Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-04-02108/USCOURTS-ca10-04-02108-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Alfred Haberman
Appellee
R. Hunt
Not Party
Patrisha Jones
Appellant
Sandoval County Board of Commissioners
Not Party

Document Text:

FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

PUBLISH June 14, 2005 

UNITED ST A TES COURT OF APPEALS PATRICK FISHER Clerk 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

PATRISHA JONES, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

V. 

DEPUTY R. HUNT, in his individual 

and official capacity; THE 

SANDOVAL COUNTY BOARD OF 

COMMISSIONERS, 

Defendants, 

and 

ALFRED HABERMAN, in his 

individual capacity, 

Defendant-Appellee. 

No. 04-2108 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of New Mexico 

(D.C. No. CIV-03-362 JB/LAM) 

Jane Gagne, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Plaintiff-Appellant. 

Daniel J. Macke, Brown & German, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for DefendantAppellee. 

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Before LUCERO and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges, and BLACKBURN,* 

District Judge. 

LUCERO, Circuit Judge. 

Patrisha Jones seeks redress under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for alleged violations 

of her Fourth Amendment rights arising from her seizure by two New Mexico 

government officials at the Bernalillo High School where Jones was a student. 

This appeal relates to the dismissal of one of the two state officials on the basis of 

qualified immunity. The second official, a deputy sheriff, remains a party in the 

proceedings below. Jones alleges that Alfred Haberman, a Social Worker 

Supervisor for the New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department 

("CYFD"), seized her at her high school with no legitimate justification, 

demanded that she leave her mother's care, and insisted that she return to her 

abusive father. Haberman made these alleged demands in the face of an existing 

court order assigning temporary custody to Jones' mother and forbidding the 

father from contacting Jones. The district court dismissed her claims against 

Haberman on the basis of qualified immunity, finding that Haberman's actions did 

not amount to a seizure and that, even if they did, the law was not clearly 

established at the time of the incident. Accepting Jones' allegations as true, we 

• The Honorable Robert E. Blackburn, District Judge, United States 

District Court for the District of Colorado, sitting by designation. 

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conclude that Haberman violated Jones' clearly established Fourth Amendment 

rights and REVERSE the district court's order dismissing Jones' suit. 

I 

When reviewing a dismissal pursuant to Rule l 2(b )( 6), we accept the wellpleaded allegations of the complaint as true and view them in the light most 

favorable to the plaintiff. See Yoder v. Honeywell Inc., 104 F.3d 1215, 1224 

(10th Cir. 1997). Construed in the most favorable light, the complaint reveals the 

following facts. 

Jones' mother and father are not married and have been estranged for some 

time. Jones had been living with her father for several years when, in the course 

of an argument, Jones' father and stepmother struck Jones, causing her to sustain 

cuts on her neck and collarbone and bruising on her face. She was sixteen years 

old at the time. Because her father is a former police officer and her stepmother 

is a friend of the county sheriff, Jones was reluctant to report the incident. She 

did, however, meet with officials at Bernalillo High School to discuss 

emancipation and revealed the details of the argument during the course of her 

conversation. As a result of Jones' disclosure, Deputy R. Hunt, a law 

enforcement officer employed by the Sandoval County Sheriff's Office, was 

dispatched to the school, apparently pursuant to the New Mexico Abuse and 

Neglect Act, N.M. Stat. Ann. §§ 32-A-4-1 to 32-A-4-33. He took Jones to the 

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sheriffs department to meet with social worker Haberman for an investigatory 

interview. At the conclusion of the interview, the two officials handed Jones over 

to the custody of her adult sister, where she remained until she moved in with her 

mother two months later. 

Based on the incident of violence, Jones' mother filed for a protective order 

on her daughter's behalf and obtained, on January 8, 2003, a Temporary Order of 

Protection and Order to Appear ("TRO") against Jones' father, under the New 

Mexico Family Violence Protection Act,§§ 40-13-1 to 40-13-8. In the TRO, the 

state court gave Jones' mother temporary physical custody of Jones and prohibited 

the father from having contact with Jones until further order of the court. Jones' 

father was not aware that Jones was living with her mother until receiving the 

TRO. On the same day that they received the TRO, Jones' father and stepmother 

met with Deputy Hunt to seek his assistance. Hunt then left that meeting and took 

social worker Haberman with him to the high school. The two officials 

confronted Jones and told her, contrary to the terms of the TRO, that she could 

not live with her mother. They insisted that she either choose to live with her 

father, again in contravention of the TRO, or move into a shelter. 

