Opinion ID: 178947
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Qualified Immunity—The City’s Employees

Text: [1] “The doctrine of qualified immunity protects 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.’ ” Pearson v. Callahan, 129 S. Ct. 808, 815 (2009) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). In Pearson, the United States Supreme Court offered this explanation of the reasoning behind the concept of qualified immunity: “Qualified immunity balances two important interests— the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably.” Id. In fact, “[t]he protection of qualified immunity applies regardless of whether the government official’s error is ‘a mistake of law, a mistake of fact, or a mistake based on mixed questions of law and fact.’ ” Pearson, 129 S. 18354 DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO Ct. at 815 (quoting Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 567 (2004) (Kennedy, J., dissenting). In considering a claim for qualified immunity, the court engages in a two-part inquiry: whether the facts shown “make out a violation of a constitutional right,” and “whether the right at issue was ‘clearly established’ at the time of defendant’s alleged misconduct.” Pearson, 129 S. Ct. at 815-16. In Pearson, the Court overruled its prior holding, in Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001), that courts had to proceed through the two-step inquiry sequentially. Pearson, 129 S. Ct. at 818; see James v. Rowland, 606 F.3d 646, 651 (9th Cir. 2010) (recognizing that Pearson overruled Saucier in part). As the Court explained, “while the sequence set forth [in Saucier] is often appropriate, it should no longer be regarded as mandatory. The judges of the district courts and the courts of appeals should be permitted to exercise their sound discretion in deciding which of the two prongs of the qualified immunity analysis should be addressed first in light of the circumstances in the particular case at hand.” Pearson, 129 S. Ct. at 818. Thus, following Pearson, it is within our discretion to decide which step to address first. Brooks v. Seattle, 599 F.3d 1018, 1022 n.7 (9th Cir. 2010); Bull v. City & County of San Francisco, 595 F.3d 964, 971 (9th Cir. 2010) (en banc). Thus, the threshhold question we will decide is whether Delia being ordered to bring the rolls of insulation out of his home for inspection “make[s] out a violation of a constitutional right.” Pearson, 129 S. Ct. at 816; see Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201.
Delia contends that Chief Wells, Peel, and Bekker violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures when he was ordered to retrieve the rolls of home insulation and show them to fire department personnel. We agree. The Fourth Amendment, made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655 (1961), guarantees, “[t]he right of the DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO 18355 people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” U.S. CONST. amend. IV. The Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment applies to “[s]earches and seizures by government employers or supervisors of the private property of their employees.” O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 715 (1987). [2] In Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980), the Supreme Court explained that no zone of privacy is more clearly defined than one’s home: “[T]he Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not reasonably be crossed without a warrant.” Id. at 590; see Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 28 (2001) (observing that “search of a home’s interior” is “the prototypical . . . area of protected activity . . .”); Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961) (observing that “[a]t the very core” of the Fourth Amendment “stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.”); see also United States v. Struckman, 603 F.3d 731, 738 (9th Cir. 2010) (recognizing the core of the Fourth Amendment is protection against unreasonable searches of one’s home); United States v. Brock, 667 F.2d 1311, 1326 (9th Cir. 1982) (noting that “[o]ne of the foundations of the fourth amendment is the right of the people ‘to be secure in their . . . houses.’ ”); cf. New York v. Harris, 495 U.S. 14, 17 (1990) (“[T]he rule in Payton was designed to protect the physical integrity of the home[.]”). Therefore, the warrantless search of a home is presumptively unreasonable unless the government can prove consent or that the search falls within one of the carefully defined sets of exceptions. See Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 327 (1987); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 474-75 (1971). The circumstances which excuse the failure to obtain a warrant are “ ‘few in number 18356 DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO and carefully delineated,’ ” where one’s home is concerned.4 4 We note that the Supreme Court recently reemphasized that the “ ‘special needs’ ” of the workplace” constitute an exception to the general rule that warrantless searches “ ‘are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment’. . .” Ontario v. Quon, 130 S. Ct. 2619, 2630 (2010) (citation and internal quotations omitted). In Quon, the Court reviewed a disagreement in O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709 (1987), on the proper analytical framework for Fourth Amendment claims against government employers. Quon, 130 S. Ct. at 2628. Under one approach, representing the plurality opinion in O’Connor, the Court explained the plurality analysis has two steps: First, because “some government offices may be so open to fellow employees or the public that no expectation of privacy is reasonable,” id., at 718, a court must consider “[t]he operational realities of the workplace” in order to determine whether an employee’s Fourth Amendment rights are implicated, id., at 717 . . . Next, where an employee has a legitimate privacy expectation, an employer’s intrusion on that expectation “for noninvestigatory, work-related purposes, as well as for investigations of work-related misconduct, should be judged by the standard of reasonableness under all the circumstances.” Id. (quoting O’Connor, 480 U.S. at 717, 718, and 725-726). The competing approach, championed by Justice Scalia in his concurrence in O’Connor, “dispensed with an inquiry into ‘operational realities’ and would conclude ‘that the offices of government employees . . . are covered by Fourth Amendment protections as a general matter.’ ” Id. (quoting O’Connor, 480 U.S. at 731). Thus, under Justice Scalia’s approach, the core inquiry is whether the search would be “regarded as reasonable and normal in the private-employer context.” O’Connor, 480 U.S. at 732. If so, the search does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Id. The Court did not resolve this schism in Quon. Quon, 130 S. Ct. at 2628. The Quon- O’Connor workplace warrant exception, however, has no application here. Although the search at issue in this case arose as a result of a workplace investigation, defendants were not seeking to search Delia’s workplace environment, but his home. See Quon, 130 S. Ct. at 2633 (concerning search of messages made by police officer on government owned alphanumeric pager); O’Connor, 480 U.S. at 712-13 (concerning search of physician’s state office and seizure of personal items from his desk and filing cabinet). Moreover, even if the Quon-O’Connor workplace warrant exception was applicable to the search here, the search was unreasonable under either the O’Connor plurality or Justice Scalia’s approach. Under the DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO 18357 See Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740, 749 (1984) (quoting United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297, 318 (1972)). In this case, defendants initially attempted to conduct a warrantless search of Delia’s house for the insulation by asking for Delia’s consent. Presumably, this is because a search conducted with the home owner’s voluntary consent is an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s proscription on warrantless searches. Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 219 (1973); United States v. Rubio, 727 F.2d 786, 796 (9th Cir. 1983). Filarsky asked Delia to consent to allowing Peel to search for the insulation. Delia, however, refused to consent. Unable to obtain Delia’s consent to a warrantless search of his house by Peel, Filarsky tried a different tactic. He sought to obtain Delia’s consent to Delia bringing the rolls of insulation out of his home to show Peel that they had not yet been installed. No doubt this was done because an individual does not have an expectation of privacy in items exposed to the public, thereby eliminating the need for a search warrant. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967) (“[T]he Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.”); see also United States v. Broadhurst, 805 F.2d 849, 856 (9th O’Connor plurality approach, the search here was unjustified from the start because there were no reasonable grounds for believing that a search for the insulation was necessary for the investigation. Delia was being investigated for abuse of sick leave. However, no activity restrictions were ever placed on Delia by his treating physician as a result of his work-place exposure to the hazardous substances. Consequently, whether or not he installed insulation in his home was irrelevant to the investigation, since he could install insulation in his home and still be in full compliance with his physician’s orders. For these same reasons, we also conclude that the search would fail to satisfy Justice Scalia’s approach because it would not be “regarded as reasonable and normal in the private-employer context.” O’Connor, 480 U.S. at 732. 