NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed much of a lawsuit filed by two Black men who said they were subjected to a racially motivated and humiliating traffic stop last year by sheriff’s deputies in southeast Louisiana.
The judge’s Tuesday ruling kept alive a claim from one of the men that a St. Tammany Parish sheriff’s deputy engaged in an unlawful search during the traffic stop.
But U.S. District Judge Lance Africk dismissed multiple other claims the sheriff’s office and deputies. Those included claims that deputies held the men longer than necessary for a traffic violation, and that the deputies took retaliatory actions against the men.
Centering on a March 13, 2021, stop in Mandeville, the lawsuit says Bruce Washington, 53, of Bogalusa, was taking his cousin, Gregory Lane, 47, of Mandeville, to get a haircut when he stopped at a Mandeville gas station. It claims two deputies began monitoring their movements without cause and later pulled them over before being joined by a third deputy. The suit says one deputy claimed, incorrectly according to the lawsuit, that Washington had failed to use his turn signal.
The lawsuit says the two were questioned and patted down. Lane’s request to call his wife so she could call a lawyer was refused. Washington was told, after saying he knew his legal rights, that the traffic stop could “go a different way than it has to be,” which Washington perceived as a threat, the lawsuit said.
Africk refused to dismiss a part of the lawsuit that claims officers had no cause to frisk Washington during the traffic stop, keeping alive a claim that Washington was a victim of an illegal search.
But Africk dismissed multiple other claims. His ruling said the men had failed to make a case that they were held for an unconstitutionally long amount of time. Nor did they establish that deputies had violated their rights by ordering them out of the vehicle — or by refusing to let one of them return to the car for paperwork proving that an issue involving an outstanding traffic warrant had been legally resolved.
Lane and Washington are represented in the lawsuit by attorneys working with the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana's Justice Lab initiative. The project recruits private lawyers and firms to aid in litigation targeting allegations of racially motivated police abuses.
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