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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The district court in Baggett considered whether §§ 3604 and 3617, standing alone, without the benefit of illuminating case law, sufficiently had established the relevant pre-existing law to permit the plaintiffs to overcome the defendants' assertion of qualified immunity, as contemplated in Lassiter. Baggett, 1997 WL 151544, at * 22. The court explained that, in light of the statute, "no competent government agent reasonably could believe that truly egregious acts of discrimination ... would not violate federal law," but concluded that because the plaintiffs' claims posed a "sophisticated legal issue" the defendants remained immune. Id. Gonzalez's claims in this case, however, present no such complications. Gonzalez has alleged and offered evidence that Moran fired her because Gonzalez refused to discriminate against tenants on the basis of race, precisely the type of egregious discrimination that the plain language of the statute warns against and that the Baggett court explained no competent official could reasonably claim federal law permitted. Finally, and to avoid confusion, we do not cite Baggett as a case that clearly establishes the law on this point; our precedent firmly states that a district court opinion cannot accomplish that result, see Jenkins, 115 F.3d at 826 n. 4. We cite the case only as a persuasive illustration that the provisions at issue here, standing alone, clearly establish the law in a case alleging conduct so plainly at odds with the statutes

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