Opinion ID: 2806250
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Constitutional Violation Under Current Law

Text: Haessig could still be entitled to qualified immunity if the undisputed facts show that her conduct violates no constitutional right under current law. In other words, if developments in constitutional law since 2008 mean that Haessig’s conduct did not violate any constitutional right, she would be entitled to summary judgment even if her conduct was unlawful under prevailing law in 2008. Haessig contends that her conduct violated no constitutional right because the facts show that she did not have the intent to discriminate that Ashcroft v. Iqbal, decided in 2009, now requires for supervisory liability for constitutional violations. 556 U.S. 662, 676–77 (2009). In Iqbal, the complaint alleged in relevant part that the Attorney General and Director of the FBI adopted an unconstitutional policy subjecting thousands of Arab Muslim men to harsh conditions of confinement in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks because of their race, religion, or naNo. 13-1857 11 tional origin. Id. at 667–69. The plaintiff brought his claim of unconstitutional discrimination as a Bivens action, the federal analog to suits brought against state officials under § 1983. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 675–76, citing Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250, 254 n.2 (2006); see generally Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). The plaintiff argued that the defendants could be liable for “knowledge and acquiescence in their subordinates’ use of discriminatory criteria.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 677. The Supreme Court rejected the view that a supervisor could violate the Equal Protection Clause because of “mere knowledge of his subordinate’s discriminatory purpose.” Id. For constitutional violations under § 1983 or Bivens, a government official “is only liable for his or her own misconduct.” Id. This means that a plaintiff who sues a supervisor must show the state of mind when the underlying constitutional violation requires a state of mind for liability. Id. at 676; see also Barkes v. First Correctional Medical, Inc., 766 F.3d 307, 319 (3rd Cir. 2014) (“[U]nder Iqbal, the level of intent necessary to establish supervisory liability will vary with the underlying constitutional tort alleged.”), rev’d on other grounds sub nom. Taylor v. Barkes, No. 14-939, 575 U.S. — (June 1, 2015); Dodds v. Richardson, 614 F.3d 1185, 1204 (10th Cir. 2010) (“The Court in Iqbal explained that the factors necessary to establish a § 1983 violation depend upon the constitutional provision at issue, including the state of mind required to establish a violation of that provision.”). For discrimination claims like those at issue in Iqbal and here, where the state of mind of purposeful discrimination is an element of the violation, a supervisor is liable only if she had the specific intent to discriminate. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 676. 12 No. 13-1857 For these claims, the plaintiff must show “more than ‘intent as volition or intent as awareness of consequences.’” Id., citing Personnel Administrator v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 279 (1979). The supervisor is liable for undertaking a course of action only because of, not merely in spite of, the action’s adverse effects upon an identifiable group. Id., citing Feeney, 442 U.S. at 279. Although Iqbal involved a claim of invidious discrimination, the Court’s discussion shaped the law of supervisory liability for constitutional violations more generally. Before Iqbal, most circuits required that a supervisor act (or fail to act) with the state of mind of deliberate indifference to be liable, no matter the underlying constitutional violation. William N. Evans, Supervisory Liability in the Fallout of Iqbal, 65 Syracuse L. Rev. 103, 117–18 & n.41 (2014) (collecting cases). The deliberate indifference test required knowledge of the subordinate’s misconduct and deliberate indifference to or tacit authorization of the misconduct. Id. at 117; see also Jones, 856 F.2d at 992 (“The supervisors must know about the conduct and facilitate it, approve it, condone it, or turn a blind eye for fear of what they might see.”). Our pre-Iqbal precedents on some discrimination claims seemed to allow a plaintiff to recover for a supervisor’s deliberate indifference to a subordinate’s purposeful discrimination. Grindle, 599 F.3d at 588 (discussing pre-Iqbal precedents for supervisory liability in this circuit), citing Nanda, 412 F.3d at 842 (holding that a supervisor would not be entitled to qualified immunity if the facts showed the supervisor “was deliberately indifferent in facilitating [his subordinate’s] discriminatory termination”). No. 13-1857 13 However, our precedents on sexual harassment claims, a subset of discrimination claims, have focused on requiring intentional gender discrimination as an element of a claim against a supervisor. In our first case discussing a sexual harassment claim brought against a state or local official under the Equal Protection Clause, we said “the ultimate inquiry is whether the sexual harassment constitutes intentional discrimination.” Bohen, 799 F.2d at 1187. We explained in regard to supervisory liability that “a plaintiff can make an ultimate showing of sex discrimination either by showing that sexual harassment that is attributable to the employer under § 1983 amounted to intentional sex discrimination or by showing that the conscious failure of the employer to protect the plaintiff from the abusive conditions created by fellow employees amounted to intentional discrimination.” Id., citing Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57 (1986). Decades later, in Valentine, we repeated the same standard, saying that a jury could infer that the supervisor had “consciously chosen not to protect” the plaintiff from the harassment so there was “a material question of fact as to whether [the supervisor] intentionally discriminated against [the plaintiff].” 452 F.3d at 684. These cases made clear that a supervisor was liable only if the ultimate trier of fact found that the supervisor intended to discriminate. But a reasonable jury could infer—though it would not be required to infer—the specific intent to discriminate from evidence that a supervisor knew about the harassment and chose not to intervene, so evidence of that nature was sufficient to survive summary judgment. After Iqbal, we re-examined the state of mind required for supervisory liability for sexual harassment in T.E. v. Grindle, 14 No. 13-1857 599 F.3d 583 (7th Cir. 2010). In Grindle, the plaintiffs sued a school principal for her response to complaints that a band teacher was sexually harassing students at the school. After receiving a school counselor’s reports of inappropriate touching, the principal interviewed the complaining students, spoke with their parents and the school’s social worker, and wrote an incident report. The plaintiffs alleged that the principal soft-pedaled the investigation and response and discounted the complaints of serious harassment as an overreaction to the teacher tapping students’ knees to keep time. The principal also told the harasser of the complaints and directed him to avoid making physical contact with students and to refrain from comments regarding students’ appearance. The principal received other complaints about the teacher but addressed the problem as a teaching-methods issue rather than sexual harassment. Id. at 585–87. We affirmed the district court’s denial of the principal’s motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. We acknowledged that after Iqbal a plaintiff must show “that the supervisor possessed the requisite discriminatory intent.” Id. at 588 (internal citation omitted). We concluded, however, that the plaintiffs’ evidence would allow a jury to conclude that [the principal] knew about [the teacher’s] abuse of the girls and deliberately helped cover it up by mislead- ing the girls’ parents, the superintendent, and other administrators. From this evidence, a ju- ry could reasonably infer—though it would not be required to infer—that [the principal] also had a purpose of discriminating against the girls based on their gender. If [the principal] No. 13-1857 15 wishes to argue that she merely wanted to avoid a scandal or that she would have taken similar steps to conceal abuse if boys had been the victims, she can present those arguments to the jury, but such suggestions do not mean that she is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. … [A] jury could conclude that by attempting to convert claims about sexual abuse by [the teacher] into complaints about teaching meth- ods, [the principal] treated the girls’ complaints differently because of their sex. Id. at 589 (internal citations omitted). Haessig argues that Iqbal and Grindle together mean that there is a constitutional difference between action and inaction—that purposeful discrimination may be inferred from the former but not the latter. She contends the district court erred as a matter of law in holding that a jury could find Haessig liable for an equal protection violation for purposefully ignoring Locke’s complaint of harassment. 3 3 The district court’s opinion was not entirely clear about the legal standard it applied to analyze Haessig’s liability. Parts of the opinion seem to use the “deliberate indifference” standard for intent that Grindle disavowed after Iqbal. Some confusion is understandable because Haessig’s summary judgment brief in the district court said that Locke could survive summary judgment if he showed that she “acted with the requisite culpable state of mind, i.e. deliberate indifference.” Locke argues that Haessig’s objection to the district court ruling is barred by invited error. See Int’l Travelers Cheque Co. v. BankAmerica Corp., 660 F.2d 215, 224 (7th Cir. 1981) (“It is well settled law that a party cannot complain of errors which it has … invited [or] induced the court to make.”). Because we affirm the district court even under the discriminatory intent 16 No. 13-1857 We have doubts about this argument. For one, there is little support in these cases for a distinction between action and inaction. Haessig points us to the Supreme Court’s statement that purposeful discrimination “involves a decisionmaker’s undertaking a course of action because of … the action’s adverse effects upon an identifiable group.” Iqbal, 556 U.S at 676–77 (internal quotation marks and modifications omitted). Haessig seizes on one phrase, “course of action,” as implying that a supervisor who takes no action cannot, as a matter of law, intend discrimination. We reject such an expansive reading of Iqbal. Haessig’s argument conflicts with the principle that a supervisor could be liable for ignoring complaints from one identifiable group while acting on similar complaints from those of another group. See Nabozny v. Podlesny, 92 F.3d at 454–56 (reversing summary judgment on equal protection claim; school officials ignored male plaintiff’s complaints of harassment but acted on female students’ harassment complaints); see also Bohen v. City of East Chicago, 799 F.2d at 1190 (Posner, J., concurring) (“The chief of the fire department was aware of the harassment, which was frequent rather than isolated and in which at least one supervisory employee was implicated; yet he did nothing. It was as if the chief knew that his men were systematically refusing to put out fires in homes owned by blacks, yet did nothing to correct the situation.”). Short perhaps only of a confession of intentional discrimination, selective inaction can be strong evidence of discriminatory intent. standard that Haessig argues on appeal, we do not reach the issue of invited error. No. 13-1857 17 In any event, Locke has provided evidence that tends to show that Haessig’s response was more than mere inaction. A reasonable jury could infer that Haessig had the requisite intent to discriminate because she threatened to retaliate against Locke after he complained of sexual harassment. See Grindle, 599 F.3d at 589 (evidence that principal failed to intervene and downplayed seriousness of the harassment was enough to allow a reasonable jury to infer intent to discriminate); see also Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, 544 U.S. 167, 173–174 (2005) (interpreting Title IX prohibition of “discrimination” “on the basis of sex” to include retaliation and holding: “Retaliation is, by definition, an intentional act.”). Haessig was irritated with Locke after he made the complaint and told him that he would not be released from his ankle monitor until he was discharged from parole. Agent Schwartz acknowledged to Locke that Haessig’s actions were retaliation for reporting the sexual harassment. This evidence of retaliation, especially when combined with the evidence of a failure to intervene or investigate, is enough to defeat summary judgment on the qualified im- 4 munity defense. Haessig responds by arguing that retaliation simply cannot support an inference of discriminatory intent. She cites Boyd v. Illinois State Police, 384 F.3d 888 (7th Cir. 2004), but Boyd denied a different sort of claim and should not be read 4 The admissibility of Schwartz’s statement is not within the limited scope of our appellate jurisdiction on this interlocutory appeal. See Whitlock, 682 F.3d at 575 (“Questions of admissibility are indeed legal questions; but they are not the sort of legal questions that are sufficiently separable from the merits so as to provide us with jurisdiction in a collateral-order appeal.”). 18 No. 13-1857 so broadly. In Boyd, the plaintiff brought an equal protection claim against his employer for withholding a raise because the plaintiff was suing the employer for Title VII violations. We specifically noted that the plaintiff had not asserted that his employer “retaliated against him on the basis of a protected trait or because of his membership in a particular class, but only because of his participation in this litigation.” Id. at 898. We held that this claim could be brought under Title VII or the First Amendment but not under the Equal Protection Clause. Id. We reaffirmed that the Equal Protection Clause “does not establish a general right to be free from retaliation.” Id., quoting Grossbaum v. IndianapolisMarion County Building Auth., 100 F.3d 1287, 1296 n.8 (7th Cir. 1996). In contrast, Locke is not asserting a general right to be free from retaliation, so Boyd has no bearing on his claim. Locke argues that Haessig retaliated against him because of a protected characteristic, his sex. See Jackson, 544 U.S. at 174 (“[R]etaliation is discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ because it is an intentional response to the nature of the complaint: an allegation of sex discrimination.”). A reasonable jury could conclude from these facts that Haessig responded to his complaint with irritation and told him he would remain on an ankle monitor because of his sex—because he was a man rather than a woman complaining of sexual harassment. See Nabozny, 92 F.3d at 455–56. Haessig may still argue to the jury that she “merely wanted to avoid a scandal,” that she consistently failed to take action in responding to all parolee complaints, or that she would have had the same response to a woman who complained of sexual harassment. See Grindle, 599 F.3d at No. 13-1857 19 589. But the availability of those arguments does not mean that Haessig is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Id. Locke may submit his evidence to a jury and can prevail if he can convince the jury that Haessig treated Locke’s complaint differently because he was a man complaining of sexual harassment. Locke does not need to prove that Haessig was motivated solely by his sex in the way that she responded to his complaint, but he must show that she chose her course of action at least in part because of his sex. See id., citing Feeney, 442 U.S. at 279. For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s denial of summary judgment and REMAND for proceedings consistent with this opinion.