Opinion ID: 756655
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Qualified Immunity and Supervisory Liability.

Text: 14 Federal law provides a cause of action when an individual, acting under color of state law, deprives a person of federally assured rights. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Public officials who stand accused of civil rights violations under section 1983 nonetheless can avoid liability for money damages by showing either that they did not violate a right clearly established under federal law or that they acted with objective legal reasonableness. 3 See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 819, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982); Buenrostro v. Collazo, 973 F.2d 39, 42 (1st Cir.1992). 15 The Supreme Court has emphasized that a section 1983 plaintiff must allege a violation of a clearly established right secured either by the Constitution or by some other federal law. See County of Sacramento v. Lewis, --- U.S. ----, ---- n. 5, 118 S.Ct. 1708, 1714 n. 5, 140 L.Ed.2d 1043 (1998). Here, the plaintiff vaults this hurdle with room to spare. The right to be free from unreasonable seizure (and, by extension, unjustified arrest and detention) is clearly established in the jurisprudence of the Fourteenth Amendment (through which the Fourth Amendment constrains state action). The right to due process of law (and, by extension, to be free from police brutality) is likewise clearly established under the Fourteenth Amendment (through which the Fifth Amendment constrains state action). 16 We have not had occasion to address the question whether, to be liable under section 1983, a supervisor must have violated an independent, clearly established right, or whether a supervisor may be liable based only on his proximity to a subordinate's violation of a clearly established right. Other circuits, however, have addressed this interplay between the clearly established requirement and supervisory liability. We follow their lead and adopt an approach that comports with the core principle of qualified immunity by protecting supervisory officials from suit when they could not reasonably anticipate liability. 17 When a supervisor seeks qualified immunity in a section 1983 action, the clearly established prong of the qualified immunity inquiry is satisfied when (1) the subordinate's actions violated a clearly established constitutional right, and (2) it was clearly established that a supervisor would be liable for constitutional violations perpetrated by his subordinates in that context. See Doe v. Taylor Indep. Sch. Dist., 15 F.3d 443, 456 (5th Cir.1994); Shaw v. Stroud, 13 F.3d 791, 801 (4th Cir.1994). In other words, for a supervisor to be liable there must be a bifurcated clearly established inquiry--one branch probing the underlying violation, and the other probing the supervisor's potential liability. 18 Here, both elements are satisfied. We already have noted that the plaintiff's clearly established rights were violated, see supra Part III(A), and it is equally well settled that a deliberately indifferent police supervisor may be held liable for the constitutional violations of his subordinates. See Diaz, 112 F.3d at 4. 19 The question, then, reduces to the test of objective legal reasonableness. This test does not serve as a proxy for liability, because even state actors who commit constitutional violations may be entitled to qualified immunity. See, e.g., Ringuette v. City of Fall River, 146 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.1998); Brennan v. Hendrigan, 888 F.2d 189, 194 (1st Cir.1989). Instead, the test's utility is restricted to the qualified immunity inquiry. In that milieu, the test provides a method for determining whether, in relation to a clearly established right, a defendant's conduct was (or was not) reasonable. Withal, objective legal reasonableness is a concept that grew up in the prototypical section 1983 context--a context in which a state actor (A) inflicts injury directly on a victim (V) in derogation of V's constitutionally-protected rights. Where the context shifts--as where A is not a direct actor (i.e., he himself did not perpetrate the seizure, detention, or assault of which V complains), but, rather, stands accused of permitting a third person (B), also a state actor, to violate V's rights--the test remains intact, but its focus shifts. In this tri-cornered situation, objective legal reasonableness (and, hence, qualified immunity) necessarily depends upon the relationship between A's acts or omissions and B's conduct. 