Opinion ID: 4558232
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: discretionary-function exception

Text: Plaintiffs cannot sue the United States unless the United States unequivocally has waived its sovereign immunity.3 See Zelaya v. United States, 781 F.3d 1315, 1321 (11th Cir. 2015) (“It is well settled that the United States, as a sovereign entity, is immune from suit unless it consents to be sued.”). The FTCA choice in the first instance. Indeed, Plaintiffs have never contested the first part of Gaubert’s test. See infra n.5. 3 If sovereign immunity applies, a court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to consider a claim. Zelaya v. United States, 781 F.3d 1315, 1322 (11th Cir. 2015). 6 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 7 of 132 waives the United States’ sovereign immunity from suit in federal courts for its employees’ negligence. See 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b). Congress, however, has carved out certain exceptions to that limited waiver, including the discretionary-function exception in 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a).4 The discretionary-function exception provides that, notwithstanding § 1346(b), the United States preserves its sovereign immunity as to “[a]ny claim . . . based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty on the part of a federal agency or an employee of the Government, whether or not the discretion involved be abused.” 28 U.S.C. § 2680(a) (emphasis added). “[T]he purpose of the exception is 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.” Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 323, 111 S. Ct. at 1273 (quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court has developed a two-part test that courts must apply in determining whether challenged conduct falls within the discretionary-function exception to the FTCA’s waiver of sovereign immunity. See id. at 322, 111 S. Ct. at 1273. First, a court examines the nature of the challenged conduct or act to determine whether it is “discretionary in nature,” meaning that it involves “an 4 The exceptions found in the Act are codified in 28 U.S.C. § 2680, and “must be strictly construed in favor of the United States.” Zelaya, 781 F.3d at 1322 (quotation marks omitted). 7 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 8 of 132 element of judgment or choice.” Id. at 322, 111 S. Ct. at 1273 (quotation marks omitted); see also Ochran v. United States, 117 F.3d 495, 499 (11th Cir. 1997) (quoting Gaubert). Second, if the challenged conduct involves an element of judgment or choice, a court then determines “whether that judgment is of the kind that the discretionary function exception was designed to shield.” Id. at 322–23, 111 S. Ct. at 1273 (quotation marks omitted). As to the first part of the test, “if a ‘federal statute, regulation, or policy specifically prescribes a course of action for an employee to follow,’” there is no judgment or choice involved. Id. at 322, 111 S. Ct. at 1273 (quoting Berkovitz v. United States, 486 U.S. 531, 536, 108 S. Ct. 1954, 1958–59 (1988)); see also Phillips v. United States, 956 F.2d 1071, 1076 (11th Cir. 1992). The inquiry focuses on “whether the controlling statute or regulation mandates that a government agent perform his or her function in a specific manner.” Hughes v. United States, 110 F.3d 765, 768 (11th Cir. 1997) (quotation marks omitted). As an initial matter, there is no contention on appeal—nor has there been at any point in the proceedings—that the first part of the Gaubert test is not met in this case. Plaintiffs have not identified, either in the district court, in their briefs on appeal, or at oral argument, any “federal statute, regulation, or policy specifically prescrib[ing] a course of action” that U.S. Forestry Branch officials were to follow 8 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 9 of 132 after initiating a controlled burn. 5 See Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 322, 111 S. Ct. at 1273 (quotation marks omitted). Thus, there was at least some element of judgment or choice at play in how the U.S. Forestry Branch observed, monitored, and maintained the controlled burn. In this particular appeal, our analysis is therefore limited to the second part of Gaubert’s test: whether the judgment or choice that was exercised by the U.S. Forestry Branch is “the type of judgment that the discretionary function exception was designed to shield.” Hughes, 110 F.3d at 768. Stated another way, the issue here is whether “the nature of the actions taken” by U.S. Forestry Branch officials in observing, monitoring, or maintaining the controlled burn were “susceptible to policy analysis.” Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 325, 111 S. Ct. at 1275. This inquiry is not concerned with “the subjective intent of the government employee” or whether he or she “actually weighed social, economic, and political policy considerations before acting.” Ochran, 117 F.3d at 500. Here, as to the second part of Gaubert’s test, the district court concluded that the U.S. Forestry Branch’s decisions related to its monitoring and maintenance of a controlled burn “involved an element of judgment and implicated important policy 5 Plaintiffs do not argue that the U.S. Forestry Branch officials had no room to exercise judgment or choice (i.e., no discretion) in their decisions about how they observed, monitored, and maintained the burn. See supra n.2. Rather, Plaintiffs have steadfastly focused their argument on the second part of Gaubert’s test, insisting that any negligent decisions that allowed the fire to spread to private property and destroy Plaintiffs’ private equipment would not have been a permissible exercise of that judgment or choice. 