Full Opinion

Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT November 5, 2026 _________________________________ Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court BRUCE WILLIAMS, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. No. 26-8001 (D.C. No. 2:25-CV-00195-SWS) CITY OF GILLETTE, WYOMING; (D. Wyo.) SHAY LUNDVALL, Mayor of Gillette, Wyoming, Defendants - Appellees. _________________________________ ORDER AND JUDGMENT * _________________________________ Before HOLMES, Chief Judge, PHILLIPS and MORITZ, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ Plaintiff Bruce Williams, appearing pro se, 1 appeals from the district court’s dismissal of his civil rights complaint against defendants City of Gillette, Wyoming After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined * unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist in the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. Because Mr. Williams is proceeding pro se, we construe his filings liberally, 1 but we cannot act as his advocate. Garrett v. Selby Connor Maddux & Janer, 425 F.3d 836, 840 (10th Cir. 2005). Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 2 (the City), and Shay Lundvall, the City’s mayor. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm. I. BACKGROUND A. Prior proceedings Mr. Williams is an atheist who resides in the City. Williams v. Gordon, No. 24-8067, 2025 WL 1637732, at *1 (10th Cir. June 10, 2025). “He follows the tenets of the Hypatian Society, which are known as the 21 Rules.” Id. “He sought to give invocations before City Council meetings and to place a 21 Rules monument in a City park that contains a Ten Commandments monument, but was [apparently] limited to one invocation per year and denied permission to place the monument.” Id. Mr. Williams sued City officials in Wyoming state court for violations of his state constitutional rights. The case was dismissed, and the Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal, “holding that Wyoming’s Governmental Claims Act did not waive sovereign immunity for civil rights claims.” Id. (citing Williams v. Lundvall, 545 P.3d 431, 434-35 (Wyo. 2024)). Mr. Williams then sued City officials, as well as the Governor of Wyoming, “in federal court under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985 . . . challeng[ing] the Governmental Claims Act and alleg[ing] City officials violated his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” Id. After allowing Mr. Williams to amend his complaint twice, the district court ultimately dismissed all claims with prejudice, holding that “the claims against the Governor were barred by Eleventh Amendment 2 Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 3 immunity and failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted,” and “that Mr. Williams failed to serve a valid summons on the City and failed to serve an appropriate person to receive service on behalf of the City.” Id. Mr. Williams appealed to this court. “[W]e affirm[ed] the decision to dismiss, but . . . vacate[d] the judgment and remand[ed] for the district court to enter a judgment of dismissal without prejudice.” Id. at *4. B. The current proceedings In August 2025, Mr. Williams initiated these proceedings by filing a pro se civil rights complaint against the City and Mr. Lundvall, in his capacity as mayor of the City. The complaint was 38 pages in length and contained 109 single-spaced paragraphs of largely unintelligible legal assertions. The 109 paragraphs were divided by the following subheadings: (1) “Cities Denial of Plaintiffs Numbers of Invocations,” R. at 7; (2) “Cities Censorship of Plaintiffs Speech,” id. at 14; (3) “Cities Molestation of Plaintiff,” id. at 17; (4) “Cities Allowing Religious Organizations To Participate In Governmental Affairs,” id. at 21; (5) “Defendant Demanding Religious Beliefs,” id. at 24; (6) “Defendant Refusing Right To Petition,” id. at 27; (7) “Refusing the Placement of 21 Rules Monument,” id. at 29, and (8) “Conspiracy By The Defendant,” id. at 34. The complaint sought “total damages” of “$271,504,276.65,” as well as injunctive and declaratory relief. Id. at 39-40. Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Mr. Williams filed a brief in opposition. 3 Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 4 The district court issued an order granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss. The court characterized the complaint as “an absolute mess” and noted that each paragraph thereof was apparently drafted “with the primary purpose of dropping the reader into the middle of a labyrinthian vortex of inadequate factual development, half-completed thoughts, fragmentary references to various legal principles and sources, and a dearth of any helpful punctuation that might assist the reader in scrabbling their way to comprehension.” Id. at 91. The district court concluded that “[t]he majority of the claims lack[ed] sufficient factual development to ‘give the court reason to believe that this plaintiff has a reasonable likelihood of mustering factual support for these claims,’” and thus dismissed those claims “without prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) for failure to comply with Rule 8’s pleading requirements and under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to plead a plausible claim on which relief might be granted.” Id. at 91-92 (internal quotation marks omitted). The district court also concluded that some of the claims could not “be pled in any event because they [we]re not viable or actionable under the law.” Id. at 92. To begin with, the district court concluded that to the extent the complaint alleged the City violated Mr. Williams’ “rights protected by the Wyoming Constitution” or other state law, “those claims [we]re not cognizable . . . under 42 U.S.C. § 1983” and should “be dismissed with prejudice.” Id. Relatedly, the district court concluded that “Mr. Williams’ attempts to recast alleged state law violations into equal protection claims [we]re not cognizable under . . . § 1983,” nor were his “claims of violations of the Wyoming Constitution dressed up as claims under the Fourteenth Amendment’s 4 Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 5 Privileges or Immunities Clause” or his “attempt to bootstrap . . . alleged Wyoming Constitution violations onto a Fourteenth Amendment claim concern[ing] the due process clause.” Id. at 95-96. The district court also concluded that the “complaint . . . suffer[ed] from statute of limitations concerns.” Id. at 97. The district court first noted that the complaint alleged that “the City ‘molested’ [Mr. Williams] and violated a number of his constitutional rights in 2014 through 2016 when three of the seven city council members walked out of the room while [he] was giving invocations/legislative prayers at the beginning of some city council meetings.” Id. The district court concluded that because “[t]he statute of limitations for § 1983 causes of action . . . is four years in Wyoming,” id. at 97, the limitations period for this claim “commenced running no later than 2016 and expired no later than 2020,” id. at 98. The district court further noted that most of the “claims and/or allegations fail[ed] to specifically identify when the underlying events occurred, but they include[d] a time period or range that start[ed] in 2014, well more than four years prior to the filing of this lawsuit.” Id. at 99. The district court concluded that “all alleged violations of Mr. Williams’ federal rights that occurred more than four years before the filing” of this action “and of which he knew or had reason to know . . . [we]re time-barred by the four-year statute of limitations and w[ould] be dismissed with prejudice.” Id. The district court noted the complaint alleged that Mr. Lundvall was being sued solely in his capacity as mayor of the City. The district court concluded that any claims asserted against Mr. Lundvall were redundant because a suit against an 5 Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 6 official in his official capacity is the same as asserting a claim against the municipality the official represents. Consequently, the district court dismissed all claims against Mr. Lundvall without prejudice. Finally, the district court concluded that any “claims against the City that [we]re not being dismissed with prejudice” would be dismissed without prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) due to Mr. Williams’ failure to comply with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 and because those claims failed to “state plausible causes of action on which relief [could be] granted.” Id. at 100. II. DISCUSSION Mr. Williams now appeals and challenges each of the grounds for dismissal cited by the district court. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm the district court’s decision in its entirety. A. Alleged violations of the Wyoming Constitution and Wyoming state law We turn first to the district court’s dismissal with prejudice of “all claims alleging a violation of the Wyoming Constitution” or Wyoming state law. Id. at 101. We review de novo a district court’s grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. Albers v. Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs, 771 F.3d 697, 700 (10th Cir. 2014). “To survive a motion to dismiss, a plaintiff must plead facts sufficient to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). “[W]e must accept all the well-pleaded allegations of the complaint as true and must construe them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). 6 Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 7 Section 1983 is “limited to deprivations of federal statutory and constitutional rights. It does not cover official conduct that allegedly violates state law.” Neinast v. Bd. of Trs. of Columbus Metro. Libr., 346 F.3d 585, 597 (6th Cir. 2003); see D.L. v. Unified Sch. Dist. No. 497, 596 F.3d 768, 776 (10th Cir. 2010). Thus, as the district court properly concluded, Mr. Williams cannot shoehorn the alleged Wyoming Constitution and statutory violations committed by the City into § 1983 claims. We therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal with prejudice of all claims in Mr. Williams’s complaint that are based on violations of the Wyoming Constitution or Wyoming state law. B. Untimely claims We turn next to the district court’s dismissal of all claims in the complaint “alleging a civil rights violation occurring more than four years before th[e] lawsuit was filed” on statute of limitations grounds. R. at 101. We review a dismissal based on the statute of limitations de novo. See Braxton v. Zavaras, 614 F.3d 1156, 1159 (10th Cir. 2010). Because § 1983 “does not contain a statute of limitations, . . . the settled practice has been to adopt a local time limitation as federal law.” Varnell v. Dora Consol. Sch. Dist., 756 F.3d 1208, 1212 (10th Cir. 2014) (internal quotation marks omitted). It is settled law in this circuit that the applicable statute of limitations period for § 1983 claims in Wyoming is four years. See Gee v. Pacheco, 627 F.3d 1178, 1190 (10th Cir. 2010); Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 1-3-105(a)(iv)(C). 7 Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 8 Paragraphs 1 through 67 of Mr. Williams’s complaint refer to violations occurring beginning in 2014. Some of those paragraphs (Paragraphs 1 through 37 and Paragraphs 55 through 67) allege that the violations continued to occur until 2022 or 2023. Paragraphs 38 through 54 of the complaint alleged violations occurring exclusively between 2014 and 2016. With respect to Paragraphs 1 through 37 and 55 through 67, we agree with the district court that “all alleged violations of Mr. Williams’ federal rights that occurred more than four years before the filing of [this] lawsuit and of which he knew or had reason to know . . . are time-barred by the four-year statute of limitations.” R. at 99. As for Paragraphs 38 through 54, those complaints fell under the subheading “Cities Molestation Of Plaintiff” and generally alleged that “3 of the 7 Council members walk[ed] out on [Mr. Williams’s] invocation after [he] had gone to the lectern.” Id. at 17. Mr. Williams argues, as he did below, that he did not discover those violations until late January 2026. But, as the district court aptly noted, the allegations of the complaint make clear that Mr. Williams “was present when [this] allegedly occurred and . . . knew at the time, or at least had reason to know, of the alleged injury to his federally-protected rights.” Id. at 98. Consequently, we also affirm the district court’s dismissal of the claims in Paragraphs 38 through 54 as time-barred. C. Mr. Lundvall As noted, the district court dismissed without prejudice all claims against Mr. Lundvall in his official capacity on the grounds that they were “redundant of 8 Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 9 th[e] claims against the City.” Id. at 101. Mr. Williams does not seriously dispute this conclusion, and we otherwise find no error on the part of the district court. See Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 165 (1985) (“Official-capacity suits . . . generally represent only another way of pleading an action against an entity of which an officer is an agent.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). D. Rule 8 violations Finally, we address the district court’s decision to dismiss without prejudice the remainder of the claims in the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) on the grounds that those claims failed to comply with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)’s pleading requirements. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) provides: “If the plaintiff fails to . . . comply with these rules or a court order, a defendant may move to dismiss the action or any claim against it.” We review a district court’s dismiss under Rule 41(b) for abuse of discretion. See Mobley v. McCormick, 40 F.3d 337, 340 (10th Cir. 1994). Rule 8(a) requires a complaint to contain, in relevant part, “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). This “requires more than labels and conclusion, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007). “Factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Id. “A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference 9 Appellate Case: 26-8001 Document: 15-1 Date Filed: 11/05/2026 Page: 10 that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). After carefully examining the complaint, we conclude the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that the remaining claims violated Rule 8(a)’s pleading standards. As the district court noted, the complaint was comprised of “mostly unintelligible mishmash rather than plausible, short-and-plain claims for relief.” R. at 101. III. CONCLUSION We affirm the district court’s judgment. Entered for the Court Gregory A. Phillips Circuit Judge 10