Hamdi A. Mohamud v. Heather Weyker, in her individual capacity as a St. Paul Police Officer

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 24-1875
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Hamdi A. Mohamud
Plaintiff - Appellant
v.
Heather Weyker, in her individual capacity as a St. Paul Police Officer
Defendant - Appellee
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Goldwater Institute; Cato Institute; New Civil Liberties Alliance
Amici on Behalf of Appellant(s)
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the District of Minnesota
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Submitted: February 11, 2025
Filed: July 23, 2025
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Before LOKEN, BENTON, and STRAS, Circuit Judges.
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STRAS, Circuit Judge.
We have decided this question before: “whether a St. Paul police officer acted
under color of state law when she allegedly lied to protect a federal witness while
serving on a federal task force.” Yassin v. Weyker, 39 F.4th 1086, 1087 (8th Cir.
2022). Our answer, once again, is she did not. See id.
I.
This appeal is the latest chapter in a series of civil-rights lawsuits against
Heather Weyker for her part in a federal investigation. See generally id.; Ahmed v.
Weyker, 984 F.3d 564 (8th Cir. 2020); Farah v. Weyker, 926 F.3d 492 (8th Cir.
2019). A full-time St. Paul police officer, Weyker became a cross-deputized federal
agent when she joined a task force investigating an interstate sex-trafficking ring.
See Yassin, 39 F.4th at 1087–88.
It took her to Nashville, where she received a call from a federal witness,
Muna Abdulkadir, who had been in a fight with several other women, including
Hamdi Mohamud. Looking to protect her, Weyker reached out to the Minneapolis
police officer on the scene, Anthijuan Beeks. After identifying herself as a St. Paul
police and joint-task-force officer, she introduced others in the room, including the
lead federal prosecutor and a federal agent. “[Her] message was clear: Abdulkadir
was a witness in a federal investigation and the other women involved in the fight
had, upon ‘information and documentation,’ been out ‘to intimidate’ her.” Id. at
1088.
The first part was true, but everything else Weyker said was false. There was
no “information” or “documentation” that anyone was trying to intimidate
Abdulkadir. Nevertheless, based on what Weyker told him, Officer Beeks arrested
Mohamud and the others for witness tampering. See Minn. Stat. § 609.498; see also
18 U.S.C. § 1513(b) (witness retaliation). In her affidavit supporting federal
charges, Weyker disclosed her joint role as an “FBI Task Force Officer / St Paul MN

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PD Officer.” (Capitalization omitted). The government eventually dismissed the
case against Mohamud, but not before she had spent about 25 months in custody.
Mohamud sued Weyker on a wrongful-arrest theory, split between two
claims. One was based on Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau
of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), which accounted for the possibility that Weyker
was acting as a federal officer at the time. The other, a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983,
applied if she had been acting “under color of” state law. Id. We took Bivens “off
the table” in an earlier case by holding that it does not extend to a situation like this
one. Ahmed, 984 F.3d at 571. We then foreclosed a § 1983 claim when we
concluded that Weyker had not acted under color of state law. See Yassin, 39 F.4th
at 1090–91.
Once we did, Weyker moved for dismissal, or, in the alternative, for summary
judgment in this case. Mohamud responded by asking for limited discovery and
permission to amend her complaint to “provide more detailed allegations and newly
uncovered evidence” to show that Weyker was “simultaneously acting under color
of both state and federal law.”
The district court1 denied both of her requests because neither would make a
difference. Further discovery would be a dead end, and the proposed amendment
would be futile because it would not “yield a conclusion that differ[ed] from . . .
Yassin.” Summary judgment was inevitable either way.
Mohamud disagrees. Her position on appeal is straightforward: new facts
show that Weyker must have been acting “under color of state law” when she misled
Officer Beeks and provided false facts in an affidavit. West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42,
48 (1988); see 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Our task is to figure out whether the new facts she
alleges are enough to tip our analysis from Yassin the other way.
1 The Honorable Joan N. Ericksen, United States District Judge for the District
of Minnesota.

