[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

_________________________

No. 14-12429

_________________________

D.C. Docket No. 5:13-cv-00390-CAR

DAVID A. DANIEL, 

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

HANCOCK COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT,

RICHARD MAYWEATHER,

TAMPA LEWIS,

PATRICK L. WILLIAMS, 

KENDREZ MAYWEATHER, 

Defendant-Appellees.

__________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Georgia

__________________________

(September 11, 2015)

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Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge, and SMITH,

*

District Judge.

PER CURIAM:

In this case, members and coaches of two high-school football teams and 

sheriff’s officers tasked with keeping the peace during a high-school football game 

were embroiled in an altercation that left Plaintiff-Appellant David Daniel

seriously injured. Daniel contends that his injuries resulted from Appellees

Hancock County School District and Hancock County off-duty sheriff’s deputies 

Richard Mayweather, Tampa Lewis, and Patrick L. Williams’s violation of his 

Fourteenth Amendment substantive-due-process right to bodily integrity. 

Although the injuries Daniel described were serious, they do not implicate the 

constitutional protections of the Fourteenth Amendment. After careful review, and 

with the benefit of oral argument, we therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal 

of David Daniel’s complaint. 

I.

David Daniel (“Daniel”) was employed by the Warren County School 

District as a teacher and the head football coach at Warren County High School 

 

* The Honorable C. Lynwood Smith, Jr., United States District Court Judge for the 

Northern District of Alabama, sitting by designation.

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(“Warren”).1

 Warren’s football team was scheduled to play against Hancock 

Central High School (“Hancock”) on October 14, 2011, for Hancock’s 

homecoming game. Hancock was a member school of the Hancock County School 

District (“District”). 

In the time leading up to the game, several incidents occurred, elevating the 

risk of violence at the game. First, Daniel had replaced the former Warren football 

coach, who was subsequently hired as an assistant coach for Hancock’s football 

team. Hancock’s coaching staff and team saw the game as an opportunity to “get 

even” for what they believed had been the wrongful termination of their new 

colleague from the Warren football team. 

Second, on October 7, 2011, one week before the game, members of the 

Warren football team attended a football game between Hancock and another high 

school. After that game, members of the Warren and Hancock football teams were 

involved in a verbal altercation that required law-enforcement intervention and 

culminated in the handcuffing of at least one player. 

Third, in the week leading up to the game between Warren and Hancock, 

students and athletes from the two schools exchanged text messages and other 

communications taunting and threatening each other and warning of possible 

 

1 Since we consider whether the district court properly granted Defendants’ motion to 

dismiss and denied Daniel’s motion to amend, we take the information in this section from 

Daniel’s proposed amended complaint and present it in the light most favorable to Daniel.

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conflict at the game. Finally, Warren directly notified the District that it had 

concerns about the security that would be provided at the game, and a Warren 

County law-enforcement officer inquired into the security measures that would be 

employed. The District advised the Warren County law-enforcement officer that 

twelve officers from the Hancock Sheriff’s Department and the Sparta Police 

Department (the local city police department) would be at the game. 

On October 14, 2011, Warren and Hancock played the football game. 

Despite the District’s statement that twelve officers would be present, only four 

off-duty sheriff’s officers—Officers Richard Mayweather, Tampa Lewis, and 

Patrick L. Williams (collectively, “Officers”), who were all residents of Hancock 

County at the time—performed security at the game. Warren won the game by a 

score of 21-2, and at least one player was ejected for fighting during the game. 

After the game, the Hancock players and coaches remained on the field 

while the Warren players and coaches exited. Before walking off the field with the 

Warren players, Daniel angered the Hancock players and coaches by approaching

them to congratulate them on their well-played game. 

While the Warren players walked to the locker room, at least two Hancock 

players, including Kendrez Mayweather (“Student Assailant”),

2 followed and 

taunted them. One of the Warren players responded to the Hancock players’ 

 

2 Kendrez Mayweather, the Student Assailant, is unrelated to Defendant-Appellee Officer 

Richard Mayweather.

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taunts, and the Student Assailant and other Hancock players rushed towards the 

Warren players. A fight ensued between the two football teams.

The Officers, who had been walking with the Hancock players as they left 

the field, ran in front of the Hancock players as the two teams advanced towards

each other. When the two teams reached each other, the Officers sprayed the 

Warren players with pepper spray. In Daniel’s view, the Officers did not spray the 

Warren players for any legitimate law-enforcement purpose but intended to injure

and disable the Warren players in order to assist the Hancock players in the 

altercation. 

