Case: 22-30691 Document: 119-1 Page: 1 Date Filed: 02/19/2024
United States Court of Appeals
for the Fifth Circuit
____________ United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
No. 22-30691
FILED
February 19, 2024
____________
Lyle W. Cayce
Jarius Brown, Clerk
Plaintiff—Appellant,
versus
Javarrea Pouncy; John Doe #1; John Doe #2,
Defendants—Appellees.
______________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Louisiana
USDC No. 5:21-CV-3415
______________________________
Before Graves, Higginson, and Ho, Circuit Judges.
Stephen A. Higginson, Circuit Judge:
Congress did not provide a statute of limitations for claims brought
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The Supreme Court held in Owens v. Okure that a
forum state’s general or residual statute of limitations for personal injury
claims applies to Section 1983 claims.
488 U.S. 235, 249–50 (1989). In
Louisiana, that period is one year. La. Civ. Code art. 3492. 1 Appellant
Jarius Brown argues that this one-year period should not apply to police
_____________________
1
And, in Louisiana, the state legislature sets “prescriptive periods” rather than
“statutes of limitations.”
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brutality claims brought under Section 1983 and seeks reversal of the district
court’s dismissal of his claims as untimely. He contends that the one-year
period both impermissibly discriminates against Section 1983 police brutality
claims and practically frustrates litigants’ ability to bring such claims. Our
review is de novo. See United States v. Irby, 703 F.3d 280, 282–83 (5th Cir.
2012).
We conclude that precedent requires us to AFFIRM.
I.
Brown alleges that officers from the DeSoto Parish Sheriff’s Office
attacked him without provocation, leaving him to languish in a jail cell with a
broken nose and eye socket. Nearly two years later, Brown sued appellee
Javarrea Pouncy and two unidentified officers in the U.S. District Court for
the Western District of Louisiana, seeking relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for
unreasonable force applied in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth
Amendments and under Louisiana state law for battery, La. Civ. Code
art. 3493.1. Pouncy moved to dismiss the Section 1983 claim as prescribed
(time-barred) under Louisiana’s one-year, residual prescriptive period for
personal injury claims. The district court dismissed with prejudice the
Section 1983 claim and dismissed without prejudice the state law claim over
which it had exercised supplemental jurisdiction. Brown appealed.
Two subsequent developments, noticed to our court by the parties,
provide additional context.
First, Brown refiled his state law claim in state court, which dismissed
the suit as untimely. Brown v. Pouncy, 2023 WL 3859923 (La. Dist. Ct. May
23, 2023). That court rejected Brown’s contention that the claim should be
governed by the two-year period for “actions which arise due to damages
sustained as a result of an act defined as a crime of violence under Chapter 1
of Title 14 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of 1950,” La. Civ. Code art.
2
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3493.10, and instead applied the state’s one-year residual period for personal
injury claims. Brown v. Pouncy, 2023 WL 3859922, *1-2 (La. Dist. Ct. May
10, 2023).
Second, federal charges stemming from the incident were brought
against at least some of the officers. On September 5, 2023, Defendant John
Doe #1, now identified as DeMarkes Grant, pled guilty to obstruction of
justice in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519. Plea Agreement, United States v.
Grant, No. 5:23-cr-00207, ECF 9 (W.D. La. Sept. 5, 2023); Factual Basis for
Plea, United States v. Grant, No. 5:23-cr-00207, ECF 9-2 (W.D. La. Sept. 5,
2023). On September 6, 2023, Pouncy was indicted on two counts of
deprivation of rights under color of law in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 242 and
one count of obstruction of justice in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 1519.
Indictment, United States v. Pouncy, No. 5:23-cr-00210, ECF 1 (W.D. La.
Sept. 6, 2023).
II.
“[T]he failure of certain States to enforce the laws with an equal hand
. . . furnished the powerful momentum behind” the Ku Klux Klan Act in the
midst of a campaign of racial terror following the Civil War. Monroe v. Pape,
365 U.S. 167, 174–75 (1961). Central to addressing this failure was the Act’s
key enforcement mechanism, Section 1983, which provides a cause of action
to “any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction
thereof” for “the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured
by the Constitution and laws” by any person acting “under color of any
statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory.”