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II.
Every complaint, amended or not, must include a “short and plain statement”
showing an entitlement to relief. Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). To meet this requirement,
it must plead enough facts, “accepted as true, to state a claim . . . that is plausible on
its face.” Far E. Aluminium Works Co. v. Viracon, Inc., 27 F.4th 1361, 1364 (8th
Cir. 2022) (citation omitted). If an amended complaint would not, it can be denied
as futile, a legal conclusion that we review de novo. See Zutz v. Nelson, 601 F.3d
842, 850 (8th Cir. 2010). Here, the district court concluded that, even granting all
inferences in Mohamud’s favor, neither the new facts nor the existing record would
show that Weyker was “clothed with the authority of state law.” West, 487 U.S. at
49 (citation omitted); see Bharadwaj v. Mid Dakota Clinic, 954 F.3d 1130, 1134 (8th
Cir. 2020) (reviewing summary-judgment rulings de novo).
A.
In a civil-rights action under § 1983, a plaintiff must show (1) “the violation
of a right secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States” (2) by “a person
acting under color of state law.” West, 487 U.S. at 48. “Color of law is rooted in
authority”: was an officer’s conduct “fairly attributable to the State”? Yassin, 39
F.4th at 1090 (citation omitted). To decide whether it was, “the focus is on the nature
and circumstances of [Weyker’s] conduct and the relationship of that conduct to the
performance of . . . official duties.” Id. (citation omitted). For us to reverse,
Mohamud bears the burden of proving that Weyker was “clothed with [state]
authority when she acted.” Id. at 1088–89.
Although it is a legal question, the under-color-of-law determination “can turn
out to be quite ‘fact[]bound.’” Id. at 1090 (quoting Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co.,
457 U.S. 922, 939 (1982)) (alteration in original). Just not in cases like this one,
when the material facts are undisputed and “[w]e are not writing on a blank slate.”
Id. at 1089. Yassin, after all, is the spitting image of this case: the same officer acting

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in the same way when faced with the same circumstances. It is the logical place to
start.
We concluded there that “[s]tate law had nothing to do with the nature and
circumstances of Weyker’s conduct.” Id. at 1090 (citation omitted). “At the time,”
she was working on the federal sex-trafficking investigation “as a Special Deputy
United States Marshal.” Id. The investigation was under the supervision of a federal
prosecutor and another federal agent, who were in the room when she received
Abdulkadir’s call. See id. at 1088. While speaking with Officer Beeks, she
referenced “her federal-task-force role” and explained that Abdulkadir was an
important witness in a federal case. Id. at 1091. Based on these facts, we concluded
that Weyker “act[ed] or purport[ed] to act in the performance of [her federal] duties,
even if [s]he overstep[ped] [her] authority and misuse[d] power.” Id. (citation
omitted) (emphasis and alterations in original). The district court followed this line
of reasoning in granting summary judgment in this case.
The federal nature of Weyker’s actions did not change just because she had
first encountered Abdulkadir years before during a state investigation. To the
contrary, Abdulkadir’s role had changed right alongside her own, from an informant
in local human-trafficking cases to a witness in a multi-state federal investigation.
See id. at 1088; cf. King v. United States, 917 F.3d 409, 433–34 (6th Cir. 2019)
(deciding that a cross-deputized officer who pursued a fugitive with a state arrest
warrant “remained a federal agent” when “the task force’s decision to apprehend
[him] was made by virtue of an exercise of federal authority”), rev’d on other
grounds sub nom., Brownback v. King, 592 U.S. 209 (2021). In short, the authority
Weyker was exercising on behalf of Abdulkadir was federal, even if they had dealt
with each other before. See Yassin, 39 F.4th at 1091.

