Opinion ID: 4245416
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Qualified Immunity – Teacher McGuire

Text: An individual defendant sued under § 1983 “may raise a defense of qualified immunity, which shields public officials from damages actions unless their conduct was unreasonable in light of clearly established law.” T.D. v. Patton, 868 F.3d 1209, 1220 (10th Cir. 2017) (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted), petition for cert. docketed (U.S. Jan. 23, 2018) (No. 17-1021). After the qualified-immunity defense is raised, “the plaintiff carries a two-part burden to show: (1) that the defendant’s actions violated a federal constitutional or statutory right, and, if so, (2) that the right was clearly established at the time of the defendant’s unlawful conduct.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). To meet this heavy burden the “plaintiff may show clearly established law by pointing to either a Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit decision, or the weight of authority from other courts, existing at the time of the alleged violation. To be clearly established, existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Further, “[a]lthough there need not be a case directly on point, [a state actor] cannot be said to have violated a clearly established right unless the right’s contours were sufficiently definite that any reasonable official in his shoes would have understood that he was violating it.” Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). And “[c]ourts must not define clearly established law at a high level of generality,” but instead must particularize the law to the facts under review. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). 6 The district court held that the complaint sufficiently alleged facts to support a substantive due process claim: “McGuire, a teacher, was acting out of malice, and in retaliation for B.P. reporting the encounter between McGuire and B.P., which resulted in B.P. being removed from McGuire’s classroom, when he forcibly entered the bathroom stall in which B.P., a student, was dressing, physically injuring and verbally assaulting an undressed B.P.” Aplt. App. at 72. The court further held, however, that Ms. Scott failed to establish that the law was clearly established such that Mr. McGuire “reasonably would have understood that his actions violated B.P.’s Substantive Due Process right.” Id. at 76-77. Ms. Scott appeals this holding.2 Mr. McGuire does not contest the district court’s determination that the complaint stated a constitutional violation—that his conduct in the school bathroom was conscience-shocking. Rather, he argues that he did not violate clearly established law. In the district court and in her appellate briefing, Ms. Scott cited Garcia ex rel. Garcia v. Miera, 817 F.2d 650, 655 (10th Cir. 1987).3 There, this court held “that at 2 Although Ms. Scott argues on appeal that the district court erred in granting qualified immunity to Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger, the court held that the complaint failed to state a claim against either of these defendants, a holding we affirm in the next section. Therefore, qualified immunity does not apply to them. 3 In district court, Ms. Scott relied on Garcia to support her claim that Mr. McGuire violated B.P.’s constitutional rights but did not cite Garcia in her discussion of clearly established law. Because the law regarding whether there was a constitutional violation is integral to whether that law was clearly established, we do not think Ms. Scott’s use of Garcia in district court forecloses this court from considering Garcia to determine the legal question of whether Mr. McGuire violated clearly (continued) 7 some point of excessiveness or brutality, a public school child’s substantive due process rights are violated by beatings administered by government-paid school officials.” (citing Milonas v. Williams, 691 F.2d 931, 940, 942 (10th Cir. 1982)). This court identified “three categories of corporal punishment.” Id. at 656. First, “[p]unishments that do not exceed the traditional common law standard of reasonableness are not actionable.” Id. Second, “punishments that exceed the common law standard without adequate state remedies violate procedural due process rights.” Id. And third, relevant here, “punishments that are so grossly excessive as to be shocking to the conscience violate substantive due process rights, without regard to the adequacy of state remedies.” Id. Garcia relied in part on Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651 (1977), first acknowledging Ingraham’s “explicit disclaimer” that it was deciding “whether corporal punishment of a school child, in any degree of excessiveness, can violate substantive rights under the Due Process Clause.” Garcia, 817 F.2d at 653. Nevertheless, Garcia ruled that “Ingraham requires us to hold that, at some point, excessive corporal punishment violates the pupil’s substantive due process rights.” Id. established law. See Pyle, 874 F.3d at 1263; cf. Gutierrez v. Cobos, 841 F.3d 895, 901 (10th Cir. 2016) (affirming summary judgment because “[p]laintiffs did not present any legal authority or legal argument to the district court in opposition to [defendant’s] motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity”). 8 In Garcia, elementary-school officials administered two beatings to a nineyear-old girl, immobilizing her and using a paddle that was split into two pieces so that “when it hit, it clapped and grabbed,” and resulted in severe injuries. 817 F.2d at 653 (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Similarly here, Ms. Scott alleged that Mr. McGuire caused numerous physical injuries to B.P. by hitting him with the bathroom-stall door and pushing him back against the stall. She further alleged that Mr. McGuire blocked B.P. in the stall and cursed and bullied him while he was in the vulnerable position of having his pants down. Although the facts of Garcia are not identical to those here, “we do not require plaintiffs to produce a factually identical case, but allow some degree of generality in factual correspondence.” Armijo ex rel. Chavez v. Wagon Mound Pub. Sch., 159 F.3d 1253, 1260 (10th Cir. 1998). At the Rule 12(b)(6) stage, the district court found that the complaint stated a claim of conscience-shocking behavior by Mr. McGuire. Mr. McGuire’s alleged conduct sufficiently resembles the conduct we held unconstitutional in Garcia such that “a reasonable official in [his] position would have known that [his] actions violated [B.P.’s] clearly established right,” T.D., 868 F.3d at 1213. He was therefore not entitled to qualified immunity at this stage of the proceedings. B. Liability of Principal Collier and Assistant Principal Berger for Failure to Protect Ms. Scott contends the district court erred in rejecting her claim against Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger in their individual capacities based on a danger-creation 9 theory. The complaint alleged that Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger “knew of the danger posed by keeping an aggressive, unstable teacher in regular employment, but did nothing to protect B.P. from the direct danger that he faced by attending school.” Aplt. App. at 17. Armijo articulated the criteria for liability of school employees under a state-created danger theory. 