Opinion ID: 2976544
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Fourth Amendment v. Fourteenth Amendment

Text: The parties dispute what constitutional standard is implicated by the facts of this case. This is not a purely academic question as the standards of liability vary significantly according to which amendment applies. See Darrah v. City of Oak Park, 255 F.3d 301, 306 (6th Cir. 2001) (“A substantially higher hurdle must be surpassed to make a showing of excessive force under the Fourteenth Amendment than under the ‘objective reasonableness’ test [of the Fourth Amendment] . . . .”). Defendants here argue that plaintiff’s claim is governed by the Fourteenth Amendment based on the holdings of the Supreme Court in Youngberg v. Romero, 457 U.S. 307 (1982), and this Circuit in Terrance v. Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital, 286 F.3d 834 (6th Cir. 2002). Plaintiff suggests, and the district court agreed, that the Fourth Amendment applies. The district court held that the facts of the case implicated the Fourth Amendment because it read the Supreme Court’s decision in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), to hold that all excessive force claims should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment reasonableness standard, rather than the Fourteenth Amendment “substantive due process” approach. Id. Subsequently, the Supreme Court clarified that Graham v. Connor “does not hold that all constitutional claims relating to physically abusive government conduct must arise under either the Fourth or Eighth Amendments; rather, Graham simply requires that if a constitutional claim is covered by a specific constitutional provision, . . . the claim must be analyzed under the standard appropriate to that specific provision, not under the rubric of substantive due process.” United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 272 n. 7 (1997). We have held that “[w]hich amendment applies depends on the status of the plaintiff at the time of the incident, whether free citizen, convicted prisoner, or something in between.” Phelps v. Coy, 286 F.3d 295, 299 (6th Cir. 2002) (citing Gravely v. Madden, 142 F.3d 345, 348-49 (6th Cir. 1998)). If the plaintiff was a convicted prisoner at the time of the incident, then the Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference standard sets the standard for an excessive force claim. Graham, 490 U.S. at 395 n. 10. But if the plaintiff was a free person, and the use of force occurred in the course of an arrest or other seizure, then the plaintiff’s claim arises under the Fourth Amendment and its reasonableness standard. Id. at 395. While this is seen most clearly in the law enforcement setting of arrests or investigatory stops, Graham, 490 U.S. at 395, the Fourth Amendment also applies in the civil setting to seizures of individuals for psychiatric evaluations or involuntary confinement. Monday v. Oullette, 118 F.3d 1099, 1102-04 (6th Cir. 1997). Thus, the Fourth Amendment reasonableness standard generally applies any time a government official seizes a free citizen with the purpose of potentially creating an involuntary custodial relationship with the State. Because the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable seizures “seems primarily directed to the initial act of restraining an individual’s liberty,” Phelps, 286 F.3d at 301 (quoting Valencia v. Wiggins, 981 F.2d 1440, 1444 (5th Cir. 1993)), we have stated that the standard applying to a pretrial detainee’s excessive force claim “lies in the murky area between the Fourth and Eighth Amendments,” Phelps, 286 F.3d at 300. At the very least, we have held that “the Fourteenth Amendment . . . ‘Due Process Clause protects a pretrial detainee from the use of excessive force that amounts to punishment.’” Phelps, 286 F.3d at 300 (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 395 n.10). The Fourteenth Amendment is the source of a pretrial detainee’s excessive force claim because when a No. 06-2263 Lanman v. Hinson, et al. Page 5 plaintiff is not in a situation where his rights are governed by the particular provisions of the Fourth or Eighth Amendments, the more generally applicable Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides the individual with protection against physical abuse by officials. Id. In Youngberg, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment provides involuntarily committed individuals with the right to be free from undue bodily restraint in the course of their treatment by the State. 457 U.S. at 324. Even though by bodily restraining a patient State actors are using physical force to restrain the liberty of a citizen, Graham, 490 U.S. at 395 n. 10 (“A ‘seizure’ triggering the Fourth Amendment's protections occurs . . . when government actors have, ‘by means of physical force or show of authority, . . . in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen.’”), the constitutional right recognized by Youngberg is not governed by the specific provisions of the Fourth Amendment. This is because the act of physically restraining the patient is for the purpose of medical treatment, which the State has determined is a necessary condition of the patient’s confinement. Likewise, a voluntarily confined individual who is bodily restrained by State actors, related to his consented-to medical treatment, has not been seized for purposes of the Fourth Amendment’s application so long as a reasonable person in the patient’s position would believe that he was free to leave the State’s care. See Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 573 (1988). If, however, a reasonable person in the patient’s position would believe that the physical restraint was not medical treatment, but rather an attempt by the State to transform the voluntary care relationship into involuntary confinement, then the patient has been seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment and its standard applies. Because at the time of the incident, Lanman was not in a situation where his rights were governed by the particular provisions of the Fourth Amendment, we find that the more generally applicable Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause applies to his excessive force claim. The Fourth Amendment is inapplicable here because defendants did not “seize” Lanman when they bodily restrained him. By requesting voluntary admission to Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital, Lanman consented to defendants providing him medical treatment. Defendants physically restrained Lanman to prevent him from harming himself or others and to administer medication to calm him down. A reasonable person in Lanman’s position, as a voluntarily admitted patient in a psychiatric hospital, would believe that the restraint was part of the medical treatment he had authorized, and