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It also makes little difference that the federal task force described the St. Paul
Police Department as the “lead agency.”2 Even if Weyker’s cross-deputization and
the involvement of the U.S. Attorney were not enough to make her actions federal,
the investigation had grown to include at least one other state, Tennessee, and
multiple federal agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Secret Service. She
then purported to act based on her federal authority when she explained
Abdulkadir’s significance to Officer Beeks and provided an affidavit supporting the
filing of federal charges against Mohamud. See id. (observing that Weyker’s work
retained its “federal character” even if some of her “local practices” crept in); see
also King, 917 F.3d at 433 (“As a deputized federal agent, [the state detective]
carried federal authority and acted under color of that authority rather than under any
state authority he may have had as a . . . detective.”). Acting as a federal agent under
the supervision of federal officials, she protected a federal witness in a federal
investigation. “State law had nothing to do with” it. Yassin, 39 F.4th at 1090.
B.
Yassin also forecloses Mohamud’s simultaneous-action argument. Her theory
is that officials can exercise both federal and state authority at the same time. For
support, she points to the line of cases treating private parties as state actors when
there is joint action with state officials. See, e.g., Evans v. Newton, 382 U.S. 296,
299 (1966) (holding that private conduct can become “so impregnated with a
governmental character” as to become “state action”); Murray v. Wal-Mart, Inc.,
2 Agreements from other unrelated federal task forces are even less helpful.
One comes from a 2005 Joint Terrorism Task Force and the other from a 2011 Cyber
Crime Task Force. Both say that “[l]iability for violations of federal constitutional
law rests with the individual agent or officer pursuant to Bivens . . . or pursuant to
42 U.S.C. [§] 1983 for state and local officers or cross-deputized federal officers.”
They just state what we already know: officers can be liable under § 1983 or Bivens
depending on the circumstances, which begs the question we are trying to answer.
See Lindke v. Freed, 601 U.S. 187, 197 (2024) (recognizing that the under-color-of-
state-law analysis “demands a fact-intensive inquiry”).

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874 F.2d 555, 558–59 (8th Cir. 1989) (holding that Wal-Mart acted jointly with a
local police force). But see Yassin, 39 F.4th at 1091 n.3 (“Federal and state officers
work together all the time without clouding their distinct sources of authority . . . .”).
Her view would give plaintiffs a choice between Bivens and § 1983 in cases like this
one. Whichever one works.
Even if a government official could theoretically exercise federal and state
authority simultaneously, Weyker did not do so here. For courts that apply a
categorical rule in these situations, a cross-deputized state officer always acts under
color of federal law. See, e.g., King, 917 F.3d at 433. And for those that recognize
the possibility that a federal-task-force officer can exercise state power, see, e.g.,
Big Cats of Serenity Springs, Inc. v. Rhodes, 843 F.3d 853, 870 (10th Cir. 2016), the
circumstances here clearly point toward federal authority, not some mixture of the
two, see Yassin, 39 F.4th at 1091 (noting a lack of “any actual or purported
relationship between” Weyker’s conduct and her duties as a St. Paul police officer
(emphasis added) (citation omitted)). Either way, Bivens would be the only option.
III.
More discovery would not have helped. See Anzaldua v. Ne. Ambulance &
Fire Prot. Dist., 793 F.3d 822, 836 (8th Cir. 2015) (recognizing that district courts
have “wide discretion” in dealing with discovery requests (citation omitted)). When
it came to clarifying Weyker’s history with Abdulkadir, we have already explained
why exploring it further would not have tipped the balance toward state action. Nor
would having Mohamud delve into the circumstances of her own arrest, the course
of the investigation, or the credibility of Officer Beeks and Abdulkadir, which were
relevant to qualified immunity, but little else. The bottom line is that the district
court could not have abused its discretion in denying discovery that would not have
made a difference. See Allen v. Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., 81 F.3d 793, 798 (8th
Cir. 1996) (explaining that the district court could deny a discovery request that
would not have helped establish the plaintiff’s claim); Strategic Energy Concepts,
LLC v. Otoka Energy, LLC, 120 F.4th 1339, 1345 (8th Cir. 2024) (reasoning that the

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district court does not abuse its discretion when it denies a “futile” motion (citation
omitted)).
IV.
We accordingly affirm the judgment of the district court.
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