159 F.3d at 1262-63. There, this court stated that “[t]he key to the state-created danger cases lies in the state actors’ culpable knowledge and conduct in affirmatively placing an individual in a position of danger. . . .” Id. at 1263 (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted). Consequently, “to be liable, [state actors] must have used their authority to create an opportunity that would not otherwise have existed for the third party’s acts to occur.” Id. (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Ms. Scott argues that the act of removing B.P. from Mr. McGuire’s classroom increased his risk of harm by Mr. McGuire and that Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger knew of Mr. McGuire’s “aggressive and hostile disposition toward B.P.,” which demonstrated a risk of violence. Aplt. Opening Br. at 11. These arguments do not demonstrate that Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger affirmatively placed B.P. in danger. Even if they were aware of the danger Mr. McGuire presented, the complaint does not allege that they took any action that made B.P. more vulnerable to the alleged danger. On the contrary, the complaint demonstrated that Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger 10 took measures to separate B.P. from Mr. McGuire by removing him from Mr. McGuire’s classroom and having him change clothes in the school office. Ms. Scott further alleged that Ms. Berger failed to intervene in the attack in the school bathroom. She did not, however, allege any facts from which an inference could be drawn that Ms. Berger affirmatively acted to create an opportunity for Mr. McGuire to attack B.P., as required to state a danger-creation claim. See Armijo, 159 F.3d at 1263; see also Gray v. Univ. of Colo. Hosp. Auth., 672 F.3d 909, 919 n.7 (10th Cir. 2012) (“[I]naction by the state in the face of a known danger is not enough to invoke the protections of the Due Process Clause.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Therefore, the district court properly dismissed the danger-creation claim. C. Liability of School Board for Failure to Train and Supervise “Municipalities can be liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 only for their own unlawful acts. Accordingly, to prove a § 1983 claim against a municipality, a plaintiff must show the existence of a municipal policy or custom which directly caused the alleged injury.” Pyle, 874 F.3d at 1266 (citation omitted). A municipal policy may include “a formal regulation or policy statement, an informal custom that amounts to a widespread practice, decisions of municipal employees with final policymaking authority, ratification by final policymakers of the decisions of subordinates to whom authority was delegated, and the deliberately indifferent failure to adequately train or supervise employees.” Id. 11 For her claims of failure to train and supervise, Ms. Scott alleged that Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger “were aware of Defendant McGuire’s aggression and malice toward B.P., and yet did nothing to protect B.P. from McGuire’s wanton disregard for student privacy and safety.” Aplt. App. at 15, 16. She further alleged that after receiving a complaint of bullying, Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger failed to implement safeguards to prevent further attacks and protect B.P. from “a dangerous and unstable teacher.” Id. Ms. Scott also alleged that Mr. Collier “downplayed the incident in an attempt to protect Defendant McGuire” and did not adequately punish him. Id. at 10. These allegations fail to adequately allege a municipal policy. “Proof of a single incident of unconstitutional activity is not sufficient to impose liability . . . unless proof of the incident includes proof that it was caused by an existing, unconstitutional municipal policy, which policy can be attributed to a municipal policymaker.” Butler v. City of Norman, 992 F.2d 1053, 1055 (10th Cir. 1993). Thus, we conclude that the complaint contains insufficient factual allegations to support an inference that Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger were acting pursuant to a policy or custom when they responded to the first bullying incident or in failing to punish Mr. McGuire more severely. We reject Ms. Scott’s argument that a School Board policy was established by Mr. Collier’s and Ms. Berger’s handling of the single, initial bullying incident. She relies on dicta in Board of County Commissioners v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 412 12 (1997), stating, “Even assuming without deciding that proof of a single instance of inadequate [job background] screening could ever trigger municipal liability . . . ,” to argue that Mr. Collier’s and Ms. Berger’s actions constituted a School Board policy. But none of Ms. Scott’s claims are based on allegations of a failure to investigate Mr. McGuire’s background, as was the case in Brown, 520 U.S. at 415 (holding sheriff’s failure to adequately examine defendant-officer’s record was irrelevant unless in light of that record the defendant-officer’s “use of excessive force would have been a plainly obvious consequence of the hiring decision”). Ms. Scott’s allegations describe nothing more than an isolated event. They allege no facts to support a claim that the response of Mr. Collier and Ms. Berger was a School Board custom or policy.4 Accordingly, we hold that the complaint does not contain factual allegations sufficient to support a plausible inference that a School Board policy directly caused the injuries B.P. allegedly suffered, and the district court correctly dismissed these claims. 4 Ms. Scott contends the district court should have granted leave to amend her complaint to add an allegation that “[t]he behaviors and attitudes of the school administration in this case certainly reflect a deliberate indifference to the dangers posed to the students under their care such that an inference of a widespread custom or policy can be easily inferred.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 14. “[B]ut this allegation is the type of ‘formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action’ that is insufficient to meet the Twombly pleading standard.” Pyle, 874 F.3d at 1266 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555)). Therefore, amendment would have been futile because the proposed amendment would not have saved the complaint from dismissal. See Barnes v. Harris, 783 F.3d 1185, 1197 (10th Cir. 2015) (stating amending a complaint is futile where the amended complaint would be subject to dismissal). 13