Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07189/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07189-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Ayanna Blue
Appellant
District of Columbia
Appellee
District of Columbia Public Schools
Appellee
Michelle Rhee
Appellee
Robert Weismiller
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 13, 2015 Decided December 29, 2015

No. 14-7189

AYANNA BLUE,

APPELLANT

v.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:10-cv-01504)

Natalie A. Baughman argued the cause for appellant. 

With her on the brief was Scott D. Gilbert. 

Carl J. Schifferle, Assistant Attorney General, Office of 

the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, argued the 

cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Karl A. 

Racine, Attorney General, Todd S. Kim, Solicitor General, 

and Loren L. AliKhan, Deputy Solicitor General.

Before: HENDERSON and TATEL, Circuit Judges, and 

EDWARDS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

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TATEL, Circuit Judge: Appellant Ayanna Blue alleges 

that while attending a District of Columbia school for

emotionally disturbed students, she and a teacher had a 

consensual sexual relationship—a relationship that led to the 

birth of a child. Blue seeks damages from the District of 

Columbia under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Title IX, and various D.C. 

tort laws. The district court dismissed her complaint for 

failure to state a claim. For the reasons set forth in this 

opinion, we affirm.

I.

Because this case comes to us at the motion to dismiss 

stage, “we must accept all factual allegations in the complaint 

as true.” NB ex rel. Peacock v. District of Columbia, 794 F.3d 

31, 42 (D.C. Cir. 2015). According to the complaint, Robert 

Weismiller, the teacher who had a sexual relationship with 

Blue, taught at various schools in the D.C. area for much of 

the past forty years. 

In the mid-1970s, while a gym and driver’s education 

teacher at a public high school in Prince George’s County, 

Maryland, Weismiller “initiated sexual relationships with two 

students.” Second Am. Compl. ¶ 24. Weismiller persuaded

“one 16-year-old student . . . to have sex with him at various 

locations, both on and off of school property.” Id. He also 

“had sexual intercourse with a second student” who was “17 

years old when the sexual relationship began.” Id. ¶ 25. 

“While serving as the student’s driver education teacher, 

Weismiller on multiple occasions drove the student to a 

motel, where they had sex.” Id. After two of her classmates 

“informed the student’s parents that they had seen her with 

Weismiller,” the girl’s parents “informed the principal of 

what the classmates had seen, and demanded that the principal 

take action.” Id. The complaint says nothing about what the 

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principal or the school district did in response to the parents’

complaint. Weismiller stopped working at the school in 1978.

Several years later, in 1984, while teaching at a public 

middle school in Prince William County, Virginia, Weismiller 

“sexually assaulted two eighth grade students.” Id. ¶ 26. 

Weismiller’s “misconduct toward the students continued into 

their ninth grade year, when he was transferred to the 

[students’ high school].” Id. A lawsuit filed in 1986 regarding 

this misconduct named as defendants “Weismiller, the Prince 

William County School Board, and several school officials.”

Id. Weismiller “was fired . . . as a result of this lawsuit.” Id.

In the late 1990s, after a brief stint at another school, 

Weismiller started working at a middle school in the Fairfax 

County, Virginia, public school system. Id. ¶ 28. About a year 

into Weismiller’s tenure, one of the plaintiffs in the Prince 

William County lawsuit, who happened to be working for the

Fairfax schools, saw Weismiller at a school event, “contacted 

the Human Resources Department for Fairfax County, 

informed officials about her lawsuit against Weismiller, and 

was told that he would be terminated from his teaching 

position immediately.” Id. ¶ 27. Although the complaint 

contains no information about whether the school system 

followed through on its promise, it does indicate that 

Weismiller stopped working for the school system that year. 

Id. ¶ 28.

Setting the stage for this litigation, the District of 

Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) hired Weismiller in 2008 to 

teach at the Transition Academy at Shadd, a school for 

emotionally disturbed students. Ayanna Blue, then eighteen 

years old, was enrolled in one of Weismiller’s classes. 