Having made these demands, the officials left Jones at the high school, at 

which point she went, panic-stricken, to a school resource officer and stated that 

if she could not live with her mother she would kill herself. Consequently, the 

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resource officer referred Jones to a school counselor and she promptly reported to 

his office. After conducting a risk assessment, the counselor determined that 

Jones presented a low risk of suicide. Meanwhile, Hunt and Haberman returned 

to the high school and, upon finding her in the counselor's office, proceeded to 

threaten and harass her in the presence of the counselor for over two hours. The 

counselor then left, and the two officials - Hunt in uniform - proceeded to tell 

Jones for an additional "hour or two" that if she did not return to her father's 

house, Hunt would arrest her, that her "life would be hell," that Hunt and 

Haberman would "be [her] shadow until [ she was] eighteen, and maybe longer," 

that they would ensure that her mother was sent to prison, that there was a "zero 

percent" chance that she would live with her mother, and that when she turned 

eighteen, she and her mother might be "cell mates." Jones cried throughout the 

encounter, and alleged that she was "terrified of Hunt and Haberman" and "did 

not even think of challenging" them. 

By prearrangement with Hunt and Haberman, Jones' father and stepmother 

were waiting at the school. Jones emerged from the counselor's office and, 

complying with Hunt and Haberman's demands, went to her father's house. The 

following day, Hunt called Jones' mother and informed her that Jones was now 

living with her father. He also falsely told Jones' mother that the TRO had been 

"reversed" and the hearing set for January 22nd was cancelled. Jones' mother 

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learned subsequently that Hunt had misled her, and she attended the January 22nd 

hearing, although she did not testify. At this point, the record is unclear as to the 

result of the January 22nd hearing. The complaint alleges, in somewhat confusing 

fashion, that the special commissioner declined to ''issue a further restraining 

order." Jones, having contacted attorneys and received assurance that she would 

not be arrested for refusing to return to her father's home, moved into a youth 

shelter the evening after the hearing. 

Jones later sued Hunt and Haberman under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming a 

violation of her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures. 1 

On the basis of its conclusion that the altercation in the counselor's office 

between Jones and the two officials did not amount to an unconstitutional seizure 

and that, even if it did, Haberman did not violate clearly established law, the 

district court granted Haberman's motion to dismiss on the basis of qualified 

immunity. Jones appeals that order. 

II 

We review de novo a district court's ruling on qualified immunity. Farmer 

v. Perrill, 288 F.3d 1254, 1259 (10th Cir. 2002). Qualified immunity is "an 

entitlement not to stand trial or face the other burdens of litigation." Mitchell v. 

1 Not relevant to this appeal, Jones also asserted claims against the 

Sandoval County Board of Commissioners for failure to adequately supervise and 

train, and sued all defendants claiming the state tort of false imprisonment. 

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Forsvth, 4 72 U.S. 511, 526 (1985). Our threshold inquiry in the qualified 

immunity analysis is whether, taking Jones' allegations as true, Haberman 

violated Jones' Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures. 

Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 736 (2002). Ifwe conclude that Jones has alleged 

constitutionally impermissible conduct, Haberman "may nevertheless be shielded 

from liability for civil damages if [his] actions did not violate clearly established 

statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have 

known." Id. at 739 (citation omitted). 

A 

Applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process 

Clause, the Fourth Amendment provides: "The right of the people to be secure in 

their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and 

seizures, shall not be violated .... " U.S. Const. amend. iv. Because the 

Amendment focuses on safeguarding persons from unwarranted intrusion, and not 

on regulating the behavior of particular governmental actors, the prohibition 

against unreasonable seizures extends to civil, as well as criminal, investigations 

by the government. See, e.g., Dubbs v. Head Start, Inc., 336 F.3d 1194, 1206 

(10th Cir. 2003) ("The focus of the Amendment is thus on the security of the 

person, not the identity of the searcher or the purpose of the search."); Marshall v. 

