Court Opinion

ID: 9371254
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-15 21:00:29.817671+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:26.469997
License: Public Domain

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                                             UNPUBLISHED

                                UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                    FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                               No. 21-1980

        E.R.L., by and through her next friend, John Doe,

                             Plaintiff - Appellant,

                      v.

        ADOPTION ADVOCACY, INC.; JUNE BOND; JOE HAYNES,

                             Defendants - Appellees,

                      and

        AMY CARR,

                             Defendant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Beaufort.
        Richard M. Gergel, District Judge. (9:21-cv-00479-RMG)

        Argued: October 27, 2022                                       Decided: February 14, 2023

        Before AGEE and HARRIS, Circuit Judges, and Lydia K. GRIGGSBY, United States
        District Judge for the District of Maryland, sitting by designation.

        Vacated and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.

        ARGUED: Robert James Butcher, CAMDEN LAW FIRM, PA, Camden, South Carolina,
        for Appellant. Steven Chase Parker, LEWIS BRISBOIS BISGAARD & SMITH LLP,
        Savannah, Georgia, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Deborah J. Butcher, CAMDEN LAW
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        FIRM, PA, Camden, South Carolina, for Appellant.

        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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        PER CURIAM:

               E.R.L. is a minor child who suffered severe abuse at the hands of her adoptive

        parents. She alleges that Adoption Advocacy, Inc., a private agency that contracted with

        state officials to arrange her adoptive placement, violated her constitutional rights by

        placing her with known abusers in deliberate indifference to her personal safety and

        security.   The district court dismissed E.R.L.’s complaint, reasoning that Adoption

        Advocacy and its employees, as private actors, did not owe E.R.L. any constitutional duty.

        But in certain circumstances, a private party that assumes a state’s affirmative

        constitutional obligations may act under color of law for purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

        See West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, 56 (1988). Because the district court did not address this

        theory of state action, we vacate its judgment and remand for the court to conduct this

        analysis in the first instance.

                                                    I.

               E.R.L. was born in Franklin County, Ohio, in 2011. When E.R.L. was young, the

        state of Ohio terminated her biological parents’ rights and placed her in the custody of

        Franklin County Children Services (“FCCS”). She remained a ward of the state until 2015,

        when FCCS arranged for her permanent adoptive placement in South Carolina.

               FCCS did not itself undertake to identify a suitable home for E.R.L. Instead, Ohio

        officials contracted with Adoption Advocacy, Inc., a private “child placing agency”

        registered in South Carolina and licensed by the South Carolina Department of Social

        Services (“SCDSS”). Under South Carolina law, child placing agencies must follow

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        rigorous procedures when selecting a prospective adoptive family. See S.C. Code § 63-9-

        520; S.C. Code Regs. § 114-4980. These include a pre-placement screening, multiple

        interviews and home visits, and a comprehensive investigation of the family’s background

        and fitness to care for the child. S.C. Code § 63-9-520(A)(1)(a); S.C. Code Regs. § 114-

        4980(E)(3). The agency must then monitor the child’s pre-adoptive placement, prepare a

        final report, and present its findings to the family court before an adoption decree may

        issue. S.C. Code § 63-9-520(A)(2).

              These procedures, to the extent they were followed here, proved woefully

        inadequate to protect E.R.L. from harm. From the moment Adoption Advocacy placed

        E.R.L. in the prospective home of Herbert and Yulanda Mitchell, she suffered severe

        emotional and physical abuse. 1 The Mitchells beat E.R.L. with whips, belts, and hangers.

        They deprived her of food and water while forcing her to watch them eat complete meals.

        During her pre-adoptive placement, E.R.L. – then a four-year-old girl – lost one and a half

        pounds. But Adoption Advocacy failed to identify these signs of abuse and instead filed a

        post-placement report recommending E.R.L.’s adoption. On October 15, 2015, a Beauford

        County family court granted a final adoptive decree for E.R.L. to the Mitchells based on

        this recommendation.

               1
                 Because the district court dismissed this action under Federal Rule of Civil
        Procedure 12(b)(6), “we recount the facts as alleged by [E.R.L.], accepting them as true
        for purposes of this appeal.” Jackson v. Lightsey, 775 F.3d 170, 173 (4th Cir. 2014). We
        note, however, that the Mitchells’ subsequent criminal convictions of unlawful conduct
        toward a child, S.C. Code § 63-5-70(A)(1), confirm the essential nature of their abuse.

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               The Mitchells’ pattern of blatant child abuse – and Adoption Advocacy’s role in

        enabling that abuse – preceded E.R.L.’s 2015 placement. Sometime before 2010, a family

        court found that Yulanda Mitchell physically abused a foster child; as a result, SCDSS

        listed her on its Registry of Abuse and Neglect. Nonetheless, between 2010 and 2015,

        Adoption Advocacy placed four children with the Mitchells for adoption. Each child, like

        E.R.L., was repeatedly starved and beaten. The children were locked in their rooms, forced

        to sleep on the floor without blankets, and made to eat feces as punishment. At school, the

        children were observed eating from trash cans and drinking from toilets. All but one of the

        children fell far below the first percentile for height and weight, and each was subsequently

        diagnosed with severe failure to thrive. On many occasions, school and medical officials

        reported these clear signs of abuse and malnutrition to SCDSS. But Adoption Advocacy

        still chose to place E.R.L. with the Mitchells.

               Finally, in November 2015 – just weeks after E.R.L.’s adoption was finalized –

        SCDSS intervened. After one of the children reported the Mitchells’ abuse to his teacher,

        South Carolina officials placed the children in emergency protective custody. The state

        then terminated the Mitchells’ parental rights and initiated criminal proceedings. Yulanda

        and Herbert Mitchell ultimately pled guilty to multiple counts of unlawful conduct toward

        a child, S.C. Code § 63-5-70(A)(1), and were sentenced to ten and four years’

        incarceration, respectively.