Throughout the fall of 2008, Weismiller made advances 

toward Blue, including telling her that “[i]f [he] were 30 years 

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younger, [he] would marry [her],” “wink[ing] at [her] in 

class[,] and kiss[ing] her on numerous occasions.” Id. ¶ 15

(internal quotation marks omitted). Around November 19, 

Weismiller “drove [Blue] home from school, and the two had 

sexual intercourse in his car.” Id. ¶ 19. Before their 

relationship ended in April 2009, “numerous incidents 

occurr[ed] in Weismiller’s classroom during the lunch period, 

in his car, and at [Blue’s] home.” Id. ¶ 20. Although Blue 

never told school officials about the relationship, she did 

inform school personnel in December 2008 that she believed 

she was pregnant, and they sent her to the health office to take 

a pregnancy test, which came back negative. Later, Blue did 

become pregnant. After Blue’s daughter was born in late 

2009, id. ¶ 21, Blue, her daughter, and Weismiller took a 

paternity test, which “[was] positive, indicating a 99.99% 

probability that Weismiller is the baby’s father,” id. ¶ 22. The 

complaint does not allege that the relationship was ever 

involuntary.

Earlier, in May 2009, after DCPS learned that Blue was 

pregnant but before she had the baby, it initiated an 

investigation of Weismiller. Id. ¶ 29. Weismiller denied that 

he had engaged in a sexual relationship with Blue, id. ¶ 30, 

but every witness DCPS interviewed—including teachers, an 

educational aide, Weismiller’s classroom aide, and a clinical 

psychologist—stated that they had seen the two alone together 

in Weismiller’s classroom or had heard rumors that the two 

were having a sexual relationship, id. ¶¶ 31–36. One witness 

saw the two alone together in Weismiller’s classroom “during 

the lunch period, with the lights off.” Id. ¶ 36. “Despite these 

first-hand accounts, DCPS, at the close of its investigation, 

acquitted Weismiller of any misconduct.” Id. ¶ 38. Five 

months later, in October 2009, DCPS terminated Weismiller 

as part of a “system-wide reduction in force.” Id. ¶ 14.

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In 2010, Blue filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the 

District of Columbia, asserting numerous claims against 

Weismiller; the then-Chancellor of DCPS, Michelle Rhee; 

DCPS; and the District of Columbia. Blue has since settled 

her claims against Weismiller and dropped her claims against 

DCPS and Rhee, so only her claims against the District of 

Columbia remain at issue. The district court granted the 

District’s motion to dismiss these claims for failure to state a 

claim. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).

On appeal, Blue pursues her claims against the District 

under section 1983, Title IX, and various D.C. tort laws. Our 

review is de novo. Tuaua v. United States, 788 F.3d 300, 302 

(D.C. Cir. 2015).

II.

Accepting the complaint’s allegations as true, one might 

think that this case is relatively easy. DCPS hired Weismiller 

even though he had a history of preying on children in two 

neighboring school systems. DCPS then assigned him to teach 

at a school for special education students, where he engaged 

in a sexual relationship with a student, Ayanna Blue. Given 

this background, most people would reasonably assume that 

Blue should have an opportunity to prove her case. But 

unfortunately for her, a series of judicially created and 

statutory obstacles, all binding on this court, stand in her path.

Section 1983

To state a claim for relief against a municipality under 

section 1983, a plaintiff must satisfy two requirements: she 

must plead “a predicate constitutional violation” and that “a 

custom or policy of the municipality caused the violation.”

Baker v. District of Columbia, 326 F.3d 1302, 1306 (D.C. Cir. 

2003). Blue claims that the District’s actions “violated [her] 

rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment 

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to be free from conduct that violates her bodily integrity,” 

Second Am. Compl. ¶ 87, by allowing Weismiller, a teacher,

to engage her, an eighteen-year-old student, in a consensual 

sexual relationship. The district court found it unnecessary to 

determine whether a right to be free from such a relationship 

exists because, even assuming it does, it concluded that Blue 

failed to allege that a district policy caused the violation. Blue 

v. District of Columbia, 850 F. Supp. 2d 16, 25, 29 (D.D.C. 

