Opinion ID: 171732
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sufficiency of the Complaint Against the Individual Officers

Text: This court reviews de novo the district court's grant of a motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), applying the same legal standard applicable in the district court. Teigen v. Renfrow, 511 F.3d 1072, 1078 (10th Cir.2007). In reviewing a motion to dismiss, this court must look for plausibility in the complaint. Under this standard, a complaint must include enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face. Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The allegations must be enough that, if assumed to be true, the plaintiff plausibly (not just speculatively) has a claim for relief. Robbins v. Oklahoma, 519 F.3d 1242, 1247 (10th Cir.2008). The district court found it unnecessary to determine the exact parameters of the First Amendment protection for sale of expressive art work because of the vagueness of [Mr. Christensen's] allegations. As explained above, the district court operated on the assumption, based on its reading of cases from courts in other circuits, that the sale of artwork on public streets and property is presumptively expressive (and so entitled to constitutional protection) if the artwork falls into one of the four categories of art identified in Bery : paintings, photographs, prints, and sculptures. R. Vol. III, Doc. 27 at 4-5. The district court regarded the plaintiff's complaint too vague to state a claim on the ground that it failed to identify the material at issue. Id., at 4, 6. The court also ruled that the individual officers were in any event entitled to qualified immunity because the constitutional violation, if any, was not clearly established at the time of their actions. Because this alternative ground would preclude a finding of liability against the officers even if the plaintiff amended his complaint to eliminate its vagueness, the court denied leave to amend and dismissed the suit against the officers. We do not agree with the district court's first rationale for dismissal, the vagueness of the complaint. The complaint alleged that Mr. Christensen is a visual artist. His art work has been displayed at various art festivals, galleries, shows, etc. in Utah. R. Vol. II, Doc. 3 at 4, Complaint, ¶ 12. If the First Amendment principles set forth by the Second Circuit in Bery v. New York apply, as the district court seemed to assume, we are inclined to think the allegation in ¶ 12 is sufficient, even without further specification of the material at issue. Rule 8(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires only that a complaint contain a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief. It is not necessary for the complaint to contain factual allegations so detailed that all possible defenses would be obviated. Even after Twombly, the factual allegations need only contain enough allegations of fact to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face. Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 1974, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007). As we observed in Robbins, plausibility in the context of determining the sufficiency of a complaint refer[s] to the scope of the allegations in a complaint: if they are so general that they encompass a wide swath of conduct, much of it innocent, then the plaintiffs `have not nudged their claims across the line from conceivable to plausible.' 519 F.3d at 1247 ( quoting Twombly, 127 S.Ct. at 1974). This requirement of plausibility serves not only to weed out claims that do not (in the absence of additional allegations) have a reasonable prospect of success, but also to inform the defendants of the actual grounds of the claim against them. Id. at 1248. Mr. Christensen's complaint provides sufficient factual material that the defendants must know the actual grounds of the complaint against them, and if he is able to prove the allegations, he plausibly has a claim for relief, at least under the constitutional theory assumed by the district court. There is no need to know, as the district court thought, anything more specific about the nature of Mr. Christensen's creations. That he is a visual artist whose art work has been displayed at various art festivals, galleries, shows, etc. in Utah is enough to demonstrate that he was plausibly within the reach of Bery. To be sure, further development of the facts on discovery might possibly disclose that his art work is unexpressive, perhaps because it is not original (as the defendants suggest in their appellate brief), but the alleged fact that his work has been displayed at festivals, galleries, and shows, as well as Mr. Christensen's self-description as a visual artist, makes the complaint at least plausible under Bery. But this assumes that Bery, or some close equivalent, is an accurate statement of the law. The district court did not so hold, finding it unnecessary to determine the exact parameters of First Amendment protection because of the vagueness of the complaint. R. Vol. III, Doc. 27 at 6. Until very recently, in a case of qualified immunity, district and appellate courts were required to resolve the issue of law before proceeding to whether it was clearly established. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). It would have been very difficult to do that here. The parties do not brief whether Bery is a correct statement of the law, but for the most part appear to agree for purposes of this appeal that persons selling original artwork are entitled to do so in traditional public fora, notwithstanding generally applicable ordinances forbidding unlicensed sales of any material on public property. Compare Appellant's Br. 7 (an artist's sale of his original artwork constitutes speech protected under the First Amendment) with Appellees' Br. 14-15 (relying on a Ninth Circuit opinion which, according to Appellees, was expressly careful in limiting its holding to original art work). It may be, however, that restrictions on sales of expressive materials are properly analyzed as restrictions on expressive conduct rather than speech, and thus subject to the relaxed constitutional standard set forth in United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968); see Heideman v. S. Salt Lake City, 348 F.3d 1182, 1192 (10th Cir.2003). [3] If so, this record is wholly inadequate for us to determine whether the defendants violated Mr. Christensen's constitutional rights. Among other things, we have no basis on which to evaluate the governmental purposes served by the regulation or the alternative channels of communication available to Mr. Christensen. On the other hand, it may be that the sale even of unoriginal art work could be expressive and therefore protected, assuming sales of expressive materials enjoy this kind of constitutional protection in the first place. If that is the proper constitutional framework, determining whether Mr. Christensen's rights were abridged would require analysis of the record without the benefit of relevant briefing by the parties. Indeed, it is possible that some other constitutional analysis applies in lieu of any that we, or the parties, have discussed. It would serve no practical purpose for us to delve any deeper into the First Amendment principles applicable to this case. The district court dismissed the complaint on vagueness grounds, which we have concluded we must reverse. The defendants have not argued an alternative ground for affirmance and the record is not sufficient for us to apply the O'Brien test. In the next section of this opinion, we will conclude that the right asserted by Mr. Christensen was not clearly established, which obviates any need for a remand with respect to the individual defendants. Thus, further analysis of the merits would have no actual consequence for the litigants. Fortunately, very recently, while this opinion was being prepared, the Supreme Court jettisoned its prior holding that courts in qualified immunity cases must determine whether the plaintiff's constitutional rights were violated before turning to whether the asserted right was clearly established. In Pearson v. Callahan, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 808, ___ L.Ed.2d ___ (2009), the Court stated: while the sequence set forth [in Saucier ] is often appropriate, it should no longer be regarded as mandatory. The judges of the district courts and the courts of appeals should be permitted to exercise their sound discretion in deciding which of the two prongs of the qualified immunity analysis should be addressed first in light of the circumstances in the particular case at hand. Id. at 818. This case is a prime example of when the discretion to avoid the first half of the Saucier two-step should be exercised. To attempt to answer Saucier 's first question would require us to opine on an open and significant issue of constitutional law on an inadequate record, without benefit either of a district court holding or of relevant briefing, even though the issue would have no effect on the outcome of the case. We therefore exercise our newfound discretion and move on.