” where the victim and perpetrator are close in age. In 2000, Doe was convicted of child exploitation. He challenged the law on First Amendment grounds on behalf of a class of similarly-situated sex offenders. The district court rejected the challenge. The Seventh Circuit reversed, finding the law unconstitutional. Though content neutral, it is not narrowly tailored to serve the state’s interest. It broadly prohibits substantial protected speech rather than specifically targeting the evil of improper communications to minors.View "Doe v. Prosecutor, Marion County" on Justia Law

Bogie attended a comedy show featuring Joan Rivers, who told a joke about Helen Keller, offending an audience member who had a deaf son. The audience member heckled Rivers; their brief exchange was filmed and was part of the documentary. When Rivers exited to a backstage area, closed to the public, Bogie gained entry and expressed frustration with the heckler and sympathy for Rivers. Rivers responded with an expression of sympathy for the heckler. The film shows at least three others present. The interaction was filmed and included in the documentary entitled Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Bogie’s conversation lasted 16 seconds in the film’s 82 minutes, 0.3 percent of the entire film. The documentary was distributed nationwide. Bogie alleges that she was portrayed in the film as having approved of condescending and disparaging remarks by Rivers toward Wisconsin, its citizens, and the heckler. Bogie’s complaint alleged that her privacy was invaded by the distribution of the film and that the film misappropriated her image for commercial purposes without her consent. The district court dismissed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, reasoning that the footage was “incidental,” newsworthy, and not used for advertising. View "Bogie v. Rosenberg" on Justia Law

The Chicago-area law firms (Anderson) represent plaintiffs in class action lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act-Junk Fax Prevention Act, which authorizes $500 in damages for faxing an unsolicited advertisement, 47 U.S.C. 227(b)(1)(C), (b)(3). This award triples upon a showing of willfulness, and each transmission is a separate violation. Advertisers would pay a fee, and B2B would send an ad to hundreds of fax numbers without obtaining permission from the recipients. When Anderson learned that defendants in four cases under the Act had contracted with B2B, B2B records became the focus of discovery. Despite obtaining all information necessary to certify classes in the four cases, Anderson continued pushing for B2B, and, at a deposition at which B2B was represented by Ruben, obtained the names of other B2B clients, and sent solicitation letters. Anderson attempted to give Ruben $ 5000. Defendants in new cases learned that Anderson had promised B2B confidentiality and unsuccessfully challenged class certification. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, stating that when an ethical breach neither prejudices an attorney’s client nor undermines the integrity of judicial proceedings, state bar authorities are generally better positioned to address the matter through disciplinary proceedings, rather than the courts through substantive sanction in the underlying lawsuit. View "Reliable Money Order, Inc. v. McKnight Sales Co., Inc." on Justia Law

Chicago police officers arrested plaintiffs for disorderly conduct at a 2005 antiwar demonstration. The plaintiffs brought claims for First Amendment retaliation, Fourth Amendment false arrest, Fourteenth Amendment class-of-one equal protection violations, and state law malicious prosecution. They also brought facial challenges against Chicago’s disorderly conduct ordinance, as overbroad and unconstitutionally vague. The district court granted summary judgment. The Seventh Circuit affirmed on the basis of qualified immunity. The facial attack on the ordinance was rendered moot by an earlier decision, which partially invalidated the subsection on overbreadth and vagueness grounds. The court acknowledged that the plaintiffs’ arrests under a now-invalid ordinance may have affected their free speech rights, but that they did not bring an as-applied challenge to redress such an injury. View "Thayer v. Chiczewski" on Justia Law

The Center broadcasts advertisements, maintains a website, publishes a weekly e-mail newsletter, produces a bi-weekly radio show, and engages in other forms of mass media communications. Its tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) is incompatible with partisan political activity, so the Center cannot endorse candidates. During election seasons, the Center runs advertisements that refer to the positions of candidates or to ballot issues and call for actions such as contacting candidates. The Center claims that it feared that Illinois’s new campaign finance laws (10 ILCS 5/9) would require it to register as a “political committee” and to disclose election-related expenditures and significant contributors and that its donors require assurances that their identities will not be disclosed. The Center argued that the law was vague and overbroad. The district court dismissed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, noting that the Illinois law is modeled on federal law. The Center did not establish that the statute “prohibits a substantial amount of protected speech,” or that its “deterrent effect on legitimate expression is ... real and substantial.”View "Ctr, for Individual Freedom v. Madigan" on Justia Law

