Court Opinion

ID: 9378530
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-10 19:01:11.88385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:21.972192
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 21-14433   Document: 61-1    Date Filed: 03/10/2023    Page: 1 of 13

                                                 [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                 In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                         ____________________

                               No. 21-14433
                         Non-Argument Calendar
                         ____________________

        JONATHAN A. SASSER,
                                                    Plaintiff-Appellant,
        versus
        BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY
        SYSTEM OF GEORGIA,
        UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA,
        JERE WADE MOREHEAD,
        Individually and as President, University of Georgia,
        UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA EQUAL OPPORTUNITY OFFICE,
        ERYN JANYCE DAWKINS,
        Individually and as Director Equal Opportunity Office,
        University of Georgia, et al.,
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        2                       Opinion of the Court                 21-14433

                                                       Defendants-Appellees.

                             ____________________

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Northern District of Georgia
                      D.C. Docket No. 1:20-cv-04022-SDG
                            ____________________

        Before NEWSOM, BRANCH, and GRANT, Circuit Judges
        PER CURIAM:
               Plaintiff Jonathan Sasser (“Sasser”) appeals pro se the district
        court’s dismissal of his second amended complaint alleging
        violations of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech while
        attending the University of Georgia (“UGA”) as a student and
        athlete on the UGA baseball team. Because the district court’s
        dismissal was proper, we affirm.
                              I.      Factual Background
                On or about September 29, 2018, Sasser attended a home
        UGA football game and, while in attendance, used a racial slur in
        reference to one of the players. Over a period of days following
        the football game, Sasser met with his baseball coach and various
        officials from the UGA Athletic Association (“UGAAA”) to discuss
        the incident. On or about October 3, 2018, these individuals
        informed Sasser he would be removed from the baseball team.
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        21-14433              Opinion of the Court                       3

               During this same period, the director of UGA’s Equal
        Opportunity Office (“EOO”), Defendant Eryn Janyce Dawkins,
        conducted an investigation that concluded with Sasser’s
        suspension for the remainder of the fall 2018 semester. Sasser
        appealed his suspension and removal from the baseball team but
        Defendant Jere Wade Morehead, UGA’s President, upheld the
        decisions. After a second appeal, the Board of Regents of the
        University System of Georgia (“the Board of Regents”) also upheld
        the decisions.
               Sasser filed suit against UGA, the Board of Regents, the
        EOO, and the UGAAA under the pseudonym “John Doe” asserting
        seven causes of action alleging free speech, due process, and equal
        protection violations, as well as breach of contract, and seeking
        declaratory and injunctive relief. He also named the following four
        school officials in both their official and personal capacities for
        violating his First Amendment rights: Morehead, Dawkins,
        Edward McMillian Tate (UGA’s Vice Chancellor of Legal Affairs),
        and C. Dean Alford, P.E. (a UGA Regent).
                Sasser amended his complaint to seek additional forms of
        relief, including reversal of his removal from the UGA baseball
        team and expungement of his record. The district court ordered
        him to file a second amended complaint identifying himself by
        name. In his second amended complaint, Sasser finally identified
        himself alleging that the disciplinary actions violated his
        constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and were taken in
        retaliation for his exercise of his First Amendment freedoms.
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        4                      Opinion of the Court                 21-14433

        Sasser also brought Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and
        due process claims, and a breach of contract claim. Additionally,
        he sought declaratory and injunctive relief.
                Following motions to dismiss filed by each Defendant, the
        district court dismissed Sasser’s second amended complaint.
                The district court dismissed all claims against UGA and the
        EOO because, as member institutions of the Board, neither are
        legal entities that can be sued. The district court also dismissed all
        claims against the Board of Regents, concluding that it was entitled
        to Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity. As for the UGAAA,
        the district court accepted Sasser’s argument that the UGAAA was
        an “arm of the state” and dismissed the claims against it as being
        barred by Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity. Finally, the
        district court dismissed the claims against the individual
        Defendants in their official capacity on sovereign immunity
        grounds, concluding that, because Sasser based those claims solely
        on past conduct, Ex Parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), did not apply.
               As for the remaining claims against the individual
        Defendants in their personal capacities, the district court concluded
        that the Defendants were entitled to qualified immunity, finding
        that Sasser had not alleged a constitutional violation, “let alone one
        [that was] clearly established.” The district court dismissed Sasser’s
        equal protection, due process, and breach of contract claims—each
        for failure to state a claim. Because none of Sasser’s claims
        remained, the district court dismissed his claims for declaratory and
        injunctive relief.
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        21-14433                    Opinion of the Court                                  5