During the altercation, the Student Assailant intentionally struck a Warren 

player who had fallen to the ground after being peppered sprayed by the Officers. 

When the Warren player attempted to get up, the Student Assailant readied himself 

to strike the Warren player again. Daniel then positioned himself in front of the 

Student Assailant and yelled, “What are you doing?” In response, the Student 

Assailant intentionally struck Daniel in the face and head with a helmet. Daniel 

sustained serious and permanent injuries as a result. 

The District took no action against the Officers or Student Assailant for their 

roles in the altercation and publicly expressed approval of the Officers’ and 

Student Assailant’s actions. The District also filed false charges against Daniel in 

relation to the altercation and sought to have the Georgia Professional Standards 

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Commission revoke or suspend Daniel’s certification as an educator. The Georgia 

High School Association, of which both Hancock and Warren are members, 

investigated the incident and imposed penalties against Hancock. Hancock 

appealed the imposition of penalties and lost. 

II.

On October 13, 2013, Daniel filed a complaint in the Middle District of 

Georgia that alleged federal and state claims. In particular, Daniel asserted claims 

under § 1983 against the District and the Officers (collectively, “Appellees”) for 

violating Daniel’s Fourteenth Amendment right to bodily integrity and state tort 

claims against the Officers and the Student Assailant.3

 The District and the 

Officers (collectively), respectively, each filed a motion to dismiss under Rule

12(b)(6), Fed. R. Civ. P. Daniel timely responded in opposition and also filed a 

motion for leave to file an amended complaint, attaching a proposed amended 

complaint. 

Basing its review on Daniel’s proposed amended complaint, the district 

court granted Appellees’ motions to dismiss Daniel’s federal claims without

prejudice. The court also concluded that further amendments of the complaint 

would be futile, so it denied Daniel’s motion to amend his complaint. Having 

dismissed Daniel’s federal claims, the district court declined to exercise 

 

3 The Student Assailant did not answer the complaint and is in default. 

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supplemental jurisdiction over Daniel’s state-law claims and dismissed his statelaw claims without prejudice. 

For the reasons set forth below, we now affirm.

III.

 We review de novo a district court’s dismissal of a complaint for failure to 

state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Resnick v. AvMed, Inc., 693 F.3d 

1317, 1324 (11th Cir. 2012). Similarly, in instances “when the district court denies 

the plaintiff leave to amend due to futility, we review the denial de novo because it 

is concluding that as a matter of law an amended complaint ‘would necessarily 

fail.’” Freeman v. First Union Nat., 329 F.3d 1231, 1234 (11th Cir. 2003) 

(quoting St. Charles Foods, Inc. v. America’s Favorite Chicken Co., 198 F.3d 815, 

822 (11th Cir. 1999)).

As for the district court’s decision not to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, 

we review that for abuse of discretion. Parker v. Scrap Metal Processors, Inc., 

468 F.3d 733, 738 (11th Cir. 2006).

IV.

The “first step [in evaluating a § 1983 claim] should [be] to identify the 

precise constitutional violation charged . . . and to explain what the violation 

requires.” Franklin v. Curry, 738 F.3d 1246, 1250 (11th Cir. 2013). Daniel’s 

proposed amended complaint (the “Complaint”) alleges that Appellees violated his 

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Fourteenth Amendment substantive-due-process right to bodily integrity by failing 

to protect him.4

 He premises his claim on the Officers’ use of pepper spray against 

the Warren players during the altercation and on the District’s failure to provide 

proper security at the game and failure to properly train and supervise the Officers. 

In this section, we address Daniel’s claim as it relates to the Officers. 

Where, as here, a plaintiff claims a violation of substantive due process, “[a]s a 

general rule, to prevail . . . a plaintiff must prove that a defendant’s conduct 

‘shocks the conscience.’” Nix v. Franklin Cty. Sch. Dist., 311 F.3d 1373, 1375 

(11th Cir. 2002) (quoting Cty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 846-47, 118 

S. Ct. 1708, 1717 (1998)). In non-custodial circumstances like those at issue in 

this case, this standard is exceedingly high: “only a purpose to cause harm 

unrelated to the legitimate object of [law enforcement] . . . satisf[ies] the element 

of arbitrary conduct shocking to the conscience, necessary for a due process 

violation.” Cty. of Sacramento, 523 U.S. at 836, 118 S. Ct. at 1711-12. When 

considering abusive executive action, the Supreme Court has stressed time and 

again that “only the most egregious official conduct” qualifies as “‘arbitrary in the 

constitutional sense[.]’” Id. at 846, 118 S. Ct. at 1716 (quoting Collins v. Harker 

Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 129, 112 S. Ct. 1061, 1071 (1992)). Force is conscience-

 

4 Although the district court denied Daniel’s motion to amend, in ruling on the motion to 

dismiss the court considered the proffered amendment as though it had been allowed. For this 

reason and because Daniel conceded in his motion to amend that the original complaint was 

deficient, we base our review on Daniel’s proposed amended complaint.

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shocking under the Fourteenth Amendment only where it is used “maliciously and 

sadistically to cause harm.” Fennell v. Gilstrap, 559 F.3d 1212, 1217 (11th Cir. 

2009). “[T]his standard ‘is to be narrowly interpreted and applied,’ such that ‘even 

intentional wrongs seldom violate the Due Process Clause.’” Doe v. Braddy, 673 

F.3d 1313, 1318 (11th Cir. 2012) (quoting White v. Lemacks, 183 F.3d 1253, 1259 

(11th Cir. 1999), and Waddell v. Hendry Cty. Sheriff’s Office, 329 F.3d 1300, 1305 

(11th Cir. 2003)). 

Daniel’s Complaint stated that the Officers “purposefully and intentionally 

pepper sprayed the Warren County players for purposes of injuring the Warren 

County players, disabling them, and assisting the Hancock Central players in their 

fight with the Warren County players.” It then conclusorily asserted that the 

Officers’ conduct was the “direct and proximate” cause of Daniel’s constitutional 

deprivation. 

These allegations suffer from two major problems. First, the Complaint did

not allege that the Officers intended to harm Daniel in particular. And second, 

even if it were amended to do so, as terrible as the allegations are, they would not 

satisfy the standard in this Circuit of governmental conduct that “shocks the 

conscience.” We address each deficiency in turn.

With regard to the missing allegation that the Officers intended to harm 

Daniel specifically, Daniel implicitly acknowledges this shortcoming by arguing in 

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his brief on appeal that we should view the Officers’ use of pepper spray against 

the Warren players in such a way as to create the inference that the Officers

intended to injure Warren’s coaching staff, in order to connect the Officers’ 

conduct to the deprivation. We cannot do this for two reasons. 

First, Daniel did not raise this argument in the district court, so he cannot 

rely on it now for the first time. “Arguments raised for the first time on appeal are 

not properly before this Court.” Hurley v. Moore, 233 F.3d 1295, 1297 (11th Cir. 

2000).

Second, even if Daniel had made this argument below, it would not have 

solved the problem because what Daniel suggests is not a logical inference; it is a 

leap over a canyon. The Complaint specifically alleged that the Officers 

“intentionally pepper sprayed the Warren County players . . . for the purposes of 

injuring the Warren County players.” It continued, asserting that “[t]he purposeful 

and intentional conduct [of] [Student Assailant] Kendrez Mayweather was the 

direct and proximate cause of the serious personal injuries [] Daniel sustained on 

October 14, 2011.” So from the allegation that the Officers pepper sprayed 

Warren’s players—not Daniel—to allow Hancock’s players to have an advantage 

in fighting Warren’s players—not Daniel, we would have to conclude that the 

Officers also intended for a then-unidentified Hancock player to later

catastrophically injure Daniel, the Warren players’ coach, when the Officers 

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pepper sprayed Warren’s players. This much cannot be inferred from what is 

alleged in the Complaint.

And even if we were to find that Daniel successfully alleged that the 

Officers intended to harm Daniel specifically, under binding caselaw, we could not 

find that the Officers’ conduct so “shocked the conscience” as to amount to a 

substantive-due-process violation. “The shocks-the-conscience inquiry . . . looks 

at the objective unreasonableness of the officers’ conduct,” Tinker v. Beasley, 429 

F.3d 1324, 1328-29 (11th Cir. 2005), and whether the conduct was undertaken 

“maliciously and sadistically for the purpose of causing harm.” Danley v. Allen, 

540 F.3d 1298, 1306-07 (11th Cir. 2008), overruled on other grounds by Ashcroft 

v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009); Fennell, 559 F.3d at 1217. 