42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Still, “[t]he century-old Civil Rights Acts do not contain every rule of
decision required to adjudicate claims asserted under them.” Burnett v.
Grattan, 468 U.S. 42, 47 (1984). Those consequential gaps are filled by 42
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U.S.C. § 1988(a), which the Supreme Court distilled in Burnett into a “threestep process” for “federal courts to follow,” “[i]n the absence of specific
guidance,” “to borrow an appropriate rule.”
Id. At Step One, “look to the
laws of the United States ‘so far as such laws are suitable to carry [the civil
and criminal civil rights statutes] into effect.’”
Id. at 48 (quoting
42 U.S.C.
§ 1988(a)). “If no suitable federal rule exists,” consider, at Step Two, the
“application of state ‘common law, as modified and changed by the
constitution and statutes’ of the forum State.”
Id. (quoting
42 U.S.C.
§ 1988(a)). But, at Step Three, “apply state law only if it is not ‘inconsistent
with the Constitution and laws of the United States.’”
Id. (quoting
42 U.S.C.
§ 1988(a)).
The Supreme Court in Burnett held that, at Step One, federal law does
not provide a statute of limitations for Section 1983 claims, id. at 48–49, and
so courts must, at Step Two, “turn to state law for statutes of limitations,”
id. at 49. One year after Burnett, the Supreme Court in Wilson v. Garcia held
that which state statute of limitations applies is a question of federal law.
471
U.S. 261, 268–69 (1985). It explained that “[o]nly the length of the
limitations period, and closely related questions of tolling and application, are
to be governed by state law” because “Congress surely did not intend to
assign to state courts and legislatures a conclusive role in the formative
function of defining and characterizing the essential elements of a federal
cause of action.”
Id. at 269. And characterization of the claim as a question
of federal law was consistent with “the federal interest in uniformity and the
interest in having firmly defined, easily applied rules.”
Id. at 270 (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted). The Court then answered that
question of federal law, holding that a state’s statute of limitations for “the
tort action for recovery of damages for personal injuries” supplies the
appropriate limitations period.
Id. at 276.
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Uncertainty persisted after Wilson’s clarification. Some states had
multiple statutes of limitations for personal injury actions. The Supreme
Court, in Owens v. Okure, resolved that uncertainty several years later,
holding that the statute of limitations for a Section 1983 action is a state’s
general or residual personal injury statute of limitations. 488 U.S. at 236. For
the Owens plaintiff, this meant New York’s three-year general statute of
limitations for personal injury claims applied rather than its one-year statute
of limitations for intentional torts, and so the Court observed that it “need
not address [plaintiff’s] argument that applying a 1-year limitations period to
§ 1983 actions would be inconsistent with federal interests.” Id. at 251 n.13.
This appeal asks our court to pick up where Owens left off.
III.
Brown contends that application of Louisiana’s one-year prescriptive
period to Section 1983 police brutality claims discriminates against those
claims and practically frustrates litigants’ ability to bring them, both of which
contravene the federal interests behind Section 1983. He argues that each is
an independent basis for concluding that the one-year prescriptive period
cannot apply to his Section 1983 police brutality claim. We first address the
level of generality at which to consider these two contentions and then
address them in turn.
A.
Brown maintains that we ask whether Section 1983 police brutality
claims—and not Section 1983 claims generally, as Pouncy contends—are
discriminated against or practically frustrated by Louisiana’s prescriptive
period. Tellingly, Section 1983 police brutality claims were at issue in both
Wilson and Owens, yet neither analyzed the statute of limitations question
based on the nature of police brutality claims specifically and instead
considered Section 1983 claims generally. 471 U.S. at 263;
488 U.S. at 237.
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That approach makes sense: The doctrinal developments outlined above
reflect an “interest in having firmly defined, easily applied rules.” Wilson,
471 U.S. at 270 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). That interest
was stymied when courts had to parse which limitations period applied based
on the particular facts of a Section 1983 action, see
id. at 275, and so Wilson,
then Owens, announced a straightforward rule that obviated the need to do
so. The claim-specific approach assumed by Brown in his opening brief—
and then urged by him in reply—would upend this.