              On appeal, proceeding pro se, Sasser challenges the dismissal
        of his claims against the individual Defendants acting in their
        personal capacities on the grounds of qualified immunity.1 Because

        1
          Sasser has abandoned all other claims on appeal. An appellant can abandon
        a claim by: (1) making only passing reference to it, (2) raising it in a perfunctory
        manner without supporting arguments and authority, (3) referring to it only
        in the “statement of the case” or “summary of the argument,” or (4) referring
        to the issue as mere background to the appellant’s main arguments. Sapuppo
        v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 681–82 (11th Cir. 2014). While we
        will liberally construe pro se pleadings, issues not briefed on appeal are
        normally deemed abandoned and will not be considered. Timson v. Sampson,
        518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008).
                Sasser does not challenge the district court’s determination that his
        First Amendment claims against the Board of Regents or the individual
        Defendants acting in their official capacity are barred by sovereign immunity.
        The same is true for his claims for declaratory and injunctive relief based on
        the alleged First Amendment violations. While Sasser’s briefing refers broadly
        to “immunity/qualified immunity” for the individual Defendants, it focuses
        on arguments related to qualified immunity only. He has therefore
        abandoned his claims based upon sovereign immunity. Even if he had not
        abandoned these claims, however, they would fail on the merits because the
        Board of Regents, as an arm or instrumentality of the State of Georgia is
        entitled to sovereign immunity. See, e.g., Stroud v. McIntosh, 722 F.3d 1294,
        1297 (11th Cir. 2013) (“There is no dispute that the Board [of Regents of the
        University System of Georgia] is an arm of the state for the purposes of
        asserting sovereign immunity.”). Similarly, the individual Defendants, as
        alleged agents of the Board of Regents, are also entitled to sovereign
        immunity. See Busby v. City of Orlando, 931 F.2d 764, 776 (11th Cir. 1991).
                 As for his claims against the individual Defendants in their official
        capacities for injunctive and declaratory relief, Sasser does not challenge the
        district court’s determination that Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), did not
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        6                           Opinion of the Court                        21-14433

        the district court did not err in dismissing Sasser’s second amended
        complaint, we affirm.
                                         II.     Discussion
               We review de novo a district court’s order granting the
        Defendants’ motion to dismiss. McDonald v. S. Farm Bureau Life
        Ins. Co., 291 F.3d 718, 722 (11th Cir. 2002).

        apply and the individual Defendants were entitled to sovereign immunity on
        those claims as well.
                Likewise, Sasser does not mention his equal protection or breach of
        contract claims on appeal. Id. Additionally, Sasser raised his due process
        claims for the first time in his reply brief. While this Court construes briefs
        filed by pro se litigants liberally, we will not address issues raised for the first
        time in an appellant’s reply brief. United States v. Levy, 379 F.3d 1241, 1244
        (11th Cir. 2004).
                 Sasser also has not challenged on appeal the district court’s dismissal
        of his claims against UGA or the EOO on the grounds that neither are legal
        entities capable of being sued in their own capacities. See Timson, 518 F.3d at
        874. Even if he had not abandoned those claims, they would fail on the merits
        because neither UGA nor the EOO are distinct, legal entities capable of being
        sued under Georgia law. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. Sys. of Ga. v. Doe, 278
        Ga. App. 878, 878 (2006) (holding that member institutions of the Board are
        not “separate or distinct” legal entities and thus “cannot sue or be sued”).
                Lastly, Sasser does not challenge the district court’s dismissal of his
        claims against the UGAAA. See Timson, 518 F.3d at 874. Even if he had not,
        his challenge would fail on the merits because the UGAAA is a private
        corporation, not a state actor, and therefore cannot be liable under § 1983.
        O.C.G.A. §§ 20-3-78, 20-3-79(a).
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        21-14433                Opinion of the Court                         7

