HELBACHS CAFÉ LLC v. City of Madison

Madison, Wisconsin civil rights lawyers represented Plaintiff, which sued Defendant on a First Amendment violation theory.



After the public health department

for the City of Madison and Dane County, Wisconsin issued

a COVID-19 mask mandate, an owner of Helbachs Café

posted a sign: "Mask Free Zone. Please remove mask before

entering” and then took it down about 30 minutes later. Over

the next few days, Madison's public health officials cited Hel-

bachs several times for violating its COVID-19 orders, and

then set a hearing to revoke Helbachs' food and drink license

for cumulative violations. Helbachs sued the City of Madison,

the County of Dane, Madison Assistant City Attorney Marci

Paulsen, and employees of the health department, all in their

official capacities, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that the

defendants retaliated against Helbachs in violation of the First

Amendment for posting its anti-mask sign. Before the district

court, Helbachs conceded that its claims against the individ-

ual defendants were duplicative of the claims against the mu-

nicipal defendants because it was only pursuing theories of

liability under Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S.

658 (1978).



The citations were later dismissed, and the revocation

hearing was not pursued. The first issue we must decide, then,

is whether Helbachs has standing to bring this First Amend-

ment retaliation claim. We conclude that it does because the

record shows that Helbachs suffered injury-in-fact beyond the

revoked citations and the threatened, but aborted, hearing.

However, Helbachs' First Amendment claim fails under Mo-

nell because the defendants' actions were not part of a larger

pattern or practice of retaliation.



See: http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2022/D08-15/C:21-3338:J:Kirsch:aut:T:fnOp:N:2918013:S:0

Affirmed.