Dimitris Desyllas v. Daniel Bernstine Roderic Diman John Fowler Rick Roe

Dimitris Desyllas, a student newspaper editor at Portland State University (“PSU”), appeals the district court’s order granting summary judgment to four university officials on Desyllas’s 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claims for violation of his First and Fourth Amendment rights. We must decide whether the district court correctly concluded that the university officials were entitled to qualified immunity. We conclude there was no error and affirm.

The United States District Court for the District of Oregon had jurisdiction in the underlying action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343 based on Desyllas’s claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 . We have jurisdiction to review the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the university officials pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 .

I.

In December 2000, Desyllas, editor of a PSU student newspaper called the Rearguard, found a box of confidential student records outside the Rearguard office in the Smith Memorial Center on campus. An anonymous note suggested that he “would know what to do with” the records. Desyllas thumbed through some of the records and, realizing their confidential nature, locked the files in a cupboard inside the newspaper…