[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

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No. 13-10129

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D. C. Docket No. 2:12-cv-03646-AKK

CINDY LAINE FRANKLIN,

 Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

CHRIS CURRY,

individually,

JOHN SAMANIEGO,

individually, et al.,

Defendants-Appellants.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Alabama

_________________________

 (December 23, 2013)

Before MARCUS, BLACK and RIPPLE,

* Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

 * The Honorable Kenneth F. Ripple, United States Circuit Judge for the Seventh Circuit,

sitting by designation.

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This case arises from Cindy Laine Franklin’s allegation that Michael Keith 

Gay, a corrections officer at the Shelby County Jail, sexually assaulted her, and 

Franklin’s ensuing lawsuit against Gay and various other officers at the jail. The 

officers other than Gay (Appellants or the Supervisory Defendants) moved for 

dismissal on the basis of qualified immunity. The district court denied the motion, 

and this interlocutory appeal followed. Upon review, we hold that Franklin has 

failed to plead a constitutional violation and that Appellants are therefore entitled 

to qualified immunity.

I. BACKGROUND

We begin with a recitation of the facts as drawn from Franklin’s complaint. 

Although the complaint provides little information concerning the sequence and 

temporal relation of events, we must accept Franklin’s well-pleaded allegations as 

true and draw all reasonable inferences in her favor. See Keating v. City of Miami, 

598 F.3d 753, 762 (11th Cir. 2010). 1

 

As alleged in the complaint, on October 19, 2010, Franklin was transferred 

to Shelby County Jail as a pretrial detainee. During the ensuing booking 

procedure, Gay said to Franklin, “I want to see your rug.” Franklin responded that 

Gay “would get in trouble,” to which Gay replied, “there is nothing you can do.” 

 1 However, we afford no presumption of truth to legal conclusions and recitations of the 

basic elements of a cause of action. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 

1949 (2009); Mamani v. Berzain, 654 F.3d 1148, 1153 (11th Cir. 2011). 

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As Gay took Franklin’s fingerprints, he placed her hand on his genitals, causing 

Franklin to object and tell Gay to leave her alone.

Some time later, as Franklin slept in her cell, Gay jolted her awake by 

getting on top of her with his pants unzipped. Gay forced his penis into Franklin’s 

mouth as she resisted. Franklin told her boyfriend and her parole officer about the 

incident, after which John Samaniego, a chief deputy at the jail, came to speak with 

her. 2

 The Alabama Bureau of Investigation obtained a statement from Franklin 

and commenced a formal investigation of her claims. Franklin spoke with other 

female detainees who told her that Gay had sexually abused another female inmate 

and engaged in sex with another. Gay eventually resigned.

Franklin commenced the instant action against Gay, Chris Curry, Sheriff of 

Shelby County, and five other prison officials: Samaniego, the chief deputy who 

spoke with her about the assault; Chris George, Division Commander of 

Investigations; Chris Corbell, Division Commander of Uniform; Jay Fondren, 

Division Commander of Corrections; and Ken Burchfield, Division Commander of 

Administration. Franklin asserted constitutional claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 

against all of the officers in their individual capacities. The Supervisory 

Defendants—Curry, Samaniego, George, Corbell, Fondren, and Burchfield—

 2 Franklin’s complaint does not indicate the duration of her stay at the Shelby County 

Jail. However, counsel have stated in filings before the district court and in their brief on appeal 

that she was only there “a very short time.”

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moved to dismiss on the basis of qualified immunity.3 The district court denied the 

motion, finding that Franklin had asserted a violation of a clearly established 

constitutional right by alleging that she had been harmed by the Supervisory 

Defendants’ deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm. The 

Supervisory Defendants now appeal the district court’s denial of their motion.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

A district court’s denial of qualified immunity on a motion to dismiss is an 

appealable order that we review de novo. Rehberg v. Paulk, 611 F.3d 828, 837 n.5 

(11th Cir. 2010). 