A class of persons required to register on the state’s online sex and violent offender database sued the Indiana Department of Correction, alleging that failure to provide any procedure to correct errors in the registry violates due process. In response, the DOC created a new policy to give notice to current prisoners about their pending registry listings and an opportunity to challenge the information. The district court granted summary judgment on the ground that the new policy was sufficient to comply with due process. The new procedures still fail to provide any process at all for an entire class of registrants: those who are not incarcerated. The Seventh Circuit reversed. State judicial post-deprivation remedies cited by the DOC are insufficient to meet the requirements of due process. Although registrants can challenge registry errors in the course of criminal prosecutions for failure to comply with registration requirements, due process does not require a person to risk additional criminal conviction as the price of correcting an erroneous listing, especially where a simple procedural fix is available much earlier. View "Schepers v. Comm'r of IN Dep't of Corr." on Justia Law

The Church holds a festival, open to the public, without charge, and obtains a Chicago permit to close portions of streets to vehicles. For the 2008 festival, the parish used a team of paid security guards and volunteer off-duty police officers (parishioners), headed by Kolasinski, a parishioner and Chicago police officer. Members of another church (Garfield) attended the festival to conduct ministry. Its pastor (Teesdale) carried a bullhorn; others carried signs with Scripture verses. The group distributed gospel tracts. Kolasinski, off-duty, wearing a shirt that read “St. Symphorosa Police,” told Teesdale that he could not use a bullhorn or distribute literature without permission. Teesdale attempted to use the bullhorn. Kolasinski handcuffed Teesdale and stated that he was under arrest. Police arrived 30 minutes later. Teesdale was arrested for trespass, a charge eventually dismissed. Teesdale, and others alleged violations of First and Fourth Amendment rights and sought to enjoin the city from preventing attendance at future festivals. A court order permitted Garfield members to enter the festival during specific hours with limitations on the size of signs and a prohibition on sound-enhancement. The 2009 festival passed without incident. The court ruled in favor of the city, but found that First Amendment rights at future festivals were threatened by official policy. The Seventh Circuit remanded that holding for dismissal, based on lack of standing. View "Teesdale v. City of Chicago" on Justia Law

Flava, which specializes in production and distribution of videos of black men engaged in homosexual acts, obtained a preliminary injunction against myVidster, an online social bookmarking service by which people refer sites to those with similar tastes, based on a finding that myVidster is a contributory infringer. The Seventh Circuit vacated the injunction. A Flava customer is authorized only to download the video for his personal use. If instead he uploaded it to the Internet and so by doing so created a copy (because the downloaded video remains in his computer), he was infringing. The court remanded for determination of whether myVidster was a contributory infringer if a visitor to its website bookmarks the video and later someone clicks on the bookmark and views the video. View "Flava Works, Inc v. Marques Rondale Gunter, et al" on Justia Law

A Wisconsin inmate checked out two books from the prison library, and purchased, with the prison’s permission, a copy of To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton (the founder of the Black Panthers). Plaintiff copied on a sheet of paper the Panthers’ “Ten-Point Program,” which appears in all three books. He put the sheet in the footlocker in his cell. A guard discovered the sheet in a random search of the cell. Plaintiff was found guilty, in a prison disciplinary proceeding, of possession of “gang literature” in violation of Wis. Admin. Code DOC 303.20(3). He was given 90 days of confinement in segregation. The prison also destroyed the sheet of paper on which he’d copied the Ten-Point Program. The district court rejected his free speech and due process claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The Seventh Circuit affirmed with respect to the free speech claim, but vacated with respect to due process. “Freedom of speech is not absolute, and the curtailment challenged in this case is slight and the justification adequate, though not ample.” The court made no findings that would enable an inference that plaintiff’s 90-day sentence to segregation was, or was not, a deprivation of liberty. View "Toston v. Thurmer" on Justia Law