Though our court has not addressed this issue before, we embraced
Wilson’s “broad and inclusive language” to reject the argument that Section
1983 suits seeking equitable relief are not bound by statutes of limitations.
Walker v. Epps, 550 F.3d 407, 411 (5th Cir. 2008). In that context, we
reasoned that “[t]he Supreme Court was fully aware when it decided Wilson
that actions seeking equitable relief only could be brought under § 1983” but
did not make an exception for those actions and emphasized the need for
uniformity. Id. at 412. We concluded that “Wilson’s strongly expressed
interests in judicial economy suggest” no exception for equitable relief exists.
Id. These same concerns also counsel against a claim-specific inquiry.
B.
Brown contends that Louisiana’s one-year prescriptive period
discriminates against Section 1983 police brutality claims because Brown
would have longer to bring an analogous state law claim. Brown relies on
then-Justice Rehnquist’s concurrence in Burnett, which observed that “if the
state statute of limitations discriminates against federal claims, such that a
federal claim would be time-barred, while an equivalent state claim would
not, then the state law is inconsistent with federal law.” 468 U.S. at 60–61
(Rehnquist, J., concurring in judgment). Brown contends that he would have
two years to bring an analogous state law claim under Louisiana’s
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prescriptive period for crimes of violence, La. Civ. Code art. 3493.10, and
so application of the one-year prescriptive period to bar his Section 1983
claim discriminates against federal claims.
It appears to be an open question of Louisiana law whether Brown
would have two years to bring his analogous state law claim. 2 We need not
resolve that question because, even assuming a two-year prescriptive period
for a state law analogue, Brown misconceives what constitutes impermissible
discrimination in contravention of the federal interests behind Section 1983.
Owens, in holding that the residual limitations period for personal
injury actions applies to Section 1983 claims, contemplated that often “state
law provides multiple statutes of limitations for personal injury actions.” 488
U.S. at 249–50. Of course, some of those might have afforded longer periods
in which to bring claims. But our case law reflects the bargain that courts
have struck in the gap that Congress left: Accept that some plaintiffs may miss
out on longer limitations periods afforded to analogous state law claims but
give all plaintiffs the baseline protection of the limitations period used for
“[g]eneral personal injury actions . . . [that] constitute a major part of the
total volume of civil litigation in the state courts,” so that it is “most unlikely
that the period of limitations applicable to such claims ever was, or ever
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2
As noted, a state trial court rejected Brown’s contention that his claim should be
governed by the two-year period under Louisiana Civil Code article 3493.10 for “actions
which arise due to damages sustained as a result of an act defined as a crime of violence
under Chapter 1 of Title 14 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes of 1950,” and instead applied
the one-year residual period. Brown, 2023 WL 3859922 at *1-2. It reasoned that “the mere
fact that plaintiff contends the actions of defendant were crimes of violence do not make it
so,” after noting that “[l]aw enforcement is permitted to use[] ‘reasonable force to effect
the arrest and detention.’”
Id. at *1 (citation omitted). The trial court found another case
“instructive” in which the one-year period applied where “the defendant law enforcement
officer was not arrested or otherwise charged with a crime relative to his interaction with
[the] plaintiff.”
Id. at *2. We do not weigh in on how the federal criminal charges might
implicate that court’s reasoning.
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would be, fixed in a way that would discriminate against federal claims.”
Wilson, 471 U.S. at 279.
Indeed, Brown’s discrimination standard might have perverse effects.
Take a state legislature that decides that, to address police brutality, it will
set a ten-year statute of limitations for plaintiffs bringing police brutality
claims under state law. And assume the state has a three-year residual statute
of limitations for personal injury claims. A Section 1983 police brutality claim
would be time-barred after three years, shorter, of course, than the ten-year
period to bring the same claim under state law. Under Brown’s theory, the
state—in making itself a more hospitable forum for civil rights claims—may
have discriminated against federal claims. 3
Our court’s precedent confirms our approach. We have consistently
applied shorter, general limitations periods instead of longer ones governing
analogous state law claims. For example, in King-White v. Humble
Independent School District, we declined to apply Texas’s five-year limitations
period for sexual assault—the most closely analogous state law claim to the
Section 1983 claim brought there—and instead applied the two-year residual
limitations period for personal injury actions. 803 F.3d 754, 759–61 (5th Cir.