III. DISCUSSION

Qualified immunity shields government officials acting within their

discretionary authority from liability unless the officials “violate clearly 

established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would 

have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S. Ct. 2727, 2738

(1982). The parties do not dispute that the Supervisory Defendants are government 

officials who were acting within the scope of their discretionary authority. Thus, 

to evaluate their entitlement to qualified immunity, we ask whether Franklin has 

alleged a violation of a constitutional right and, if so, whether the constitutional 

right violated was clearly established at the time of the violation. Keating, 598 

 3 Franklin’s claims against Gay are not a part of this appeal.

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F.3d at 762. We hold that Franklin failed to allege a violation of a constitutional 

right and thus falls short of this standard.

In determining whether Franklin alleged a constitutional violation, the 

district court made two related errors. First, it applied an incorrect legal standard. 

Second, the district court allowed Franklin to satisfy the standard it applied with 

conclusory allegations. We address each error in turn. 

A. The Legal Standard for Deliberate Indifference

In analyzing Franklin’s claims against the Supervisory Defendants, the 

district court erred by finding allegations that they “knew or should have known” 

of a substantial risk of serious harm sufficient to state a deliberate indifference

claim. Deliberate indifference requires more than constructive knowledge.

The district court began its analysis correctly, stating that, “to establish 

supervisory liability under § 1983, a plaintiff must allege that the supervisor 

personally participated in the alleged unconstitutional conduct or that there is a 

causal connection between the actions of a supervising official and the alleged 

constitutional deprivation.” D. Ct. Order at 6 (internal quotation marks and 

alterations omitted); see Cottone v. Jenne, 326 F.3d 1352, 1360 (11th Cir. 2003). 

The district court then explained that a plaintiff can show a causal connection, inter 

alia, when “the supervisor’s policy or custom resulted in deliberate indifference.” 

D. Ct. Order at 6 (internal quotation marks omitted). To this point, the district 

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court’s analysis was sound. However, the court then went astray when it

concluded that Franklin had alleged a causal connection, stating:

Franklin alleges that a causal connection exists because Sheriff Curry 

was on notice of Officer Gay’s alleged conduct and the need to correct 

this practice, but failed to do so, and because Sheriff Curry’s policy or 

custom resulted in deliberate indifference, 

and 

[w]ith respect to Officers Samaniego, Burchfield, Fondren, Corbell 

and George, Franklin alleges that they too knew or should have known

of Officer Gay’s pattern of inappropriate conduct with female 

detainees and inmates but “were deliberately indifferent . . . .” 

D. Ct. Order at 7 (emphasis added). In reaching these conclusions, the district 

court neglected to analyze whether Franklin had properly alleged deliberate 

indifference. In fact, the elements of deliberate indifference do not appear 

anywhere in the district court’s order.4

 

Its first step should have been to identify the precise constitutional violation 

charged—in this case, deliberate indifference—and to explain what the violation 

requires. See Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 140, 99 S. Ct. 2689, 2692 (1979) 

(before discussing liability in a § 1983 suit, “it is necessary to isolate the precise 

constitutional violation with which [the defendant] is charged”). Had the district 

 4 We do not suggest that district courts must recite a specific set of words in evaluating a 

claim, but without setting out even the basic contours of deliberate indifference, the district court 

was unable to properly analyze the sufficiency of Franklin’s allegations. 

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court done so, Franklin’s failure to allege the required elements would have been 

apparent. 

Deliberate indifference requires the following: “(1) subjective knowledge of 

a risk of serious harm; (2) disregard of that risk; (3) by conduct that is more than 

gross negligence.” Goodman v. Kimbrough, 718 F.3d 1325, 1331-32 (11th Cir. 

2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). Franklin’s allegations that the 

Supervisory Defendants “knew or should have known” of a substantial risk clearly 

fall short of this standard. “Were we to accept that theory of liability, the 

deliberate indifference standard would be silently metamorphosed into a font of 

tort law—a brand of negligence redux—which the Supreme Court has made 

abundantly clear it is not.” Id. at 1334. As we have stated, “[t]o be deliberately 

indifferent a prison official must know of and disregard an excessive risk to inmate 

health or safety; the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference 

could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also 

draw the inference.” Id. at 1332 (internal quotation marks omitted). Franklin 

failed to allege the Supervisory Defendants actually knew of the serious risk Gay 

posed even in the most conclusory fashion. Because of this failure, Franklin did 

not allege a constitutional violation, and Appellants were entitled to qualified 

immunity. 

