Opinion ID: 4567680
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: State-Created Danger Claims

Text: The District Court held that, as alleged, neither the Dispatcher nor the Operator was liable for the Johnson Family’s harm. Because the Dispatcher did not act affirmatively, and because the Operator’s behavior did not shock the conscience, we agree.
Liability The state-created danger doctrine traces to a few words in the Supreme Court’s opinion in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989). Like the case here, the facts were disturbing. County officials allegedly learned of a father’s penchant for beating his son Joshua. Id. at 192–93. Rather than protect the defenseless child, the officials elected against intervening, and the dad’s final attack caused “brain damage so severe that [the boy was] expected to spend the rest of his life confined to an institution.” Id. at 193. Joshua and his mother then sued, alleging, novelly, that the officials’ failure to intervene violated the boy’s constitutional rights. Id. The Supreme Court rejected the claim. Such rights appear nowhere in the text of the Constitution, of course, and “the Due Process Clause[] generally confer[s] no affirmative right to governmental aid, even where such aid may be necessary to secure life, liberty, or property interests of which the government itself may not deprive the individual.” Id. at 196. Rather, only “in certain limited circumstances” does “the Constitution impose[] upon the State affirmative duties of care and protection with respect to particular individuals,” such as 6 prisoners and the “involuntarily committed.” Id. at 198–99. In those cases, the State has taken an “affirmative act of restraining the individual’s freedom to act on his own behalf,” and that could be a “‘deprivation of liberty’ triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause.” Id. at 200. But there was not that kind of “special relationship” between the county and the young boy. Id. at 197, 201. Further, while the county “may have been aware of the dangers that Joshua faced in the free world, it played no part in their creation, nor did it do anything to render him any more vulnerable to them.” Id. at 201. From those simple words—“played no part in their creation” and “render him any more vulnerable”—sprang a considerable expansion of the law. While seemingly not part of DeShaney’s holding, lower courts seized on those words to create a new remedy that would, it was thought, aid the next “[p]oor Joshua.” 3 Thus was born the “state-created danger” 3 DeShaney v. Winnebago Cty. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 213 (1989) (Blackmun, J., dissenting). In his oftrepeated dissenting opinion, Justice Blackmun urged a “‘sympathetic’ reading” of the Constitution, “one which comports with dictates of fundamental justice.” Id. As the majority noted, victims like Joshua do deserve both sympathy and action, and “[t]he people of Wisconsin may well prefer a system of liability which would place upon the State and its officials the responsibility for failure to act in situations such as the present one.” Id. at 203. But the Constitution does not permit the courts to “thrust” that remedy upon them by an “expansion of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” outside its ordinary meaning. Id. That is because 7 theory of liability, which we adopted in Kneipp v. Tedder, 95 F.3d 1199, 1205 (3d Cir. 1996).4 There, a severely intoxicated husband and wife were walking home from a bar. Id. at 1201. Police officers stopped the couple, separated them, and allowed the man to continue on his way. Id. at 1201–02. The officers later “sent [the woman] home alone,” but she never made it; she was “found unconscious at the bottom of an embankment” the next day. Id. at 1202–03. The woman’s parents then sued, asserting that the officers had violated their daughter’s substantive due process rights. Id. at 1203. But there was no “special relationship” between the state and the decedent falling within DeShaney’s narrow holding. Id. at 1205. Charting a new course, we elevated the commentary in DeShaney and discovered that the Court had “left open the possibility that a constitutional violation might . . . occur[]” when a state “play[s a] part in . . . creat[ing]” a danger or when it “render[s a person] more vulnerable to” that danger. Id. at 1205 (quoting DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 201). Since the police separated the couple, “then sen[t the woman] home unescorted in a seriously intoxicated state in cold weather,” the state, through its actors, “made [her] more vulnerable to harm.” Id. “the Constitution is a written instrument” and “its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now.” Brown v. Ent. Merch. Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786, 822 (2011) (Thomas, J., dissenting) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Rather, our Constitution reserves the virtue of sympathy to the people. 4 Earlier cases “considered the possible viability” of the theory. Kneipp v. Tedder, 95 F.3d 1199, 1205 (3d Cir. 1996) (collecting cases). 8 at 1209. The danger, we explained, was not the plaintiff’s intoxicated journey from tavern to domicile. Id. Rather, it was the “state-created danger” of removing her male companion, who presumably would have sheltered her from peril, that violated the guarantee of due process framed in the Fourteenth Amendment. 5 Id. at 1211.