2015). To do otherwise, we explained, would be “precisely the practice that
the Supreme Court rejected in Wilson and Owens.”
Id. at 761.
C.
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3
Of course, the rejoinder might be that this hypothetical regime discriminates
against Section 1983 claims but does not practically frustrate them. Indeed, at oral
argument, counsel explained that the convergence of the discrimination and frustration
arguments would provide a narrow basis for a ruling in Brown’s favor. Because we
conclude that Brown misconceives the standard for discrimination, we do not consider the
convergence argument.
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Brown also argues that Louisiana’s one-year prescriptive period
practically frustrates the ability to bring claims in contravention of the federal
interests underlying Section 1983. Brown and amici argue that a short
limitations period is particularly harmful to victims of police brutality, who
as victims of violence experience trauma that is often exacerbated by
remaining in custody. See, e.g., Dani Kritter, The Overlooked Barrier to Section
1983 Claims: State Catch-All Statutes of Limitations, Cal. L. Rev. Online
(Mar. 2021), https://www.californialawreview.org/online/the-overlookedbarrier-to-section-1983-claims-state-catch-all-statutes-of-limitations.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly admonished that Section 1983 be
interpreted consistent with its broad, remedial purpose. In Wilson, the Court
explained that the “high purposes of this unique remedy make it appropriate
to accord the statute a sweep as broad as its language.” 471 U.S. at 272
(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). A statute of limitations must
therefore account for “practicalities that are involved in litigating federal civil
rights claims.” Burnett,
468 U.S. at 50. Otherwise, it would inhibit Section
1983’s “central objective” of “ensur[ing] that individuals whose federal
constitutional or statutory rights are abridged may recover damages or secure
injunctive relief.”
Id. at 55.
Brown argues that Owens, in a footnote, expressly left open the
question of whether one year is so short that it denies those individuals relief.
The footnote reads:
Because we hold that the Court of Appeals correctly borrowed New
York’s 3-year general personal injury statute of limitations, we need
not address [plaintiff’s] argument that applying a 1-year limitations
period to § 1983 actions would be inconsistent with federal interests.
See Burnett v. Grattan, 468 U.S. 42, 61,
104 S.Ct. 2924, 2935, 82
F.Ed.2d 36 (1984) (Rehnquist, J., concurring) (before borrowing a
state statute of limitations and applying it to § 1983 claims, a court
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must ensure that it “afford[s] a reasonable time to the federal
claimant”).
Owens, 488 U.S. at 251 n.13.
Taking this footnote as our starting point, we turn to then-Justice
Rehnquist’s concurrence in Burnett. While it does state that a limitations
period could be so unreasonably short that it frustrates the federal interests
behind Section 1983, it concludes that “[t]he willingness of Congress to
impose a 1–year limitations period in 42 U.S.C. § 1986 demonstrates that at
least a 1–year period is reasonable.”
468 U.S. at 61 (Rehnquist, J., concurring
in judgment). Section 1986 creates a cause of action against those who have
knowledge of a conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil rights, as
defined in
42 U.S.C. § 1985, and have the power to help stop such a
deprivation but do not do so. Section 1983 and Section 1986 claims are, of
course, distinct, and so it is possible that what is too short to vindicate one
might be sufficient to vindicate the other.
While the Supreme Court has not addressed, post-Owens, whether the
length of a statute of limitations constitutes practical frustration in
contravention of federal interests, we find its treatment of the application of
state tolling provisions to Section 1983 claims instructive. The Court
explained in Hardin v. Straub that, to determine whether federal interests
would be contravened by the application of state tolling provisions, courts
must ask whether “the State’s rules . . . defeat either § 1983’s chief goals of
compensation and deterrence or its subsidiary goals of uniformity and
federalism.” 490 U.S. 536, 539-40 (1989). This reflects “a congressional
decision to defer to ‘the State’s judgment on the proper balance between the
policies of repose and the substantive policies of enforcement embodied in
the state cause of action.’”