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B. Franklin’s Factual Allegations

The district court’s second error was finding purely conclusory allegations—

i.e., a “formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action”—sufficient to 

satisfy the standard it applied. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S. Ct. 

1937, 1949 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). It is important that 

defendants be apprised of the conduct that forms the basis of the charges against 

them. Conclusory allegations fail to apprise defendants of the factual basis of the 

plaintiff’s claims. Accordingly, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require a 

pleading to contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the 

pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). Specifically, “[t]o survive a 

motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as 

true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678, 

129 S. Ct. at 1949 (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S. 

Ct. 1955, 1974 (2007)). The plausibility standard is met only where the facts 

alleged enable “the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is 

liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id. The complaint’s allegations must establish 

“more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Id. Mere 

“labels and conclusions or a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of 

action will not do,” and a plaintiff cannot rely on “naked assertions devoid of 

further factual enhancement.” Id. (internal quotation marks and alteration 

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omitted); see also id. at 679, 129 S. Ct. at 1950 (“While legal conclusions can 

provide the framework of a complaint, they must be supported by factual 

allegations.”); Randall v. Scott, 610 F.3d 701, 709 (11th Cir. 2010) (applying the 

standards described in Iqbal to a § 1983 case involving defendants asserting 

qualified immunity in place of the heightened pleading standard applied in prior 

cases).

Franklin’s repeated allegations the Supervisory Defendants were deliberately 

indifferent or their actions constituted or resulted in deliberate indifference carry 

no weight. Similarly, by alleging Appellants “knew or should have known” of a 

risk, Franklin has merely recited an element of a claim without providing the facts 

from which one could draw such a conclusion. The district court found these 

allegations sufficient. Had the district court followed the Supreme Court’s “twopronged approach” of first separating out the complaint’s conclusory legal 

allegations and then determining whether the remaining well-pleaded factual 

allegations, accepted as true, “plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief,” the 

insufficiency of Franklin’s allegations would have been obvious. See Iqbal, 556 

U.S. at 679, 129 S. Ct. at 1950; see also Randall, 610 F.3d at 709-10 (“A district 

court considering a motion to dismiss shall begin by identifying conclusory 

allegations that are not entitled to an assumption of truth—legal conclusions must 

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be supported by factual allegations.”); accord Shay v. Walters, 702 F.3d 76, 82 (1st 

Cir. 2012).

Stripping away Franklin’s conclusory allegations leaves only a handful of 

properly pleaded facts—specifically, (1) that Gay verbally harassed Franklin and 

told her “there is nothing you can do,” (2) that Gay sexually assaulted Franklin, 

(3) that Gay had previously sexually assaulted another female detainee, and (4) that 

Gay had previously had sexual relations with a third female detainee. Given only 

these facts, Franklin’s complaint is insufficient to state a plausible claim that each 

of the Supervisory Defendants should have known of a substantial risk that Gay 

would sexually assault Franklin, much less that each defendant was subjectively 

aware of the risk and knowingly disregarded it. Franklin states that Sheriff Curry 

“failed to promulgate, to adopt, to implement or to enforce policies, rules, or 

regulations to safeguard female inmates,” but she does not describe any of the 

policies that were in place, the sort of policies that should have been in place, or

how those policies could have prevented Gay’s harassment. Similarly, Franklin

alleges the names and titles of the other Supervisory Defendants5 but alleges 

 5 Appellants point to a related problem of Franklin grouping defendants together in a 

manner that makes it impossible to determine the unconstitutional conduct attributed to each one

individually. Our conclusions about the insufficiency of Franklin’s allegations generally render 

analysis of this particular deficiency unnecessary except to emphasize the requirement that 

Franklin allege each Supervisory Defendant’s subjective awareness of the risk of harm and that 

each of them exhibited deliberate indifference through his own actions. Meeting these 

requirements without any individualized allegations other than Appellants’ names and titles is 

unlikely.

