Opinion ID: 799337
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: State-Created Danger Exception (Count Two)

Text: The State can also be held liable under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process clause for failing to protect an individual from harm by third parties where the state action `affirmatively place[s] the plaintiff in a position of danger,' that is, where state action creates or exposes an individual to a danger which he or she would not have otherwise faced. Kennedy v. City of Ridgefield, 439 F.3d 1055, 1061 (9th Cir.2006) (quoting DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 197, 109 S.Ct. 998). To determine whether an official affirmatively placed an individual in danger, we ask: (1) whether any affirmative actions of the official placed the individual in danger he otherwise would not have faced; (2) whether the danger was known or obvious; and (3) whether the officer acted with deliberate indifference to that danger. Id. at 1062-64. In Count Two of their complaint, Plaintiffs allege that Defendants act[ed] with deliberate indifference to known or obvious danger in removing Plaintiffs from their homes and placing them in the care of foster parents, including in the care of relative caregivers and out of state facilities and homes, who were unfit to care for them and posed an imminent risk of harm to Plaintiffs' safety. The complaint also contains more detailed factual allegations, including that Defendants placed Leo and Victor in a foster home that had a known history of neglect; that Defendants required Mason to have unsupervised visits with his grandparents despite having knowledge that they had abused him; and that Defendants placed Mason in an out-of-state facility that had a known history of chronic neglect and abuse. The district court dismissed Count Two for failure to state a claim under the state-created danger doctrine, and ruled in the alternative that Defendants were entitled to qualified immunity because Plaintiffs' rights under the state-created danger doctrine were not clearly established. Citing repeatedly to the dissent from denial of rehearing en banc in Kennedy v. City of Ridgefield , rather than the opinion itself, the district court reasoned that the complaint did not sufficiently allege that Defendants did more than simply expose the plaintiff to a danger that already existed because Defendants merely place[d] foster children into an already broken system. The district court's reasoning was erroneous. The test that the district court took from the dissent from denial in Kennedy that the official must do more than expose the plaintiff to a danger that already existedis not the law of this circuit. Compare 440 F.3d 1091, 1093 (9th Cir.2006) (Tallman, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) with 439 F.3d at 1061 (opinion of the court). Such a test would render the state-created danger doctrine meaningless. As discussed above, this doctrine provides an exception to the general rule that the Fourteenth Amendment does not impose a duty on the State to protect individuals from third parties. Thus, by its very nature, the doctrine only applies in situations where the plaintiff was directly harmed by a third party a danger that, in every case, could be said to have already existed. The dangers examined in our previous casessuch as a vengeful, unstable neighbor, see Kennedy, 439 F.3d 1055; a violent, predatory inmate, see L.W., 92 F.3d 894; or a rapist prowling a high-crime area late at night, see Wood v. Ostrander, 879 F.2d 583 (9th Cir. 1989)already existed before the plaintiffs were harmed by them. But the point of the state-created danger doctrine is that the affirmative actions of a state official create[d] or expose[d] an individual to a danger which he or she would not have otherwise faced.  Kennedy, 439 F.3d at 1061 (opinion of the court) (emphasis added). That is precisely what Plaintiffs have alleged here. They allege that Defendants knew of the danger of abuse and neglect that Plaintiffs faced in certain foster homes and acted with deliberate indifference by exposing Plaintiffs to that danger anyway. This is sufficient to state a claim under the controlling opinion in Kennedy. The fact that the dangerous foster homes already existed is irrelevant. Moreover, we have already held that the state-created danger doctrine applies to placing a foster child in a home where there is a known danger of abuse. Tamas, 630 F.3d at 843-44. As we explained in Tamas, the State's approval of a foster care placement despite reports of suspected abuse creates a danger of abuse that the foster child would not otherwise have faced. Id. We therefore reverse the district court's dismissal of Count Two for failure to state a claim under the state-created danger doctrine. Because Tamas also held that these rights were clearly established, we reject the district court's conclusion that qualified immunity provides an alternative ground for dismissal. See id. at 837-38, 846 (holding that the due process rights of foster children are clearly established and applying the state-created danger doctrine to foster care licenses issued in 1997 and 1999).