Id. at 538 (quoting Wilson,
471 U.S. at 271).
Discussing the policy choice that state legislatures face in deciding whether
to toll limitations periods for claims brought by prisoners, the Court
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explained that “a State reasonably could decide that there is no need to enact
a tolling statute applicable to” suits brought by prisoners or could
“reasonably” conclude that a tolling statute is necessary because “some
inmates may be loath[] to bring suit against adversaries . . . whose daily
supervision and control they remain subject” to and that those “who do file
may not have a fair opportunity to establish the validity of their allegations
while they are confined.” Id. at 544. That a state legislature could decide,
consistent with the federal interests behind Section 1983, not to toll
prisoners’ claims suggests there is also no frustration of federal interests here
where barriers facing police brutality victims overlap with those facing
prisoners, as described in Hardin.
Our court has repeatedly applied Louisiana’s one-year prescriptive
period, see, e.g., Stringer v. Town of Jonesboro, 986 F.3d 502 (5th Cir. 2021),
but we agree with Brown that it has not been challenged on these grounds.
Puerto Rico, Kentucky, and Tennessee are tied with Louisiana as having the
shortest limitations periods applicable to Section 1983 actions, 4 and it does
not appear that either the First Circuit or Sixth Circuit has addressed these
arguments.
But the Ninth Circuit and Eleventh Circuit each addressed challenges
to one-year limitations periods after Owens. As out-of-circuit cases, they are
merely persuasive, see Ferraro v. Liberty Mut. Fire Ins. Co., 796 F.3d 529, 533
(5th Cir. 2015), and offer limited analysis. In McDougal v. County of Imperial,
the Ninth Circuit rejected the argument that “a one-year period of
limitations is too restrictive to accommodate the important federal interests
at stake in a civil rights action.”
942 F.2d 668, 672 (9th Cir. 1991). It
_____________________
4
See P.R. Laws tit. 31, § 5298(2); Ky. Rev. Stat. § 413.140; Tenn. Code.
§ 28-3-104.
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observed that “Congress . . . demonstrated its belief that a one-year period is
reasonable in the civil rights context, providing for such a period in 42 U.S.C.
§ 1986.”
Id. at 673. In Jones & Preuit v. Mauldin, the Eleventh Circuit
rejected, on remand from the Supreme Court after Owens, the argument that
a one-year period contravenes federal interests because “[n]o case . . . has
held that a one-year limitations period conflicts with the policies behind
section 1983 by providing an insufficient period in which to file suit.”
876
F.2d 1480, 1484 (11th Cir. 1989).
Finally, we turn to Brown’s argument that other circuits “have
declined to apply” state limitations periods “in contexts where they were
incompatible with other federal statutes or rights.” Brown misreads these
cases. In Mason v. Owens-Illinois, Inc., the Sixth Circuit declined to apply a
limitations period that otherwise applied only to actions brought by the state
civil rights commission because it was a poor fit for actions brought by private
litigants under Section 1983. 517 F.2d 520 (6th Cir. 1975). In Johnson v.
Davis, the Fourth Circuit declined to apply a one-year limitations period to
Section 1983 claims because that statute of limitations applied only to Section
1983 claims while the general personal injury statute of limitations was two
years.
582 F.2d 1316 (4th Cir. 1978). Both cases predate the holding in Owens
that the residual limitations period for personal injury claims applies to
Section 1983 claims. 488 U.S. at 249–50. And, in Tearpock-Martini v.
Borough of Shickshinny, decided after Owens, the Third Circuit did not apply
the state’s two-year residual limitations period for personal injury claims, not
because that period practically frustrated federal interests, but because it
concluded that the Establishment Clause claim could not be time-barred as it
was “predicated on a still-existing display or practice.”
756 F.3d 232, 239
(3d Cir. 2014).
IV.
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We read Supreme Court precedent, and our cases applying that
precedent, to foreclose Brown’s position. Only the Supreme Court, having
already solved the problem of uncertainty in the absence of a federal
limitations period for Section 1983 claims, can clarify how lower courts
should evaluate practical frustration without undermining that solution. And
states, like Louisiana, are free to act so that they are no longer outliers.
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM.
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