Only conduct that is “the most egregious conduct”—that is, conduct

deliberately “intended to injure in some way unjustifiable by any government 

interest”—gives rise to a substantive-due-process claim. Cty. of Sacramento, 523 

U.S. at 846, 849, 118 S. Ct. at 1716, 1718. As the Supreme Court has explained, 

“Historically, this guarantee of due process has been applied to deliberate

decisions of government officials to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property.” 

Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 331, 106 S. Ct. 662, 665 (1986) (emphasis in 

original). Indeed, our caselaw sets a very high bar for such “conscience shocking”

conduct in non-custodial settings.

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Dacosta v. Nwachukwa, 304 F.3d 1045 (11th Cir. 2002), presents an 

example of just how high our threshold is. In Dacosta we found no Fourteenth 

Amendment claim despite a set of facts that showed clear malicious intent. Id. at 

1049. There, the defendant-appellant, an instructor at Georgia Military college, 

purposefully slammed a door in a student’s face, and when the student held up her

arm to protect herself from the door, her arm shattered the glass window on the 

door and became lodged in the cracked pane. Id. at 1047. The instructor then 

violently swung the door several times in an attempt to knock the student back 

from the door. Id. After that proved unsuccessful, the instructor reached through 

the cracked glass pane, shoved the student’s face, and tried to forcibly dislodge her 

arm from the window. Id. Several other students in the class had to physically

restrain the instructor until police arrived and arrested him for criminal battery. Id.

at 1047. This Court reversed the district court’s denial of the instructor’s motion to 

dismiss, even though it noted that the facts described the tort of intentional battery. 

Id. at 1048. As we explained, “such conduct, malicious as it may have been,” did 

not amount to a federal constitutional violation. Id.

Similarly, in Skinner v. City of Miami, 62 F.3d 344 (11th Cir. 1995), a 

firefighter sued his colleagues for violating his substantive-due-process rights by 

hazing him in an especially degrading and humiliating fashion. Id. at 346. We 

reasoned that although “Skinner ha[d] proven that he was assaulted[,] that . . . is a 

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tort created by state law, and not necessarily a violation of a constitutional right.” 

Id. at 347. We explained that “[t]ort law is one such area that remains largely 

outside the scope of substantive due process jurisprudence.” Id.

Against this background, the Officers’ use of government-issued pepper 

spray for the purpose of handicapping the Warren players during an altercation, 

while surely “untoward, unfortunate, and understandably upsetting[,]” does not 

state a substantive-due-process violation. Maddox v. Stephens, 727 F.3d 1109, 

1127 (11th Cir. 2013). Daniel’s injuries resulted from the Student Assailant’s 

intentional battery, even if the Officers’ pepper spraying contributed in some way 

to the Student Assailant’s opportunity to attack Daniel. And the harm that Daniel 

suffered is redressable by principles firmly rooted in state tort. Daniel has filed 

state-law claims, and he must look to them for redress.

V.

As for Daniel’s claims against the District, they were premised on the 

District’s alleged policies of failing to provide proper security at events and failing 

to properly train and supervise those who provided security for events. 

In addressing this claim for municipal liability under § 1983, we must first 

consider whether a direct causal link exists between a municipal policy or custom 

and the alleged constitutional deprivation. Collins, 503 U.S. at 123, 112 S. Ct. at 

1067; see White, 183 F.3d at 1259. To allege a custom or policy giving rise to a 

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substantive-due-process violation, a plaintiff must point to either an officially 

promulgated policy or an unofficial custom or practice of the government entity 

shown through the repeated acts of a final policymaker for that entity. Grech v. 

Clayton Cty., 335 F.3d 1326, 1329-30 (11th Cir. 2003). Either way, though, a 

plaintiff “(1) must show that the local governmental entity . . . has authority and 

responsibility over the governmental function in issue and (2) must identify those 

officials who speak with final policymaking authority for that local governmental 

entity concerning the act alleged to have caused the particular constitutional 

violation in issue.” Id. at 1330. We have noted that a government entity almost 

never will have a formal policy allowing a particular constitutional violation. Id. 

So, usually, a plaintiff must demonstrate that the government entity has a custom 

or practice of allowing the particular constitutional violation. Id. To do this, a 

plaintiff generally must show “‘a persistent and widespread practice.’” Church v. 

