Opinion ID: 4486949
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Did the Policy Allow the DNA Swab?

Text: Sheriff Scott could be liable if (1) his office had a formal policy authorizing the swab of Crabbs’ DNA and (2) that policy was unconstitutional. Crabbs sued Scott under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. That statute makes it illegal for any “person” to, “under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State . . . subject[], or cause[] to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.” Id. A municipality can be liable under § 1983. Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978). But to hold a municipality liable, it is not enough to show that a municipal employee violated someone’s rights; there is no respondeat superior municipal liability under § 1983. Id. at 691. Instead, plaintiffs must point to a municipal “policy or custom” and show that it was the “moving force” behind the constitutional violation. Id. at 694. Crabbs is suing Scott in his official capacity as Franklin County Sheriff, so the claim “is, in all respects other than name, to be treated as a suit against the entity.” Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 166 (1985). Here, Scott has no formal policy permitting the taking of Crabbs’ DNA, because Crabbs was not a felony arrestee at the time the swab was taken. According to the 2011 Memo from Chief Deputy Barrett, Sheriff’s Office employees could “only collect DNA specimens from persons . . . arrested on a felony charge.” And a bond-violation arrest is not the same thing as a felony arrest in the statutory context, as we noted in Crabbs I. 786 F.3d at 430. Crabbs’ “felony voluntarymanslaughter charge was irrelevant to his second arrest.” Id. at 431. If Crabbs was not “arrested -6- Case No. 18-3445, Crabbs v. Scott on a felony charge” under the statute’s definition, then it follows that he also was not “arrested on a felony charge” under a memo that uses the exact same phrasing. Also, the Sheriff’s Office intake procedures listed the offenses for which arrestees would be processed through the Identification Bureau—bond revocation was not listed. Therefore, the alleged policy did not give Sheriff’s Office employees any authority to swab Crabbs’ DNA. Going beyond the written documents, Crabbs points to Sheriff Scott’s earlier position in this litigation and his deposition testimony. Both reveal, according to Crabbs, that Scott thought swabbing Crabbs’ DNA was required under the policy. According to this argument, we should interpret the policy to mean what the Sheriff, who made the policy, said it means. Now, Monell does contemplate municipal liability for the actions of officials “whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy.” 436 U.S. at 694. So it’s at least possible that, if Scott understood the policy to cover Crabbs and then applied it to him, then that application could amount to office policy. In Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati, a plurality of the Supreme Court recognized that municipal liability should attach when the decision comes from an official who “possesses final authority to establish municipal policy with respect to the action ordered.” 475 U.S. 469, 481 (1986) (plurality); see also Paige v. Coyner, 614 F.3d 273, 284 (6th Cir. 2010) (citing the Pembaur plurality). But there, liability attached only because the policymaker’s “decision directly caused the violation” of constitutional rights. Pembaur, 475 U.S. at 484; see Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 406 (1997) (noting that, in Pembaur, “[n]o questions of . . . causation arose”). Therein lies the problem. Scott did not take the swab, nor did he direct anyone to do so. So his involvement was limited to the policy. Neither Scott’s deposition testimony nor his litigation position as to the meaning of the policy is what “directly caused” the swab of Crabbs’ -7- Case No. 18-3445, Crabbs v. Scott DNA. By the time Scott took a litigation position and was deposed, the deed had already been done—Crabbs’ DNA had already been taken. Even assuming Scott had the type of final policymaking authority contemplated by Pembaur, there’s no way his after-the-fact interpretation of the policy, correct or incorrect, could have “directly caused” something that had already happened. See Pembaur, 475 U.S. at 481, 484. So really, Crabbs is saying that, when it comes to interpreting the policy, and thus why the swab was taken, we should trust Scott’s reading. But we are not bound by Scott’s after-the-fact interpretation of how