Opinion ID: 2742439
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: a state actor affirmatively used

Text: his or her authority in a way that created a danger to the citizen or 18 that rendered the citizen more vulnerable to danger than had the state not acted at all. Bright v. Westmoreland Cnty., 443 F.3d 276, 281 (3d Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks and footnotes omitted). The Estate asserts that Appellees—either Mordaga or another employee within the BCPO—disclosed Lagano’s status as a confidential informant to members of organized crime families, and that this disclosure established a statecreated danger that resulted in his murder. Mordaga responded that he is entitled to qualified immunity on the state-created danger claims because the Estate failed to establish either a violation of a constitutional right, or that the constitutional right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation. The District Court focused on the second prong of the qualified immunity analysis, holding that the constitutional right claimed to have been violated was not clearly established at the time of Lagano’s murder. In reaching this conclusion, the District Court reasoned that because “[t]here are no published cases that extend the state created danger right to confidential informants in the Third Circuit[,] . . . it would be unfair to hold that a constitutional right was ‘clearly established.’” (App. 6a–7a.) The District Court defined the right asserted by the Estate as “a confidential informant’s constitutional right to nondisclosure.” (Id.) We cannot endorse the District Court’s unduly narrow construction of the right at issue, or its statement that the right was not clearly established. It has been clearly established in this Circuit for nearly two decades that a state-created danger 19 violates due process. See Kneipp v. Tedder, 95 F.3d 1199, 1211 (3d Cir. 1996) (holding that state-created danger theory is “viable mechanism for establishing a constitutional violation.”). That we have not applied the state-created danger theory in the context of a confidential informant is not dispositive on the qualified immunity defense. As the Supreme Court explained in Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730 (2002), “[a]lthough earlier cases involving fundamentally similar facts can provide especially strong support for a conclusion that the law is clearly established, they are not necessary to such a finding.” Id. at 741 (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). Thus, the Estate can overcome Mordaga’s qualified immunity defense without proving that we have previously issued a binding decision recognizing a state-created danger in the context of the disclosure of a confidential informant’s status, and the District Court erred in requiring it to do so. The focus of the qualified immunity inquiry is on the allegations made by the Estate. Specifically, the question is whether the facts averred by the Estate fall within the elements of the state-created danger theory, and whether “it would be clear to a reasonable officer” that the alleged disclosure was unlawful under the circumstances. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202 (2001). We express no opinion as to whether the amended complaint satisfies these inquiries, but, because the District Court failed to apply the proper standard, we must vacate the District Court’s decision in favor of Mordaga on the qualified immunity defense.