City of Huntsville, 30 F.3d 1332, 1345 (11th Cir. 1994) (quoting Depew v. City of 

St. Marys, 787 F.2d 1496, 1499 (11th Cir. 1986)). Indeed, the practice must be 

extensive enough to allow actual or constructive knowledge of such customs or 

policies to be attributed to the governing body of the municipality. Id. “‘Normally 

random acts or isolated incidents are insufficient to establish a custom or policy.’” 

Church, 30 F.3d at 1345 (quoting Depew v. City of St. Marys, 787 F.2d at 1499)). 

Daniel did not identify a specific officially promulgated unconstitutional policy, so 

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he was required to demonstrate a custom or policy by alleging facts of a persistent 

and widespread practice of permitting the specific constitutional violation he 

alleges. He failed to do so.

A. Daniel did not allege facts contending that the District had a policy of

failing to provide proper security

In the Complaint, Daniel claimed that “the [] District had an inadequate 

number of properly trained security personnel present, did not have a security plan 

in place for the game and [] did not have a plan in place for the deployment of 

security personnel before, during or after the game.” In essence, Daniel asserted

that the District did not provide enough security and that the security that it did 

provide was not competent. 

When a claim is premised on the government’s failure to protect an 

individual not in custody, the “harm [suffered] will seldom, if ever, be cognizable 

under the Due Process Clause.” White, 183 F.3d at 1258. The Supreme Court has 

been clear that while the Fourteenth Amendment “‘forbids the State itself to 

deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property without “due process of law[,]” its 

language cannot fairly be extended to impose an affirmative obligation on the State 

to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means.’” Collins, 

503 U.S. at 126, 112 S. Ct. at 1069 (quoting Deshaney v. Winnebago Cty. Dep’t of 

Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 195, 109 S. Ct. 998, 1003 (1989)). The Due Process 

Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “is phrased as a limitation on the State’s 

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power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security.” 

Deshaney, 489 U.S. at 195, 109 S. Ct. at 1003. It “generally confer[s] no 

affirmative right to governmental aid, even where such aid may be necessary to 

secure life, liberty, or property interests of which the government itself may not 

deprive the individual.” Id. at 196, 109 S. Ct. at 1003. But where a substantivedue-process claim does arise in a non-custodial setting, it is evaluated under a 

“shocks the conscience” standard of review. Nix, 311 F.3d at 1377. 

Here, on appeal, Daniel does not point to any alleged facts from his 

Complaint that showed that the District’s failure to provide proper security was 

“conscience shocking.” And even if we could look to his brief in the district 

court,5 there, Daniel merely highlighted several actions that the District took after

the altercation—for example, supporting and defending the Officers’ conduct and 

filing false charges against Daniel. While we can understand how such conduct 

may have been upsetting and personally insulting, we cannot say that it rose to the 

level of “shocking the conscience” under the caselaw. Maddox, 727 F.3d at 1127. 

And the Fourteenth Amendment cannot provide relief absent “conscienceshocking” conduct. DeShaney, 480 U.S. at 201-02, 109 S. Ct. at 1006-07; White, 

183 F.3d at 1258. “[A] State’s failure to protect an individual against private 

 

5 We have explained many times that “a legal claim or argument that has not been briefed 

before the court is deemed abandoned and its merits will not be addressed.” Access Now, Inc. v. 

Sw. Airlines Co., 385 F.3d 1324, 1330 (11th Cir. 2004); see also Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian 

Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 681 (11th Cir. 2014). 

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violence simply does not constitute a violation of the [Substantive] Due Process 

Clause” otherwise. DeShaney, 480 U.S. at 197, 109 S. Ct. at 1004. As a result, 

Daniel failed to allege a Fourteenth Amendment substantive-due-process claim 

against the District for failing to provide proper security. 

B. Daniel failed to allege facts evidencing that the District’s failure to

properly train and supervise was deliberately indifferent

Daniel’s Complaint alleged that the District failed to properly train and 

supervise the Officers and that that failure directly and proximately caused

Daniel’s Fourteenth Amendment constitutional deprivation. But this allegation, 

too, was insufficiently supported to withstand the District’s motion to dismiss.

