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Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 4.1.10 Defendants

The defendants should be identified with a close eye toward relief. As a rule of thumb, if you seek damages, seek them from the person who inflicted the injury leading to the claim for damages. By contrast, if you seek injunctive relief, you must name the highest-level officials, usually the department heads, since they can offer the most thorough and far-ranging relief. Injunctive relief starts at the top; damages start at the bottom. The bedrock principle is to include as defendants everyone necessary for relief.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 9.2.15 Funding

In virtually all cases, the defendant’s ability to comply with the mandates of an institutional reform decree depends on having adequate funds. Executive officials alone do not control appropriations, and legislators are extremely unlikely to be parties to a decree.4430 Thus, consider whether specifying what steps or types of actions the defendants must take to obtain sufficient appropriations is helpful.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 8.1.2 Overview of the Eleventh Amendment

The Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution expressly bars suits in federal court against states by citizens of other countries and other states.3833 Despite this express language, the Supreme Court held in 1890 that the Eleventh Amendment also prohibits suits by citizens against their own states.3834 As a result, private parties may not sue a state or state agency by name in federal court unless Congress validly abrogates state sovereign immunity or the state waives its immunity.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 1.4.1 Developing the Legal Theory

As the client describes the problems to be addressed, the attorney will begin analyzing whether the acts or omissions of concern violate any constitutional principles, laws or regulations, or federally approved plans guiding state action or common law norms. As this analysis unfolds, consider what public or private entities or individuals are arguably responsible for the harm alleged. In exploring which legal claims will be asserted in the lawsuit, it is useful to start with some preliminary legal brainstorming.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 5.1.9 “Persons” Acting “Under Color of State Law” Under Section 1983

A § 1983 action can be brought only against a person acting “under color of [state] law.”1549 Liability lies against those “who carry a badge of authority of a State and represent it in some capacity, whether they act in accordance with their authority or misuse it.”1550 Although the term “person” was originally thought to refer only to human beings, the concept was broadened in Monell v.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 5.1.10 Under Color of State Law

State and local officials can interfere with federal rights in two distinct ways. By enforcing state laws or policies that conflict with federal law, state and local officials deprive their victims of federal rights. In such a case, the public officials obviously act under “color of state law.”1554 State and local officials can also interfere with federally-protected rights by misusing power entrusted to them under state law.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 2.6.4 Pendent Party Jurisdiction

Some federal courts subsequently used the Gibbs approach to support the exercise of jurisdiction over new parties over whom there was no independent basis of federal jurisdiction. When, for example, a plaintiff files a federal claim against a defendant, under what circumstances may the court entertain jurisdiction over a state claim against a second defendant when there is no independent basis for federal jurisdiction?

Home Foreclosures: 16.3.4.7a.1 The Supreme Court ruling in Tyler

Resolving the conflict in the lower courts, the Supreme Court in Tyler v. Hennepin County295 held that when a local government takes a home at a property tax foreclosure and keeps the homeowner’s equity after the tax debt is paid, it violates the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Takings Clause is applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, and provides that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Home Foreclosures: 16.3.4.7a.4 Determining the amount of compensation that is due

The Supreme Court in Tyler did not address the critical question of how “just compensation” should be calculated in tax foreclosure cases. The lower courts in Tyler also had not dealt with the issue because the Takings Clause claim was dismissed. While Hennepin County eventually sold the property for $40,000, no court had ruled that this was the property value that should be used for determining the surplus equity or proper compensation.

Access to Utility Service: 11.5.7.2.1 Overview

Sections 11.5.7.2.2–11.5.7.2.4, infra, summarize the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) efforts to regulate phone and video calls between incarcerated people and people in the free world, as well as the recent federal legislation affecting the FCC’s authority over these communications.