the alleged policy should or should not have applied to Crabbs. Because we find that Crabbs was not a felony arrestee, the alleged policy simply did not apply to him, and what Scott says after the DNA swab doesn’t change that conclusion. Crabbs also points to the deposition testimony of Gary Goodrich, the sergeant on duty the night Crabbs’ DNA was taken. In the deposition, Crabbs’ attorney described the facts as he understood them: after Crabbs was acquitted, he was not allowed to leave the jail until his DNA had been collected. The attorney then asked Sgt. Goodrich whether, if the facts were as he described them, that would be consistent with “standard procedure.” Sgt. Goodrich responded, “[i]n a nutshell, yes.” But this statement refers to the Sheriff’s Office standard procedure only as Goodrich understood it. It turns out he was wrong; “standard procedure” would not have permitted the swab of Crabbs’ DNA. What Sgt. Goodrich doesn’t point to is any statement from a superior officer directing him to apply the policy to Crabbs. And Crabbs makes no argument that Sgt. Goodrich had the type of final policymaking authority for his individual actions to constitute municipal policy under Pembaur. So Sgt. Goodrich is simply another municipal employee who misread the policy. All in all, Crabbs cannot establish that there was a policy requiring—or even permitting—the swab of his DNA. -8- Case No. 18-3445, Crabbs v. Scott B. Can Scott Still Be Liable for the Mistaken Application of the Policy? The district court’s analysis did not end when it found that the policy did not allow the Sheriff’s Office to collect Crabbs’ DNA. The court instead proceeded to consider whether Scott could still be liable for his employees’ incorrect application of the policy. In doing so, the district court made several assumptions: “(1) that the Sheriff’s Office has a policy permitting the postacquittal collection of DNA from felony arrestees on ID holds, (2) that such a policy was unconstitutional, and (3) that the [employees who collected Crabbs’ DNA] misapplied such a policy to Plaintiff as the authority for the collection of his DNA.” We make the same assumptions here.3 And we determine that no reasonable juror could find that the alleged policy proximately caused Crabbs’ injury. Even if the policy was not followed here, Crabbs must still show that the policy was the “moving force” behind the injury he suffered. See Monell, 436 U.S. at 694. In other words, he must show a “direct causal link” between the policy and the DNA swab. See Powers v. Hamilton Cty. Pub. Def. Comm’n, 501 F.3d 592, 607 (6th Cir. 2007). For § 1983 claims, this causation analysis is informed by “traditional tort concepts of causation.” Id. at 608. Accordingly, to give rise to Monell liability, the policy must have been the factual and proximate cause of Crabbs’ injury. Id. The first element of causation under § 1983 is factual causation. Factual causation “is typically assessed using the ‘but for’ test, which requires us to imagine whether the harm would have occurred if the defendant had behaved other than it did.” Id. Here, the district court assumed that Scott had a policy allowing the Sheriff’s Office to collect DNA samples from felony arrestees after they had been acquitted. Given this assumption, the factual-causation issue is this: if Scott 3 We reiterate that, although in the following discussion we refer to “the policy,” we are merely assuming that such a policy exists. Nothing in this section should be read to conclusively establish that the Sheriff’s Office had any policy regarding post-acquittal DNA collection from felony arrestees. -9- Case No. 18-3445, Crabbs v. Scott did not have a post-acquittal DNA collection policy, would Crabbs’ DNA sample have been taken? The answer is clearly no; the parties do not even dispute this point. The Sheriff’s Office employees all thought that Crabbs was a felony arrestee, so they thought the policy applied to him. The court records all suggest that they thought Crabbs was being processed for the felony voluntarymanslaughter charge. Under “Charge Data,” the jail records listed the manslaughter charge, not the bond revocation. Both the jail records and the Identification Bureau records stated that Crabbs needed to be “processed on” only the manslaughter charge. We can therefore conclude that the Sheriff’s Office employees took Crabbs’ DNA simply because they thought he was a felony arrestee eligible for DNA collection under the policy. In other words, but for the policy, Crabbs’ DNA would not have been swabbed. So factual