Several other Circuit Courts have also recognized the state-created danger theory of liability.6 But the Supreme Court 5 Courts often treat the “state-created danger” doctrine “as if it were a rule of common law.” Weiland v. Loomis, 938 F.3d 917, 920 (7th Cir. 2019). But it is not, and we must guard against reasoning that, especially with the best intentions, deviates from the Constitution’s careful balance of authority recognized in DeShaney. See Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 332 (1986) (“We have previously rejected reasoning that would make of the Fourteenth Amendment a font of tort law to be superimposed upon whatever systems may already be administered by the States.” (quoting Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 701 (1976) (internal quotation marks omitted)). 6 See, e.g., Doe v. Jackson Local Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 954 F.3d 925, 932 (6th Cir. 2020); Martinez v. City of Clovis, 943 F.3d 1260, 1271 (9th Cir. 2019); Estate of Her v. Hoeppner, 939 F.3d 872, 876 (7th Cir. 2019); Anderson ex rel. Anderson v. City of Minneapolis, 934 F.3d 876, 881 (8th Cir. 2019); Matthews v. Bergdorf, 889 F.3d 1136, 1150 (10th Cir. 2018); Okin v. Village of Cornwall-On-Hudson Police Dep’t., 577 F.3d 415, 428 (2d Cir. 2009). But see Keller v. Fleming, 952 F.3d 216, 227 (5th Cir. 2020) (“[T]he Fifth Circuit has 9 has not.7 And the doctrine has not escaped criticism, since it does not stem from the text of the Constitution or any other positive law, 8 and consequently vests open-ended lawmaking power in the judiciary. 9 Moreover, the “state-created danger” never recognized th[e] ‘state-created-danger’ exception.”); Turner v. Thomas, 930 F.3d 640, 646 (4th Cir. 2019) (“[W]e have never issued a published opinion recognizing a successful state-created danger claim.”); Irish v. Maine, 849 F.3d 521, 526 (1st Cir. 2017) (“While this circuit has discussed the possible existence of the state-created danger theory, we have never found it applicable to any specific set of facts.”). One oddity of this reasoning is that it seems to create liability for the kind of action DeShaney did not. 7 Nor is it certain to. See Collins v. City of Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125 (1992) (“As a general matter, the Court has always been reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process[.]”). 8 See Doe ex rel. Johnson v. S.C. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 597 F.3d 163, 188 (4th Cir. 2010) (Wilkinson, J., concurring) (“Neither the majority nor the parties point to any instance where Congress has laid down a rule to govern the conduct in this case, and it is wrong for a federal court to rush in where Congress has feared to tread.”) 9 See Johnson, 597 F.3d at 184 (Wilkinson, J., concurring) (“Law exists in part to guard against the overreaching of public authority, and from that general purpose the life-tenured federal courts are not exempt. When the many cautionary maxims of restraint are toppled like dominos, the chances of judicial miscalculation exponentially increase. . . . Federal courts simply do not have a roving warrant to adopt whatever policies they believe to be beneficial, all in the name 10 doctrine offers little help to public employees seeking to better discharge their duties, and does not tell them “what