Court Opinion

ID: 9394494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-05-15 17:00:51.402754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:00.631179
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-11659   Document: 58-1    Date Filed: 05/15/2023    Page: 1 of 13

                                                [DO NOT PUBLISH]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

                         ____________________

                               No. 22-11659
                         Non-Argument Calendar
                         ____________________

        MELANIE ORTIZ,
                                                    Plaintiff-Appellant,
        versus
        CITY OF MIAMI,
        a Florida municipal corporation,
        RODOLFO LLANES,
        individually,
        JAVIER ORTIZ,
        individually,
        FABIO SANCHEZ,
        individually,
        MIAMI FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE, et al.,,
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        2                      Opinion of the Court                22-11659

                                                      Defendants-Appellees,

        JORGE COLINA, et al.,

                                                               Defendants.

                             ____________________

                    Appeal from the United States District Court
                        for the Southern District of Florida
                       D.C. Docket No. 1:20-cv-25132-RNS
                             ____________________

        Before ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges.
        PER CURIAM:
               Melanie Ortiz, a former City of Miami (the “City”) police
        officer, appeals the district court’s order dismissing her claims
        against the City, the Miami Fraternal Order of Police (the “FOP”),
        Rodolfo Llanes, Fabio Sanchez, and Javier Ortiz. Ortiz also appeals
        the district court’s order denying her motion for reconsideration.
        After careful review, we affirm the dismissal of Ortiz’s claims and
        the denial of reconsideration.
               I.      FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
               Ortiz was employed as a police detective with the City since
        at least 2013. During 2013 and 2014, Ortiz was assigned to patrol
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        22-11659               Opinion of the Court                       3

        duty in Little Havana. A collective bargaining agreement between
        the City of Miami and the FOP governed Ortiz’s employment. In
        December 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested sev-
        eral City employees, including one police officer and two police
        aides, following an investigation into a scheme in which tow-truck
        operators would bribe police officers. The City suspended three
        police officers in relation to the alleged bribery scheme but made
        no arrests. Ortiz was not suspended at that time.
               In December 2017, the City’s Internal Affairs Section sum-
        moned Ortiz to provide a statement in connection with the bribery
        scheme. Ortiz “initially thought that she was being interviewed
        regarding what she had observed others do when she had been as-
        signed to patrol in Little Havana in 2013–2014.” After Ortiz arrived
        at the Internal Affairs office with her unidentified FOP representa-
        tive, Sergeant Fabio Sanchez, a City employee, called her FOP rep-
        resentative aside for a private conversation. Her FOP representa-
        tive then informed her that he would not be able to represent her,
        but that Javier Ortiz, the FOP president, would be her representa-
        tive.
               Melanie Ortiz returned to the Internal Affairs office on De-
        cember 16, 2017, and Javier Ortiz served as her FOP representative.
        During the meeting, Javier Ortiz denied Melanie Ortiz’s request to
        review her file and told her that “[h]er only option to avoid going
        to jail—and having her daughter learn about her arrest through the
        media—would be to immediately and irrevocably resign.” Javier
        Ortiz also stated that a FOP lawyer could not represent Ortiz.
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        4                     Opinion of the Court                 22-11659

        Ortiz attempted to go downstairs to her car to call another police
        officer or superior to help her, but Sergeant Sanchez told her she
        could not leave the Internal Affairs office. Javier Ortiz provided
        Ortiz with the following resignation memorandum, which Ortiz
        signed:
              I, Officer Melanie Ortiz PIN 29186 voluntarily resign
              with no threats, rewards or promises from my posi-
              tion as a Police Officer with the City of Miami Police
              Department. This redline memorandum is irrevoca-
              ble and my resignation will be effective immediately.
              I have spoken to my representative of choice, Lieu-
              tenant Javier Ortiz who is the President of the Miami
              Fraternal Order of Police. I am resigning for personal
              reasons and believe that this is the best option for my-
              self and my family.
        Ortiz’s resignation was accepted by then-Chief of Police, Rodolfo
        Llanes. Four other City police officers subsequently resigned using
        “nearly verbatim documents.” Those officers included: (1) Michael
        Bode, a former police officer “who actually had accepted [bribes]”;
        (2) Article Peoples, who was relieved of duty in 2014 during the
        bribery investigation but was never criminally charged; and (3)
        Yesid Ortiz and Reynaldo Irias, who both resigned after being sum-
        moned by Internal Affairs and were not criminally charged in rela-
        tion to the bribery scheme.
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        22-11659                   Opinion of the Court                                5

               Article 8.1.D of the FOP’s collective bargaining agreement
        with the City, which is similar to Florida Statute § 112.532(1)(d), 1
        provides the following guidelines for investigations that could lead
        to disciplinary action: (1) the officer must be informed of the nature
        of the investigation before any interrogation begins; (2) all identifi-
        able witnesses shall be interviewed prior to the investigative inter-
        view of the accused; and (3) the evidence and complaint must be
        provided to the accused officer before any interview of that officer.
        After the officer’s interview, Internal Affairs then makes recom-
        mendations as to guilt or innocence and appropriate punishment
        to the Chief of Police. After the Chief’s decision is made, a police
        officer can appeal to the Civil Service Board for a vote on the issue
        of guilt.
               On December 16, 2020, Ortiz filed a complaint against the
        City of Miami, the Order of Police, and several individual defend-
        ants. On May 17, 2021, Ortiz filed a second amended complaint

        1Section 112.532 sets forth the rights and privileges of all law enforcement
        officers. Subsection (1)(d) provides, in relevant part:
               The law enforcement officer . . . under investigation must be
               informed of the nature of the investigation before any interro-
               gation begins . . . . All identifiable witnesses shall be inter-
               viewed, whenever possible, prior to the beginning of the in-
               vestigative interview of the accused officer. The complaint, all
               witness statements, including all other existing subject officer
               statements, and all other existing evidence . . . must be pro-
               vided to each officer who is the subject of the complaint before
               the beginning of any investigative interview of that officer. . . .
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        6                           Opinion of the Court                        22-11659

        against the City of Miami, Rodolfo Llanes, Javier Ortiz, Fabio
        Sanchez, and the FOP (collectively, “Defendants”). Ortiz claimed
        that Defendants denied her due process in violation of 42 U.S.C. §
        1983 (Count I) and that Defendants conspired to violate her consti-
        tutional rights (Count II). On May 28, 2021, Defendants filed a mo-
        tion to dismiss the second amended complaint. Defendants argued
        dismissal was appropriate as to Count I because: (1) Ortiz’s § 1983
        claims related to the FOP and Ortiz failed to plead the requisite
        “state action” because the FOP and Ortiz, a labor union and labor
        union president, are private actors; (2) Ortiz’s § 1983 claim failed to
        plead a requisite “constitutional violation” as Ortiz failed to invoke
        any of her rights to either a pre or post-deprivation hearing; (3)
        Llanes and Sanchez, as governmental officials, are entitled to qual-
        ified immunity; and (4) Ortiz failed to allege that the City had a
        custom or policy that constituted deliberate indifference to a rec-
        ognized constitutional right. As to Count II, Defendants argued
        that the second amended complaint failed to allege a § 1983 con-
        spiracy.
               On December 2, 2021, the district court granted the Defend-
        ants’ motion to dismiss with prejudice. 2 For Count I, as to Llanes
        and Sanchez, the district court determined that they were entitled
        to qualified immunity because neither had committed any consti-
        tutional violation. Specifically, the district court reasoned that the

        2 The district court determined that Ortiz’s failure to seek redress in state court

        did not bar her § 1983 claim against the FOP and the individual defendants.
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        22-11659               Opinion of the Court                        7

        memorandum identified by Ortiz’s complaint was “insufficient to
        put Llanes on notice of the coercion [to resign]” and that Sanchez’s
        private chat with an unidentified representative did not “amount
        to a constitutional violation.” As to the § 1983 claim pertaining to
        all Defendants, the district court determined that the complaint
        failed to allege a conspiracy between the state and private actors.
        The district court noted that “[c]ritically, the operative complaint
        does not allege that Sanchez and Javier Ortiz communicated at any
        point during the relevant time period, much less that they reached
        an understanding.” Declining to “infer that because Sanchez rec-
        ommended Javier Ortiz be the representative at the interview, that
        the two reached an understanding to deprive Ortiz of her due pro-
        cess rights,” the district court concluded that the complaint did not
        allege a conspiracy. As to Javier Ortiz and the FOP, the district
        court concluded that they were not acting under state color.
               The district court also determined that Ortiz’s complaint did
        not state a claim for municipal liability under § 1983 because she
        did not identify any official policy of coercing employees to resign
        and because Llanes could not have been part of an unofficial policy
        as he was not the final policymaker. For those reasons, the district
        court dismissed Count I. As to Count II, the district court dismissed
        the conspiracy claim for the same reasons as it dismissed the con-
        spiracy claim under § 1983––insufficient evidence of such a conspir-
        acy.
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        8                           Opinion of the Court                      22-11659