2012); see also Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 

U.S. 658, 690 (1978). We agree.

This circuit has identified several ways in which a 

plaintiff may allege a municipal policy or custom. 

Specifically, she may point to (1) “the explicit setting of a 

policy by the government that violates the Constitution,” (2)

“the action of a policy maker within the government,” (3) “the 

adoption through a knowing failure to act by a policy maker 

of actions by his subordinates that are so consistent that they 

have become ‘custom,’” or (4) “the failure of the government 

to respond to a need (for example, training of employees) in 

such a manner as to show ‘deliberate indifference’ to the risk 

that not addressing the need will result in constitutional 

violations.” Baker, 326 F.3d at 1306 (citations omitted). On 

appeal, Blue pursues only one of these theories: that under 

certain circumstances, a single decision by a municipal 

official with final policymaking authority can constitute a 

municipal policy. Id. (citing City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 

485 U.S. 112, 123–30 (1988) (plurality opinion)). In order for 

a municipality to be held liable for the single decision of a 

final policymaker, that official must have demonstrated 

“deliberate indifference to the risk that a violation of a 

particular constitutional or statutory right [would] follow the 

decision.” Board of County Commissioners v. Brown, 520 

U.S. 397, 411 (1997). Blue alleges that two District decisions 

satisfied this standard: the decision to hire Weismiller without 

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conducting a proper background investigation and the 

decision not to terminate Weismiller after DCPS investigated 

his sexual relationship with Blue.

The second of Blue’s theories merits only brief attention. 

Although the district court rejected Blue’s failure-to-fire 

claim for multiple reasons, we need address only one: that the 

District’s decision to retain Weismiller after the investigation 

could not have caused the specific injury that Blue relied upon 

as the basis for her section 1983 claim—the sexual 

relationship with Weismiller. Blue, 850 F. Supp. 2d at 28. 

This is correct. Blue’s relationship with Weismiller ended in 

April 2009, a month before DCPS initiated its investigation. 

The District’s May decision to retain Weismiller thus could 

not have affected the no-longer-existing relationship.

Blue presents a second variation of her failure-to-fire 

claim—one that would, if valid, avoid the causation problem. 

She contends that the District’s single decision not to 

reprimand Weismiller after the District investigated the 

relationship demonstrates a municipal policy of ignoring 

sexual abuse by teachers. But Blue has cited no decision by 

this circuit, nor are we aware of one, that supports such a 

theory of municipal liability. As Blue points out, other circuits 

have recognized that theory, but in the cases Blue cites, the

municipality failed to respond to improper actions by

numerous municipal officials. McRorie v. Shimoda, 795 F.2d 

780, 784 (9th Cir. 1986) (citing actions by numerous prison 

guards); Grandstaff v. City of Borger, 767 F.2d 161, 171 (5th 

Cir. 1985) (describing “repeated acts of abuse . . . by several 

officers in several episodes”); Owens v. Haas, 601 F.2d 1242, 

1245 (2d Cir. 1979) (recounting the severe beating of a 

prisoner by “[a]pproximately seven guards”). This case is 

quite different. Not only does it involve the alleged 

misbehavior of only one municipal employee, but, more 

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important, DCPS’s May 2009 investigation concluded that 

Weismiller never had a sexual relationship with Blue. The 

District therefore had no reason to fire Weismiller.

Blue’s second asserted basis for a municipal policy—the 

District’s failure to properly screen Weismiller before hiring 

him—warrants somewhat more analysis. Blue contends that 

the District’s failure to properly screen Weismiller qualified 

as a municipal policy because it was a single decision by a 

final policymaker. The district court rejected this theory 

because Blue failed to “allege[] . . . that the decision to hire 

Weismiller without an adequate background check was made 

by a final municipal policymaker.” Blue, 850 F. Supp. 2d at 

27. Instead, Blue alleged only that “[the] District has ‘a 

custom, policy or practice of failing to adequately investigate 

the backgrounds of its teachers before hiring them.’” Id.

