Opinion ID: 170616
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: municipal liability and policymaking authority

Text: While § 1983 allows suits against individual state officials who have violated their constitutional rights, plaintiffs frequently wish to seek damages further up the chain of command. Officials sued personally are shielded by qualified immunity, meaning that they are liable for damages only where they had fair warning of the illegality of their conduct. Even when held liable they do not always have the money or the insurance to pay large judgments against them. The municipalities that employ them have more money and no immunity, so they are tempting targets for lawsuits when municipal officials have erred. Section 1983, however, rejects the tort principle of respondeat superior and does not subject municipalities to vicarious liability for the acts of their employees; municipal taxpayers are liable only for the municipality's own misdeeds. Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 690-95, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). Federal law forces municipal taxpayers to pay damages for official actions through municipal liability only if those edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy of the district. Id. at 694, 98 S.Ct. 2018. Because the Sheridan County School District had no official policy of sexual-orientation discrimination, these plaintiffs must show that their rights were violated by one of the district's final policymakers. Simmons v. Uintah Health Care Special Serv. Dist., 506 F.3d 1281, 1284-85 (10th Cir.2007). Although the board made the final decision not to hire Ms. Milligan-Hitt and Ms. Roberts, the plaintiffs contend that final policymaking authority over the hiring decisions was delegated to the superintendent, who exercised it in an intentionally discriminatory manner. The plaintiffs do not contend that the hiring committees themselves were discriminatory, apart from any involvement from the superintendent. The district court treated the superintendent's policymaking authority as a question of fact and presented it to the jury, which concluded that Mr. Dougherty was the final policymaker of the district. [1] We must reverse this judgment because the question of Mr. Dougherty's final policymaking authority is a question of law, which should not have gone to the jury. The district court should have concluded that as a matter of law, Mr. Dougherty did not make district hiring policy. [2]
The judge, not the jury, should determine who exercises final policymaking authority in a municipality. This issue was settled by the Supreme Court's decision in Jett v. Dallas Indep. Sch. Dist., 491 U.S. 701, 736-38, 109 S.Ct. 2702, 105 L.Ed.2d 598 (1989). In Jett, the Supreme Court held that allowing a jury to decide whether a school's principal and superintendent could have been delegated final policymaking authority was manifest error. Id. at 736, 109 S.Ct. 2702. The Court explained that it was incorrect to give this issue to a jury because the identity of those final policymakers whose conduct can create municipal liability is `a question of state law. ' Id. at 737, 109 S.Ct. 2702 (quoting City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 485 U.S. 112, 123, 108 S.Ct. 915, 99 L.Ed.2d 107 (1988) (plurality opinion)). It thus concluded that the identification of those officials whose decisions represent the official policy of the local governmental unit is itself a legal question to be resolved by the trial judge before the case is submitted to the jury. Id. at 737, 109 S.Ct. 2702. Therefore, jury instructions regarding policymaking authority are inappropriate because the judge, not the jury, identifi[es] those officials whose wrongs can create municipal liability. Id. In adopting this standard, Jett expressly rejected as unworkable the view the plaintiffs now advance. During the previous term in City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik , the Court failed to produce a majority opinion explaining how final policymaking authority should be determined. Justice Brennan had argued in a concurring opinion that determinations of municipal liability should be based on the realities of municipal decisionmaking, which would entail a factual and practical inquiry into a municipality's actual power structure. 