               On January 3, 2022, Ortiz filed a motion for reconsideration.
        The district court denied this motion, finding no manifest error of
        fact or law in the previous order. Ortiz timely appealed.
                           II.      STANDARD OF REVIEW
               We review de novo a district court’s order of dismissal, “ac-
        cepting the allegations in the complaint as true and construing
        them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Mesa Valderrama
        v. United States, 417 F.3d 1189, 1194 (11th Cir. 2005). 3 A complaint
        must articulate “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plau-
        sible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570
        (2007).
                                      III.   ANALYSIS
               Ortiz argues that the district court erred in dismissing her
        claims against the City of Miami, former-Police Chief Rodolfo
        Llanes, Internal Affairs Sergeant Fabio Sanchez, the FOP, and the
        FOP President Javier Ortiz. We address arguments relating to the
        parties in turn.

        3 We   review a district court’s denial of a motion for reconsideration for abuse
        of discretion. Corwin v. Walt Disney Co., 475 F.3d 1239, 1254 (11th Cir. 2007).
        Although Ortiz seeks reversal of the order denying reconsideration, she makes
        no arguments in her briefing that pertain to the order denying reconsideration
        nor the correct standard of review. As such, we consider any argument as to
        that order abandoned. Tanner Advert. Grp., L.L.C. v. Fayette County, 451
        F.3d 777, 785 (11th Cir. 2006) (stating that issues not clearly designated in the
        initial brief are considered abandoned).
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        22-11659                Opinion of the Court                           9

                                  A. The City of Miami
                As a municipality, the City cannot be held vicariously liable
        under § 1983 for constitutional violations committed by its officers.
        Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 693–94 (1978). “There
        are, however, several different ways of establishing municipal lia-
        bility under § 1983.” Hoefling v. City of Miami, 811 F.3d 1271, 1279
        (11th Cir. 2016). A municipality can be liable for official policies
        enacted by its legislative body. McKusick v. City of Melbourne, 96
        F.3d 478, 483 (11th Cir. 1996). “Municipal liability may also attach
        if final policymakers have acquiesced in a longstanding practice
        that constitutes the entity’s standard operating procedure.” Hoe-
        fling, 811 F.3d at 1279.
                Ortiz’s complaint fails to state a claim for municipal liability.
        Nowhere in her complaint does she identify an official policy of
        prompting employee resignations in the manner described. There-
        fore, in order to hold the City liable, Ortiz must point to a practice
        “so permanent and well settled” that it constitutes a custom or us-
        age with the force of law. Monell, 436 U.S. at 691. As with the
        failure to identify an official policy, such an allegation is lacking in
        her complaint. Melanie Ortiz alleged that the City had a policy of
        conspiring with the FOP and Javier Ortiz to deprive police officers
        of their due process rights by coercing resignations. The problem
        with Ortiz’s argument, however, is that the complaint relies on
        then-Chief Llanes’s acceptance of her resignation as the City’s con-
        nection to the conspiracy. But Llanes did not adopt any policy re-
        lated to police resignations by accepting what, under the
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                 22-11659

        allegations of the complaint, was a seemingly voluntary resigna-
        tion, and the complaint did not allege that he had any knowledge
        of the alleged resignation practice.
                Ortiz argues that such approval and knowledge can be “rea-
        sonably inferred” because he was the “chief of a police department
        that had a collective bargaining agreement specifying elaborate
        pre[-]deprivation and post[-]deprivation procedures” and because
        the form-letter resignation “contained no rational explanation as to
        why she would waive all of those pre[-]deprivation and post-depri-
        vation procedures.” We disagree. First, there is an explanation as
        to why she would waive those procedures, as the resignation letter
        states that Ortiz was “resigning for personal reasons and believe[d]
        that this is the best option for myself and my family.” Second, the
        fact that Llanes’s department had procedures as to disciplinary
        hearings in no way implies his approval of coerced resignations. If
        anything, those disciplinary procedures would lead Llanes to as-
        sume that the resignation was not coerced absent further infor-
        mation. See Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs of Bryan Cnty. v. Brown, 520
        U.S. 397, 404 (1997) (“[A] plaintiff must show that the municipal
        action was taken with the requisite degree of culpability and must
        demonstrate a direct causal link between the municipal action and
        the deprivation of federal rights”). Because Ortiz’s complaint fails
        to mention a policy or custom adopted by the City, the allegations
        are insufficient to create municipal liability.
               Therefore, the district court did not err in dismissing Ortiz’s
        § 1983 claim against the City of Miami.
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        22-11659               Opinion of the Court                        11