Barlow's, Inc., 436 U.S. 307, 312-13 (1978) ("If the government intrudes on a 

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person's property, the privacy interest suffers whether the government's 

motivation is to investigate violations of criminal laws or breaches of other 

statutory or regulatory standards."). We have held that the Fourth Amendment 

subjects state social workers to its requirements. See Dubbs, 336 F .3d at 1205 

("There is no 'social worker' exception to the Fourth Amendment."). 

A seizure occurs for Fourth Amendment purposes when "a reasonable 

person would have believed that he was not free to leave." Michigan v. 

Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 573 (1988). In United States v. Hill, 199 F.3d 1143 

(10th Cir. 1999), we identified several factors to guide our determination of 

whether a person was, in fact, seized. They include: 

1) the threatening presence of several officers; 2) the 

brandishing of a weapon by an officer; 3) some physical 

touching by an officer; 4) use of aggressive language or tone 

of voice indicating that compliance with an officer's request is 

compulsory; 5) prolonged retention of a person's personal 

effects ... ; 6) a request to accompany the officer to the 

station; 7) interaction in a nonpublic place or a small, enclosed 

place; 8) and absence of other members of the public. 

Hill, 199 F.3d at 1147-48. We have refused to treat any of the factors cited above 

as dispositive. United States v. Glass, 128 F.3d 1398, 1406 (10th Cir. 1997); 

United States v. Little, 18 F.3d 1499, 1503 (10th Cir. 1994) (en bane) ("only in 

rare instances will any one factor produce an inexorable conclusion that a seizure 

has occurred."). Nor are these factors exclusive. See United States v. Griffin, 7 

F.3d 1512, 1518 (10th Cir. 1993) ("we have avoided hard line rules to govern this 

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analysis, and our opinion today should not be interpreted as an exhaustive 

pronouncement."). Rather, we base our Fourth Amendment analysis on the 

"totality of the circumstances." United States v. Shareef, 100 F.3d 1491, 1505 

(I 0th Cir. 1996) ( citation omitted). When viewing the totality of the 

circumstances, it may be that the strong presence of two or three factors 

demonstrates that a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to 

terminate an encounter with government officials. 

We must view Jones' encounter with Haberman and Hunt through the eyes 

of a reasonable sixteen-year-old. See Little, 18 F .3d at 1505 n.6 ("whether the 

person being questioned is a child or an adult" is "relevant" to whether a person 

would have felt free to leave); see also Doe v. Heck, 327 F .3d 492, 510 (7th Cir. 

2003) (child "was 'seized' with[in] the meaning of the Fourth Amendment 

because no reasonable child would have believed that he was free to leave"). 

Seen from a such a perspective, we are inexorably driven to the conclusion that a 

reasonable sixteen-year-old would not have felt free to terminate the encounter 

with Hunt and Haberman. 

Jones' encounter with Hunt and Haberman, two government officials, one 

of whom was in police uniform, took place in a small, confined school 

counselor's office, to which Jones had been sent by a school official after 

threatening suicide. See Hill, 199 F.3d at 1147-48. Jones was a sixteen-year-old 

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girl whom these very officials had transported from the high school to the 

sheriffs department for an investigatory interview two months earlier. She knew 

that they had the authority to determine her custodial care, as they had previously 

turned her over to the custody of her older sister. Finding herself alone with these 

two officials for an "hour or two," Jones endured their repeated threats that if she 

did not agree to live with her father, they would arrest her and follow her for at 

least the next two years, ensuring that her "life would be hell." As evidenced by 

her crying, she was obviously emotionally fragile and distraught. See Little, 18 

F.3d at 1505 (A citizen's "subjective state of mind" is relevant "to the extent that 

[it] may have been known to the officer and influenced his conduct."). An 

emotionally vulnerable sixteen-year-old would not have felt free to terminate that 

encounter. 

The district court concluded that the threats of arrest did not contribute to 

the seizure, because "[a]ny compliance Haberman demanded ... concerned Jones' 

future living arrangements and did not concern an alleged inability to leave the 

counselor's office at that moment." Construing the facts in the light most 

favorable to Jones, the district court's conclusion is incorrect. Jones was living 

with her mother at the time of the encounter. A reasonable sixteen-year-old 

would have interpreted Hunt and Haberman's threats to mean that if she did not 

agree to go home with her father - who was waiting at the school to receive her 

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following her encounter with Hunt and Haberman - then she would be arrested. 