not an attempt by defendants to keep him there against his will. While the facts viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff suggest that Lanman did ask defendants to get off of him so he could breathe, there is no evidence to suggest that Lanman expressed a desire to leave the hospital and defendants refused to allow him to do so. Therefore, Lanman was not seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. We find that the appropriate source for Lanman’s excessive force claim is the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides him, as a patient of a state care institution, with the constitutional right recognized in Youngberg to freedom from undue bodily restraint in the course of his treatment. Basing this right in substantive due process, rather than the Fourth Amendment, allows for balancing the individual’s liberty interest against the State’s asserted reasons for restraining the individual’s liberty while in its care. It also gives proper deference to the decisions of institutional professionals concerning medical treatment. The district court relied on DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Social Serv., 489 U.S. 189 (1989), for the proposition that it was the involuntary nature of the individual’s confinement that No. 06-2263 Lanman v. Hinson, et al. Page 6 invoked the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections in Youngberg and Terrance.1 Therefore, it held, because Lanman voluntarily committed himself to Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital (“KPH”) by signing an admission application, and was theoretically free to leave at any time, he was not owed any duties under the Fourteenth Amendment. We disagree. DeShaney does not address a situation in which the State itself, by the affirmative acts of its agents, infringes on an individual’s constitutionally protected liberty interests. The Court in DeShaney recognized that the protections of the Due Process Clause may be triggered when the State affirmatively acts and subjects an involuntarily confined individual to deprivations of liberty which are not among those generally authorized by his confinement. 489 U.S. at 200 n. 8. Likewise, the Due Process Clause would protect a voluntarily confined individual from deprivations of liberty by state actors that exceed those authorized by his consent to treatment. The mechanism which brought the individuals to the various facilities, whether considered “voluntary” or “involuntary,” is not controlling; in either case they are entitled to freedom from undue restraint at the hands of the State under the Fourteenth Amendment. Differentiating Fourteenth Amendment cases from those governed by the Fourth Amendment based on the voluntary or involuntary nature of the state’s custody would lead to arguably inconsistent results. In the present case even though Lanman was technically voluntarily committed, under Michigan law, once he gave the hospital notice of his intent to leave, the hospital could retain him against his will for up to three days. MICH. COMP. LAWS § 330.1419(1). Thus, applying the district court’s reasoning, if Lanman had decided to leave the hospital, and been retained involuntarily under § 330.1419(1), any § 1983 claims arising in those three days of involuntary confinement would fall under the Fourteenth Amendment. But immediately prior to his decision to leave, while his confinement was technically voluntary, the Fourth Amendment would apply to any § 1983 claims. Under such a system, while Lanman’s relationship and dependence on the state would not have changed, his constitutional protection would have. We do not believe such a distinction is warranted. 1 The district court found the involuntariness argument determinative by reading DeShaney to mean that the Constitution only imposes a duty on the State to assume responsibility for the safety of an individual when it has “take[n] a person into its custody and holds him there against his will.” DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 199-200 (emphasis added). But DeShaney decided only that the State is not responsible for the actions of third-party private actors against individuals unless it had imposed restraints on the individuals' liberty to render them unable to care for themselves. Id. at 200. The harms that occurred to the petitioner in DeShaney “occurred not while he was in the State's custody, but while he was in the custody of his natural father, who was in no sense a state actor.” Id. at 201. Furthermore, the DeShaney Court noted that the State had played no part in creating the dangers faced by the petitioner nor did it do anything to render him any more vulnerable to them. Id. This is unlike the present case in which Plaintiff alleges that the State, through the affirmative acts of Defendants, infringed on Lanman’s substantive due process right in freedom from undue restraint while in the State’s custody. His status as voluntary or involuntary is irrelevant as to his constitutional right to be free from the State depriving him of liberty without due process. At this time, we do not need to decide whether the State owes the same affirmative constitutional duties of care and protection to its voluntarily admitted residents as it owes to its involuntarily committed residents under Youngberg. In an unpublished disposition, however, a panel of this Court held that because the plaintiff had been voluntarily admitted to the state mental hospital, the State’s constitutional duty to protect those it renders helpless by confinement was not triggered. Higgs v. Latham, No. 91-5273, 1991 WL 21646, at  (6th Cir. Oct. 24, 1991) (unpublished). Our sister circuits are split on this issue. See Torisky v. Schweiker, 446 F.3d 438, 446-47 (3d Cir. 2006) (holding that while a voluntary custodial relationship with the State is not a deprivation of liberty sufficient to trigger the protections of Youngberg, a court commitment to state custody is not a necessary prerequisite--a voluntary commitment may become involuntary in nature by state action); Walton v. Alexander, 44 F.3d 1297, 1303-04 (5th Cir. 1995) (recognizing that after DeShaney, “if the person claiming the right of state protection is voluntarily within the care of custody of a state agency, he has no substantive due process right to the state’s protection”); Monahan v. Dorchester Counseling Ctr., 961 F.2d 987, 992 (1st Cir. 1992) (finding no substantive due process right to safety under DeShaney because voluntary patient was free to leave the facility); Society for Good Will to Retarded Children v. Cuomo, 737 F.2d 1239, 1245-46 (2d Cir. 1984) (finding Youngberg’s protections apply to voluntary and involuntary residents alike). No. 06-2263 Lanman v. Hinson, et al. Page 7 Accordingly, we find that the Fourteenth Amendment governs plaintiff’s claim.