(quoting Second Am. Compl. ¶ 82).

We agree with the district court that Blue’s assertion is 

insufficient to support a claim that the District, in failing to 

properly screen Weismiller, acted pursuant to a municipal 

policy actionable under section 1983. As the Supreme Court 

made clear in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, when reviewing the 

sufficiency of a complaint, a court must first “tak[e] note of 

the elements a plaintiff must plead to state [the] claim” to 

relief, 556 U.S. 662, 675 (2009), and then determine whether 

the plaintiff has pleaded those elements with adequate factual 

support to “state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,” 

id. at 678 (quoting Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 

544, 570 (2007)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Blue has 

failed to satisfy Iqbal’s first step.

Section 1983 plaintiffs have several ways to allege a 

municipal policy, each with its own elements. If the plaintiff 

fails to identify the type of municipal policy at issue, the court 

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would be unable to determine, as required by Iqbal’s second 

step, whether the plaintiff had provided plausible support for 

her claim. Although the court could try to surmise which 

theory of municipal liability has the strongest support in the 

complaint, this is not our role. It therefore follows that to state 

a valid claim against a municipality under section 1983, a 

plaintiff must plead the elements of the relevant type of 

municipal policy.

Under this standard, Blue’s inadequate screening claim 

fails because, as she concedes, she never indicated the 

contours of any type of municipal policy. At most, the 

complaint suggests that the District made a serious mistake in 

hiring Weismiller, just as other school districts have done in

the past. Although, if true, this would be distressing, the 

complaint does not allege that the District has a policy of 

failing to properly screen employees.

We draw support for our position from the decisions of 

the two other circuits that have considered this issue. In 

Santiago v. Warminster Township, the plaintiff alleged that 

the municipality was liable based on a single decision by the 

chief of police. 629 F.3d 121, 125 (3d Cir. 2010). The Third 

Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the case, 

finding that the complaint failed to adequately plead 

municipal liability because it never alleged that the police 

chief had final policymaking authority. Id. at 135. The court 

explained that the plaintiff had “to plead in some fashion that 

[the police chief] had final policy making authority, as that is 

a key element of a Monell claim.” Id. at 135 n.11. The

Seventh Circuit has similarly held that a plaintiff must plead 

that a final municipal policymaker made the decision that 

caused the violation. Baxter by Baxter v. Vigo County School 

Corp., 26 F.3d 728, 735 (7th Cir. 1994) (“[I]t must first be 

alleged adequately that a defendant is a final policymaker. 

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Only then can a court proceed to the question of whether the 

single act or decision of that defendant constituted municipal 

policy.”). In other words, in order for the district court to 

assess whether Blue stated a facially plausible complaint, 

Blue needed to assert the elements of the type of municipal 

policy that caused her injury. Blue failed to do so.

Title IX

Blue next argues that the District denied her the benefits 

of an education on the basis of sex in violation of Title IX of 

the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681 et 

seq., when it failed to end Weismiller’s sexual relationship 

with her. Title IX provides that “[n]o person in the United 

States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from 

participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to 

discrimination under any education program or activity 

receiving Federal financial assistance.” Id. § 1681(a). In 

Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, the 

Supreme Court held that a student can recover damages under 

Title IX for sexual harassment by a teacher when three 

elements exist: (1) an appropriate official at the school, i.e., 

one with authority to institute corrective measures, (2) had 

actual notice of the harassment and (3) demonstrated 

deliberate indifference to the harassment. 524 U.S. 274, 290 

(1998). The district court determined that Blue had failed to 

demonstrate any of the three. Blue, 850 F. Supp. 2d at 31–36. 

Although Blue insists that she has established all three 

elements, we need address only the second, actual notice. 

In Davis ex rel. LaShonda D. v. Monroe County Board of 

Education, the Supreme Court interpreted the actual notice 

requirement to mean that school officials must have been 

aware of “known acts of sexual harassment by a teacher.” 526 

U.S. 629, 641 (1999). The Court further held that such acts 

must have come to the school officials’ attention while the 

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harassment was ongoing. See id. at 642–43 (explaining that to 

be liable, the school officials’ deliberate indifference must 

have caused the discrimination).

