Opinion ID: 797630
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Conscience-Shocking Conduct

Text: 35 In order to shock the conscience and trigger a violation of substantive due process, official conduct must be outrageous and egregious under the circumstances; it must be truly brutal and offensive to human dignity. . . . Smith v. Half Hollow Hills Cent. School Dist., 298 F.3d 168, 173 (2d Cir.2002) (quoting Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d 1028, 1033 & n. 6 (2d Cir.1973)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Courts have always been reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process because guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in this unchartered area are scarce and open-ended. Collins, 503 U.S. at 125, 112 S.Ct. 1061. 36 In gauging the shock, negligently inflicted harm is categorically beneath the threshold, while conduct intended to injure in some way unjustifiable by any government interest is the sort of official action most likely to rise to the conscience-shocking level. County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 849, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998). In between, the Supreme Court has recognized that conduct exhibiting deliberate indifference to harm can support a substantive due process claim, with a potent qualification that has bearing here: 37 Deliberate indifference that shocks in one environment may not be so patently egregious in another, and our concern with preserving the constitutional proportions of substantive due process demands an exact analysis of circumstances before any abuse of power is condemned as conscience-shocking. 38 Id. at 850, 118 S.Ct. 1708. The conscience recognizes the dilemma of conflicting obligations. In the apparent absence of harmless options at the time decisions must be made, an attempt to choose the least of evils is not itself shocking. 39 In Lewis, the Supreme Court held that the deliberate indifference of police officers who risk the lives of suspects by engaging in high speed pursuit cannot be deemed conscience-shocking, because they have obligations that tend to tug against each other and because [t]hey are supposed to act decisively and to show restraint at the same moment, and their decisions have to be made `in haste, under pressure, and frequently without the luxury of a second chance.' Id. at 853, 118 S.Ct. 1708 (quoting Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 320, 106 S.Ct. 1078, 89 L.Ed.2d 251 (1986)). Police conduct in such events does not shock the conscience unless there is intent to harm suspects physically or to worsen their legal plight. Id. at 854, 118 S.Ct. 1708. By contrast, prison officials' deliberate indifference to inmate welfare in non-emergency situations can be conscience-shocking because the officials have time to make unhurried judgments, upon the chance for repeated reflection, largely uncomplicated by the pulls of competing obligations. Id. at 853, 118 S.Ct. 1708. The duty of a prison official in such a situation does not ordinarily clash with other equally important governmental responsibilities, Whitley, 475 U.S. at 320, 106 S.Ct. 1078, because no substantial countervailing interest excuse[s] the State from making provision for the decent care and protection of those it locks up . . . . Lewis, 523 U.S. at 851, 118 S.Ct. 1708. 40 The plaintiffs do not allege that the defendants acted with an evil intent to harm; but they argue that the defendants' deliberate indifference shocks the conscience because the defendants made their decisions in an unhurried fashion with hours, days, weeks and even months to contemplate, deliberate, discuss and decide what to do and say about the health hazards posed to thousands of people who were coming onto and working at Ground Zero. Appellants' Br. 39-40. 41 The decisions alleged were made by the defendants over a period of time rather than in the rush of a car chase; but the decisions cannot on that account be fairly characterized as unhurried or leisured. The OIG Report (relied upon by the complaint) shows that the defendants were required to make decisions using rapidly changing information about the ramifications of unprecedented events in coordination with multiple federal agencies and local agencies and governments. See OIG Report at i (Responding to this crisis required organizations from all levels of government to coordinate their response efforts and to make critical public health and safety decisions quickly, and without all of the data that decision-makers would normally desire.); cf. Kaucher v. County of Bucks, 455 F.3d 418, 426-27 & n. 3 (3d Cir.2006) (We note defendants were under some pressure to respond quickly to the spread of infection [at the jail over a period of more than two years], and we question whether deliberately indifferent conduct is truly conscience shocking in this context.). 42 Hurried or unhurried, the defendants were subjected to the pull of competing obligations. The complaint concedes that the alleged wrongs to the plaintiffs were committed in aid of competing public goals that were not insubstantial: 43 Defendants caused to be made the aforesaid misleading statements and omissions . . . in order to insure that Plaintiffs and Class Members immediately began to perform search, recovery, clean-up and other work at the Ground Zero site immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and to create the overall impression that it was safe for people residing and working in areas near Ground Zero to return to their normal lives. 44 Compl. ¶ 62. The complaint thus recognizes what everyone knows: that one essential government function in the wake of disaster is to put the affected community on a normal footing, i.e., to avoid panic, keep order, restore services, repair infrastructure, and preserve the economy. 45 In previous cases in which we recognized a state created danger, government officials were not subject to the pull of competing obligations. As to Pena, there is certainly no countervailing public benefit to the encouragement of drunk driving. See Pena v. DePrisco, 432 F.3d 98, 114 (2d Cir.2005) (Not condoning egregious drunk driving `does not ordinarily clash with other equally important governmental responsibilities.') (quoting Lewis, 523 U.S. at 852, 118 S.Ct. 1708). And the active incitement of private violence against demonstrators in Dwares served no conceivable public interest; Dwares emphasized that the officers allegedly intended to punish the victims because of their political opinions. See Dwares v. City of New York, 985 F.2d 94, 99 (2d Cir.1993) (the allegations in the complaint would easily permit the finder of fact to infer that the officers intended the flag burners qua flag burners to suffer the injuries inflicted). 