Jones reasonably believed that leaving the office, and thus refusing to go home 

with her father, would result in her arrest. 

Additionally, the court below found that Jones went to the counselor's 

office voluntarily, which "points away from a seizure." This finding is at odds 

with the allegation in the complaint. Jones claims that the school resource officer 

referred Jones to the counselor to determine if she were at risk of committing 

suicide. A reasonable high school student would not have felt free to flaunt a 

school official's command, leave an office to which she had been sent, and 

wander the halls of her high school without permission. It is possible that Jones' 

initial encounter with Hunt and Haberman was consensual. Regardless, it was 

transformed into a seizure through Hunt and Haberman's alleged threats and 

demands. See Little, 18 F .3d at 1505 ("a consensual encounter between a citizen 

and police can be transformed into a seizure through persistent and accusatory 

questioning by police."). 2 

B 

2 We need not determine the precise moment in time that a seizure 

occurred. Although it may have occurred earlier, we are satisfied that after Hunt 

and Haberman threatened Jones with her own arrest, as well as her mother's 

arrest, and promised that her "life would be hell" because the two officials would 

"be [her] shadow until [she was] eighteen, and maybe longer," she was seized. 

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Our conclusion that the alleged encounter constituted a seizure is but the 

first part of the constitutional analysis. We must yet determine if the seizure was 

reasonable, an inquiry that depends on the context in which it took place. New 

Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 337 (1985). With limited exceptions, a search or 

seizure requires either a warrant or probable cause. Camara v. Municipal Court, 

387 U.S. 523, 528-529 (1967) ("except in certain carefully defined classes of 

cases, a search of private property without proper consent is 'unreasonable' unless 

it has been authorized by a valid search warrant."); T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 340-41 

("Ordinarily, a search ... must be based upon 'probable cause' to believe that a 

violation of the law has occurred. [However,] we have in a number of cases 

recognized the legality of searches and seizures based on suspicions that, although 

'reasonable,' do not rise to the level of probable cause."). 

The court below relied on one such exception recognized by the Supreme 

Court in T.L.O. In T.L.O., the Supreme Court held that where school officials 

detain and question a child for the purpose of maintaining or restoring order in 

the school: 

the accommodation of the privacy interests of schoolchildren 

with the substantial need of teachers and administrators for 

freedom to maintain order in the schools does not require strict 

adherence to the requirement that searches be based on 

probable cause to believe that the subject of the search has 

violated or is violating the law. Rather, the legality of a search 

of a student should depend simply on the reasonableness, 

under all the circumstances, of the search. 

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T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 341. Adopting the Terry standard, the Court explained that a 

search of a student by a school official is reasonable if "justified at its inception" 

and "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the 

interference in the first place." Id. (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20 

( 1968)). We have held that "the same considerations which moved the Supreme 

Court to apply a relaxed Fourth Amendment standard in cases involving school 

searches support applying the same standard in school seizure cases." Edwards v. 

Rees, 883 F .2d 882, 884 (10th Cir. 1989) (applying Terry standard where a junior 

high school vice principal seizes a student to question him about a bomb threat). 

Therefore, we have held since 1989 that seizures of students by school officials 

must pass the Terry test. 

Because Haberman and Hunt's seizure of Jones took place on public school 

property, the district court erroneously concluded that the relaxed Fourth 

Amendment standard announced in T.L.O. should apply to this case. 3 The 

Supreme Court fashioned a relaxed standard due to its concern about "unduly 

burden[ing] the efforts of school authorities to maintain order in their schools." 

T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 342. Because the case before us does not involve efforts by 

3 The district court in error applied the relaxed standard when deciding if 

the altercation constituted a seizure. The relaxed standard announced in T.L.O. 

and extended by this court in Rees is irrelevant to determining if a seizure 

occurred, and applies only to an inquiry into the reasonableness of a search or 

seizure. 