Blue has failed to satisfy the Davis standard. Nowhere in 

her complaint did she allege that anyone—much less an 

appropriate official—knew of any acts of sexual harassment 

while the harassment was ongoing. She did allege that school 

officials had actual notice “as shown by the pregnancy test 

she took at the school’s request in December 2008 and 

through interviews of teachers and staff who had seen 

Weismiller and [Blue] alone together in his classroom.” 

Second Am. Compl. ¶ 94. Neither suffices. Because Blue 

never alleged that she revealed to school officials at the time 

of the pregnancy test that Weismiller was the potential father, 

school officials could not have known that Weismiller was 

sexually harassing her. As for the teachers and staff seeing 

Weismiller and Blue alone together, even assuming, as Blue

alleges, that Weismiller was sexually harassing her in the 

classroom, Davis requires that the sexual harassment be 

“known,” and Blue has failed to allege that anyone knew

sexual harassment was occurring in Weismiller’s classroom. 

Blue has therefore failed to state a claim to relief under Title 

IX.

D.C. Tort Claims

This brings us, finally, to Blue’s tort claims against the 

District. The district court dismissed these claims, finding that 

Blue had failed to comply with D.C. Code § 12-309, Blue, 

850 F. Supp. 2d at 36–38, which requires that a person 

bringing a claim against the District must “within six months 

after the injury . . . give[] notice in writing to the Mayor of the 

District of Columbia of the approximate time, place, cause, 

and circumstances of the injury or damage.” Section 12-309 

further provides that “[a] report in writing by the Metropolitan 

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Police Department, in regular course of duty, is a sufficient 

notice.” The D.C. Court of Appeals has “repeatedly . . . held 

that ‘compliance with the statutory notice requirement is 

mandatory,’ and that § 12-309 ‘is to be construed narrowly 

against claimants.’” Owens v. District of Columbia, 993 A.2d 

1085, 1088 (D.C. 2010) (quoting, respectively, Pitts v. 

District of Columbia, 391 A.2d 803, 807 (D.C. 1978), and 

Brown v. District of Columbia, 853 A.2d 733, 736 (D.C. 

2004)). The D.C. Court of Appeals has also held that the 

“statutory exception to formal notice [within section 12-309] 

. . . is limited to police reports.” Campbell v. District of 

Columbia, 568 A.2d 1076, 1078 (D.C. 1990).

Conceding that she failed to provide notice to the mayor 

within six months of her injury, Blue nonetheless argues that

section 12-309’s notice requirement has been satisfied 

because DCPS investigated her allegations, meaning that the 

District had actual notice of her injury. This theory, however, 

runs counter to longstanding D.C. Court of Appeals 

precedent, which makes clear not only that the notice 

requirement is “mandatory,” but also that it must be 

“construed narrowly against claimants.” Owens, 993 A.2d at 

1088. Emphasizing the strictness of this requirement, the D.C. 

Court of Appeals has even found that a plaintiff failed to 

satisfy section 12-309 when she gave oral notice to the city. 

Pitts, 391 A.2d at 806 (explaining that oral notice of the 

injury was “contrary to both the statute and the case law of 

this jurisdiction”). Under D.C. law, then, it is not enough that 

the District has knowledge; that knowledge must come in 

writing from the claimant.

Alternatively, seeking to take advantage of section 12-

309’s police report exception, Blue argues that she is entitled 

to discover whether a police report about the incident exists or 

whether the police assisted in drafting DCPS’s May 2009 

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investigative report. But because Blue failed to advance this 

argument in the district court, she has forfeited it here. Flynn 

v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue Service, 269 F.3d 1064, 

1068–69 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (“[A]n argument not made in the 

lower tribunal is deemed forfeited and will not be entertained 

absent ‘exceptional circumstances.’”).

III.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm. 

So ordered.

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