Opinion ID: 6216788
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Individual-Capacity Suits Under RFRA

Text: In addition to bringing claims for injunctive relief against the BOP, Mr. Ajaj also sued several BOP officials in their individual capacities for money damages for refusing to (1) accommodate his Ramadan and Sunnah fasting practices; (2) provide access to a religiously compliant halal diet; (3) provide pastoral visitation with an imam; and (4) allow him to pray with others. 4 After the parties completed briefing in this court, Mr. Ajaj was again transferred to a new facility—Coleman I in Sumterville, Florida. Upon arrival he received a handbook that contained an explicit prohibition against group prayer. He moved to supplement the record on appeal with the handbook and his declaration that he has not had consistent or reliable access to group prayer in any facility to which he has been assigned since ADX. BOP represents that this policy has since been rescinded and urges us to limit our review to the record before the district court at the time of dismissal. There is precedent in our circuit indicating that postjudgment supplementation for the purpose of showing that a case is not moot, rather than to show that a case has become moot on appeal, may be improper. See Rio Grande Silvery Minnow, 601 F.3d at 1110 n.11 (10th Cir. 2010) (“This court will not consider material outside the record before the district court” where a party offered supplemental evidence to support the district court’s determination that the case was not moot and that the defendant’s injurious conduct was likely to recur. (internal quotation marks omitted)). But see EEOC v. CollegeAmerica Denver, Inc., 869 F.3d 1171, 1174 n.6 (10th Cir. 2017) (considering postjudgment developments and concluding that intervening events made clear that a live case or controversy persisted without needing to “decide whether the district court was right to dismiss the claim based on the record as it then existed”). On remand the district court is free to consider Mr. Ajaj’s changed circumstances as it did when it continued proceedings for some RFRA claims after he was transferred from ADX to Terre Haute. 15 Appellate Case: 19-1250 Document: 010110643021 Date Filed: 02/09/2022 Page: 16 The district court dismissed all the RFRA claims against the individualcapacity defendants, holding that RFRA did not authorize money damages. While this appeal was pending, however, the Supreme Court held that money damages are available under RFRA. See Tanzin, 141 S. Ct. at 489. Recognizing that they can no longer defend the ground relied on by the district court in dismissing the individualcapacity RFRA claims, the individual defendants now urge this court to affirm on the alternative ground of qualified immunity—which the district court never reached but both sides briefed below. Mr. Ajaj has submitted a supplemental brief arguing that qualified immunity does not apply to RFRA claims. We hold that qualified immunity can be invoked by officials sued in their individual capacities for money damages under RFRA. We decline, however, to opine on the merits of the defense in this case, leaving it to the district court in the first instance to determine whether it defeats any of Mr. Ajaj’s claims. We proceed to explain. The defense of qualified immunity is a judicially recognized doctrine that shields government officials “from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). The doctrine represents a balance between two competing values: providing an avenue to hold officials accountable for constitutional or statutory violations and limiting the social costs arising from the threat of personal liability for official conduct. See id. at 813–14. In addition to creating the expense of litigation, 16 Appellate Case: 19-1250 Document: 010110643021 Date Filed: 02/09/2022 Page: 17 individual-capacity suits can raise several other concerns: They may divert officials’ energy from public matters and duties, they may deter individuals from pursuing public office, and their prospect may induce excessive caution in “all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible” in carrying out official duties. Id. at 814 (internal quotation marks omitted). Because these considerations are present regardless of the cause of action against the official, qualified immunity “represents the norm” in suits against public officials. Id. at 807. Accordingly, many circuits have applied qualified immunity to individual-capacity suits under a variety of statutes, including RFRA. See, e.g., Werner v. McCotter, 49 F.3d 1476, 1481–82 (10th Cir. 1995) (applying qualified immunity to state officials sued under RFRA before RFRA was limited to apply only to federal officials), superseded by statute on other grounds as stated in Williams v. Wilkinson, 645 F. App’x 692 (10th Cir. 2016); Lebron v. Rumsfeld, 670 F.3d 540, 557 (4th Cir. 2012) (RFRA); Padilla v. Yoo, 678 F.3d 748, 756–57, 768 (9th Cir. 2012) (RFRA); Davila v. Gladden, 777 F.3d 1198, 1210 (11th Cir. 2015) (declining to address whether RFRA authorizes individual-capacity suits for money damages because defendants would in any event be entitled to qualified immunity); see also Gonzalez v. Lee Cnty. Hous. Auth., 161 F.3d 1290, 1299–1300, 1300 n.34 (11th Cir. 1998) (collecting 11 opinions from eight circuits recognizing qualifiedimmunity defense under eight different federal statutes); Tapley v. Collins, 211 F.3d 1210, 1214–16, 1215 n.9 (11th Cir. 2000) (same; also deciding that good-faith defense in Fair Housing Act did not abrogate qualified-immunity defense). 