Williams v. Hansen’s Empirical Analysis
326 F.3d 569 · 2003
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently May 2020 · most notably Francis v. Giacomelli (2009), Adams v. Trustees of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (2011)
4 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Virginia Eastern District Court)
Relationships
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Anderson v. Creighton · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment · Malley v. Briggs
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he right the official is alleged to have violated must have been “clearly established” in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense: The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful ...; but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“action disparately impacts members of a particular [protected] group, it will not be found to violate the Equal Protection Clause unless the plaintiff demonstrates that the action was motivated, at least in part, by an 'invidiously discriminatory' intent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Elhady v. Piehota“[T]o succeed on an equal protection claim, a plaintiff must first demonstrate that he has been treated differently from others with whom he is similarly situated and that the unequal treatment was the result of intentional or purposeful discrimination.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.