causation is satisfied. But factual causation is not enough. Crabbs must also prove the second element, proximate causation. The cornerstone of the proximate-cause analysis is foreseeability; we ask “whether it was reasonably foreseeable that the complained of harm would befall the § 1983 plaintiff as a result of the defendant’s conduct.” Id. at 609. Foreseeability is measured as of the time of the defendant’s wrongdoing—thus, we avoid hindsight bias. See 1 Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm § 29 cmt. j (Am. Law Inst. 2010) (noting how proximate cause excludes liability for harms that were not foreseeable “at the time of the actor’s tortious conduct”). So here, the proximate-cause issue is whether, when Sheriff Scott’s office passed the alleged policy, it was reasonably foreseeable that the policy could be mistakenly applied to someone like Keith Crabbs—that is, someone who was arrested for a felony, then released on bond, then rearrested for violating that bond, then placed on an ID hold, then tried for and acquitted of the underlying felony, then swabbed for a DNA sample upon release. - 10 - Case No. 18-3445, Crabbs v. Scott Proximate cause can be resolved by the court if the plaintiff has not provided enough evidence for a reasonable juror to conclude that the relevant injury was reasonably foreseeable. See Hunley v. DuPont Auto., 341 F.3d 491, 499 n.5 (6th Cir. 2003); see also Anderson, 477 U.S. at 249. That is the case here. Crabbs cannot point us to any other instances where the Sheriff’s Office collected DNA from non-felony arrestees. Nor can Crabbs show us that anyone else—even a felony arrestee—has had their DNA collected by the Sheriff’s Office after being acquitted. Indeed, to show reasonable foreseeability, Crabbs essentially just reiterates that the Sheriff’s Office employees thought they were applying the policy. But the issue is no longer whether Scott’s employees thought they were applying the policy; that was the question under factual causation. The issue now is whether their doing so was reasonably foreseeable. And on that issue, Crabbs does not point us to any additional evidence. Without more, a reasonable juror could not conclude that the policy was the proximate cause of Crabb’s injury. Therefore, summary judgment in favor of Scott was proper. Our assumption that the underlying policy was unconstitutional does not change this outcome, because even an unconstitutional policy must proximately cause the plaintiff’s injury. To be sure, in cases involving a municipal actor departing from a municipal policy, the underlying policy is usually constitutional on its face. For example, in Berry v. City of Detroit, the city’s formal deadly-force policy was facially sound, but the plaintiff was alleging a systemic misapplication of that policy such that police officers were regularly using deadly force in an unconstitutional manner. 25 F.3d 1342, 1345–46 (6th Cir. 1994). Crabbs has not pointed us to any cases where the policy being incorrectly applied was facially unconstitutional. But we do not go so far as to say that a municipality is always liable if its unconstitutional policy leads to a deprivation of rights, regardless of how unreasonably the policy is applied. Doing - 11 - Case No. 18-3445, Crabbs v. Scott so would conflict with traditional tort principles. In tort law, even if a defendant has breached her legal duty, she is not liable unless her breach proximately caused the alleged injury. See 1 Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm § 29 (2010) (“An actor’s liability is limited to those harms that result from the risks that made the actor’s conduct tortious.”). So too for breaches of constitutional duty. See Powers, 501 F.3d at 608. Limiting the scope of liability here is consistent not only with tort doctrine, but also with basic fairness; municipalities should not have to anticipate and preemptively account for every possible incorrect reading of their policies in order to avoid Monell liability. Otherwise we would be drifting too close to respondeat superior liability for § 1983 claims against municipalities, an idea that has been repeatedly and resoundingly rejected. See Brown, 520 U.S. at 403. Accordingly, we would hold Scott liable for Crabbs’ injury only if Scott’s alleged policy was both the factual and proximate cause of the injury—even though we are assuming that the underlying policy was unconstitutional. See Powers, 501 F.3d at 608. And Crabbs has not presented sufficient evidence for a reasonable juror to find in his favor on proximate cause.