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school administrators to preserve order on school property, it does not implicate 

the policy concerns addressed in T .L.O. and therefore does not merit application 

of the T.L.O. standard. 4 

It is ultimately unnecessary for us to decide what Fourth Amendment test is 

most appropriate in this case "because the conduct alleged in [this] case would 

violate the most minimal standard of which we can conceive." Snell v. Tunnell, 

920 F.2d 673, 698 (10th Cir. 1990). Even applying the Terry standard - that a 

seizure must be "justified at its inception" and "reasonably related in scope to the 

circumstances which justified the interference in the first place" - Haberman 

violated Jones' Fourth Amendment rights. Terry, 392 U.S. at 20. 

Taking the facts as alleged, Haberman's seizure of Jones was not "justified 

at its inception.'' Id. The complaint does not allege that Haberman suspected 

4 We do not imply that a social worker investigating allegations of abuse or 

neglect necessarily requires a warrant, probable cause, or exigent circumstances 

before questioning a child on public school property. Where a social worker 

merely conducted an interview of a child at a public school, and thus did not 

remove the child nor interfere with the sanctity of the private home, we have 

applied the Terrv standard. Doe v. Bagan, 41 F .3d 571, 575 n.3 (I 0th Cir. 1994 ). 

It may be that the Terry standard applies even where a social worker removes a 

child from her parents' custody at a public school following a legitimate 

investigation into child abuse and neglect. As discussed, infra, this case presents 

a unique constellation of alleged facts allowing us to evaluate the claims under 

the Terry standard without deciding what standard ought to apply in an ordinary 

removal case. 

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Jones' mother of abusive or neglectful behavior. 5 On the other hand, there was 

sufficient evidence of her father's abusiveness to both warrant transfer from his 

custody (which Haberman himself facilitated two months earlier) and the issuance 

of a TRO against him. 6 Indeed, Haberman's demand that Jones leave her 

mother's care and enter her father's custody violated the express terms of the 

existing TRO. We do not see how a seizure, the alleged intended purpose of 

which would violate a court order, can possibly be justified at its inception. 

There was no legitimate governmental interest in this seizure. See Wyoming v. 

Houghton, 526 U.S. 295, 299-300 (1999) (we may "evaluate the search or seizure 

under traditional standards of reasonableness by assessing, on the one hand, the 

degree to which it intrudes upon an individual's privacy and, on the other, the 

degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental 

interests."). Where no legitimate basis exists for detaining a child, a seizure is 

plainly unreasonable. Taking the alleged facts as true, this seizure, which lasted 

between three to four hours, was unjustified from the beginning, and therefore 

cannot be said to be "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which 

5 Of course, discovery could develop facts indicating that Haberman had 

legitimate concerns for Jones' welfare, which would be highly relevant to the 

constitutional analysis. 

6 According to the complaint, Jones' father had been charged by CYFD 

with abusing two of his other children, and he lost custody as a result of those 

charges. Haberman, as an employee of CYFD, allegedly had access to 

information about these charges before the seizure. 

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justified the interference in the first place." Terry, 392 U.S. at 20. Even when 

scrutinized under the minimal requirements of Terry, Haberman's alleged conduct 

amounts to an unreasonable seizure. 

After the defendants have the opportunity to develop the factual record, the 

picture confronting the court may look very different. Haberman may have had 

legitimate concerns for Jones' safety and welfare, he may have played a minor 

role in the encounter and been ignorant of Hunt's motives, and Jones may have 

consented to the questioning throughout the encounter. Viewing the totality of 

the circumstances as alleged in the complaint in the light most favorable to Jones, 

however, we conclude that she has alleged sufficient facts to demonstrate at the 

l 2(B )( 6) stage that she was unreasonably seized within the meaning of the Fourth 

Amendment. 

C 

Although his alleged actions, if true, violated Jones' Fourth Amendment 

rights, Haberman nonetheless gains qualified immunity if his "actions did not 

violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable 

person would have known." Hope, 536 U.S. at 739 (internal quotation omitted). 

To defeat a claim of qualified immunity, plaintiffs need not point to a prior 

holding that the specific conduct at issue is unlawful; rather, the unlawfulness of 

the alleged action must have been apparent. See id. Moreover, it is incumbent 

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upon government officials to make "reasonable applications of the prevailing law 

to their own circumstances." Murrell v. Sch. Dist. No. 1, 186 F.3d 1238, 1251 

(10th Cir. 1999). 