46 Beyond our own precedent, the plaintiffs direct us to two recent district court decisions that found conduct to be conscience-shocking on facts that are in one case somewhat similar, and in the other, identical. In Briscoe v. Potter, 355 F.Supp.2d 30 (D.D.C.2004), aff'd, 171 Fed. Appx. 850 (D.C.Cir.2005), postal employees who had contracted anthrax alleged that their supervisors had falsely told them that it was safe to return to work after anthrax had been discovered at their facility. The district court held that the supervisors' conduct was conscience-shocking: the supervisors were commendable for their dedication to getting the mail out but deplorable for not recognizing the potential human risk involved. . . . [T]hese alleged actions demonstrated a gross disregard for a dangerous situation in which `actual deliberation [was] practical.' Id. at 46 (quoting Butera v. Dist. of Columbia, 235 F.3d 637, 652 (D.C.Cir.2001)). The shock to the conscience notwithstanding, the due process claim was dismissed on qualified immunity, see 355 F.Supp.2d at 48, and a substantive due process claim arising from the same incident was dismissed in Richmond v. Potter, No. 03-00018, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25374, at -29 (D.D.C. Sept. 30, 2004), aff'd on other grounds, 171 Fed.Appx. 851 (D.C.Cir.2005). Plaintiffs here allege harm similar to that suffered in Briscoe, but we need not decide whether Briscoe was correctly decided, because there is a salient ground for distinction: the need to process the mails at a single postal facility cannot be compared with the need to restore the residential, economic, educational and civic life of an entire community. 47 In Benzman v. Whitman, No. 04 Civ. 1888, 2006 WL 250527 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 2, 2006), the district court considered substantive due process claims arising from the same press releases at issue in this case. Citing Briscoe, Benzman held that if the reassuring statements made by EPA officials were made with knowledge of their falsehood, they were unquestionably conscience-shocking based on the nature of the EPA's mandate: 48 The EPA is designated as the agency in our country to protect human health and the environment, and is mandated to work for a cleaner, healthier environment for the American people. The agency enforces regulations regarding pollution in our environment and the presence of toxic and hazardous substances, and has endorsed and promulgated regulations for hazardous and toxic materials, such as asbestos and lead. As head of the EPA, Whitman knew of this mandate and took part in and directed the regulatory activities of the agency. Given this responsibility, the allegations in this case of Whitman's reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the September 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking. 49 Id. at  (footnote and citation omitted). We disagree with this reasoning, which focuses too narrowly on the mission of a single agency without considering the other substantial government interests at stake. 6 50 If anything, the importance of the EPA's mission counsels against broad constitutional liability in this situation: the risk of such liability will tend to inhibit EPA officials in making difficult decisions about how to disseminate information to the public in an environmental emergency. Knowing that lawsuits alleging intentional misconduct could result from the disclosure of incomplete, confusingly comprehensive, or mistakenly inaccurate information, officials might default to silence in the face of the public's urgent need for information. This is because, as the Supreme Court held in Collins v. City of Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125-29, 112 S.Ct. 1061, 117 L.Ed.2d 261 (1992), a government official's failure to warn of a known danger, without more, does not violate substantive due process. 51 Collins also instructed that, at least in the § 1983 context, courts should operate from a presumption that the administration of government programs is based on a rational decisionmaking process that takes account of competing social, political, and economic forces. Id. at 128, 112 S.Ct. 1061. While § 1983 implicates issues of federalism that are not relevant here, the Court's instruction has force nonetheless: substantive due process liability should not be allowed to inhibit or control policy decisions of government agencies, even if some decisions could be made to seem gravely erroneous in retrospect. Cf. United States v. Varig Airlines, 467 U.S. 797, 814, 104 S.Ct. 2755, 81 L.Ed.2d 660 (1984) (Federal Tort Claims Act discretionary function exception is designed to prevent judicial `second-guessing' of legislative and administrative decisions grounded in social, economic, and political policy through the medium of an action in tort). 52 Can the goals of a government policy possibly outweigh a known risk of loss of life or bodily harm? The EPA and other federal agencies often must decide whether to regulate particular conduct by taking into account whether the risk to the potentially affected population will be acceptable. Such decisions require an exercise of the conscience, but such decisions cannot be deemed egregious, conscience-shocking, and arbitrary in the constitutional sense, Collins, 503 U.S. at 129, 112 S.Ct. 1061, merely because they contemplate some likelihood of bodily harm. 53 Moreover, mass displacement, civil disorder and economic chaos in an urban area also can result in bodily harm and loss of life. The relative magnitude of such risks cannot be reliably computed, and they are in any event incommensurable. Accepting as we must the allegation that the defendants made the wrong decision by disclosing information they knew to be inaccurate, and that this had tragic consequences for the plaintiffs, we conclude that a poor choice made by an executive official between or among the harms risked by the available options is not conscience-shocking merely because for some persons it resulted in grave consequences that a correct decision could have avoided. [T]he touchstone of due process is protection of the individual against arbitrary action of government, which in the substantive manifestation of due process is exhibited by the exercise of power without any reasonable justification in the service of a legitimate governmental objective. Lewis, 523 U.S. at 845-46, 118 S.Ct. 1708 (internal quotation omitted). When great harm is likely to befall someone no matter what a government official does, the allocation of risk may be a burden on the conscience of the one who must make such decisions, but does not shock the contemporary conscience. 54 These principles apply notwithstanding the great service rendered by those who repaired New York, the heroism of those who entered the site when it was unstable and on fire, and the serious health consequences that are plausibly alleged in the complaint. 55    56 Because the conduct at issue here does not shock the conscience, there was no constitutional violation. We therefore need not decide whether the conduct alleged violated law that was then clearly established, or whether any special factors counsel hesitation in the recognition of a Bivens action against the defendants. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm.