Keith Allen Kiefer v. Isanti County, Minnesota

After a criminal trial under a county’s civil solid waste ordinance specific to solid-waste management operations, the county incarcerated the petitioner Keith Kiefer for 60 days after his conviction. There was no pre-trial detention. On appeal in a subsequent civil case, the state appellate court found the ordinance “obviously” inapplicable to Mr. Kiefer’s personal outdoor storage. Then, the state court vacated his criminal conviction. Kiefer then sued the county under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment violations, but the lower courts granted the county’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the analytical home for § 1983 unreasonable seizure claims involving only postconviction incarceration for ‘violating’ an inapplicable law is the Fourth Amendment’s Unreasonable Searches and Seizures Clause or the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause when the Fourth Amendment Unreasonable Searches and Seizures Clause apparently drops out “once a trial has occurred.” Manuel v. City of Joliet, Ill., 580 U.S. 357, 369 n.8 (2017).

2. Whether a plaintiff must prove a mens rea element for county governmental liability for a § 1983 unreasonable seizure claim, an issue reserved in Thompson v. Clark, 142 S. Ct. 1332, 1338, n.3, and where a circuit split persists as recently acknowledged in Armstrong v. Ashley, 60 F.4th 262, 279 (5th Cir. 2023) (“Following Thompson, the circuit split remains in place.”).