Court Opinion

ID: 9481815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:32:35.64691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:35.607915
License: Public Domain

ENGEL, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in all of the majority’s opinion except that portion which holds that there may have been a fourth amendment seizure here. In my judgment, the facts of this case place it well beyond the intended reach of the fourth amendment. In that one particular, therefore, I respectfully dissent.
An understanding of the context in which an alleged fourth amendment violation takes place has historically been and is still necessary to determine the amendment’s reach. See Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 572-73, 108 S.Ct. 1975, 1978-79, 100 L.Ed.2d 565 (1988). Reduced to its essentials, we have here not a constitutional violation but merely a squabble between two individuals, each of whom in a sense was purporting to act under color of state law. They collided over what can only be called a territorial or jurisdictional dispute which got out of hand in an unseemly way.
The fourth amendment has always properly been used to strike a balance between the government’s interest in law enforcement — either of criminal statutes or of substantive regulations — and the citizens’ interest in individual autonomy, security and privacy. Historians agree that the fourth amendment was intended to outlaw general warrants for the search and seizure of personal property. General warrants did not require probable cause, nor did they speci*699fy particular places to be searched or items to be seized. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 760-61, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2038-39, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969), and generally, J. Landynski, Search and Seizure and the Supreme Court: A Study in Constitutional Interpretation 19-48 (1966). The fourth amendment “is the one procedural safeguard in the Constitution that grew directly out of the events which immediately preceded the revolutionary struggle with England.” Id. at 19.
In England, the general warrant had been used to enforce the crown’s libel laws, which severely restricted criticism of the government. Henry VIII in 1538 gave vast search powers to his agents to restrict freedom of the press. See F. Siebert, Freedom of the Press in England: 1476-1776 48 (1952). The British government’s power to issue general warrants for unrestricted searches and seizures of libelous writings was not restricted until Lord Camden, in Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029 (1765), sustained a trespass verdict in favor of the victim of a general warrant. (See generally Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 481-485, 85 S.Ct. 506, 509-512, 13 L.Ed.2d 431 (1965)). William Penn then led the Parliamentary attack against the general warrant with his now famous observation:
The poorest man may, in his cottage, bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.
N. Lasson, The History and Development of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution 49-50 (1937).
General warrants, particularly the form of general warrant called a “writ of assistance,” were also used in the American colonies by royal customs officers to enforce British restrictions on trade and to extract revenues from the Americans. Those warrants conferred on customs officers the general power to search for and seize smuggled goods without any evidentiary basis. The general warrants lacked the safeguards of the common law warrants, which specified the place to be searched and the property to be seized, and could be issued by a judge only upon sworn testimony establishing the evidentiary basis for the search or seizure. Intending to prevent the new American government from arbitrarily exercising its law enforcement powers through the use of general searches and seizures, the framers drafted and approved the fourth amendment. Ratified as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, it states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause ...
U.S. Constitution, Am. IV.
I briefly recite this history because I believe the majority today has strayed well beyond the original intent and even the modern meaning of the fourth amendment. Certainly the language of the amendment has in prior cases been properly applied to resolve problems unanticipated by the framers, such as workplace drug testing, the use of metal detectors, wire tapping, and the exercise of general police powers. Yet in each of these cases, and countless others that our courts have decided under the fourth amendment, judges have been asked to strike the proper balance between law enforcement and personal liberty — the very balance at the heart of the colonists’ objections to general warrants. This balance stands at the core of the fourth amendment as it was conceived in the late 1780s and I respectfully suggest, even as it is applied by federal- courts today.
In my opinion the majority errs in concluding that Tackett’s unseemly behavior, even if technically construed as action under color of state law, must perforce have violated Cassady’s constitutional rights. The majority finds a factual question to exist concerning whether Cassady’s subjective fear (quite possibly justified) that she could not safely leave her office without being assaulted amounted, in a constitu*700tional sense, to a “seizure.” The term “seizure” in our everyday speech has many meanings, but I believe we must analyze “seizure” as it is used in the Constitution since applying that term outside its historical context may lead to interpretive error. Under the majority's definition, a seizure subject to fourth amendment scrutiny can occur at any time a co-worker who happens to be cloaked with government authority infringes on the freedom of movement of a fellow employee. I respectfully suggest that this was never the intent of the fourth amendment, and goes beyond any current interpretation of the Supreme Court applying the fourth amendment.
