Felder v. Casey

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Felder v. Casey
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Argued March 28, 1988
Decided June 22, 1988
Full case nameBobby Felder v. Duane Casey, et al.
Citations 487 U.S. 131 ( more )
108 S. Ct. 2302; 101 L. Ed. 2d 123
Holding
A state notice-of-claim statute was preempted by § 1983.
Court membership
Chief Justice
William Rehnquist
Associate Justices
William J. Brennan Jr.  · Byron White
Thurgood Marshall  · Harry Blackmun
John P. Stevens  · Sandra Day O'Connor
Antonin Scalia  · Anthony Kennedy
Case opinions
Majority Brennan, joined by White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy
Concurrence White
Dissent O'Connor, joined by Rehnquist
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Art. VI, 42 U.S.C. § 1983

Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that a state notice-of-claim statute could not be applied to a civil rights suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in state court.

Contents

Background

A Wisconsin statute required people wishing to sue a state or local government entity or officer to give notice at least 120 days in advance of filing suit. The claimant must provide an itemized statement of the relief sought, and the lawsuit must be filed within six months of receiving notice that the claim has been disallowed. Failure to comply with the statute's requirements was grounds for dismissing the suit.

Wisconsin A north-central state of the United States of America

Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States, in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin is the 23rd largest state by total area and the 20th most populous. The state capital is Madison, and its largest city is Milwaukee, which is located on the western shore of Lake Michigan. The state is divided into 72 counties.

Bobby Felder, a black Milwaukee resident, alleged that he was beaten and arrested by white Milwaukee Police Department officers on July 4, 1981. Nine months later, he filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin state court against the city of Milwaukee and the police officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law that allows lawsuits for violations of constitutional rights. The officers moved to dismiss Felder's lawsuit because he had not complied with the state notice-of-claim statute, and on appeal the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed that the statute applied and Felder had not adequately complied with it, so the case must be dismissed.

Milwaukee Largest city in Wisconsin

Milwaukee is the largest city in the state of Wisconsin and the fifth-largest city in the Midwestern United States. The seat of the eponymous county, it is on Lake Michigan's western shore. Ranked by its estimated 2014 population, Milwaukee was the 31st largest city in the United States. The city's estimated population in 2017 was 595,351. Milwaukee is the main cultural and economic center of the Milwaukee metropolitan area which had a population of 2,043,904 in the 2014 census estimate. It is the second-most densely populated metropolitan area in the Midwest, surpassed only by Chicago. Milwaukee is considered a Gamma global city as categorized by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network with a regional GDP of over $105 billion.

Milwaukee Police Department

The Milwaukee Police Department is the police department organized under the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The department has a contingent of about 1,800 sworn officers when at full strength and is divided into seven districts. Alfonso Morales is the current chief of police, serving since February 2018, with two months of that under interim status.

Wisconsin Supreme Court the highest court in the U.S. state of Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is the highest appellate court in Wisconsin. The Supreme Court has jurisdiction over original actions, appeals from lower courts, and regulation or administration of the practice of law in Wisconsin.

Opinion of the Court

The Court held that Wisconsin's notice-of-claim statute was preempted because it "conflicts in both its purpose and effects with the remedial objectives of § 1983, and because its enforcement in such actions will frequently and predictably produce different outcomes in § 1983 litigation based solely on whether the claim is asserted in state or federal court." The state statute essentially imposed an exhaustion requirement, which the Court had previously held did not apply to § 1983 suits in Patsy v. Board of Regents of Florida , 457 U.S. 496 (1982).

The doctrine of exhaustion of remedies prevents a litigant from seeking a remedy in a new court or jurisdiction until all claims or remedies have been exhausted in the original one. The doctrine was originally created by case law based on the principles of comity.

See also

<i>United States Reports</i> official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States

The United States Reports are the official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner and by the name of the respondent, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States. United States Reports, once printed and bound, are the final version of court opinions and cannot be changed. Opinions of the court in each case are prepended with a headnote prepared by the Reporter of Decisions, and any concurring or dissenting opinions are published sequentially. The Court's Publication Office oversees the binding and publication of the volumes of United States Reports, although the actual printing, binding, and publication are performed by private firms under contract with the United States Government Publishing Office.

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