485 U.S. at 145, 108 S.Ct. 915 (Brennan, J., concurring in the judgment). The plurality, however, rejected Justice Brennan's view, explaining that it would be capricious. . . to hold a municipality responsible for every decision that is perceived as `final' through the lens of a particular factfinder's evaluation of the city's `actual power structure.' Id. at 124 n. 1, 108 S.Ct. 915. The plurality went on to say that a federal court would not be justified in assuming that municipal policymaking authority lies somewhere other than where the applicable law purports to put it. Id. at 126, 108 S.Ct. 915. In Jett, the Court explained that it had taken the case to clarify the application of our decisions in St. Louis v. Praprotnik and Pembaur v. Cincinnati to the school district's potential liability for the discriminatory actions of [a principal]. 491 U.S. at 710-11, 109 S.Ct. 2702 (internal citations omitted). A majority then adopted the plurality opinion in Praprotnik and squarely rejected the alternative of letting factfinders decide where final policymaking authority lies. Id. at 737-38, 109 S.Ct. 2702. This rule is true to the logic of Monell. Because municipalities are responsible only for their own misdeeds, municipal taxpayers are liable only for those official actions that represent the municipality in a legal sense. Monell, 436 U.S. at 694, 98 S.Ct. 2018. By ensuring that liability follows legal authority, Jett provides incentives for cities to give final authority only to responsible officials. Moreover, if municipal liability depended on the unpredictable results of a case-by-case analysis of the actual power structure of each municipality sued, cities might be forced to insure broadly against potential misconduct by every significant official. The Jett rule is more predictable and depends on a factor largely controlled by the citylaw. See Praprotnik, 485 U.S. at 124 n. 1, 108 S.Ct. 915 (Municipalities cannot be expected to predict how courts or juries will assess their `actual power structures,' and this uncertainty could easily lead to results that would be hard in practice to distinguish from the results of a regime governed by the doctrine of respondeat superior. ). Thus Jett ensures that cities are held liable only for their own choices about where to vest authority, as Monell requires, not forced to provide `mutual insurance' against unforeseeable usurpations of power, as Monell forbids. Monell, 436 U.S. at 694, 98 S.Ct. 2018 (quoting Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess. 792 (1871) (statement of Rep. Butler)). To be sure, as both Jett and Praprotnik acknowledged, this rule could in some cases allow a municipality to use legal forms to hide the function of its true policies. But the Supreme Court concluded that there is a different mechanism for guarding against this risk: allowing plaintiffs to hold a municipality liable not only for the actions of its legal policymakers but also for its unwritten customs and policies. As Praprotnik put it: whatever analysis is used to identify municipal policymakers, egregious attempts by local government to insulate themselves from liability for unconstitutional policies are precluded by a separate doctrine. . . . [T]he Court has long recognized that a plaintiff may be able to prove the existence of a widespread practice that, although not authorized by written law or express municipal policy, is `so permanent and well settled as to constitute a custom or usage with the force of law.' 485 U.S. at 127, 108 S.Ct. 915 (emphasis added) (quoting Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 68, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970)) (further internal quotation marks omitted). This doctrine is not at issue here. Our Circuit has repeatedly adhered to Jett 's holding. In Ware v. Unified School District No. 492, 902 F.2d 815 (10th Cir. 1990), decided the year after Jett, we held that, as a matter of law, a Kansas superintendent was not the final policymaker of the school district. Because of the Supreme Court's admonition that the identification of final decisionmakers must be done as a matter of law, we refused to consider evidence in the record that could be construed to support an inference that the board delegated its final authority. Id. at 819 n. 1. Similarly, in Jantz v. Muci, 976 F.2d 623 (10th Cir. 1992), we rejected a claim that a Kansas school principal, rather than the school board, had final policymaking authority over hiring decisions. We noted that while the district court found the principal to have virtual de facto hiring authority, the court did not discuss Kansas law, and we reversed its decision. Id. at 631. Despite the weight of this authority, the plaintiffs argue that this Circuit's decision in Randle v. City of Aurora, 69 F.3d 441 (10th Cir.1995), establishes that juries can sometimes determine who has final policymaking authority. In Randle, we held that a liquor licensing assistant fired by the City of Aurora might be able to hold the city liable for the allegedly discriminatory actions of the city's manager, finance director, and human resources director, because it was unclear whether those officials were the city's final policymakers. Id. at 444. In analyzing the issue, Randle confirmed that final policymaking authority is a legal issue to be determined by the court. Id. at 448 (internal quotation marks omitted). However, we refused to decide whether the city officials sued in that case had been delegated policymaking authority, because disputes of material fact . . . preclude[d] a grant of summary judgment for the City. Id. at 449. This disposition might seem to imply that issues of fact could be relevant to identifying officials with final policymaking authority. Thus, the plaintiffs argue, the identification of those officials whose decisions represent the official policy of the local governmental unit, Jett, 491 U.S. at 737, 109 S.Ct. 2702, may sometimes be resolved by the jury as a factual issue. In light of the governing precedent and the details of the case, we do not think that the reference to material fact in Randle should be read so expansively. Another reading is equally plausible and would be more consistent with Supreme Court precedent. After the Randle opinion referred to a dispute[ ] of material fact, 69 F.3d at 449, it went on to describe a dispute that was legal, not factual. The decision explained that Ms. Randle's claim survived summary judgment because provisions in the City of Aurora's charter and a city personnel policy appeared to grant the City Manager full authority over personnel policies . . . and . . . prevent the City Council from any involvement in employment decisions. Id. at 449. The Court then acknowledged that the manager's authority could in theory be restrained by city council regulations, but noted that no such regulations had been mentioned in the record or in the city's brief. Id. at 449-50. On the basis of these three documents alonethe charter, personnel policy, and the absence of any regulations the Court remanded the issue for further proceedings of an unspecified form. [3] The charter, policy, and regulations are all essentially legal documents. Our prior cases analyzing municipal liability under Jett and Praprotnik have treated city ordinances as law. See, e.g., Melton v. Oklahoma City, 879 F.2d 706, 724 (10th Cir. 1989). Indeed, we regularly read and apply city ordinances, not in the record, just as we do federal and state statutes. Id. (city ordinance); United States v. One (1) 1975 Thunderbird, 576 F.2d 834, 836 (10th Cir.1978) (state statutes); United States v. Van Buren, 513 F.2d 1327, 1328 (10th Cir. 1975) (federal statute); Jackson v. Denver Producing & Ref. Co., 96 F.2d 457, 460 (10th Cir.1938) (city ordinance). [4] Similarly, the Randle Court noted that the personnel policy had apparently been incorporated by the city charter. Randle, 69 F.3d at 449 (quoting Charter of City of Aurora, § 7-4(b)). Jett made clear that for purposes of municipal liability, municipal ordinances and regulations are not facts to be scrutinized by lay juries but rather legal documents whose contents should be applied by judges. Thus, when the Court in Randle turned to an analysis of the city charter, regulations, and official personnel policy, we do not think it intended to contradict its earlier statement that final policymaking authority is a legal issue to be determined by the court. 69 F.3d at 447 (internal quotation marks omitted). Instead, Randle recognized what the Supreme Court heldthat final policymaking authority must be determined by a judicial examination of state and local law, not turned over to the jury.