Assuming with the majority that Tackett was acting under color of state law, as that phrase has been interpreted under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, I agree that a police officer’s exercise of arbitrary or excessive force, or a government official’s discretionary abuse of power which goes beyond the scope of his or her authority will usually have been performed under color of state law for purposes of section 1983 liability. See Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961) (thirteen City of Chicago police officers acted under color of state law when they broke into petitioners’ home in the early morning, routed them from bed, made them stand naked in the living room, and ransacked every room in the house). Yet our inquiry into Tackett’s liability should not end with this determination. “Thus, before a defendant may be held liable under section 1983, that defendant must first possess power by virtue of state law, then misuse that power in a way that violates federal constitutional rights.” Christian v. Belcher, 888 F.2d 410, 414 (6th Cir.1989) (emphasis added). Although Belcher directly involved first amendment rights, the observation appears equally valid in the application of the fourth amendment.
The majority has failed to explain how constitutional, rather than state common law rights have been violated by Tackett’s action. The majority’s reasoning opens up the specter that the fourth amendment can be invoked by any government employee who feels that a co-worker has unreasonably detained her beyond her scheduled working hours to finish a project, has unreasonably asked her to work on a weekend, or has made the government worker feel that she should confine her workspace to one room rather than another. Cassa-dy’s apprehensions may extend beyond those hypothesized above, but I see nothing which would allow us to draw principled distinctions between these differing harms. “The search and seizure provision as finally drafted and adopted, had both the virtue of brevity and the vice of ambiguity.” Landynski, Search and Seizure, supra, p. 42.
In all fourth amendment cases today, as in the early colonial challenges to the general warrant, courts must weigh the government’s need to inspect and investigate against the public’s desire to be left alone. See National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 665, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 1390, 103 L.Ed.2d 685 (1989) (drug testing of public employees constitutes a search under the fourth amendment); Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 108 S.Ct. 1975, 100 L.Ed.2d 565 (1988) (no fourth amendment seizure when police drove alongside defendant as he ran); New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 105 S.Ct. 733, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985) (school officials investigating student misconduct must abide by the fourth amendment); Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (requiring warrant for government’s use of electronic listening device); Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967) (requiring warrant for fire, health and housing code inspections). These are of course but a small sample of the dozens of fourth amendment cases the Supreme Court has considered in recent decades. In each, including all of the fourth amendment cases cited in the majority opinion1, the government argued that its action was legally justified in the interest of law en*701forcement, while the aggrieved party — often but not always a criminal defendant— argued that our vital national concern for personal liberty and privacy had been threatened by the government’s action.
No such dichotomy exists before us. No one argues that Tackett’s action was justified as a law enforcement action or otherwise. Cassady’s claim that her liberty and privacy have been violated leaves us with scarcely half of the fourth amendment balance of interests. In my view this alleged wrong should be remedied, if at all, through a state law tort action.
Undoubtedly, “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). It is also true that “[I]ndividuals do not lose Fourth Amendment rights merely because they work for the government instead of a private employer.” O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 717, 107 S.Ct. 1492, 1497, 94 L.Ed.2d 714 (1987). Still we should recognize that application of the term “seizure” in its constitutional sense may differ from our own everyday use of that word. Judges apply law to particular facts, and the facts of this case do not implicate the fourth amendment as written by the framers nor applied by the Supreme Court.
Cassady did not feel any greater threat because Tackett was a government employee than she would have felt had he been any other person brandishing a gun and making verbal threats. Tackett did not even pretend that because he was a government employee he had a legal right to confine Cassady. Just as surely, Cassa-dy viewed Tackett as a vexatious, gun-toting co-worker, but not as a jailer cloaked with authority to throw her in jail. The matter would be entirely different had Tackett, as jailer, confined a member of the public improperly.
