PASADENA, Calif.—The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear oral arguments against a lower court’s decision to dismiss a civil rights case brought by Will Walters, a gay man who sued the City of San Diego after police officers deprived him of his constitutionally protected right to equal enforcement of the law.
After being approached by police at the 2011 San Diego LGBT Pride festival, Will Walters was wrongfully arrested and subjected to misconduct by police. Officers claimed the leather kilt he wore violated the city’s nudity ordinance, despite the fact that Mr. Walters was wearing underwear beneath the modest kilt, had worn the garment without incident during the Pride parade earlier that day—and had spent $1000 for professional tailoring to ensure it was compliant with community standards.
Nevertheless, officers marched Mr. Walters in handcuffs through the festival (apparently still nude in the officers’ eyes), transporting him in a police car to another call along the way and locking him in the backseat with no air conditioning for nearly half an hour on a hot, summer day with the windows closed. Mr. Walters spent an entire night in jail.
The following year, his attorney sent a photographer to the Over The Line Tournament at San Diego’s Mission Beach. The photographer came back with images of women wearing swimsuits that were not extraordinarily revealing, nor unlike bikinis that have been around since the early 1970s, but which are vastly more revealing than Mr. Walters’ leather kilt.
The photos taken showed some of the same police officers who had arrested Will Walters a year earlier standing next to women wearing far more revealing bikinis at Over The Line in 2012. The photos showed the court what at least one officer openly admitted in deposition: that the San Diego Police Department has a stricter standard for LGBT Pride than for women at Over The Line, a sexually charged event catering to straight men.
Stunningly, conservative U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo, who had previously denied individual motions by San Diego’s city attorney to dismiss Mr. Walters’ case, in the end granted the city summary dismissal.
Now, the 9th Circuit of Appeals has decided that Mr. Walters’ charges of discriminatory enforcement of the law by the San Diego Police Department deserve a fresh look.
Mr. Walters’ attorney, Chris Morris, a former San Diego deputy city attorney, will argue that his client deserves a chance to present his charges against officers who abused the power assigned to them by the people of San Diego before for a jury to decide.
“We are grateful that the 9th Circuit has granted our request to hear oral argument in this case,” Morris said. “We look forward to presenting the overwhelming evidence of discriminatory conduct by the San Diego Police Department to a panel of judges and are hopeful that the outcome of the hearing will be positive; not just for this case but for the entire LGBT community.”
The case (No. 14-55495) will be heard by a panel of judges Friday, March 11 at 9 a.m. in Courtroom 2, at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Pasadena: 125 South Grand Ave., Pasadena, Calif. 91105.
