Luz Gonzalez v. Lee County Housing Authority, 161 F.3d 1290 (1998)

Citation: Luz Gonzalez v. Lee County Housing Authority, 161 F.3d 1290 (1998)
Parent Document: Luz Gonzalez v. Lee County Housing Authority, 161 F.3d 1290 (1998)
Jurisdiction: United States (federal)
Effective Date: 1998-12-02
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/759590/luz-gonzalez-v-lee-county-housin... ↗

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Ordinarily, a plaintiff who seeks to overcome a state official's affirmative defense of qualified immunity must cite case law, in force at the time of the defendant's actions, that would have made it absolutely clear that the defendant's conduct violated federal law. There is no case from the U.S. Supreme Court, this Circuit, or the relevant state Supreme Court, that would have established that a person violates section 3617 by firing an employee for refusing to discriminate against potential tenants on the basis of race. Cf. Jenkins by Hall v. Talladega City Bd. of Educ., 115 F.3d 821, 826 n. 4 (11th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 412, 139 L.Ed.2d 315 (1997) (explaining that decisions from only these courts clearly establish the law for the purposes of qualified immunity). The absence of such a case is not fatal to Gonzalez's claim, however, because this case differs from the typical qualified immunity case in which the plaintiff sues a public official pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and asserts the violation of some (often generally worded) constitutional right. Although the assertion of such broadly conceived rights, without the benefit of sufficiently illuminating case law, may fail to overcome the hurdle of qualified immunity, see Lassiter v. Alabama A & M Univ., Bd. of Trustees, 28 F.3d 1146, 1150 (11th Cir.1994) (en banc); Jenkins, 115 F.3d at 825 n. 3, we have acknowledged the possibility that some federal statutory provisions will be sufficiently clear on their own to provide defendants with fair notice of their obligations under the law, see Santamorena v. Georgia Military College, 147 F.3d 1337, 1340 n. 6 (11th Cir.1998); Lassiter, 28 F.3d at 1150 n. 4.36 Cf. United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, ----, 117 S.Ct. 1219, 1227, 137 L.Ed.2d 432, ---- ("[G]eneral statements of the law are not inherently incapable of giving fair and clear warning, and ... may apply with obvious clarity to the specific conduct in question, even though 'the very action in question has [not] previously been held unlawful.' ") (quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987)). Section 3617 provides just such an explicit statement of what the Fair Housing Act demanded of the defendant in this case.

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