NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

RUTH ANN CONDE CHEESMAN; ROY 

D. CHEESMAN, 

Plaintiffs-Appellees, 

 v. 

TABITHA A. SNYDER, 

Defendant-Appellant, 

and 

MAYRA CUENCA; PAMELA 

ANDERSON; BERTA NORTON; 

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL AND 

HEALTH SERVICES, Children's 

Administration; DSHS REGION 1/DCFS 

CHILDRENS ADMINISTRATION; 

ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR THE STATE 

OF WASHINGTON; BOB FERGUSON, 

State of Washington Attorney General, 

Defendants.

No. 23-35310 

D.C. No. 1:18-cv-03013-SAB 

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Washington

Stanley A. Bastian, Chief District Judge, Presiding

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

FILED

JUL 26 2024

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
2 

Argued and Submitted July 10, 2024

Seattle, Washington

Before: McKEOWN, CLIFTON, and BRESS, Circuit Judges.

Ruth Ann and Roy Cheesman brought this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit claiming that 

Child Protective Services (CPS) investigator Tabitha Snyder violated their 

Fourteenth Amendment rights when Snyder took the Cheesmans’ three children for 

a medical examination without parental consent or judicial authorization. The 

district court held that Snyder was not entitled to absolute or qualified immunity. 

After the district court granted judgment as a matter of law in favor of plaintiffs on 

the issue of liability, a jury awarded $175,000 to the Cheesmans. Snyder appealed. 

Reviewing the denial of qualified immunity de novo and construing any disputed 

facts in favor of plaintiffs, see O’Doan v. Sanford, 991 F.3d 1027, 1035, 1043 (9th 

Cir. 2021), we conclude that Snyder is entitled to qualified immunity. We reverse 

and remand for entry of judgment in favor of Snyder.

Public employees “are entitled to qualified immunity under § 1983 unless (1) 

they violated a federal statutory or constitutional right, and (2) the unlawfulness of 

their conduct was ‘clearly established at the time.’” District of Columbia v. Wesby, 

583 U.S. 48, 62–63 (2018) (quoting Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 664 (2012)). 

Under this circuit’s Fourteenth Amendment precedents, “the state is required to 

notify parents and to obtain judicial approval before children are subjected to 
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investigatory physical examinations” unless there is “a reasonable concern that 

material physical evidence might dissipate or that some urgent medical problem 

exists requiring immediate attention.” Wallis v. Spencer, 202 F.3d 1126, 1141 (9th 

Cir. 2000) (internal citation omitted). If a defendant “fails to notify ‘parents about 

the examinations and performs the examinations without obtaining either the 

parents’ consent or judicial authorization,’ the [defendant] . . . ‘violates parents’ 

Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process rights.’” Benavidez v. Cnty. of San 

Diego, 993 F.3d 1134, 1150 (9th Cir. 2021) (brackets omitted) (quoting Mann v. 

Cnty. of San Diego, 907 F.3d 1154, 1160–61 (9th Cir. 2018)).

We have discretion to resolve this case on the clearly established prong of the 

qualified immunity analysis. See O’Doan, 991 F.3d at 1036. “To be clearly 

established, a right must be sufficiently clear ‘that every reasonable official would 

have understood that what he is doing violates that right.’ In other words, ‘existing 

precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.’” 

Reichle, 566 U.S. at 664 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting 

Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011)). “This demanding standard protects 

‘all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.’” Wesby, 

583 U.S. at 63 (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986)). 

Plaintiffs primarily rely on Wallis, but Wallis involved facts very different 

from this case. In Wallis, officers seized two children, ages two and five, after “a 
4 

mental patient who had a long history of delusional disorders and was confined to a 

mental institution told her therapist a fantastic tale of Satanic witchcraft within her 

family and an impending child sacrifice.” 202 F.3d at 1131. When police arrived at 

the family’s house, there was no evidence of “anything suspicious,” and the children

appeared unharmed and denied they had been abused. Id. at 1134. Nonetheless, the 

children were taken away in the middle of the night, placed in a county institution 

for days, and then subjected to invasive examinations. Id. at 1134–35. In these 

circumstances, we held that a constitutional violation occurs when children are taken 

for a medical examination without parental notification or judicial authorization. Id.

at 1141. We did not identify facts that would have supported a reasonable concern 

of an urgent medical problem or dissipating evidence at the time of the medical 

examination.

Plaintiffs also point to Greene v. Camreta, 588 F.3d 1011 (9th Cir. 2009), 

vacated in part, 563 U.S. 692 (2011). In Greene, we held that a mother’s 

constitutional rights were violated when she was ordered to leave the premises while 

her daughter underwent a genital examination following allegations of sexual abuse. 

Id. at 1019. In that case, it was clear that allowing the mother (who was already 

waiting outside the medical examination room) to remain in the waiting room would

not interfere with the collection of evidence or treatment of urgent medical problems. 

Id. Finally, plaintiffs cite Benavidez, 993 F.3d 1134, and Mann, 907 F.3d 1154, but 
5 

those cases were decided after the events in question and could not put Snyder on 

notice of the alleged unconstitutionality of her actions. See Kisela v. Hughes, 584 

U.S. 100, 107 (2018). In any event, those cases involved facts very different from 

this case.

Neither Wallis, Greene, nor any other precedent clearly established that 

Snyder’s “conduct was unlawful in the situation [s]he confronted.” Wesby, 583 U.S. 

at 63. Snyder took the children for immediate medical examinations based on 

evidence of physical injury and recent physical abuse. Five-year-old L.C. showed 

up to school with puffiness, bruising, and a red linear mark on her eye, and she stated 

that her father caused the injury by hitting her in the head. L.C. also stated that her 

father hit her sister V.C. when V.C. tried to get ice for L.C. Siblings V.C. and I.C.

likewise told police that their father regularly hit them, with V.C. reporting that she 

had been hit the night before. V.C. stated that she was scared to go home and that

she might get hit if she spoke to the police about her father.

Based on L.C.’s visible injury and the children’s reports of physical abuse, 

Snyder determined that a prompt medical examination was necessary because she 

was concerned there might be an urgent medical problem or dissipating evidence of 

internal injuries. No clearly established law demonstrated that every reasonable 

official in Snyder’s circumstances would understand that what she was doing was 
6 

unlawful. See id.1

We reverse and remand for the entry of judgment in favor of Snyder and for 

any further proceedings consistent with this decision.

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

1 As our analysis indicates, we disagree with the district court’s determination that 

evidence that Roy Cheesman allegedly abused the children was not relevant to the 

question of whether Snyder violated the Cheesmans’ constitutional rights. Because 

we resolve this case on qualified immunity grounds, we do not address the other 

issues raised on appeal.