                                B. Llanes and Sanchez
                Next, Ortiz alleges that Llanes and Sanchez violated her due
        process rights under § 1983. The district court determined that
        they were entitled to qualified immunity because the second
        amended complaint failed to allege that Llanes or Sanchez commit-
        ted any constitutional violations. While Ortiz urges reversal of the
        district court’s order, she makes no arguments relating to qualified
        immunity in her initial briefing and makes a short nonsensical ar-
        gument on qualified immunity in her reply briefing. As such, we
        consider the qualified immunity issue abandoned. See Tanner Ad-
        vert., 451 F.3d at 785; Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739
        F.3d 678 (11th Cir. 2014) (explaining that a party fails to adequately
        brief a claim when she does not plainly and prominently raise it,
        e.g., by devoting a discrete section of his argument to those claims).
        And because we find that Ortiz has abandoned any argument as to
        qualified immunity, we affirm the dismissal of Ortiz’s due process
        claim under § 1983 against Llanes and Sanchez.
                             C. The FOP and Javier Ortiz
               Finally, Ortiz alleges that the FOP and Javier Ortiz violated
        her due process rights under § 1983. To state a claim under § 1983,
        a plaintiff must plausibly allege (1) a deprivation of a federal right
        and (2) that the deprivation was committed under the color of state
        law. Am. Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Sullivan, 526 U.S. 40, 49–50 (1999).
        Defendants can only satisfy the second prong if “the party charged
        with the deprivation [was] a person who may fairly be said to be a
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        12                      Opinion of the Court                  22-11659

        state actor.” Harvey v. Harvey, 949 F.2d 1127, 1130 (11th Cir. 1992)
        (quoting Lugar v. Edmonson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 937 (1982)).
                “[T]o act ‘under color of’ state law for § 1983 purposes does
        not require that the defendant be an officer of the State,” as “[p]ri-
        vate actors, jointly engaged with state officials, are acting under the
        ‘color of law’ for purposes of § 1983 actions.” Dennis v. Sparks, 449
        U.S. 24, 27–28 (1980). “The plaintiff attempting to prove such a
        conspiracy must show that the parties ‘reached an understanding’
        to deny the plaintiff his or her rights.” Bendiburg v. Dempsey, 909
        F.2d 463, 468 (11th Cir. 1990) (quoting Addickes v. S.H. Kress &
        Co., 398 U.S. 144, 152 (1970). Ortiz argues that the FOP and Javier
        Ortiz, although private actors, became state actors by acting in con-
        cert with the state officials in depriving her of constitutional rights.
        The district court, however, determined that the allegations did
        not support such a conspiracy between the private and state actors
        in this case.
                We agree with the district court, as Ortiz’s complaint indeed
        fails to allege a conspiracy between the FOP, Javier Ortiz, and the
        City. The only fact alleged in the second amended complaint rele-
        vant to such a conspiracy is the private conversation between
        Sanchez and Ortiz’s original FOP representative, in which Sanchez
        recommended Javier Ortiz to be the representative at Ortiz’s next
        interview. But we cannot infer from a recommendation on union
        representation that the two reached an understanding to deprive
        Ortiz of her constitutional due process rights. Without a
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        22-11659                   Opinion of the Court                              13

        sufficiently alleged understanding between the private actors and
        state actors, the FOP and Javier Ortiz cannot be held liable under §
        1983.
              The district court thus did not err in dismissing the § 1983
        claims against the FOP and Javier Ortiz. 4
                                  IV.     CONCLUSION
               For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s or-
        der dismissing Ortiz’s claims and its order denying her motion for
        reconsideration.5
                AFFIRMED.

        4 Count II for
                     conspiracy against all Defendants was properly dismissed for the
        same reasons outlined here. Ortiz failed to allege an actual agreement or un-
        derstanding to deprive her of her constitutional rights.
        5 The FOP and Javier Ortiz filed a Motions for Sanctions against Melanie Ortiz.

        Although Ortiz’s briefing is disorganized, it is not utterly devoid of merit. As
        such, we deny the motion.