Without doubt, it was clearly established by January 2003 that a seizure 

must be reasonable. See, e.g., United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 

878 ( 1975). In Terry, decided in 1968, the Court instituted the rule that, at 

minimum, a seizure must be "justified at its inception" and "reasonably related in 

scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." 

Terry, 392 U.S. at 20. It was also clearly established by the date of the seizure 

that the Fourth Amendment's strictures apply to social workers. See, e.g., Malik 

v. Arapahoe County Dep't of Soc. Servs., 191 F.3d 1306, 1316 (10th Cir. 1999) 

(holding, in a case involving alleged retaliation, that it was clearly established 

that a social worker violates the Fourth Amendment by procuring seizure order 

through material omissions); Snell, 920 F .2d at 697-98 (holding that a social 

worker violates the Fourth Amendment where there is "evidence indicating 

deliberate and willful conduct, specifically, that the defendants knew that any 

allegations concerning child sexual abuse and the Snells were false, yet they 

persisted in their attempts to intervene on that very basis."). Indeed, in 1994 we 

applied the Terry standard to a social worker's seizure of a child at a public 

school. Doe v. Bagan, 41 F.3d at 575 n.3. Finally, the standard by which a court 

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judges whether a seizure occurred was clearly established. See, e.g., Hill, 199 

F.3d at 1147-48. 

Therefore, by January 10, 2003, Haberman was on notice that the Fourth 

Amendment's requirements applied to him, that a seizure would occur within the 

meaning of that Amendment if at any point the person believed that she was not 

free to terminate an encounter with him, that the "free to leave" determination 

would be informed by the Hill factors, and that any seizure of a child at a public 

school must be justified at its inception. Because Haberman's conduct as alleged 

constituted a seizure under Hill and was unreasonable under Terry, Haberman 

violated a clearly established constitutional right of which a reasonable person 

would have known. 

Our conclusion is based on clearly and narrowly articulated Fourth 

Amendment principles. In Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. at 638-40, the Court 

expressed its awareness that if alleged at a sufficient level of generality, any 

constitutional violation would deprive government officials of qualified 

immunity. Therefore, rather than "alleging violation of extremely abstract 

rights,'' plaintiffs must show that "[t]he contours of the right [are] sufficiently 

clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates 

that right." 1£L at 640. In Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S._ (2004), the Supreme 

Court considered how factually related existing precedent must be to an alleged 

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violation to render a rule of law "clearly established." The Court concluded that 

the standard established in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989) ("the test 

of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise 

definition or mechanical application"), was "cast at a high level of generality" 

and therefore did not clearly establish a Fourth Amendment violation. Id. at_. 

The tests enunciated in Hill and Terry are far more specific than the 

general standard set forth in Graham. Furthermore, the Court's recent qualified 

immunity jurisprudence does not allow public officials such as Haberman, who 

are alleged to have committed blatant Fourth Amendment violations, to obtain 

immunity from suit. The Brosseau Court acknowledged that even with regard to 

highly general standards, "in an obvious case, these standards can 'clearly 

establish' the answer, even without a body of relevant case law." Id. Implicit in 

the Court's reasoning is the recognition that officials committing outrageous, yet 

sui generis, constitutional violations ought not to shield their behavior behind 

qualified immunity simply because another official has not previously had the 

audacity to commit a similar transgression. 

We conclude that the Fourth Amendment violation as alleged in this case is 

both obvious and outrageous, and that "it would be clear to a reasonable officer 

that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted." Saucier v. Katz, 

533 U.S. 194, 202 (2001 ). A social worker who lacks any legitimate justification 

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for seizing a child, but nonetheless seizes the child and demands, in direct 

contravention of a court order, that she enter the custody of her abusive father, 

would clearly know that his conduct is unconstitutional. 7 

III 

Jones' allegations, if true, establish that Haberman violated her clearly 

established Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures. We 

therefore REVERSE the district court's order granting Haberman's motion to 

dismiss on the basis of qualified immunity and REMAND for further 

proceedings. 

7 We emphasize that our disposition of this case is largely dictated by the 

Rule 12(b)(6) standard. Jones' complaint effectively portrays the encounter at 

issue as an unjustified seizure in light of clearly established law, and we must 

accept her allegations as true. As such, we conclude that the district court erred 

in granting qualified immunity at this stage in the litigation. 

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