17 Appellate Case: 19-1250 Document: 010110643021 Date Filed: 02/09/2022 Page: 18 Mr. Ajaj nevertheless contends that the analysis in Tanzin establishes that RFRA does not recognize a qualified-immunity defense to damages liability. We beg to differ. The very analysis that supported recognition of the damages claim also compels recognition of qualified immunity. To begin with, Tanzin stated that “[t]he legal backdrop against which Congress enacted RFRA confirms the propriety of individual-capacity suits.” 141 S. Ct. at 490 (internal quotation marks omitted). It pointed out that the RFRA language persons acting under color of law “draws on one of the most well-known civil rights statutes: 42 U.S.C. § 1983,” and the Court had “long interpreted it to permit suits against officials in their individual capacities.” Id. For present purposes we should also note that damages claims under § 1983 have also long been subject to the defense of qualified immunity. But there is much more. RFRA provides a right to seek “appropriate relief.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb–1(c). Tanzin said that the meaning of this “open-ended” language is “inherently context dependent.” 141 S. Ct. at 491 (internal quotation marks omitted). The relevant context was “suits against Government officials.” Id. And “[b]y the time Congress enacted RFRA, [the Supreme] Court had interpreted the modern version of § 1983 to permit monetary recovery against officials who violated ‘clearly established’ federal law.” Id. Thus, the same context that supported a RFRA damages remedy also supported the application of qualified-immunity doctrine, which limits individual liability to violations of clearly established law. 18 Appellate Case: 19-1250 Document: 010110643021 Date Filed: 02/09/2022 Page: 19 Indeed, as the Court emphasized, the specific origin of RFRA makes even more compelling the inference that the damages remedy under that statute was meant to copy that under § 1983. RFRA was a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 885–90 (1990), “which held that the First Amendment tolerates neutral, generally applicable laws that burden or prohibit religious acts even when the laws are unsupported by a narrowly tailored, compelling governmental interest.” Tanzin, 141 S. Ct. at 489. “RFRA made clear that it was reinstating both the pre-Smith substantive protections of the First Amendment and the right to vindicate those protections by a claim.” Id. at 492. Also, continued the Court, “[t]here is no doubt that damages claims have always been available under § 1983 for clearly established violations of the First Amendment.” Id. To be sure, Tanzin referenced this context only to support recognition of the damages claim under RFRA; although the parties before the Court agreed that there would be a qualified-immunity defense to a RFRA damages claim, see id. n., the Court did not expressly endorse that agreement. But the force of the Court’s analysis remains. When it is so clear that RFRA was intended to reinstate what had been a pre-Smith damages action under § 1983, there is a strong implication that as venerable and important a component of § 1983 as qualified immunity was also incorporated. Tanzin observed that “[g]iven the textual cues [upon which it relied], it would be odd to construe RFRA in a manner that prevents courts from awarding [damages] relief.” Id. at 492; see id. (“Had Congress wished to limit the remedy to that degree, it knew how to do so.”). For the same reasons, we think it 19 Appellate Case: 19-1250 Document: 010110643021 Date Filed: 02/09/2022 Page: 20 would be equally odd to construe RFRA to preclude a qualified-immunity defense. In short, we think our prior decision in Werner, 49 F.3d at 1481–82, got it right in applying qualified immunity to RFRA damages claims, even though our decision concerned a since-invalidated RFRA claim against state actors, see City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 511 (1997) (holding that RFRA is unconstitutional in so far as it permits suits against state actors). We are unpersuaded by Mr. Ajaj’s two counterarguments. First, he contends that Tanzin discouraged “judicial policymaking,” which this court would be engaged in by attaching a defense to RFRA when Congress had not done so itself. Aplt. Supp. Br. at 12. But Mr. Ajaj misconceives the point that the Court was making. Once it had applied the tools of statutory interpretation to construe RFRA as providing a damages remedy against individual officers, the Court refused to adopt policy arguments made by the government against such a remedy. To be sure, when trying to construe the vague term appropriate relief in RFRA, the Court looked to “background