Opinion ID: 456390
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: trerice's claims arising directly under the constitution

Text: 9 Trerice filed suit seeking damages on account of actions which allegedly violated his son's constitutional rights. Trerice's constitutional claims were properly dismissed because (1) no private cause of action under the Constitution is available to him, and (2) even were an appropriate cause of action available, the military decisions of which he complains are not subject to judicial review.
10 A cause of action in monetary damages against individual federal officials for constitutional infringements exists by virtue of Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971), and its progeny. A Bivens-type action for damages will not lie, however, when special factors counselling hesitation are present. Id. at 396, 91 S.Ct. at 2005, quoted in Chappell v. Wallace, 462 U.S. 296, 298, 103 S.Ct. 2362, 2364, 76 L.Ed.2d 586 (1983). 11 The Supreme Court, in Chappell, concluded that 12 the unique disciplinary structure of the Military Establishment and Congress' activity in the field constitute special factors which dictate that it would be inappropriate to provide enlisted military personnel a Bivens-type remedy against their superior officers. 13 Id. at 304, 103 S.Ct. at 2367. Chappell involved a suit by Navy enlisted men against their superior officers for alleged racially discriminatory conduct. The Court's broad holding there, that enlisted military personnel may not maintain a suit to recover damages from a superior officer for alleged constitutional violations, id. at 305, 103 S.Ct. at 2368, raises an insuperable obstacle to Trerice's constitutional claims in the present case. 14 Trerice, in his brief, argues that his constitutional claim falls within the Chappell doctrine's acknowledged exception for particularly extreme, as opposed to garden-variety, constitutional violations. However, Chappell involved allegations of discriminatory conduct which included the imposition of penalties of unusual severity, 462 U.S. at 297, 103 S.Ct. at 2364, and so is factually quite similar to the present case. 15 But a more fundamental flaw in Trerice's argument is that there exists no such exception as he posits to the broad rule of Chappell. He misreads the assertion in the Chappell opinion that 16 This Court has never held, nor do we now hold, that military personnel are barred from all redress in civilian courts for constitutional wrongs suffered in the course of military service. [Citations.] 17 Id. at 304, 103 S.Ct. at 2367. This statement indicates merely that the Chappell Court did not intend to preclude all suits by military personnel arising out of constitutional violations; a non-Bivens, congressionally-authorized statutory cause of action for damages against superior officers might lie, as might other constitutional claims, if they are not directed at individual superior officers. 18 We have recently endorsed a broad reading of Chappell in this Circuit, in a decision which affirmed the dismissal of a former Air Force pilot's Bivens claims against his erstwhile commanding officers. Mollnow v. Carlton, 716 F.2d 627, 629-30 & n. 4 (9th Cir.1983) (we believe the Court necessarily imposed a per se prohibition on the filing of Bivens-type actions by servicemen against their superiors), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 1595, 80 L.Ed.2d 126 (1984).
19 A second, independent ground for proper dismissal of Trerice's constitutional claims is provided by the fact that the military decisions upon which his complaint focuses are not subject to judicial review, under the doctrine of Wallace v. Chappell, 661 F.2d 729, 731-34 (9th Cir.1981), rev'd on other grounds, 462 U.S. 296, 103 S.Ct. 2362, 76 L.Ed.2d 586 (1983). There, we adopted, at least where constitutional claims are asserted, id. at 733, a version of the Fifth Circuit's test of reviewability of military decisions as enunciated in Mindes v. Seaman, 453 F.2d 197, 201-02 (5th Cir.1971). We have since reaffirmed these principles in several decisions written after the Supreme Court's reversal of Wallace. See Helm v. State of California, 722 F.2d 507, 509-10 (9th Cir.1983); Watkins v. United States Army, 721 F.2d 687, 690 (9th Cir.1983); Gonzalez v. Department of Army, 718 F.2d 926, 929-30 (9th Cir.1983). 20 Trerice's constitutional claims fail to satisfy at least one requirement of this test, in that they lack any allegation of exhaustion of intraservice remedies, and so were properly dismissed.