Michael Reinoehl, 48, emerged from an alcove of a downtown parking garage before firing two gunshots as Aaron "Jay" Danielson was walking in downtown after the pro-Trump rally in Clackamas on Aug. 29, 2020, according to a police affidavit. Danielson is in the dark shirt on far left.

A judge has dismissed a federal lawsuit filed against the city of Portland by the estate of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, the 39-year-old fatally shot in downtown Portland after a pro-Trump car rally on Aug. 29, 2020.

The suit alleged that a “hands-off” approach by city leaders to increasingly violent political clashes created an environment that encouraged lawlessness and led to Danielson’s killing. The suit also named Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt.

But U.S. Magistrate Judge Youlee Yim You found the city and mayor took no specific action that placed Danielson in greater danger that night. She threw out the suit’s due process and negligence claims.

Members of the public have no constitutional right to sue public employees who fail to protect them from harm inflicted by third parties, the judge noted.

A “state-created danger exception” to that rule applies when government employees “affirmatively place the plaintiff in a position of danger,” the opinion said.

That didn’t occur in this case, You ruled.

The suit didn’t allege, for example, that the city government or mayor directed Danielson to the location where he was shot, prevented him from leaving that area, had any contact with him or were even aware of his presence downtown, the judge wrote.

Michael Reinoehl, a self-described anti-fascist who said he provided security for racial justice protests in Portland, appeared to have targeted Danielson, according to surveillance camera video of the shooting released by police.

Reinoehl, 48, emerged from an alcove of a downtown parking garage before firing two gunshots as Danielson was walking in downtown after a pro-Trump rally, according to a police affidavit.

The suit said Danielson deployed bear spray at Reinoehl in defense simultaneously to the gunshots. Danielson died at the scene from a single bullet to the upper right chest, an autopsy found.

Danielson had been with his friend Chandler Pappas and both were wearing Patriot Prayer hats, signifying their support of the right-wing group based in Vancouver. Reinoehl was shot and killed days later outside a Washington apartment complex when officers from a multi-agency task force moved in to arrest him on a warrant for murder.

Attorney Christopher L. Cauble, representing Danielson’s estate, had argued that the city failed to keep demonstrators and counterdemonstrators separated by not diverting the caravan of cars that began in Clackamas from entering downtown Portland. He also argued that the mayor urged police to avoid engaging with crowds “unless a life safety situation” developed.

But the judge found that wasn’t enough to support the suit’s claims.

“At best, those actions may have increased the general risk inherent to anyone in downtown at the time; however, the state-created danger doctrine requires showing that government actors created a particular risk specific to the harmed individual,” You wrote.

The suit also alleged that the city and mayor, by providing only a “skeletal police presence” with directions to officers to stay out of sight and apart from demonstrators, emboldened people to engage in violent behavior.

Yet the judge said such actions were not specific to Danielson but instead “aimed at the public-at-large.”

You noted that the allegations in the Danielson estate suit were unlike a case brought in Seattle when that city “abruptly deserted” the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct in the Capitol Hill neighborhood amid civil rights protests in June 2020.

In that case, the city of Seattle is accused of encouraging the participants of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP, to wall off the area and “agreed to a ‘no response’ zone within and near CHOP’s borders” - allegations sufficient to support a claim that the city’s actions “foreseeably placed the plaintiffs in a worse position that they would been” without any city intervention, You wrote in her ruling.

In this suit, the judge also ruled that Schmidt’s decision not to prosecute cases that “don’t involve deliberate property damage, theft or threat of force against another person,” was protected by prosecutorial immunity.

His decision not to pursue charges for a class of cases and his communication of that decision is clearly “connected with the prosecutor’s role in judicial proceedings” and subject to absolute immunity, You ruled.

U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon on Thursday adopted the magistrate’s findings and ordered the suit against the city, the mayor and Schmidt dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled again.

Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212

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