Opinion ID: 62880
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Physical Injury Claim

Text: On appeal, McCray argues that the district court erred in dismissing her claim that Howard violated her substantive due process rights by striking her while he was resisting removal from the Judge’s courtroom and thus injuring her. The 2 The district court also determined that McCray failed to state a substantive due process claim based on the alleged slander. On appeal, McCray makes no argument challenging this determination, and thus we decline to address it. Access Now, Inc. v. Sw. Airlines Co., 385 F.3d 1324, 1330 (11th Cir. 2004) (stating well-settled rule that a legal claim or argument that has not been briefed on appeal is deemed abandoned and will not be addressed). In addition, after dismissing McCray’s federal claims, the district court stated that to the extent McCray’s complaint raised state law claims, it declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction to hear them. We do not address this determination by the district court because McCray has failed to challenge it on appeal as well. Id. 3 We review de novo the district court’s grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Glover v. Liggett Group, Inc., 459 F.3d 1304, 1308 (11th Cir. 2006). 5 substantive component of the Due Process Clause “protects individual liberty against ‘certain government actions regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them.’” Collins v. City of Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125, 112 S. Ct. 1061, 1068 (1992) (quoting Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 331, 106 S. Ct. 662, 665 (1986)). Substantive due process applies to “those rights that are ‘fundamental’–rights that are ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’” Skinner v. City of Miami, 62 F.3d 344, 347 (11th Cir. 1995) (quoting Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, 58 S. Ct. 149, 152 (1937)). The Supreme Court has commented that it “has always been reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process because guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in this unchartered area are scarce and open-ended” and that judicial self-restraint requires the Court “to exercise the utmost care” when it is asked to “break new ground in this field.” Collins, 503 U.S. at 125, 112 S. Ct. at 1068. Specifically, state tort law “remains largely outside the scope of substantive due process jurisprudence.” Skinner, 62 F.3d at 347. Substantive due process doctrine is not a “font of tort law to be superimposed upon whatever systems may already be administered by the States.” Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 701, 96 S. Ct. 1155, 1160 (1976). Thus, “even conduct by a government actor that would amount to an 6 intentional tort under state law will rise to the level of a substantive due process violation only if it also ‘shocks the conscience.’” Waddell v. Hendry County Sheriff’s Office, 329 F.3d 1300, 1305 (11th Cir. 2003) (quoting Dacosta v. Nwachukwa, 304 F.3d 1045, 1048 (11th Cir. 2002)). The Supreme Court has acknowledged that “‘the measure of what is conscience-shocking is no calibrated yard stick.’” Id. (quoting County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 847, 118 S. Ct. 1708, 1717 (1998)). Negligence will not violate the Due Process Clause, and even intentional torts seldom will. Id. This Court applied this standard in Dacosta in concluding that the plaintiff, a female student at Georgia Military College (“GMC”), failed to state a substantive due process claim against the defendant, a male instructor at GMC. Dacosta, 304 F.3d at 1047-49. In Dacosta, the plaintiff alleged that the defendant ignored her question in his class but answered similar questions from male students. Id. at 1047. When the plaintiff asked the same question, the defendant walked out of the classroom, and the plaintiff followed him. Id. After seeing that the plaintiff had left the classroom, the defendant darted back inside the classroom and slammed the door in the plaintiff’s face. Id. The plaintiff held up her arm to protect herself from the door, but her arm shattered the glass window on the door and became lodged in the cracked pane. Id. The defendant then violently swung the door 7 several times in an attempt to knock the plaintiff back from the door. Id. After this proved unsuccessful, the defendant reached through the cracked glass pane, shoved the plaintiff’s face, and tried to forcibly dislodge her arm from the window. Id. This Court stated that the alleged facts in Dacosta constituted the tort of intentional battery, but concluded that “such conduct, malicious as it may have been,” did not amount to a federal constitutional violation. Id. at 1048. As in Dacosta, McCray’s complaint alleges conduct that, if true, is unbecoming of a public official and may potentially constitute an intentional tort such as battery under state law. However, under governing precedent, this alleged conduct fails to rise to the level of “conscience-shocking” so as to state a claim of substantive due process. McCray’s potential remedies for this conduct are in state court, but not through the federal constitution under § 1983 in this Court. Id. at 1049 (“Remedies for batteries of this sort should be pursued in accordance with state law.”). Thus, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of McCray’s claim “for physical injury.”