We have concluded that the instruction authorizing the jury to determine who was the final policymaker for these hiring decisions was erroneous. Our inquiry, however, cannot end there. If as a matter of law Mr. Dougherty was the final policymaker, then submitting the issue to the jury may have been inconsequential because the correct procedure would have yielded the same answer. However, we conclude that Mr. Dougherty did not exercise such authority, and therefore that the municipality is not liable for any discrimination he may have committed. [5] Under Wyoming law, the Board of Trustees is vested with the authority to make personnel decisions. The statute governing school trustees gives them the power to [e]mploy and determine the salaries and duties of superintendents, principals, teachers, and all other school personnel. Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 21-3-111(a)(vi). The plaintiffs do not dispute this, but argue that because the school board did not adequately supervise Mr. Dougherty, it delegated this authority to him and gave him the school board's status as final policymaker. In light of the legalnot factual nature of the municipal liability inquiry, however, we are interested only in delegations of legal power, not in whether the board's actual exercise of its power of review was sufficiently aggressive. See Jantz, 976 F.2d at 631. With this in mind, we conclude that the board's delegation of administrative power to the superintendent did not turn him into the final policymaker. The school board has adopted a policy entitled Board/Superintendent Relationship explicitly delegating its executive powers to the school superintendent. The policy explains: The Board believes that the legislation of policies is the most important function of the school board and that the execution of the policies should be the function of the Superintendent. Delegation by the Board of its executive powers to the Superintendent provides freedom for the Superintendent to manage the schools within the Board's policies and frees the Board to devote its time to policymaking and evaluation functions. The Board holds the Superintendent responsible for the administration of its policies, the execution of Board decisions, the operation of the internal machinery designed to serve the school programs, and for keeping the Board informed about school operations and problems. The Board shall strive to procure, when a vacancy exists, the best professional leader available for the chief administrative post. App. 1870. It then concludes by describing the powers that the board agrees to extend to the superintendent, including a promise that the Board . . . shall . . . [a]ct only upon the recommendation of the Superintendent in matters of employment or dismissal of school personnel. Id. A second policy, titled Staff Hiring, makes the superintendent responsible for developing selection procedures and recommending candidates to the Board. App. 2482. Following Praprotnik, we look primarily to two factors in deciding whether an official is a final policymaker within his area of authority: first, whether his discretionary decisions are constrained by general policies enacted by others, and second, whether those decisions are reviewable by others. Dill v. City of Edmond, 155 F.3d 1193, 1211 (1998) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under these factors, we are not persuaded that the board's policies enact a delegation so final that the superintendent's edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy. Monell, 436 U.S. at 694, 98 S.Ct. 2018. [6] First, the board's policy explicitly provides that the superintendent's decisions are to be constrained by general policies enacted by the school board. See Dill, 155 F.3d at 1211. The superintendent is charged with executi[ng] only the policies legislat[ed] by the board, and the policy reiterates his duty to manage the schools within the Board's policies.  App. 1870 (emphasis added). The additional policy instructing him to develop selection procedures and make recommendations does not change this; like all of the superintendent's duties, it is subject to the general instruction that he implement the board's policies rather than creating his own. The Fifth Circuit, confronting a similar distribution of executive and legislative power by a school board, has reached the same conclusion. In Barrow v. Greenville Independent School District, 480 F.3d 377 (5th Cir.2007) the court held that a superintendent's final power to make recommendations or personnel transfers did not make him the final policymaker over those personnel decisions. The court noted its prior decisions that under Texas law, school boards make policy and superintendents administer, id. at 380, and concluded that a superintendent's authority to execute policies did not make him the final policy maker for purposes of Monell. Id. at 381-82. [7] Second, under the board's policies at issue in this case, the superintendent's hiring decisions are reviewable by others. Dill, 155 F.3d at 1211. When the superintendent puts forward the candidates recommended by the committee, the board may decide not to hire them. If the board does not like the candidates the superintendent puts forward, it may demand new ones. This review prevents the superintendent from being a final policymaker. The plaintiffs challenge this conclusion on two grounds. They argue that the policy providing that the board shall hire only upon the recommendation of the Superintendent, App. 1870, gives him a final veto power over particular candidates (although in one case Mr. Dougherty actually supported one of the plaintiffs). Other circuits have rejected the argument that a potential ability