18358 DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO Cir. 1986) (“What a person knowingly exposes to public view is not protected by the Fourth Amendment”). Delia, however, again rejected Filarsky’s request. [3] Unable to obtain Delia’s consent to search his home, and alternatively, failing to persuade Delia to voluntarily retrieve the insulation from his home and place it in public view on his front lawn, Filarsky was stymied. It was only at this juncture that Filarsky’s final move was to hatch a plan to compel Delia to do indirectly what Filarsky and the City of Rialto officials declined to do directly. Delia was ordered to go into his house and bring out the rolls of insulation for inspection. He was cautioned at the beginning of his interview that his failure to cooperate with the investigation could result in charges of insubordination and possible termination of his employment. As a result, Chief Wells’s order “convey[ed] a message that compliance with [his] request[ ] [was] required.” Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 435 (1991). As this court has recognized in the situation where police demand entrance to a dwelling, “compliance with a [governmental] demand is not consent.” United States v. Winsor, 846 F.2d 1569, 1573 n.3 (9th Cir. 1988) (en banc) (internal quotations omitted). In Winsor, police officers decided to enter a hotel and go from room to room looking for a robbery suspect. Id. at 1571. “When the police knocked on the door [of the defendants’ room] and demanded that it be opened,” one of the defendants obeyed, at which point, the police officers recognized the suspect as the robber and found evidence of the robbery in plain view. Id. This court found that the defendant had opened the door in response to a claim of lawful authority, not voluntarily. Id. at 1573. Consequently, this court held that “the police did effect a ‘search’ when they gained visual entry into the room through the door that was opened at their command.” Id. Similarly, under the facts in this case, Delia was compelled to enter his own home and retrieve the insulation for public view by order of Chief Wells. Delia’s actions were involuntary and coerced by the direct threat of sanctions including loss of his DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO 18359 firefighter position.5 Therefore, we hold that the warrantless compelled search of Delia’s own home, requiring him to retrieve and display the insulation in public view on his front yard, violated Delia’s right under the Fourth Amendment to be free from an unreasonable search of his home by his employer.
Having found that Delia’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated, we turn to the second prong of the qualified immunity inquiry, whether the right was clearly established at the time of the defendants’ misconduct. Accordingly, we must focus on what the defendants’ knew, or should have known, concerning Delia’s Fourth Amendment constitutional rights as of September 18, 2006, the date of Chief Wells’s order. Whether a right is clearly established “turns on the ‘objective legal reasonableness of the action, assessed in light of the legal rules that were clearly established at the time it was taken.’ ” Pearson, 129 S. Ct. at 822 (quoting Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 614 (1999)); see Clouthier v. County of Contra Costa, 591 F.3d 1232, 1241 (9th Cir. 2010); Greene v. Camreta, 588 F.3d 1011, 1031 (9th Cir. 2009). Delia bears the burden of demonstrating that the right allegedly violated was clearly established at the time of the incident. See Greene, 588 F.3d at 1031; Robinson v. York, 566 F.3d 817, 825 (9th Cir. 2009), cert. denied, 130 S. Ct. 1047 (2010); Galen v. County of Los Angeles, 477 F.3d 652, 665 (9th Cir. 2007). The “contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that 5 It is well established that public employers generally cannot condition employment on an employee’s waiver of constitutional rights. See O’Hare Truck Serv., Inc. v. City of Northlake, 518 U.S. 712, 717 (1996); Pickering v. Board of Educ., 391 U.S. 563, 568 (1968); Vance v. Barrett, 345 F.3d 1083, 1092 (9th Cir. 2003); see also McDonell v. Hunter, 809 F.2d 1302, 1310 (8th Cir. 1987) (holding that the state may not require, as a condition of employment, waiver of the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches). 18360 DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO right.