Michigan Gaming Control Board, et al. v. John Moody, et al.

While investigating tips that licensed harnessracing drivers were accepting money to fix horse races, gambling regulators from the Michigan Gaming Control Board interviewed the drivers. Each driver had previously agreed to cooperate in investigations as a licensing condition but asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege and refused to answer questions. Gambling regulators suspended the drivers’ licenses for failure to cooperate and later issued orders excluding them from racetracks, but no criminal charges were filed against the drivers. In this § 1983 action, the Sixth Circuit denied qualified immunity on the drivers’ Fifth Amendment claim that the regulators violated their clearly established self-incrimination rights by suspending their licenses and excluding them. It also denied qualified immunity on the drivers’ due-process claim that two of the regulators deprived them of a timely hearing about the later orders excluding them from entering racetrack grounds, a claim that the district court refused to allow the drivers to raise on remand because it was not in the complaint.

1. Whether government licensees who were never charged with a crime can demonstrate a violation of a Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer regulatory-related questions without threat of a regulatory penalty, unless they were offered immunity.

2. Whether the licensees demonstrated a violation of clearly established law as to a right against self-incrimination and as to a due-process right to a timely post-exclusion hearing.