                   A. Qualified Immunity for the individual
                      Defendants acting in their personal capacities
               Because Sasser has abandoned all his other claims, the
        remaining issue on appeal is Sasser’s § 1983 claim against the
        individual Defendants for monetary damages based upon alleged
        First Amendment violations. Even assuming that Sasser can show
        that his First Amendment right to free speech was violated, he has
        not shown that the allegedly violated right was clearly established.
        The individual Defendants are therefore entitled to qualified
        immunity for the claim against them in their personal capacities.
                A complaint stating a claim for relief must contain “a short
        and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled
        to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). Factual allegations in a complaint
        “must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative
        level, on the assumption that all the allegations in the complaint
        are true.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007)
        (citations omitted). A plaintiff’s allegations must amount to more
        than “labels and conclusions.” Id.
               Section 1983 prohibits officials acting under color of state
        law from depriving another of their constitutional rights. 42 U.S.C.
        § 1983. Qualified immunity protects a defendant from liability
        under § 1983 for discretionary acts, “as long as [those] acts do not
        violate clearly established . . . constitutional rights of which a
        reasonable person would have known.” Jackson v. Sauls, 206 F.3d
        1156, 1164 (11th Cir. 2000). “The immunity protects all but the
        plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.”
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        8                      Opinion of the Court                 21-14433

        Jordan v. Mosley, 487 F.3d 1350, 1354 (11th Cir. 2007) (quotation
        omitted).
               Overcoming the official’s qualified immunity defense
        ordinarily involves a two-part inquiry. Id. at 1137. We consider:
        (1) “[whether] the facts, construed in the light most favorable to
        the plaintiff, show that a constitutional right has been violated; and
        (2) whether the right violated was clearly established.” Roberts v.
        Spielman, 643 F.3d 899, 904 (11th Cir. 2011) (quotation omitted).
        Both elements must be satisfied to overcome qualified immunity.
        Id. A court may address these factors in either order it deems most
        appropriate, see Case v. Eslinger, 555 F.3d 1317, 1325–26 (11th Cir.
        2009), and a public official is entitled to qualified immunity if the
        plaintiff fails to establish either one, see Pearson v. Callahan, 555
        U.S. 223, 236 (2009).
                The controlling question in the “clearly established” prong
        of the qualified immunity analysis is whether the individual
        Defendants received “fair warning” that their conduct was
        unconstitutional. Wade v. United States, 13 F.4th 1217, 1225 (11th
        Cir. 2021). This “standard is a demanding one.” Cantu v. City of
        Dothan, 974 F.3d 1217, 1235 (11th Cir. 2020). This is especially true
        in the context of the First Amendment. See, e.g., Gaines v.
        Wardynski, 871 F.3d 1203, 1220 (11th Cir. 2017) (“It is particularly
        difficult to overcome the qualified immunity defense in the First
        Amendment context.”); Maggio v. Sipple, 211 F.3d 1346, 1354 (11th
        Cir. 2000) (“[A] defendant in a First Amendment suit will only
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        21-14433                   Opinion of the Court                                9

        rarely be on notice that his actions are unlawful.” (quotation
        omitted)).
                There are three methods by which a plaintiff can
        demonstrate that a right was clearly established. We focus
        primarily on the first method of the analysis, in which “the law can
        be ‘clearly established’ for qualified immunity purposes only by
        decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, Eleventh Circuit Court of
        Appeals, or the highest court of the state where the case arose.”
        Jenkins v. Talladega City Bd. of Educ., 115 F.3d 821, 826 n.4 (11th
        Cir. 1997). 2 “This method requires us to consider whether the
        factual scenario that the official[s] faced is fairly distinguishable
        from the circumstances facing [the] government official[s] in a
        previous case.” Gaines, 871 F.3d at 1209 (quotation omitted).
        “Although existing case law does not necessarily have to be
        ‘directly on point,’ it must be close enough to have put ‘the
        statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.’” Id. at 1209–
        10 (quoting Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011)).
               Sasser argues that Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (1972), and
        Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri, 410 U.S.
        667 (1973), clearly establish a First Amendment violation in this
        case. In doing so, he argues that Tinker v. Des Moines Independent

        2
          Plaintiffs can also satisfy the “clearly established” prong by pointing to “a
        broader, clearly established principle that should control the novel facts of the
        situation,” or by demonstrating that “the conduct involved in the case may so
        obviously violate the constitution that prior case law is unnecessary.” Terrell
        v. Smith, 668 F.3d 1244, 1255 (11th Cir. 2012). Sasser does neither here.
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        10                      Opinion of the Court                 21-14433

        Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), and Bethel School
        District No. 403 v. Frazer, 478 U.S. 675 (1986), the cases upon
        which the Defendants (and the district court) rely, dealt only with
        high school students’ First Amendment rights, while Healy and
        Papish address college and university students’ rights.
               In Healy, the Supreme Court held that a college violated the
        plaintiffs’ free association rights when it denied recognition of their
        student group. Healy, 408 U.S. at 170–71. Citing Tinker, the Court
        stated that “state colleges and universities are not enclaves immune
        from the sweep of the First Amendment.” Id. at 180. Indeed, it
        recognized that the protection of First Amendment freedoms is
        “vital” on the campuses of colleges and universities, which
        represent “the marketplace of ideas.” Id. One year later in Papish,
        the Supreme Court held that the University of Missouri violated a
        graduate student’s First Amendment rights by expelling him for
        disseminating a student newspaper with an expletive-bearing
        headline. Papish, 410 U.S. at 671. The Court reaffirmed Healy and
        stated that while “a state university[ has an] undoubted prerogative
        to enforce reasonable rules governing student conduct,” it may not
        “shut off” the “dissemination of ideas—no matter how offensive to
        good taste.” Id. at 669–70. In so holding, it also acknowledged that
        universities nonetheless may apply “nondiscriminatory [and]
        reasonable rules governing conduct” of students. Id.
            Sasser is correct that Healy and Papish speak to the First
        Amendment rights of university students. And, of course, the First
        Amendment protects speech that is offensive and abhorrent.
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        21-14433                Opinion of the Court                        11

        However, he has not pointed to a case from the United States
        Supreme Court, our Court, or the Supreme Court of Georgia in
        which a student was disciplined in violation of the First
        Amendment for using a racial slur on campus during a school-
        sponsored event. See Gaines, 871 F.3d at 1209. Both Healy and
        Papish are factually distinguishable from this case. Healy
        concerned the First Amendment right to free association, not the
        freedom of speech, and addressed formal recognition of a student
        group rather than the discipline of a student for his or her individual
        speech. Healy, 408 U.S. at 170–71. Likewise, Papish addressed the
        discipline of a student for distribution of a student newspaper
        containing what the university argued was obscenity. Papish, 410
        U.S. at 671. The facts of that case were materially different from
        this case and thus cannot defeat qualified immunity.
               And true, both Tinker and Bethel involved students in public
        high schools. The plaintiffs in Tinker were high school students
        who were disciplined for wearing black armbands in protest of the
        Vietnam War, Tinker, 393 U.S. at 504, while the plaintiff in Bethel
        was a high school student who delivered a speech riddled with
        “elaborate, graphic, and explicit sexual” content, Bethel, 478 U.S.
        at 678. The Supreme Court held that the school in Tinker violated
        the plaintiffs’ rights by suspending them, Tinker, 393 U.S. at 514,
        but in Bethel upheld the plaintiff’s suspension from school, Bethel,
        478 U.S. at 686. Tinker “held that public schools may regulate
        student expression when it ‘substantially interfere[s] with the work
        of the school or impinge[s] upon the rights of other students.’” Doe
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        12                       Opinion of the Court                   21-14433

        v. Valencia Coll., 903 F.3d 1220, 1229 (11th Cir. 2018) (quoting
        Tinker, 393 U.S. at 509). While the Court “ma[de] clear that
        students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of
        speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,’” Morse v. Frederick,
        551 U.S. 393, 396 (2007) (quoting Tinker, 393 U.S. at 506), the Court
        also held in Bethel that “the constitutional rights of students in
        public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of
        adults in other settings,” Bethel, 478 U.S. at 682. For those reasons,
        public schools are permitted to impose sanctions upon students “in
        response to . . . offensively lewd and indecent speech.” Id. at 685.
                Still, it is not clear to what extent Tinker applies to the
        university setting, making it all the more obvious that the law in
        this area is not so clearly established to put the individual
        Defendants on notice so as to defeat qualified immunity. Indeed,
        our Court has stated that “it’s not at all clear that Tinker[ ]. . .
        applies in the university—as opposed to the elementary- and
        secondary-school—setting,” acknowledging that the caselaw in
        this area “sends mixed signals.” Speech First, Inc. v. Cartwright, 32
        F.4th 1110, 1127 n.6 (11th Cir. 2022). Still, Sasser has not pointed
        to a factually similar case that “truly compels . . . the conclusion . . .
        that [the] Defendant[s] violated [his] federal rights.” Evans v.
        Stephens, 407 F.3d 1272, 1282 (11th Cir. 2005) (en banc).
               We therefore conclude that the district court did not err in
        dismissing Sasser’s second amended complaint because, even if the
        individual Defendants did violate Sasser’s rights, as he alleged,
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        21-14433               Opinion of the Court                        13

        those rights were not clearly established, so they were entitled to
        qualified immunity.
                                   III.   Conclusion

               For these reasons, the district court did not err in dismissing
        Sasser’s second amended complaint. Accordingly, we affirm.
              AFFIRMED.