Opinion ID: 77038
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Fingerprinting.

Text: 25 Plaintiff claims her Fourth Amendment rights were violated when Officer Highfill fingerprinted her in a way that caused her body repeatedly to be pressed against Highfill's back. In her brief, Plaintiff contends Highfill's acts violated the Fourth Amendment; the brief says that it is an obvious violation of the Fourth Amendment to fondle, grope and sexually assault a pretrial detainee. But in her complaint and deposition, Plaintiff herself never used such words and does not hint at sexual impropriety on Highfill's part; she describes Highfill's conduct during the fingerprinting process as just doing his job and that Highfill w[as not] mean to me. For example, no sexual language (or even sexually suggestive language) accompanied the fingerprinting. 26 After the dust has settled on this claim, what remains is that Plaintiff — an adult who was always fully clothed — was uncomfortable when she was being fingerprinted because her body was pulled into the back of Officer Highfill with the rolling of each finger. Plaintiff, at the time, said nothing about her discomfort; nor did she claim — then or in her complaint, deposition or brief — that she was hurt or injured physically. 27 We acknowledge that a Fourth Amendment 7 violation can occur without much force being applied during a seizure. The Amendment protects people from unreasonable seizures, and unreasonable contemplates more than the unnecessary strike of a nightstick, sting of a bullet, [or] thud of a boot. Fontana v. Haskin, 262 F.3d 871, 878 (9th Cir.2001) (concluding police officer's sexual verbal and physical predation against a handcuffed arrestee on ride to police station was Fourth Amendment violation). Apart from excessive force, we recognize that harassing and abusive behavior by an officer towards a detainee during a seizure can, in some cases, rise to the level of unreasonable for Fourth Amendment purposes. See id. at 879. But we stress that not every intrusion, touching, discomfort or embarrassment during an arrest is actionable as a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Some of these acts may be provably accidental or just too insignificant and thus within the range of the constitutionally reasonable. Id. at 880; cf. Vinyard v. Wilson, 311 F.3d 1340, 1344, 1348 n. 13 (11th Cir.2002) (concluding de minimis force when officer dragged plaintiff inside jail, following arrest, either by her shirt, her arm, or her hair); Jones v. City of Dothan, Ala., 121 F.3d 1456, 1460 (11th Cir.1997) (concluding de minimis force when officers slammed plaintiff against wall). We conclude that the pertinent fingerprinting conduct is of that nature. 28 The overriding function of the Fourth Amendment is to protect personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusion by the State. Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 1834, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966). We accept that Plaintiff was uncomfortable with the fingerprinting process when she was touching the back of Officer Highfill with her body. We also accept that Officer Highfill's subjective intentions are unimportant in determining whether the complained-of touching was — objectively — too much of an affront to Plaintiff's personal privacy and dignity in a constitutional sense and, therefore, unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. What is reasonable, of course, depends on all of the circumstances surrounding the search or seizure and the nature of the search or seizure itself. Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n, 489 U.S. 602, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 1414, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted). We conclude that the touching complained of by Plaintiff — given the business-like circumstances surrounding the fingerprinting of an arrested person and the limited and coincidental nature of the touching — was too slight and was within the outside borders of what is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.