to veto new candidates by failing to recommend them turns a school administrator into a policymaker, see Barrow, 480 F.3d at 381-82; Adkins v. Board of Educ., 982 F.2d 952, 959 (6th Cir.1993), and so do we. The ultimate authority to hire employees and to decide what rules govern hiring is retained by the board. The superintendent's power to recommend is simply a component of the board's hiring power, not a separate source of district policyindeed, the recommendation power has meaning only within the hiring system run by the board. Thus, any complaint about the superintendent's failure to properly recommend candidates to the board belongs in a suit against him personally, not the district. Alternatively, the plaintiffs complain that in practice the board's supervision of the superintendent's role in the hiring process was so deferential that he was functionally unreviewed. But this appears to confuse the legal question of the locus of final decisionmaking authority with the factual question of how aggressively or independently the board tends to exercise the power it has. If the board retains the authority to review, even though it may not exercise such review or investigate the basis of the decision, delegation of final authority does not occur. Jantz, 976 F.2d at 631. As a plurality of the Supreme Court put it in Praprotnik, [s]imply going along with discretionary decisions made by one's subordinates . . . is not a delegation to them of the authority to make policy. 485 U.S. at 130, 108 S.Ct. 915 (plurality opinion). Regardless of whether plaintiffs are right that the board did not aggressively supervise Mr. Dougherty's decisions, the board had the authority to do so. Whether it used it or not, that authority makes the board, not the superintendent, the proper target in a municipal liability suit. To hold otherwise and attempt to dig into the details of the board's supervisory activities in this case would be to make the [un]justified . . . assump[tion] that municipal policymaking authority lies somewhere other than where the applicable law purports to put it. Id. at 126, 108 S.Ct. 915. That would subject school boards to capricious review by federal juries for every municipal squabble. Id. at 124 n. 1, 108 S.Ct. 915, It is true that in analyzing this element of municipal liability in Randle we held that review must be  meaningful  as opposed to merely hypothetical. 69 F.3d at 449. This caveat must not be taken out of context, however. As we have explained, Randle did not attempt to repudiate the rule that policymaking authority is discovered by looking to the presence of legal authority rather than examining the facts of its exercise in a particular case. Randle held that the city council's potential ability to pass regulations making the city manager's decisions reviewable did not stop him from being a final policymaker, because no such regulations had been passed. Id. at 449-50. In other words, Randle requires us to look to the legal structure actually in place, not to imagine hypothetical review mechanisms that might exist if the legal structure changed. Analogously, we have held that the power of others to remove an official from his position does not necessarily keep him from being a final policymaker, because the the power of ouster [i]s too general to function as a mechanism of reviewing individual decisions, Starrett v. Wadley, 876 F.2d 808, 819 (10th Cir.1989), just as the fact that a city council is elected does not keep it from being a city's final policymaker. However, we have never held a legally reviewable decision unreviewable for purposes of municipal liability merely because we were unsatisfied with the actual exercise of a board's oversight authority. That rule would immerse us into fact-bound disputes about municipal politics and administration in nearly every case, the very approach rejected by Jett.
Because Superintendent Dougherty was not the final policymaker in Sheridan County School District No. 2, nothing remains of the plaintiffs' case against the district. The district appealed the district court's decision denying it judgment as a matter of law, which means we must decide whetherunder the correct legal standardthe evidence at trial was sufficient for the jury to find that the school district itself had discriminated. See Sims v. Great Am. Life Ins. Co. 469 F.3d 870, 890-91 (2006) (We review de novo a district court's denial of a motion for judgment as a matter of law, viewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the opposing party and drawing all reasonable inferences therefrom. . . . [I]f `there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for the issue against that party' . . . we reverse a jury's verdict.) (quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a)(1)). On appeal the plaintiffs do not argue that their claims can survive if neither Mr. Dougherty's conduct nor Mr. Burgess's can form the basis for municipal liability. See Aplee.'s Br. 35-45; id. at 36 ([P]laintiffs' claim is a simple one: Dougherty and Burgess, through the authority of the superintendent's office, manipulated the hiring selection processes . . . to ensure that Hitt and Roberts were deprived of future employment as administrators in the District, and they did this because of Hitt's and Roberts' sexual orientation.); see also App. 1751-52 (plaintiffs' closing argument) (This case is about delegated authority. . . . Here my clients lost out, not because the board voted against them, but because Mr. Dougherty . . . violated my clients' rights.). Because this is the only ground on which the plaintiffs defend the judgment below, we conclude that the defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(b) should have been granted.