New York – August 5, 2024 – On August 1, 2024, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of Cooley pro bono client Bilal Hankins in a civil rights lawsuit arising from an unlawful traffic stop by police officers in New Orleans. A Black man who was a teenager at the time of the incident, Hankins was driving with friends looking for a lost dog when, after asking police for assistance, he was stopped and unlawfully held at gunpoint by officers working a private security detail in uptown New Orleans. The Cooley pro bono team representing Hankins was led by partner Patrick Gibbs, special counsel Patrick Hayden, and associates Chris Andrews, Victoria Pasculli, Valeria Pelet del Toro, Tina Jensen and Ari Bustos, along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana.
“This is the first step in securing justice for Bilal, and we look forward to supporting him throughout his case against the officers,” said Hayden, who led the Cooley pro bono team on the matter. “This is one example of Cooley’s pro bono work to seek justice for individuals facing insurmountable obstacles.”
On June 13, 2020, Hankins and two friends were driving around looking for a neighbor’s lost chihuahua when they saw a private neighborhood security car. Hankins drove up to the officer, Kevin Wheeler, and told him about the lost dog in the hope that he could help. Wheeler, who had previously been fired from the New Orleans Police Department for lying in a use of force investigation and was working as a paid detail for the Hurstville Security District, instead radioed a fellow officer, Ramon Pierre, for backup. The two proceeded to follow Hankins, pull him over with flashing lights and point their firearms at Hankins and his friends in the car. The officers released Hankins only after he again told them that they were looking for a lost dog.
In a published opinion, the Fifth Circuit concluded that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity for stopping Hankins because a reasonable jury could find that the officers had no reasonable basis to suspect any criminal activity. The Fifth Circuit held that, when resolving all factual disputes in favor of Hankins, the officers simply confronted “a college-aged male in a car registered to a woman’s name in a different neighborhood of the same city, driving slowly on a residential street at night after approaching an officer to ask for assistance finding a lost chihuahua.” Under these innocuous facts, the Fifth Circuit determined that seizing an individual like Hankins violates clearly established federal law – particularly because, unlike in earlier cases the Fifth Circuit had considered, Hankins had affirmatively approached an officer in the first instance. Under “quintessential clearly established law,” the Fifth Circuit held, traffic stops that are “based on inchoate and unparticularized suspicion are unlawful.”
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