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987); see James, 606 F.3d at 652. [4] This case does not fit neatly into any previous category of Fourth Amendment law. This is best demonstrated by the fact that no party provided any prior case law analogous to this situation. Moreover, until today, this court had not extended Winsor beyond situations where police demand entrance. In attempting to demonstrate that the right allegedly violated was clearly established at the time of Chief Wells’s order, Delia cites several cases. These cases include this court’s prior decision in Los Angeles Police Protective League v. Gates, 907 F.2d 879 (9th Cir. 1990), as well as the Supreme Court’s decisions in Uniformed Sanitation Men Ass’n, Inc. v. Commissioner of Sanitation, 392 U.S. 280 (1968) and Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U.S. 273 (1968). A review of these decisions, however, does not demonstrate that Chief Wells’s order violated a clearly established right. Both Supreme Court decisions concern municipal employees who were questioned about corruption in their agencies. In Gardner, the plaintiff, a police officer, was subpoenaed to appear before a New York County grand jury that was investigating bribery and corruption of police officers in connection with gambling operations. Gardner, 392 U.S. at 274. Although he was informed of his privilege against selfincrimination, the police officer was told that he would be fired if he did not sign a waiver of immunity. Id. After he refused to sign the waiver, he was fired. Id. at 274-75. The Court held that the plaintiff was discharged “not for failure to answer relevant questions about his official duties, but for refusal to waive a constitutional right. . . . He was dismissed solely for his refusal to waive the immunity to which he is entitled if he is required to testify despite his constitutional privilege.” Id. at 278. [5] The Court reached an identical conclusion in Uniformed Sanitation Men, decided the same day as Gardner. In DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO 18361 Uniformed Sanitation Men, fifteen sanitation workers were summoned to appear at a hearing conducted by a commissioner of investigations. The commissioner was investigating charges that sanitation department employees were not charging certain fees and were keeping other fees for themselves. Uniformed Sanitation Men Ass’n, Inc., 392 U.S. at 281. Each sanitation employee was told that if he refused to testify “his employment and eligibility for other city employment would terminate.” Uniformed Sanitation Men Ass’n, Inc. 392 U.S. at 282. Twelve workers refused to answer, invoking their privilege against self-incrimination, and were discharged. Id. The remaining three workers answered questions at the hearing. They were subsequently suspended as a result of “information received from the Commissioner of Investigation concerning irregularities arising out of (their) employment in the Department of Sanitation.” Id. The three workers were later summoned before a grand jury and asked to sign waivers of immunity. Id. They refused and were fired solely for refusing to sign waivers of immunity. Id. at 282-83. The Supreme Court held all the discharges unconstitutional, noting that, “[the sanitation workers] were not discharged merely for refusal to account for their conduct as employees of the city. They were dismissed for invoking and refusing to waive their constitutional right against self-incrimination.” Id. at 283. Thus, in both Gardner and Uniformed Sanitation Men, the Court held that public agencies may not impair an individual’s privilege against self-incrimination by compelling incriminating answers, or by requiring a waiver of immunity. See id.; Gardner, 392 U.S. at 278. Neither case involved the legality of a search under the Fourth Amendment. Accordingly, neither Gardner nor Uniformed Sanitation Men would have put defendants on notice that Chief Wells’s order to Delia, with no attendant threat to his employment, constituted a violation of the Fourth Amendment. [6] Delia also cites this court’s decision in Gates. In Gates, a police officer was served with an administrative warrant to search his garage. Gates, 907 F.2d at 883. When the plaintiff 18362 DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO refused to permit the search, he was fired for insubordination. Id. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Gardner and Uniformed Sanitation Men, this court held that the plaintiff “could not be disciplined when he refused to allow the appellants to violate his constitutional rights. As the Supreme Court has pointed out, it is not proper to discharge an officer from duty in order to punish that officer for exercising rights guaranteed to him under the constitution.” Id. at 886. Thus, the Gates decision did not concern the legality of an actual search, let alone a “search” under circumstances similar to this case. As a result, the Gates decision, like the Supreme Court’s decisions in Gardner and Uniformed Sanitation Men, would hardly have put defendants on notice that their conduct here violated the Fourth Amendment. Thus, Delia has not demonstrated that a constitutional right was clearly established as of the date of Chief Wells’s order, such that defendants would have known that their actions were unlawful. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Chief Wells, Peel, and Bekker on the ground of qualified immunity.