20 This brings us to the doctrine of supervisory liability, which holds that a supervisor (defined loosely to encompass a wide range of officials who are themselves removed from the perpetration of the rights-violating behavior) may be liable under section 1983 if he formulates a policy or engages in a practice that leads to a civil rights violation committed by another. See City of Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, 471 U.S. 808, 823-24, 105 S.Ct. 2427, 85 L.Ed.2d 791 (1985). Notice is a salient consideration in determining the existence of supervisory liability. See Febus-Rodriguez v. Betancourt-Lebron, 14 F.3d 87, 93 (1st Cir.1994) (treating as [a]n important factor ... whether [the supervisor] was put on notice of behavior which was likely to result in the violation of ... constitutional rights). Nonetheless, supervisory liability does not require a showing that the supervisor had actual knowledge of the offending behavior; he may be liable for the foreseeable consequences of such conduct if he would have known of it but for his deliberate indifference or willful blindness. Maldonado-Denis v. Castillo-Rodriguez, 23 F.3d 576, 582 (1st Cir.1994). 21 To demonstrate deliberate indifference a plaintiff must show (1) a grave risk of harm, (2) the defendant's actual or constructive knowledge of that risk, and (3) his failure to take easily available measures to address the risk. See Manarite v. City of Springfield, 957 F.2d 953, 956 (1st Cir.1992). This formulation correctly implies that deliberate indifference alone does not equate with supervisory liability; a suitor also must show causation. See Maldonado-Denis, 23 F.3d at 582 (explaining that the supervisor must have had the power and authority to alleviate [the violation]). In other words, the plaintiff must affirmatively connect the supervisor's conduct to the subordinate's violative act or omission. Id. This affirmative connection need not take the form of knowing sanction, but may include tacit approval of, acquiescence in, or purposeful disregard of, rights-violating conduct. See id. 22 This returns us to the point of our beginning: the relationship between qualified immunity and supervisory liability. By definition, a defendant who claims qualified immunity must do so either on the theory that the asserted right is not clearly established or on the theory that the conduct attributed to him satisfies the test of objective legal reasonableness. See Harlow, 457 U.S. at 819, 102 S.Ct. 2727. Because the constitutional rights and supervisory liability doctrine that underlie Camilo-Robles's claim are clearly established, the qualified immunity analysis here turns on whether, in the particular circumstances confronted by each appellant, that appellant should reasonably have understood that his conduct jeopardized these rights. See Ringuette, 146 F.3d at 5; Berthiaume v. Caron, 142 F.3d 12, 14-15 (1st Cir.1998). 23 The inquiry into qualified immunity is separate and distinct from the inquiry into the merits. Consequently, courts are well-advised to separate qualified immunity analysis from merits analysis whenever practicable. In some circumstances, however, these inquiries overlap. So it is here: the appellants stand accused of culpable conduct in a setting that requires an inquiry into deliberate indifference (which is customarily a merits-related topic). 24 Given this setting, discerning whether a particular appellant's behavior passes the context-specific test of objective legal reasonableness to some extent collapses the separate qualified immunity and merits inquiries into a single analytic unit. 4 Such an approach is unusual, but we occasionally have engaged in precisely this sort of merits-centric analysis in the course of deciding questions of qualified immunity. See, e.g., Morales v. Ramirez, 906 F.2d 784, 787 (1st Cir.1990) (explaining that, in certain cases, some aspect of the merits may be inexorably intertwined with the issue of qualified immunity) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); Amsden v. Moran, 904 F.2d 748, 753-58 (1st Cir.1990) (examining the substance of the plaintiff's due process claims to determine the defendants' eligibility for qualified immunity). 25 We weave these strands together into a thread that binds these appeals. The plaintiff alleges a violation of clearly established constitutional rights and asserts that several defendants bear supervisory liability for that violation. Responding to these allegations, each defendant claims qualified immunity and, because both the rights in question and each defendant's susceptibility to supervisory liability are clearly established, these qualified immunity claims hinge on whether that defendant's conduct was objectively reasonable. Since our inquiry into objective legal reasonableness involves deliberate indifference, however, we are compelled to engage the merits to a greater extent than is usual. 26