to do, or avoid, in any situation.” Weiland v. Loomis, 938 F.3d 917, 919 (7th Cir. 2019). But we remain bound to faithfully apply our precedent explaining the scope of the doctrine. As currently formulated, that requires a plaintiff to plead four elements: first, foreseeable and fairly direct harm; second, action marked by “a degree of culpability that shocks the conscience”; third, a relationship with the state making the plaintiff a foreseeable victim, rather than a member of the public in general; and fourth, an affirmative use of state authority in a way that created a danger, or made others more vulnerable than had the state not acted at all. See Sauers v. Borough of Nesquehoning, of substantive due process.”); Doe ex rel. Magee v. Covington Cty. Sch. Dist. ex rel. Keys, 675 F.3d 849, 874 (5th Cir. 2012) (Higginson, J., concurring) (noting the “loose articulation” of the state-created danger doctrine); cf. Collins, 503 U.S. at 125 (“[G]uideposts for responsible decisionmaking in this unchartered area [of substantive due process] are scarce and open-ended. The doctrine of judicial self-restraint requires us to exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field.”) (citation omitted); see also Kedra v. Schroeter, 876 F.3d 424, 462 (3d Cir. 2017) (Fisher, J., concurring) (“[I]t is troubling how far we have expanded substantive due process . . . .”); Morrow v. Balaski, 719 F.3d 160, 186 (3d Cir. 2013) (en banc) (Ambro, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“Federal courts cannot be the forum for every complaint that a government actor could have taken an alternate course that would have avoided harm to one of our citizens.”). 11 905 F.3d 711, 717 (3d Cir. 2018). We apply that precedent to the facts Appellant pleads here.
Authority The state-created danger theory requires Appellant to allege that the Dispatcher “affirmatively used . . . her authority in a way that created a danger to the [decedents] or that rendered [them] more vulnerable to a danger than had [the Dispatcher] not acted at all”—i.e., to allege an affirmative act. L.R. v. Sch. Dist. of Phila., 836 F.3d 235, 242 (3d Cir. 2016) (quoting Bright v. Westmoreland, 443 F.3d 276, 281 (3d Cir. 2006)). True, we have noted the “inherent difficulty in drawing a line between an affirmative act and a failure to act,” and sometimes frame the inquiry as asking whether a defendant’s “exercise of authority resulted in a departure from th[e] status quo.” Id. at 242–43. But we have repeatedly held that an alleged failure to do something, standing alone, cannot be the basis for a state-created danger claim. See, e.g., Burella v. City of Phila., 501 F.3d 134, 146–47 (3d Cir. 2007) (police officers’ failure to intervene in domestic-violence situation did not satisfy element four). Here, there are no allegations of affirmative conduct by the Dispatcher that caused the Johnson Family’s harms. Rather, Appellant claims only that the Dispatcher failed to communicate the Johnson Family’s location to the firefighters. 10 But this is a classic allegation of omission, a 10 (App. at 56 (“[The] Dispatcher violated the decedents’ substantive due process rights by failing 12 failure to do something—in short, a claim of inaction and not action. That is not enough under our prior decisions, and so we will affirm the dismissal of that claim.
