Case Citator › City of Kenosha v. Bruno

City of Kenosha v. Bruno

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Overruled
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
412 U.S. 507
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
35 of 35
Citing cases (total)
35
Treatment dates
1978
Overruled
A reviewed court has overruled this case. City of Kenosha v. Bruno's holding that municipalities cannot be sued as persons under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 was overruled by Monell v. New York City Department of Social Services. Monell held that local governments can be sued directly for monetary, declaratory, or injunctive relief when an official policy or custom causes a constitutional deprivation.
More on how this was screened

North Dakota v. Merchants National Bank & Trust Co. expressly described Kenosha's municipal-person holding as overruled by Monell. Kenosha's separate observation that federal courts must check their own jurisdiction was unaffected. All 35 flagged citations have been read; the confirmed overruling is listed below. Stebbins v. Weaver declined to extend Kenosha's rule about municipalities to a state agency. Because Kenosha stated a boundary limited to municipalities, that decision applied the case's stated scope and supplies no separate adverse entry. Several later opinions merely report Monell's treatment of Kenosha or describe Kenosha's own treatment of an older circuit decision. Two phrases in DeMarco v. DepoTech Corp. concern one opinion.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

35 later cases cite City of Kenosha v. Bruno; 35 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

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Treatments

Overruled

  • The Supreme Court overruled the municipal immunity rule that Kenosha had applied to both damages and equitable suits under § 1983.

    Monell v. New York City Department of Social Services · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    That other day has come and we now overrule Monroe v. Pape, supra, insofar as it holds that local governments are wholly immune from suit under § 1983.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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