20 Mar Supreme Court Decides Olivier v. City of Brandon – 1983 Case Involving Heck
The Supreme Court held today in Olivier v. City of Brandon that Heck v. Humphrey does not bar a §1983 suit seeking purely prospective relief. This was the case involving the street preacher who had been convicted of violating the City’s ordinance restricting expressive activity near the public amphitheater (the restriction applied in a content neutral manner). Olivier wanted to return to the venue to continue to preach after his conviction, but without the threat of criminal punishment so he brought a §1983 action seeking only forward-looking relief, asked the court to declare the ordinance unconstitutional and prevent its enforcement against him. The Fifth Circuit held that his claims were categorically barred by Heck, because if he succeeded it would “necessarily imply the invalidity” of his prior conviction. Olivier argued that Heck’s bar should not apply in two circumstances, both present here: 1) where the individual is only seeking prospective relief; and 2) when the person was never in custody for his conviction and thus never had access to habeas proceedings.
In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Kagan, the Court held that Heck does not bar a lawsuit seeking purely prospective relief, assuming a credible threat of prosecution. The Court reasoned that if he was not able to bring a prospective suit, he would be left with an “untenable choice” (referencing Greek mythology): “violate the law and suffer the consequences (the Scylla), or else give up what he takes to be his First Amendment rights (the Charybdis).” This result was wholly consistent with the Court’s decision in Wooley v. Maynard, though that case was decided before Heck. The Court concluded that Olivier was not challenging the “validity of his conviction or sentence,” which “falls outside habeas’s core – and likewise outside Heck’s concerns.” A prospective suit is not a collateral attack on the prior conviction, which therefore does not raise the concerns Heck did in terms of “parallel litigation” and “conflicting judgments.”
The Court rejected the City’s argument that hinged on the line from Heck that states: “When a state prisoner seeks damages in a §1983 suit, the district court must consider whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence; if it would, the complaint must be dismissed.” (emphasis added). The Court called this argument “fair”, but “hardly dispositive.” Strictly speaking, the Court noted the language fits, but the Court explained that it has “often cautioned that general language in judicial opinions should be read as referring in context to circumstances similar to the circumstances then before the Court and not referring to quite different circumstances that the Court was not then considering.” And here, the Court found “the sentence relied on swept a bit too broad.” That is so because here, there is no “looking back” at the facts underlying the conviction, “even if as a kind of byproduct, success in it shows that something past should not have occurred.” Thus, the Heck language should not apply here where the Court in Heck did not consider a forward-looking suit like this one.
The Court cabined its holding in two important ways. First, it did not answer the second question about the application of the Heck bar in circumstances where the individual never had access to habeas because it found the first question fully disposed of the case. The Court also specifically noted that it was not saying that “every person can challenge his statute of conviction through a §1983 suit for wholly prospective relief” and instead, reserved the question of “whether a person may bring such a suit while he is in custody for violating the statute challenged.”