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                                                      II.

               In February 2021, E.R.L. filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that her

        placement with the Mitchells violated her Fourteenth Amendment rights. Due to state

        confidentiality laws and E.R.L.’s youth at the time of her abuse, her counsel had no

        knowledge of the individuals – presumed to be SCDSS employees – who arranged and

        supervised her placement. The district court thus allowed E.R.L. to serve an expedited

        subpoena on SCDSS in order to “properly identify the defendants in this action.” Order at

        1, E.R.L. ex rel. Doe v. Adoption Advoc., Inc., No. 9:21-cv-479-RMG (D.S.C. Feb. 24,

        2021), ECF No. 9. SCDSS, in turn, identified Adoption Advocacy as the sole entity

        responsible for E.R.L.’s placement. E.R.L. then amended her complaint to bring claims

        against Adoption Advocacy and its employees alone.

               The defendants moved to dismiss the case, arguing that E.R.L.’s complaint failed to

        allege that Adoption Advocacy’s employees acted under color of state law when they

        placed E.R.L. with the Mitchells. The district court granted the motion, holding that the

        private agency and its employees did not owe E.R.L. a constitutional duty. See E.R.L.,

        2021 WL 3493179, at *3 (D.S.C. Aug. 9, 2021). The court recognized that private actors

        may, under certain circumstances, engage in state action for purposes of § 1983. But it

        construed E.R.L.’s complaint and briefing to raise only one such theory: that Adoption

        Advocacy was engaged in a “traditionally exclusive public function.” Id. at *2. Because

        “[t]he care of foster children is not traditionally the exclusive prerogative of the State,” the

        court concluded, E.R.L. failed to allege that her adoptive placement implicated state action.

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        Id. (quoting Milburn by Milburn v. Anne Arundel Cnty. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 871 F.2d 474,

        479 (4th Cir. 1989)).

               Performing an “exclusive public function,” however, is only one way that a private

        party may act on behalf of the state. See Peltier v. Charter Day Sch., Inc., 37 F.4th 104,

        115 (4th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (“The Supreme Court has identified various circumstances

        in which a private actor may be found to have engaged in state action.”). As relevant here,

        a private party also “may, under certain circumstances, be deemed a state actor when the

        government has outsourced one of its constitutional obligations to a private entity.”

        Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S. Ct. 1921, 1929 n.1 (2019) (citing West

        v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, 56 (1988)). 2

               In West, the Supreme Court identified one such circumstance, holding that a private

        physician providing medical services in state prison acted under color of law for purposes

        of § 1983. Because the state “has a constitutional obligation, under the Eighth Amendment,

        to provide adequate medical care to those whom it has incarcerated,” the Court reasoned,

        contracting out that obligation “does not relieve the [s]tate of its constitutional duty to

        provide adequate medical treatment to those in its custody, and it does not deprive the

               2
                  We do not in any way fault the district court for failing to parse out these separate
        theories of state action. Though West liability is analytically distinct from “exclusive
        public function” liability – resting on a private party’s assumption of a state’s affirmative
        constitutional duty, rather than a state’s traditional prerogative – courts at times conflate
        the two. Moreover, the parties’ exceptionally voluminous filings in the district court did
        little to clarify these distinct inquiries or otherwise provide guidance on the state action
        question.

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        [s]tate’s prisoners of the means to vindicate their Eighth Amendment rights.” 487 U.S. at

        54–56.

                 Here, E.R.L. alleges that the state of Ohio terminated her birth parents’ rights and

        placed her in the custody of state officials. She also alleges that until her adoption was

        finalized, Ohio retained legal custody and control over her autonomy. See Ohio Rev. Code

        § 5103.23. And the Fourth Circuit has held that “when a state involuntarily removes a

        child from her home, thereby taking the child into its custody and care, the state has taken

        an affirmative act to restrain the child’s liberty, triggering the protections of the Due

        Process Clause.” Doe ex rel. Johnson v. S.C. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 597 F.3d 163, 175 (4th

        Cir. 2010). “Such responsibility, in turn, includes a duty not to make a foster care

        placement that is deliberately indifferent to the child’s right to personal safety and

        security.” Id.

                 Under West, the state’s delegation of an affirmative constitutional duty to Adoption

        Advocacy’s employees may give rise to liability under § 1983. The district court here did

        not consider whether Doe imposed such an affirmative constitutional duty on the state with

        respect to E.R.L.’s placement with the Mitchells.          Nor did it consider whether the

        delegation of any such duty to private adoption agency employees might suffice to establish

        § 1983 liability under West. We therefore vacate the court’s judgment and remand so that

        the district court may address these questions in the first instance. 3

                 Given this disposition, we need not resolve the somewhat perplexing discovery-
                 3

        related arguments raised by each party on appeal. E.R.L. contends that the district court
        “should have permitted limited discovery to allow [her] to defend the Motion to Dismiss”

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                                                     III.

               For the reasons given above, we vacate the district court’s order granting the motion

        to dismiss and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

                                                                     VACATED AND REMANDED

        but identifies no such motion for limited discovery that was denied. In response, Adoption
        Advocacy argues that the district court appropriately denied “pre-suit discovery” under
        Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 27. But here, too, Adoption Advocacy identifies no such
        pre-suit motion, and E.R.L. represents that there is none. To the extent there exists a live
        discovery dispute between the parties, the district court can address it on remand. We also
        decline to reach Adoption Advocacy’s alternative arguments of qualified immunity and
        collateral estoppel at this juncture, leaving those, too, for the district court to address if
        necessary.

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