9 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 10 of 132 considerations.” The district court cited several policy implications the U.S. Forestry Branch employees might reasonably need to consider, including the safety of citizens in the area, the safety of those monitoring the fire, the management of limited resources used to control a fire, and the protection of surrounding natural resources, as well as unique security and military concerns due to the burn’s proximity to the Fort Stewart Military Base. IV. POLICY CONSIDERATIONS NOT ALLEGED IN THE COMPLAINT As a threshold claim regarding the second part of Gaubert’s test, Plaintiffs argue the district court’s discussion of particular social, economic, political, and public policy considerations was improper because (1) the court should have limited its consideration to the allegations on the face of the Plaintiff’s complaint, (2) the complaint did not include any allegations about the policy considerations at play, and (3) the complaint did not include any factual allegations as to what actions the U.S. Forestry Branch took in an effort to monitor or maintain the controlled burn. In the absence of such allegations, Plaintiffs contend it was improper for the district court (1) to speculate as to what policy concerns might have been at play, and (2) to adopt facts from other published court decisions where the government presented evidence that particular policy considerations actually were at play. 10 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 11 of 132 Plaintiffs’ arguments misunderstand the pleading requirements and the relevant inquiry underlying the discretionary-function exception. To survive dismissal, Plaintiffs were required to “allege a plausible claim that falls outside the discretionary function exception.” Douglas, 814 F.3d at 1276; see also Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 324–25, 111 S. Ct. at 1274–75 (“For a complaint to survive a motion to dismiss, it must allege facts which would support a finding that the challenged actions are not the kind of conduct that can be said to be grounded in the policy of the regulatory regime.”). In other words, Plaintiffs’ complaint must have alleged facts showing that a government employee engaged in conduct that, by its nature, is not the kind of conduct that is based on or grounded in considerations of public policy. Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 324–25, 111 S. Ct. 1274–75. Here, the Plaintiffs’ complaint identifies the challenged conduct as the U.S. Forestry Branch’s negligent failure to “observe, monitor[,] and maintain” the controlled burn once the fire was started. The relevant question, then, is whether the decisions the U.S. Forestry Branch officials made in planning how to observe, monitor, and maintain the controlled burn, even if negligent, are the kind of conduct “susceptible to policy analysis.” Id. at 325, 111 S. Ct. at 1275 (emphasis added). As to the second step of Gaubert, the issue is not whether the officials or employees actually weighed any particular policy considerations before taking (or declining to take) any particular action. See Ochran, 117 F.3d at 500; Hughes, 110 11 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 12 of 132 F.3d at 768. The inquiry here is not fact-based. See Autery v. United States, 992 F.2d 1523, 1530–31 (11th Cir. 1993). Rather, “Gaubert . . . cautions against conducting a fact-based inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the government actor’s exercise of a particular discretionary function, urging courts instead to look to the nature of the challenged decision in an objective, or general sense, and ask whether that decision is one we would expect inherently to be grounded in considerations of policy.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). Further, as to the second part of Gaubert we are not aware of any precedent—and Plaintiffs cite none—indicating that at the motion-to-dismiss stage, a federal court must limit its discretionary-function-exception analysis to policy considerations a plaintiff’s complaint chooses to expressly allege were at play. To the contrary, this Court previously has affirmed the dismissal of claims under the discretionary-function exception notwithstanding the apparent absence of any allegations or evidence concerning actual policy considerations undertaken by the government employees. See, e.g., Mesa v. United States, 123 F.3d 1435, 1438–39 (11th Cir. 1997) (discussing at length what considerations a DEA agent might hypothetically weigh in deciding how to locate and identify the subject of an arrest warrant). We recognize that the district court referenced two particular court decisions in which the government presented evidence that certain policy considerations 12 Case: 18-15033 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 13 of 132 actually were at play in controlling forest fires. 6 However, this in no way tainted the district court’s analysis. If anything, the fact that government officials in analogous situations were found to have actually weighed public policy considerations in exercising their discretion is relevant to whether the challenged discretionary conduct here was “susceptible to policy analysis.” See Gaubert, 499 U.S. at 325, 111 S. Ct. at 1275. For all of the above reasons, the district court committed no procedural error in its facial analysis of Plaintiffs’ complaint. Before examining the substantive application of the discretionary-function exception to the U.S. Forestry Branch’s conduct, we step back in time to discuss the Supreme Court’s Rayonier decision in 1957.