presumptions” (such as the liability of individual government officials for damages) that were themselves based on policy considerations. Tanzin, 141 S. Ct. at 493. But for background presumptions to “inform the understanding of a word or phrase [in a statute], those presumptions must exist at the time of enactment.” Id. What the government was advocating was policy that had not been incorporated in earlier relevant statutes, and the Court refused to “manufacture a new presumption now and retroactively impose it on a Congress that acted 27 years ago.” Id. In contrast, to recognize qualified immunity in damages cases under RFRA is not to 20 Appellate Case: 19-1250 Document: 010110643021 Date Filed: 02/09/2022 Page: 21 create new policy but to construe statutory language in light of a background presumption that was well-established when RFRA was enacted. Second, Mr. Ajaj argues that Congress indicated its intent not to include a qualified-immunity defense (or any other unstated defenses) when it included a specific defense in the statute’s text, 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb–1(b). See United States v. Brown, 529 F.3d 1260, 1265 (10th Cir. 2008) (“Under the doctrine of expressio unius est exclusio alterius, to express or include one thing implies the exclusion of the other.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). We have a different view. The relevant provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb–1 state: (a) In general—Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, except as provided in subsection (b). (b) Exception—Government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person— (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest. The exception stated in subsection (b) to the general rule stated in subsection (a) is not confined to suits for damages. If the government action is the least restrictive means of serving a compelling governmental interest, there is no violation of law. This proposition was accepted both before and after the Supreme Court’s decision in Smith. See, e.g., Thomas v. Rev. Bd. of Ind. Emp. Sec. Div., 450 U.S. 707, 718 (1981) (“The mere fact that the petitioner’s religious practice is burdened by a governmental program does not mean that an exemption accommodating his practice must be 21 Appellate Case: 19-1250 Document: 010110643021 Date Filed: 02/09/2022 Page: 22 granted. The state may justify an inroad on religious liberty by showing that it is the least restrictive means of achieving some compelling state interest.”); Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 141 S. Ct. 1868, 1881 (2021) (“A government policy can survive strict scrutiny only if it advances interests of the highest order and is narrowly tailored to achieve those interests. Put another way, so long as the government can achieve its interests in a manner that does not burden religion, it must do so.” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). Such justification of an infringement of free exercise not only precludes a damages award but would also preclude any equitable relief. In other words, subsection (b) is not just a means of protecting individuals from inappropriate damages awards. The policies that must be considered in deciding whether to recognize qualified immunity are not at play. We can think of no reason to infer from that provision that Congress was expressing any disapproval of the tradition of granting qualified immunity to public officials. “The [expressio unius] doctrine properly applies only when the unius (or technically, unum, the thing specified) can reasonably be thought to be an expression of all that shares in the grant or prohibition involved.” A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 107 (2012); see Barnhart v. Peabody Coal Co., 537 U.S. 149, 168 (2003) (The expressio unius canon “does not apply to every statutory listing or grouping; it has force only when the items expressed are members of an associated group or series, justifying the inference that items not mentioned were excluded by deliberate choice, not inadvertence.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). For example, if a 22 Appellate Case: 19-1250 Document: 010110643021 Date Filed: 02/09/2022 Page: 23 restaurant sign says “No dogs allowed,” does that mean that pet monkeys and baby elephants are welcome? See Reading Law at 107. Here, it is reasonable to infer that subsection (b) states the only justification for substantially burdening someone’s exercise of religion. But it is not reasonable to view the subsection as stating the only ground on which an official can defend against personal liability for such an imposition. What if the official acted under a court order or because a gun was held to the official’s head? In our view, Mr. Ajaj would have us stretch a useful canon of construction beyond its limits. We conclude that qualified immunity can be invoked by officials sued for damages in their individual capacities under RFRA. We reverse the district court’s dismissal of Mr. Ajaj’s individual-capacity claims and remand for the court to determine whether the relevant defendants are entitled to immunity.