Where a government entity has a policy or custom of failing to train and 

supervise its employees, and that failure causes the entity’s employee to violate a 

person’s constitutional rights, the government entity may be liable. Collins, 503 

U.S. at 123, 112 S. Ct. at 1068; Gold v. City of Miami, 151 F.3d 1346, 1350-51

(11th Cir. 1998).

6

 We have previously noted that a government entity “is not 

automatically liable under section 1983 even if it inadequately trained or 

supervised its [] officers and those officers violated [a plaintiff’s] constitutional 

rights. . . . [T]here are only ‘limited circumstances’ in which an allegation of a 

failure to train or supervise can be the basis for liability under § 1983.” Gold, 151 

 

6 The rule suggested by the Supreme Court for purposes of failure to train also applies to 

the failure to supervise. See Gold, 151 F.3d at 1350-51.

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F.3d at 1350 (citing City of Canton, Ohio v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 387, 109 S. Ct. 

1197, 1204 (1989)). As the Supreme Court has explained, these “limited 

circumstances” arise “only where the failure to train amounts to deliberate 

indifference to the rights of persons with whom the police come into contact.” City 

of Canton, 489 U.S. at 388, 109 S. Ct. at 1204.7

 Although “municipal liability 

requires a decision by a final policymaker[,]” Church, 30 F.3d at 1343, a 

municipality can be liable when “a series of decisions by a subordinate official 

manifest[s] a ‘custom or usage’ of which the supervisor must have been 

aware.” City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 485 U.S. 112, 130, 108 S. Ct. 915, 928 

(1988) (plurality opinion).

In order for liability to attach, however, the municipality must have had 

notice of a need to train or supervise in a particular area. Gold, 151 F.3d at 1351. 

Otherwise, as a matter of law, the entity cannot be liable for failure to train and 

supervise. Id. To establish notice and deliberate indifference for purposes of 

failure to train, a plaintiff must “ordinarily” show “a pattern of similar 

constitutional violations by untrained employees.” Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 

 

7 The district court erred in applying the heightened “shocks the conscience” level of fault 

to Daniel’s claims for failure to train and supervise. Nevertheless, for the reasons explained 

infra, it correctly entered judgment for the District, so we affirm. See Turner v. Am. Fed’n of 

Teachers, 138 F.3d 878, 880 n.1 (11th Cir. 1998) (“We must affirm the judgment of the district 

court if the result is correct even if the district court relied upon a wrong ground or gave a wrong 

reason.”).

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51, __, 131 S. Ct. 1350, 1360 (2011) (quoting Bd. of Comm’rs of Bryan Cty. v. 

Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 409, 117 S. Ct. 1382 (1997)).

For example, in Brooks v. Scheib, 813 F.2d 1191 (11th Cir. 1987), this Court

held that a city lacked notice of past police misconduct where ten citizen 

complaints about the specific police officer at issue had been made. Id. at 1193. 

We reasoned that despite the number of complaints, the plaintiff “never 

demonstrated that past complaints of police misconduct had any merit” or had any 

relation to the specific conduct at issue so that the city “knew or should have 

known that the natural consequence of its policy and practices would be the 

deprivation of rights.” Id. 

Similarly, in Wright v. Sheppard, 919 F.2d 665 (11th Cir. 1990), we held 

that a sheriff’s department was not liable for a deputy’s acts where the deputy 

assaulted a man to settle a private debt for a third party. We found that the need 

for training was not “plainly obvious.” Id. at 674. Even though the sheriff had 

previously heard that officers assisted in private debt collections, we concluded 

that there was “no evidence of a history of widespread prior abuse . . . [that] put the 

sheriff on notice of the need for improved training or supervision.” Id. at 674; see 

also Popham v. City of Talladega, 908 F.2d 1561, 1564-65 (11th Cir. 1990). 

Here, Daniel did not even identify a pattern of prior similar instances of 

alleged improper training and supervision that resulted in significant injuries to 

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people whom the District hired security to protect. Instead, Daniel asserts that his 

allegations concerning the existing rivalry between the two schools, the fact that it 

was Hancock’s homecoming game, and the fact that a Warren County lawenforcement officer had made inquiries to the District about security should have 

put the District on “notice of its need to provide training and supervision with 

respect to the area of security.” But these allegations did not demonstrate that the 

District had a previously existing problem with security it had provided at District 

events. There was nothing about these allegations that suggested that security that 

the District had arranged in the past was inadequately trained or supervised. In 

short, under our caselaw these allegations did not present the sort of “‘continued 

adherence to an approach [the District] kn[e]w or should [have] know[n] . . . failed 

to prevent tortious conduct by employees.’” Connick, 131 S. Ct. at 1360 (quoting 

Bryan Cty., 520 U.S. at 407, 117 S. Ct. at 1382). 

