Louis Matthew Clements v. Governor of Florida, et al

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 23-13766
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
LOUIS MATTHEW CLEMENTS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA,
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF FLORIDA,
SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
COMMISSIONER OF THE FDLE,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
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2 Opinion of the Court 23-13766
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 4:23-cv-00024-AW-MAF
____________________
Before N EWSOM , B RASHER , and ABUDU, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Louis Clements appeals the district court’s denial of his
amended Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) motion for relief from its judgment
dismissing his complaint asserting constitutional challenges to Fla.
Stat. § 741.0405 and Florida’s sex-offender registration require-
ments, Fla. Stat. §§ 943.0435 and 775.21. Clements argues on ap-
peal that (1) the district court erred by denying his amended Rule
60(b) motion because he erroneously included a broken hyperlink
in his pleadings to an article that he claimed supported his claims,
and (2) the district court erroneously failed to construe his claims
as arising under the Equal Protection Clause, the Ex Post Facto
Clause, the Double Jeopardy Clause, and the Eighth Amendment.
After careful consideration, we hold that the district court didn’t
err, so we affirm.1
1 We review the denial of a motion for relief from a judgment or order under
Rule 60(b) for abuse of discretion. Maradiaga v. United States, 679 F.3d 1286,
1291 (11th Cir. 2012). “That review is narrow in scope, addressing only the
propriety of the denial or grant of relief and does not raise issues in the un-
derlying judgment for review.” Id. (quotation marks and citation omitted).
“The losing party must do more than show that a grant of the motion might
have been warranted; he must demonstrate a justification for relief so
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23-13766 Opinion of the Court 3
Under Rule 60(b), a district court “may relieve a party . . .
from a final judgment, order, or proceeding for,” among other rea-
sons, “mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect” and
“any other reason that justifies relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(1), (6).
The term “mistake” in Rule 60(b)(1) includes legal errors made by
judges. Kemp v. United States, 596 U.S. 528, 535 (2022). “It is not an
abuse of discretion for the district court to deny a motion under
Rule 60(b) when that motion is premised upon an argument that
the movant could have, but did not, advance before the district
court entered judgment.” Maradiaga v. United States, 679 F.3d 1286,
1294 (11th Cir. 2012). “Nor is it an abuse of discretion for the dis-
trict court to deny a motion under Rule 60(b) when the judgment
or order from which the movant seeks relief was entered as a result
of the movant’s choice to rely on an unsuccessful legal theory.” Id.
Here, the district court did not abuse its discretion by deny-
ing Clements’s amended Rule 60(b) motion. See Id. at 1291. The
mistakes that Clements asserted warranted relief from the court’s
judgment included his own mistake in attaching a non-functioning
link to an article that he contended had supported his claims in his
amended complaint and the court’s failure to construe his pro se
pleadings to state a variety of different legal theories.2 As to the
compelling that the district court was required to grant the motion.” Id. (quo-
tation marks and citation omitted and alterations adopted).
2 We “give liberal construction to the pleadings of pro se litigants, [but] we
nevertheless have required them to conform to procedural rules.” Albra v. Ad-
van, Inc., 490 F.3d 826, 829 (11th Cir. 2007) (quotation marks and citation omit-
ted). “[I]ssues not briefed on appeal by a pro se litigant are deemed
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4 Opinion of the Court 23-13766
first alleged mistake, nothing in Rule 60(b) suggests that a plaintiff’s
own mistake would warrant relief from an adverse judgment. See
Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(1). Regardless, the relevant article did not in-
clude any new information that might have changed the court’s
analysis regarding whether Clements had standing and whether his
amended complaint had failed to state a claim. Specifically, it does
not affect the court’s conclusions that Clements had no grounds to
challenge § 741.0405, a repealed statute, and that his challenges to
Florida’s sex-offender registration system were foreclosed by prec-
edent of this Court and the Supreme Court.
As to Clements’s second argument, while it’s true that legal
errors made by a judge fit within the definition of “mistake” in Rule
60(b)(1), none of the mistakes that he alleged that the district court
committed were legal errors. Kemp, 596 U.S. at 535. Although a
pro se litigant’s pleadings are to be construed liberally, the alterna-
tive construction that Clements sought to clarify in his Rule 60(b)
motion was not warranted. See Albra v. Advan, Inc., 490 F.3d 826,
829 (11th Cir. 2007). Clements’s assertion that the district court
should have construed his claims as challenges under the Equal
Protection Clause, the Ex Post Facto Clause, the Double Jeopardy
Clause, and the Eighth Amendment was an attempt to have the
district court read into his pleadings claims that he did not state.
abandoned.” Timson v. Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008). A claim is
abandoned when an appellant “either makes only passing references to it or
raises it in a perfunctory manner without supporting arguments and author-
ity.” Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 681 (11th Cir. 2014).
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23-13766 Opinion of the Court 5
The only exceptions are his arguments regarding the Equal Protec-
tion Clause and the Ex Post Facto Clause because he did explicitly
include challenges under those constitutional provisions in his
amended complaint, which the court resolved in its dismissal.
Clements’s construction argument was effectively an attempt to
seek Rule 60(b) relief on the ground that the claims that he asserted
in his amended complaint were premised on unsuccessful legal the-
ories, which is not a proper ground for relief under Rule 60(b).
Maradiaga, 679 F.3d at 1294. Furthermore, even if the district court
could have construed Clements’s claims in the way that he asserted
that it should have, that construction would not have affected its
legal conclusions that he did not have standing to challenge a re-
pealed law and that his claims were foreclosed by precedent. Lastly,
even if Clements’s Rule 60(b) arguments had merit, the court’s de-
nial of his Rule 60(b) motion would still not be an abuse of discre-
tion because Clements could have brought these arguments before
the district court had entered judgment, specifically, in response to
the magistrate judge’s R&R, which concluded that his constitu-
tional challenges to Florida’s sex-offender registry were foreclosed
by precedent. Id.
As a final matter, Clements has abandoned all other claims
that he sought to raise in the section of his brief titled “Statement
of Issues Presented for Review” because he did not present argu-
ments or cite to legal authority supporting them. Timson v.
Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008); Brief of Appellant at 7.
Further, this Court has already resolved the merits of Clements’s
separate appeal from the district court’s dismissal of the complaint
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6 Opinion of the Court 23-13766
itself in Appeal No. 23-11731, and he cannot relitigate those issues
anew in this separately docketed appeal simply by incorporating
those arguments by reference into his appellate brief in this appeal.
In sum, Clements has failed to “demonstrate a justification
for relief so compelling that the district court was required to grant
[his] motion.” Maradiaga, 679 F.3d at 1291 (internal quotation
marks omitted). Therefore, the district court didn’t err—much less
abuse its discretion—in denying his Rule 60(b) motion.
AFFIRMED.
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