The excessive force cases to which the majority analogize this case are quite different. In those cases, the fourth amendment’s concern that the enforcement of our laws be balanced against fundamental notions of privacy, personal security and liberty was clearly at issue. In my opinion those cases are fundamentally different, for no one can possibly contend that there was any law enforcement interest in Tack-ett’s actions.
Neither Cassady, Tackett or anyone else could view what Tackett did as anything remotely similar to the exercise of a legal duty as an officer of the government or as an enforcer of the laws. He was an office bully; nothing more, nothing less. While police officers sued for the use of excessive force may argue — successfully or not, depending on the facts — that unusual measures were needed to carry out their duties, Tackett cannot and does not argue that he had a right to confine Cassady to her office as part of his official functions. The fourth amendment’s balance between the interests of law enforcement and personal liberty has no relevance to this workplace turf battle between two strong-willed coworkers who happened to receive their paychecks from the government. The majority’s concern that Tackett’s action may well have been “objectively unreasonable” as that term is discussed in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989), ignores the fact that we must first have before us a claim properly arising under the fourth amendment before we may consider whether the action at issue was reasonable thereunder.
The indignity suffered by Cassady may very well permit her successfully to pursue a claim for false imprisonment under Kentucky law. “The action for the tort of false imprisonment ... protects the personal interest in freedom from restraint of movement.” Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts 47 (5th Ed.1984). “The restraint may be by means of physical barriers, or by threats of force which intimidate the plaintiff into compliance with orders. It is sufficient that the plaintiff submits to an apprehension of force reasonably to be understood from the conduct of the defendant, although no force is used or even expressly threatened.” Id. at 49.
While undoubtedly Tackett had no legal right to make Cassady feel threatened and confined, the prohibition on his action arises in the common law of torts, not in *702the Constitution, for Tackett’s conduct did not imply a claim of legal authority to act as he did. Cassady alleges that she was forced to barricade herself in her office and feared for her safety for forty-five minutes. Accepting her allegations as true, as we must when reviewing a summary judgment, Tackett’s behavior was unseemly and reprehensible, but we trivialize the Constitution by holding that the document speaks to this incident. As we noted in Braley v. City of Pontiac, 906 F.2d 220, 226 (6th Cir.1990), “[t]he protections of the Constitution are not coextensive with the protections of the common law....”
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the defendant’s actions are not viola-tive of the substantive component of the fourteenth amendment’s due process clause. In this respect the Supreme Court’s discussion in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989), seems particularly apt. “The [Due Process] Clause is phrased as a limitation on the State’s power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security.” Id. at 195, 109 S.Ct. at 1003.
This has been a most difficult case and I respectfully suggest that my difference with the majority is in an analysis of the various approaches which may be made under the Constitution to the unique facts of this case. It is difficult indeed to fit them comfortably within any particular analysis found in existing case law, but to me, at least, a more rational analysis would confine the liability potential in such circumstances to the more narrow range of substantive due process if for no other reason than that fourth amendment analysis, either historical or modern, simply does not make sense in this context. On the contrary, the best arguments to be mustered both in favor of and against the existence of a constitutional violation here seem to lie in the substantive due process cases. Even there, however, I am fully in agreement with the majority that the defendant’s conduct does not measure up to the stringent requirements of that component. A further factor supporting this type of analysis lies in the circumstances which underlie the dispute which is at action. To me at least, it is rather obvious that the underlying dispute between these individuals — who had the right to control what area of the jail — is uniquely one for state and local law. It is one which in my opinion can and should be left to resolution at the local level. In other words, this is the sort of dispute in which the federal courts as a matter of policy should be loathe to wield those powers conferred under section 1983.
The fourth amendment stands as a potent limit on the exercise of the government’s power to invade our homes and even our bodies, to seize our property and to learn information which we wish to keep private. On either an objective or subjective basis, no one, least of all the parties themselves, ever conceived that the defendant was acting in a law enforcement capacity in confining Cassady to her office. I would affirm the district court’s summary judgment in favor of defendant Tackett.

. Both the Black v. Stephens, 662 F.2d 181 (3d Cir.1981), and the Douglas v. Marino, 684 F.Supp. 395 (D.N.J.1988), cases cited in the majority’s discussion of the fourth amendment were analyzed and decided on fifth or eighth amendment grounds.