Opinion ID: 693416
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Entry into the House and Seizure of Desirae's Belongings

Text: 40 The district court concluded that Winburn merited summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity as to the other Fourth Amendment claims. We agree. As discussed above, once a defendant official has shown she is acting within her discretionary authority, the plaintiff must show that the official violated clearly established rights of which a reasonable official would have known. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982); Jordan v. Doe, 38 F.3d 1559, 1565 (11th Cir.1994). The plaintiff's burden is heavy: For qualified immunity to be surrendered, pre-existing law must dictate, that is, truly compel (not just suggest or allow or raise a question about), the conclusion for every like-situated, reasonable government agent that what defendant is doing violates federal law in the circumstances. Lassiter v. Alabama A & M Univ., 28 F.3d 1146, 1150 (11th Cir.1994) (en banc) (emphasis in original). Public officials are not obligated to be creative or imaginative in drawing analogies from previously decided cases. Adams v. St. Lucie County Sheriff's Dep't, 962 F.2d 1563, 1575 (11th Cir.1992) (Edmondson, J., dissenting), approved en banc, 998 F.2d 923 (11th Cir.1993). 41 Winburn has carried her burden of showing that she acted within her discretionary authority. Florida statutes permit HRS to take children into protective custody if an HRS investigator determines it necessary to protect the child. See Fla.Stat.Ann. Sec. 39.401(1)(c) (West 1988); id. Sec. 415.505(f)(3) (West 1993) (current version at id. Sec. 415.505(e)(3) (West Supp.1995)). Furthermore, HRS policy is to allow the child to take personal belongings when removed. 12 The Lenzes do not contend that this HRS policy was beyond HRS's authority. Thus, we conclude that Winburn's entry into the house to collect Desirae's needments was within Winburn's discretionary authority. 42 The Lenzes have failed to carry their burden of showing that Winburn's entry into their house and seizure of clothes, stuffed animals, video games, and encyclopedias violated a clearly established constitutional right. First, the Lenzes have cited no caselaw that makes it sufficiently clear that the Fourth Amendment prohibits as unreasonable entries such as Winburn's. Second, the Lenzes failed to show that their property interest in Desirae's belongings was sufficiently apparent to Winburn that a reasonable official in Winburn's position would have known that she was infringing on the Lenzes' property rights in violation of the Fourth Amendment. 43 As to the first weakness in their argument, the Lenzes contend that unwarranted entry into the home is a paradigmatic Fourth Amendment violation, and that the law was therefore clearly established even in the absence of factually similar caselaw. We are unpersuaded. To strip an official of qualified immunity, the right the official is alleged to have violated must have been 'clearly established' in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense.... Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). The Fourth Amendment prohibits only unreasonable searches. Unreasonableness is determined by a case-by-case balancing of the state's interests against the individual's. New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 337, 105 S.Ct. 733, 740, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985); see also Marshall v. Barlow's, Inc., 436 U.S. 307, 316-21, 98 S.Ct. 1816, 1822-24, 56 L.Ed.2d 305 (1978) (balancing OSHA's interest in surprise inspections against business owners' privacy interests). In the Fourth Amendment context, therefore, the law of qualified immunity provides that Winburn need not predict whether the interest of the state in retrieving personal effects for a child's comfort will be deemed to outweigh the privacy interests of the suspected abusers. Neither must she err on the side of caution and assume that such searches are unreasonable. See Lassiter, 28 F.3d at 1149. As the Supreme Court has explained, [i]t simply does not follow immediately from the conclusion that it was firmly established that warrantless searches not supported by probable cause and exigent circumstances violate the Fourth Amendment that [the official's] search was objectively legally unreasonable. Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640, 107 S.Ct. at 3039. Winburn is thus entitled to qualified immunity from the claim based on her entry into the Lenzes' house. 44 The Lenzes have also failed to carry their burden as to the seizure of Desirae's belongings. In particular, they have failed to cite any law or facts available to Winburn that would have led a reasonable official in her shoes to conclude that seizing Desirae's belongings would infringe upon a possessory interest of the Lenzes. Qualified immunity analysis asks the objective question whether a reasonable officer could have believed his conduct lawful under clearly established law in light of the information the officer possessed. See Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641, 107 S.Ct. at 3040. By all the outward circumstances apparent in the summary judgment record, an official in Winburn's shoes would in fact have concluded that Desirae's clothes, stuffed animals, toys, and books belonged to Desirae. The items were in Desirae's room and would appear suitable only to a child's use. The Lenzes asserted no property interest at the time to inform Winburn that the objects were in fact only lent to Desirae for her use while she was in the Lenzes' house. Based on these facts, the only ones available to Winburn at the time, a reasonable official could not have known that taking the items was a seizure in violation of the Lenzes' Fourth Amendment rights.