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nothing about the significance of their titles, their individual roles in the jail, their 

personal interactions or familiarity with Gay, their length of service, their 

management policies, or any other characteristics that would bear on whether they 

knew about but were deliberately indifferent to Gay’s conduct and the risk he 

posed.6

 From Franklin’s allegations, a finder of fact could not even conclude that 

all of the Defendants were ever in the jail, much less that each of their individual 

actions constituted deliberate indifference to the risk Gay would abuse Franklin. 

Subjecting Appellants to the full “panoply of expensive and time-consuming 

pretrial discovery devices,” Nero Trading, LLC v. U.S. Dep’t of Treasury, 570 F.3d 

1244, 1249 (11th Cir. 2009), and forcing them to defend this action based on 

Franklin’s inadequate allegations not only runs counter to the general rules of 

pleading, it also undermines qualified immunity’s fundamental purpose of

protecting “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the 

 

6 Before the district court and in her appellate briefs, Franklin essentially conceded that 

her allegations concerning the Supervisory Defendants other than Curry were insufficient and 

attempted to excuse her lack of specificity by admitting that she simply does not know the details 

about the Supervisory Defendants’ responsibilities at this stage. Far from excusing her 

insufficient pleadings, this admission only reinforces our conclusion that her complaint was due 

to be dismissed. In any event, Franklin cites no legal basis for her contention that her lack of 

knowledge should relax the pleading standard to which she is held. Cf. DM Research, Inc. v. 

Coll. of Am. Pathologists, 170 F.3d 53, 56 (1st Cir. 1999) (“[T]he discovery process is not 

available where, at the complaint stage, a plaintiff has nothing more than unlikely speculations. 

While this may mean that a civil plaintiff must do more detective work in advance, the reason is 

to protect society from the costs of highly unpromising litigation.”). 

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law” from the costs of suit. Aschroft v. al-Kidd, ___ U.S. ___, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 

2085 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

If anything, Franklin’s allegations suggest that the policy of the jail was to 

promptly investigate claims of sexual harassment. She alleges that shortly after 

she reported Gay’s conduct to her parole officer, a prison official discussed the 

attack with her, and an investigation commenced. Ultimately, the officer alleged to 

have engaged in wrongdoing resigned. In this way, Franklin’s own allegations 

undercut the legal conclusions she asks us to draw from them and fail to allow a 

court “to draw [a] reasonable inference that the [Appellants are] liable for the 

misconduct alleged.” See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678, 129 S. Ct. at 1949. 

Thus, even under the relaxed standard the district court applied, Franklin’s 

conclusory allegations are insufficient to allege a constitutional violation. This 

provides an additional basis for Appellants’ entitlement to qualified immunity.7

IV. CONCLUSION

 7 As part of their appeal, Appellants argue that under Iqbal supervisors can only be liable 

for constitutional violations if a plaintiff alleges purposeful and intentional conduct. We reject 

this argument. Appellants ignore the Iqbal Court’s caution that “[t]he factors necessary to 

establish a [claim] will vary with the constitutional provision at issue.” 556 U.S. at 676, 129 S. 

Ct. at 1948. The discussion of purposeful intent in Iqbal pertained to claims of invidious 

discrimination, not deliberate indifference. See id. Nothing in Iqbal suggests that supervisors 

cannot be held liable for deliberate indifference toward risks posed by their subordinates or that 

such liability requires a higher mens rea than any other deliberate indifference claim. So long as 

a supervisor’s own conduct—and not that of his subordinate—constitutes deliberate indifference, 

his status as a supervisor changes nothing. See id.

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In light of the foregoing, Franklin failed to allege a constitutional violation, 

and the district court erred in denying Appellants’ motion to dismiss.

REVERSED.

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