Red Rover Group, L.L.C. Plaintiff— v. City of Bossier City; Steven Pennell

Background Red Rover Group challenged Bossier City’s enforcement of two barking noise ordinances after receiving multiple citations. It sued the City and several officials, alleging equal protection and vagueness violations, Monell liability, failure to train, state law claims, and requests for injunctive relief. The district court dismissed the complaint under Rule 12(b)(6), and Red Rover appealed. The court’s reasoning Reviewing de novo, the Fifth Circuit held Red Rover failed to state a class-of-one equal protection claim because it did not identify a similarly situated comparator treated differently in all relevant respects. The alleged comparator, an entertainment district across town, was not adequately comparable, including because Red Rover did not allege any noise complaints there. The court also held the barking ordinances in Sections 14-63(c) and 46-31(b)(4) were not impermissibly vague because their plain language gave a person of ordinary intelligence fair warning of prohibited conduct and did not lack standards of enforcement. Because there was no underlying constitutional violation, the Monell policy claim, failure-to-train claim, failure-to-intervene theory, qualified immunity challenge, requests for injunctive relief, and state law claims all failed as well. The court also noted the failure-to-intervene issue was inadequately briefed on appeal. Because Red Rover failed to provide an appropriate comparator, it unsuccessfully pleaded its equal protection claim. What it means going forward The decision leaves the dismissal intact and confirms that Red Rover cannot proceed on its constitutional, municipal-liability, injunctive, or related state-law theories based on the pleaded allegations. It also underscores that comparator pleading matters in class-of-one equal protection cases and that derivative claims fall away when no constitutional violation is stated.