A federal appellate court panel has upheld a Toledo judge’s ruling that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the Sandusky Bay Station did not racially discriminate or violate the constitutional rights of several Hispanic individuals who were stopped or detained.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati in a decision filed Thursday affirmed U.S. District Court Judge Jack Zouhary’s decision that the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and Canton-based Immigrant Worker Project failed to prove that the U.S. Border Patrol’s policy was to target people who look Hispanic. Toledo-based FLOC and the Immigrant Worker Project had alleged that border patrol agents in the area targeted Hispanics for stops and detentions, and used racist terms.

RELATED: Judge rules Sandusky Bay Station agents did not discriminate

To prove that the agency has such a policy, the plaintiffs needed to show that there was a formal policy, that there was a policy of inadequate training or supervision, that decision makers allowed illegal actions, or that it has a custom of “tolerating violations of federal law.”

The plaintiffs didn’t argue that there was a formal policy or inadequate training. But the court also ruled that high-ranking decision makers testified that they do not allow racial profiling. A pair of agents testified that they could use race as a factor, but not the only consideration for a stop.

“Neither of these agents, however, testified that he ratified anyone else’s use of race as a factor in determining whom to approach,” the court wrote.

The court also ruled that four encounters by Hispanic persons with Border Patrol agents were allowable, because other factors were used besides race to initiate the stop. 

Evidence showing border agents having at one point regularly used the words “wet” or “wetback” to refer to Hispanics was odious, but that the patrol had worked to end the practice.

Leslie Murray of Murray and Murray of Sandusky, which represented the plaintiffs, said they could either appeal to the full circuit court or to the U.S. Supreme Court, although no decision has been made for next steps.

“We are disappointed in the result,” she said.

Ms. Murray said they were unsuccessful in convincing the court that the examples presented were part of a larger problem, and that the “crux of the issue was that using race and ethnicity as a factor in deciding who to encounter is an unequal application of the law and therefore unconstitutional.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which argued the case for the border patrol, did not return a request for comment Thursday.

Contact Nolan Rosenkrans at: nrosenkrans@theblade.com, or 419-724-6086, or on Twitter @NolanRosenkrans.

First Published August 24, 2017, 6:41 p.m.