And the Complaint had yet another flaw. Even had Daniel identified a 

pattern of similar conduct that should have provided notice, he still could not have 

cleared another hurdle: “the identified deficiency in a [] training program [and 

supervision] must be closely related to the ultimate injury.” City of Canton, 489 

U.S. at 391, 109 S. Ct. at 1206. So Daniel still would have had to have alleged that 

the training and supervision deficiency actually caused the Officers’ challenged 

actions. To do so, Daniel would have had to have demonstrated both a link 

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between the District’s alleged failure to train and supervise and the risk that the 

Officers would then pepper spray the Hancock players, on the one hand, and a link 

between the risk that the Officers would pepper spray the Hancock players and 

Daniel’s specific injuries would result to Daniel, on the other. See Hale v. 

Tallapoosa Cty., 50 F.3d 1579, 1584 (11th Cir. 1995). Daniel’s Complaint failed 

to allege facts sufficient to establish either nexus.

Daniel’s Complaint alleged only that the District’s “deliberately indifferent 

policy, practice and custom” of failing to provide proper security, proper training, 

and proper supervision “was the direct and proximate cause of the . . . deprivation 

of [] Daniel’s liberty interest in bodily integrity.” It did not assert or show that, 

“through its deliberate conduct, [the District] was the ‘moving force’ behind the

injury” caused by the Student Assailant. Bryan Cty., 520 U.S., at 404, 117 S. Ct. at 

1388. The absence of such allegations is independently fatal to Daniel’s claim 

against the District. An entity is liable under § 1983 only “when the ‘execution of 

the government’s policy or custom . . . inflicts the injury.’” Gold, 151 F.3d at 

1350. For these reasons, the district court was correct to dismiss Daniel’s § 1983 

claim against the District.

V.

Next, Daniel contends that the district court abused its discretion in denying 

as futile his motion to amend his original complaint. Generally, Rule 15(a), Fed. 

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R. Civ. P., restricts a district court’s discretion to dismiss a complaint without 

prejudice. Thomas v. Town of Davie, 847 F.2d 771, 773 (11th Cir. 1988). We 

have noted that if a more carefully drafted complaint might state a claim, the 

district court must provide a plaintiff with at least one chance to amend the 

complaint before the dismissing the case with prejudice. Bank v. Pitt, 928 F.2d 

1108, 1112 (11th Cir. 1991). But, among other exceptions, this rule does not apply 

where amendment would be futile. Bryant v. Dupree, 252 F.3d 1161, 1163 (11th 

Cir. 2001).

Here, Daniel’s proposed amended complaint would have been futile for all 

of the reasons that we have described in this opinion. Nor, in view of the nature of 

the deficiencies, could better drafting have cured enough of the problems to allow 

Daniel to have stated a claim on these facts. Moreover, the district court evaluated 

Appellees’ motions to dismiss against the allegations of the proposed amended 

complaint, effectively allowing Daniel the benefit of amending his original 

complaint. Under these circumstances, the district court did not abuse its 

discretion in denying leave to amend and dismissing the § 1983 claims with 

prejudice. Hall v. United Ins. Co. of Am., 367 F.3d 1255, 1263 (11th Cir. 2004).

VI.

Finally, Daniel appeals the district court’s refusal to exercise its 

supplemental jurisdiction over his state-law claims and its dismissal of those 

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claims without prejudice. A district court can exercise supplemental jurisdiction 

over all state-law claims that arise from a common nucleus of operative facts with 

a substantial federal claim. Parker, 468 F.3d at 743. But a district court may 

decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over a claim if the district court has 

dismissed all claims over which it has original jurisdiction. 28 U.S.C. § 

1367(c)(3). Because the district court properly dismissed Daniel’s federal claims, 

the district court did not abuse its discretion by declining to exercise supplemental 

jurisdiction. Parker, 468 F.3d at 738. 

V.

In short, the district court did not err in dismissing Daniel’s complaint and in 

denying Daniel’s motion to amend, and it did not abuse its discretion in refusing to 

exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Daniel’s state-law claims. The district 

court’s order is AFFIRMED.

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