the Conscience Appellant alleges that the Operator violated the Johnson Family’s constitutional rights by “directing them to close themselves inside the burning building’s 3rd floor rear room, assuring them that [f]irefighters were coming to their rescue, but then failing inexplicably to inform the [f]irefighters of [their] existence, location, or need of rescue.” (App. at 54.) The District Court held that those allegations do not “shock the conscience,” as that phrase is defined in our precedent. We agree. Start with the standard, recognizing that it offers little light. See, e.g., Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d 1028, 1033 (2d Cir. 1973) (noting the shock-the-conscience test “is not one that can be applied by a computer, [but] it at least points the way”), quoted in Cty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 847 (1998). We have explained that “[t]he exact level of culpability required to shock the conscience . . . depends on the circumstances of each case, and the threshold for liability varies with the state actor’s opportunity to deliberate before taking action.” Kedra v. Schroeter, 876 F.3d 424, 437 (3d Cir. 2017). In “‘hyperpressurized environments requiring a snap judgment,’ an official must actually intend to cause harm in inexplicably to inform the Firefighters of decedents’ existence, location, or need of rescue on the 3rd floor of the burning building.”).) 13 order to be liable.” Id. (alteration omitted) (quoting Vargas v. City of Phila., 783 F.3d 962, 973 (3d Cir. 2015)). “In situations in which the state actor is required to act ‘in a matter of hours or minutes,’ . . . the state actor [must] ‘disregard a great risk of serious harm.’” Id. (quoting Sanford v. Stiles, 456 F.3d 298, 310 (3d Cir. 2006) (per curiam)). “And where the actor has time to make an ‘unhurried judgment[],’ a plaintiff need only allege facts supporting an inference that the official acted with a mental state of ‘deliberate indifference.’” Id. (alteration omitted) (quoting Sanford, 456 F.3d at 309). The District Court believed that the Operator faced “emergency circumstances,” so the intent-to-cause-harm standard applied. (App. at 24.) On appeal, Appellant argues for a lower standard. But the claim fails even under the deliberateindifference test. Consider the Operator’s instructions and assurances. Sheltering in place rather than risking a perilous descent through a raging fire mirrors standard practices. As for the promises of timely help, Appellant notes that the Johnson Family “forwent attempting to escape the burning building by . . . another rear window that opened onto a flat, walkable roof.” (App. at 51.) But she does not allege that the Operator knew about this means of escape. The Operator’s failure to communicate the decedents’ location and need of rescue is also insufficient. 11 “[T]he Due 11 Were this failure the sole basis of Appellant’s claim against the Operator, we would affirm the dismissal of this claim for the same reason as the claim against the Dispatcher— i.e., for failure to allege an affirmative act. Appellant, however, alleges that the Operator violated the decedents’ constitutional 14 Process Clause is simply not implicated by a negligent act of an official causing unintended loss of or injury to life, liberty, or property.” Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 328 (1986); cf. Rouse v. Plantier, 182 F.3d 192, 197 (3d Cir. 1999) (“[C]laims of negligence or medical malpractice, without some more culpable state of mind, do not constitute ‘deliberate indifference.’ . . . We have found ‘deliberate indifference’ . . . where [a] prison official . . . knows of a prisoner’s need for medical treatment but intentionally refuses to provide it.” (emphasis added)). Appellant does not allege that the Operator intentionally declined to relay the decedents’ location to the [f]irefighters. Instead, she argues the Operator “fail[ed] inexplicably to inform the firefighters of the decedents’ rights “by a combination” of the instructions, assurances, and the failure to communicate. (App. at 54.) Because we hold that Appellant’s claim against the Operator does not satisfy element two of the state-created danger theory, we need not determine whether a combination of affirmative acts and omissions satisfies element four. Cf. Rivas v. City of Passaic, 365 F.3d 181, 197 (3d Cir. 2004) (where EMTs falsely told police that man assaulted them, element four satisfied by, for example, EMTs’ later failure to advise police about the man’s medical condition and decision to “abandon control over the situation”). But see Walter v. Pike Cty., 544 F.3d 182, 195–96 (3d Cir. 2008) (under state-created danger theory, a defendant’s affirmative act does not impose a later duty to act if the initial act did not shock the conscience); id. at 196 (“[T]hese findings would not amount to a constitutional violation—they would not establish that the defendants committed a culpable act, only that they acted in 2001 and then, months later, shocked the conscience through inaction.”). And we need not address elements one and three. 15 existence, location, or need of rescue.” (App. at 54 (emphasis added).) But the only reasonable inference is that the Operator neglected to relay that information through error, omission, or oversight. Nothing in the complaint or, indeed, ordinary experience supports the inference that the Operator deliberately chose to discard her concern for the Johnson Family’s lives. For that reason, Appellant’s claim against the Operator does not satisfy element two of the state-created danger theory. 12 So we will affirm the dismissal of that claim.