holding official immunity is available in claims of discrimination if plaintiff fails to establish his treatment by defendants "was so at variance with what would reasonably be anticipated, absent racial discrimination that racial discrimination is the probable explanation"
How later courts described this case
- holding official immunity is available in claims of discrimination if plaintiff fails to establish his treatment by defendants "was so at variance with what would reasonably be anticipated, absent racial discrimination that racial discrimination is the probable explanation"
- explaining that the official immunity analysis under Minnesota state law is “less of a subjective inquiry into malice, which was traditionally favored at common law, and more of an objective inquiry into the legal reasonableness of an official’s actions”
- explaining that, in determining whether a party acted in good faith or bad faith, a false statement made by the defendant may be evidence of bad faith
- upholding the stop of a vehicle that was being driven in a direction away from the scene of a recent armed robbery and whose occupant’s race and clothing matched the suspect’s description
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
SIMONETT, Justice
(concurring specially).
I agree the Human Rights Act does not preclude application of official immunity and I agree the issue of “malice” survives the *574 respondent officers’ motion for summary judgment. I wish to comment, however, on an aspect of summary judgment motion practice.
It seems to me only when the evidence preponderates heavily in favor of the moving party must (or should) the appellate or trial court view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party; because only then is the “in the light most favorable” test needed to ascertain if there is a genuine issue of material fact.
If the facts are plainly in dispute on a genuine issue, there is no need, in order to deny summary judgment, to consider how the evidence might be interpreted to “favor” one party over another. To discuss “favor-ableness” in this situation runs the risk of being misconstrued as factfinding.
In this case, the respondent officers claim their stop of complainant’s vehicle was a constitutional Terry stop, where race may be a proper consideration. The majority opinion points out this claim does not necessarily absolve the officers of a racial discrimination charge because there are still material facts in dispute on the issue of “malice” and on the issue of racial discrimination. The majority opinion further points out the proof on these two issues may overlap. These observations are appropriate. But at this stage of the proceedings, to avoid putting a thumb on the scales, I would say little more, except that because there are genuine issues of material fact the case goes to a full hearing before an administrative law judge who is the factfin-der.