Opinion ID: 751094
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Equal Protection Claim Against the Municipality

Text: 18 The district court dismissed the equal protection count against the Town for failure to state a claim. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). Eighteen months later, plaintiffs moved to reinstate and amend the claim, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 15, to allege that the Town should be held liable either because Grayson was the municipal official who instituted the official policy against providing law-enforcement protection to child victims of sexual abuse in the home, see Monell v. Department of Social Servs. of New York, 436 U.S. 658, 694-95, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 2037-38, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978), or because the Town failed to train Grayson adequately to deal with domestic child sexual abuse, which constituted much or most of the crime in the community. 19 The district court denied the motion to amend, on the ground that its earlier Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal amounted to a decision on the merits and, accordingly, the law of the case. 10 Even assuming the rationale for the instant decision were to be found infirm, see Griggs v. Hinds Junior College, 563 F.2d 179, 180 (5th Cir.1977) (noting that Rule 15 amendment is especially appropriate [ ] ... when the trial court has dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim); see also Dussouy v. Gulf Coast Inv. Corp., 660 F.2d 594, 598 n. 2 (5th Cir.1981), we would affirm on the ground that the proposed amendment would have been futile. See Levy v. FDIC, 7 F.3d 1054, 1056 (1st Cir.1993). 20 Rule 15 permits the trial court to deny leave to file an amended complaint which would be subject to immediate dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a viable claim for relief. See Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182, 83 S.Ct. 227, 230, 9 L.Ed.2d 222 (1962); Mills v. State of Me., 118 F.3d 37, 55 (1st Cir.1997). The Town cannot be held vicariously liable in an action under section 1983 unless its official policy or custom was the moving force behind the alleged violation of constitutional rights. See Monell, 436 U.S. at 694, 98 S.Ct. at 2037-38. 11 Normally, therefore, a municipality cannot be held liable unless its agent actually violated the victim's constitutional rights. See City of Los Angeles v. Heller, 475 U.S. 796, 799, 106 S.Ct. 1571, 1573, 89 L.Ed.2d 806 (1986) (If a person has suffered no constitutional injury at the hands of [any] individual police officer, the fact that the departmental regulations might have authorized [unconstitutional action] is quite beside the point.). 21 Plaintiffs simply allege that the Town is liable under section 1983 because Grayson established an official Town policy or custom of selective law enforcement which in turn caused them injury. 12 Since their predicate claim against Grayson fails, however, see supra Section II.A, so must their contention that any such discriminatory Town policy or custom existed. 22 Alternatively, of course, the Town could be held liable under section 1983 were it to appear that the injury to plaintiffs was caused by the Town's failure to train Grayson. The liability criteria for failure to train claims are exceptionally stringent, however. See City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388-89, 391, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 1204-05, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989). 23 Only if the failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights of persons with whom the police come into contact, and is closely related to, or the moving force behind, the constitutional injury, can the claim against the municipality prevail. Id. (emphasis added). For this deliberate or conscious choice to have been established, plaintiffs needed to present evidence that (1) the Town knew when it hired Grayson that the risk of future equal protection violations arising and recurring in domestic child sexual abuse cases was so obvious that its failure to train him therein likely would result in continued violations; or (2) even though the initial risk of recurring constitutional violations was not so obvious, the Town subsequently learned of a serious recurrence, yet took no action to provide the necessary training. Id. at 390 & n. 10, 109 S.Ct. at 1205 & n. 10; see also id. at 396, 109 S.Ct. at 1208-09 (O'Connor, J., concurring in part). 13 24 To begin with, plaintiffs merely allege that Lisbon is a high crime area in northern Grafton County [and] that much or most of the crime committed in northern Grafton County involves domestic violence and sexual abuse. (Emphasis added.) There is no allegation that these circumstances obtained in 1975, however, when Grayson became the police chief. No less importantly, even assuming similar circumstances prevailed in 1975, the need to train Grayson was not so obvious, [nor] the [alleged] inadequacy [of the training] so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the [Town] can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need [for training]. City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 390, 109 S.Ct. at 1205. 25 It bears reminding that the gravamen of the amended complaint is not that Grayson did not adequately investigate these allegations, but that he purposely chose not to investigate them at all. It is reasonable to observe, therefore, that whatever relevant training the Town failed to give Grayson would not have entailed specialized law-enforcement investigatory skills, but simply the commonplace understanding that police officers may not deny law-enforcement protection based simply on their arbitrary classifications of various groups of crime victims. 26 Thus, the amended complaint asserted no sufficient basis for concluding that Town policymakers reasonably should have anticipated that a new police chief would need specialized instruction in so rudimentary a law-enforcement responsibility, nor that the Town had been put on notice that such equal-protection violations were routine occurrences in domestic child sexual abuse cases, either locally or elsewhere. Rather, unlike many other law-enforcement responsibilities, cf., e.g., id. at 390 & n. 10, 109 S.Ct. at 1205 & n. 10 (noting that it might be considered obvious that armed police officers assigned to arrest fleeing felons would need instruction regarding constitutional limitations on proper use of deadly force), the Equal Protection Clause bar against arbitrary law enforcement is neither obscure nor problematic of application. 14 27 Finally, plaintiffs have not alleged that the Town was ever placed on notice that Grayson, after he was appointed in 1975, routinely violated the equal protection rights of citizens by engaging in selective and arbitrary law enforcement. See Swain v. Spinney, 117 F.3d 1, 11 (1st Cir.1997) (lack of notice of prior constitutional violations defeats failure-to-train claim). Accordingly, we conclude that the proposed amendment to the complaint would have been futile. 15 28 Needless to say, our conclusion represents no endorsement of the conduct with which Grayson is charged in the complaint. It would be dereliction of duty for a police chief to turn over to private parties the decision whether a serious offense should be pursued and it is hard to imagine what might justify telling a complainant falsely that the prosecutor would have no interest in the complaint. Nevertheless, not every form of misconduct is a constitutional violation--most wrongs find their remedy under state law--and our present holding is simply that the allegations made in the complaint do not properly assert a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. 29 Affirmed.