Opinion ID: 221741
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Supervisory Liability for Deliberate Indifference after Iqbal

Text: We have long permitted plaintiffs to hold supervisors individually liable in § 1983 suits when culpable action, or inaction, is directly attributed to them. We have never required a plaintiff to allege that a supervisor was physically present when the injury occurred. In Larez v. City of Los Angeles, 946 F.2d 630 (9th Cir.1991), we explained that to be held liable, the supervisor need not be directly and personally involved in the same way as are the individual officers who are on the scene inflicting constitutional injury. Id. at 645. Rather, the supervisor's participation could include his own culpable action or inaction in the training, supervision, or control of his subordinates, his acquiescence in the constitutional deprivations of which the complaint is made, or conduct that showed a reckless or callous indifference to the rights of others. Id. at 646 (internal citations, quotation marks, and alterations omitted). After the district court dismissed Starr's claim, but before briefing on appeal, the Supreme Court decided Iqbal. Plaintiff Iqbal, a Pakistani Muslim, had been arrested and detained in severely restrictive conditions following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Id. at 1943. He filed a Bivens action in federal court against his jailers and various officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft and F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller, alleging purposeful discrimination on the basis of race, religion and national origin. Id. (citing Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971)). A Bivens action seeks to hold federal officers individually liable for constitutional violations. Although more limited in some respects, a Bivens action is the federal analog to an action against state or local officials under § 1983. Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250, 254 n. 2, 126 S.Ct. 1695, 164 L.Ed.2d 441 (2006). The Court held that Iqbal's complaint failed to plead facts sufficient to state a claim against Attorney General Ashcroft and Director Mueller for purposeful and unlawful discrimination. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1954. The Court explained that because Bivens and § 1983 suits do not allow for the imposition of vicarious liability, stating a claim against a government official in his or her individual capacity for purposeful discrimination requires pleading that each Government-official defendant, through the official's own individual actions, has violated the Constitution. Id. at 1948. The Court stated that [t]he factors necessary to establish a Bivens violation will vary with the constitutional provision at issue. Id. The Court explained that purposeful discrimination, which was alleged against Attorney General Ashcroft and Director Mueller, requires a plaintiff to plead and prove that the defendant acted with discriminatory purpose. Id. Proving purposeful discrimination requires showing more than intent as volition or intent as awareness of consequences; the plaintiff must show that the decisionmaker acted because of his action's adverse effects, not merely in spite of them. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Therefore, the supervisors in Iqbal needed to have adopted and implemented the detention policies at issue not for a neutral, investigative reason but for the purpose of discriminating on account of race, religion, or national origin. Id. at 1948-49. Holding Attorney General Ashcroft and Director Mueller personally liable for unconstitutional discrimination if they did not themselves have a discriminatory purpose would be equivalent to finding them vicariously liable for their subordinates' violation, which Bivens and § 1983 do not allow. In so holding, Iqbal followed earlier cases holding that alleging a supervisor's mere awareness of the discriminatory effects of his or her actions or inaction does not state a claim of unconstitutional discrimination. Starr does not allege purposeful discrimination by Sheriff Baca. Rather, he alleges unconstitutional conditions of confinement in violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, as incorporated through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A claim of unconstitutional conditions of confinement, unlike a claim of unconstitutional discrimination, may be based on a theory of deliberate indifference. See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994). A showing that a supervisor acted, or failed to act, in a manner that was deliberately indifferent to an inmate's Eighth Amendment rights is sufficient to demonstrate the involvement  and the liability  of that supervisor. Thus, when a supervisor is found liable based on deliberate indifference, the supervisor is being held liable for his or her own culpable action or inaction, not held vicariously liable for the culpable action or inaction of his or her subordinates. We see nothing in Iqbal indicating that the Supreme Court intended to overturn longstanding case law on deliberate indifference claims against supervisors in conditions of confinement cases. We also note that, to the extent that our sister circuits have confronted this question, they have agreed with our interpretation of Iqbal. See Dodds v. Richardson, 614 F.3d 1185, 1204 (10th Cir.2010) (We therefore conclude that after Iqbal, Plaintiff can no longer succeed on a § 1983 claim against Defendant by showing that as a supervisor he behaved knowingly or with deliberate indifference that a constitutional violation would occur at the hands of his subordinates, unless that is the same state of mind required for the constitutional deprivation he alleges.  (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted)); Sandra T.E. v. Grindle, 599 F.3d 583, 591 (7th Cir.2010) ( Iqbal does not change the fact that [w]hen a state actor's deliberate indifference deprives someone of his or her protected liberty interest in bodily integrity, that actor violates the Constitution, regardless of whether the actor is a supervisor or subordinate, and the actor may be held liable for the resulting harm.); Sanchez v. Pereira-Castillo, 590 F.3d 31, 49 (1st Cir. 2009) (Although `Government officials may not be held liable for the unconstitutional conduct of their subordinates under a theory of respondeat superior, ' supervisory officials may be liable on the basis of their own acts or omissions, including supervising with deliberate indifference toward the possibility that deficient performance of the task may contribute to a civil rights deprivation. (quoting Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1948) (some internal quotation marks omitted)). We therefore conclude that a plaintiff may state a claim against a supervisor for deliberate indifference based upon the supervisor's knowledge of and acquiescence in unconstitutional conduct by his or her subordinates.