# Schmidt v. City of Norfolk - appellants' opening brief
> *Filed party brief. It establishes procedural posture and the appellants' position; it is not a court holding and does not establish that the appeal has been decided.*
## Source metadata
- **Court:** United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
- **Case:** *Schmidt v. City of Norfolk*, No. 26-1227
- **Document:** 16, appellants' opening brief
- **Filed:** 2026-04-13
- **Archived:** 2026-07-20 from unauthenticated public access
- **Wayback snapshot:** save failed on 2026-07-20 after the archive service returned HTTP 403; retry pending
## Precise extract
- The file-stamped header identifies “USCA4 Appeal: 26-1227,” “Doc: 16,” and “Filed: 04/13/2026.”
- The caption identifies Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington as plaintiffs-appellants and the City of Norfolk and Mark Talbot, in his official capacity, as defendants-appellees.
- The requested disposition is the appellants' request; it is not a court ruling.
## Procedural-status boundary
This filing confirms that the district-court judgment was appealed and that the appellants filed their opening brief. The public docket mirror returned HTTP 403 to the archival fetch and its browser-visible snapshot was not current enough to establish a July 20 disposition. No categorical statement about the appeal's ultimate disposition should be made from this source.
**Wayback failure**: The bounded Save Page Now pass stopped after the archive service returned HTTP 403 on the first request. This source was not individually retried; retry pending.
## Notes
- Tier 2 - filed court document, authoritative for filing metadata and party argument only.
- Counsel addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, signatures, and unrelated personal details are not reproduced in this extract.
- Cited by: see `citing_pages:` frontmatter; populated after wiki integration.