Christopher Russett v. State of Arizona ( 2020 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JAN 15 2020
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
CHRISTOPHER RUSSETT; et al., No. 17-15709
18-15325
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
D.C. No. 2:16-cv-00431-ROS
v.
STATE OF ARIZONA; et al., MEMORANDUM*
Defendants-Appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Arizona
Roslyn O. Silver, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted July 17, 2019
San Francisco, California
Before: MURPHY,** PAEZ, and RAWLINSON, Circuit Judges.
Defendants-Appellants appeal two district court orders denying their
motions to dismiss on grounds of qualified immunity in this 42 U.S.C. § 1983
action. We have jurisdiction over this appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we
reverse.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Michael R. Murphy, United States Circuit Judge for
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, sitting by designation.
1. Plaintiffs-Appellees (“Appellees”) are corrections officers who allege
they were assaulted by inmates while employed by the Arizona Department of
Corrections in various incidents from 2014 through 2015. Appellees brought
claims against individual prison employees and officials (“Appellants”) under 42
U.S.C. § 1983, alleging Appellants violated their Fourteenth Amendment due
process rights by placing them in known danger with deliberate indifference to
their personal safety. See Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 331 (1986) (noting
that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applies “to deliberate
decisions of government officials to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property”);
Patel v. Kent Sch. Dist., 648 F.3d 965, 971–72, 974 (9th Cir. 2011) (reiterating that
the Fourteenth Amendment does not impose a duty on the state to protect
individuals from the acts of third parties unless “the state affirmatively places the
plaintiff in danger by acting with deliberate indifference to a known or obvious
danger” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Although the complaint contains
allegations specific to each Appellee, the allegations can be summarized as
assertions that Appellants knowingly assigned Appellees to work with violent
inmates under extremely dangerous conditions.
2. Appellants twice moved to dismiss the claims asserted against them,
arguing they were entitled to qualified immunity because (1) the allegations in
Appellees’ complaint did not state a claim under the state-created danger doctrine,
2 17-15709
and (2) the alleged constitutional violations were not clearly established at the time
of the incidents. The district court denied Appellants’ motions as to the claims
asserted against them by Appellees. We review the district court’s denial of
qualified immunity de novo. Hernandez v. City of San Jose, 897 F.3d 1125, 1131
(9th Cir. 2018).
3. A state actor is entitled to qualified immunity unless: (1) “the facts
alleged, taken in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, show
that the official’s conduct violated a constitutional right” and (2) the right at issue
“was clearly established ‘in light of the specific context of the case’” at the time of
the alleged misconduct. Clairmont v. Sound Mental Health, 632 F.3d 1091, 1100
(9th Cir. 2011). This court has discretion to address either prong of the qualified
immunity analysis first. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009).
4. Here, it is unnecessary to address the first prong of the qualified
immunity analysis because Appellees cannot show that the right at issue was
clearly established at the time of the alleged incidents in 2014 and 2015. A clearly
established right is one that is “sufficiently clear that every reasonable official
would have understood that what he is doing violates that right.” Reichle v.
Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 664 (2012) (internal quotation marks and alteration
omitted). A plaintiff need not identify “a case directly on point, but existing
precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond
3 17-15709
debate.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011). Courts do not “define
clearly established law at a high level of generality,” id. at 742, because qualified
immunity is meant to protect “all but the plainly incompetent or those who
knowingly violate the law,” id. at 743 (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341
(1986)).
Appellees argue the constitutional right they assert was recognized by this
court in L.W. v. Grubbs, 974 F.2d 119 (9th Cir. 1992). The plaintiff in Grubbs was
a registered nurse employed at a medium security custodial institution. Id. at 120.
She was sexually assaulted by an inmate who was selected by the defendants to
work alone with her in the medical clinic. Id. This court held that the plaintiff’s
complaint stated a claim under the state-created danger doctrine. Id. at 123.
Although Appellees underscore that the plaintiff in Grubbs was employed
by a correctional facility, she was employed as a nurse, not a corrections officer.
This distinction is key because, unlike nurses, the primary responsibility of
corrections officers is to constantly supervise and closely interact with violent
inmates. Further, this court emphasized in Grubbs that the defendants led the
plaintiff “to believe that she would not be required to work alone with violent sex
offenders.” Id. at 120. Neither this court nor the Supreme Court has ever held that
a prison employee whose essential duties involve monitoring inmates can assert a
4 17-15709
substantive due process claim when he is assaulted by an inmate he was tasked
with supervising.
We have never before recognized a state-created danger cause of action on
facts analogous to the ones asserted by Appellees. Thus, it was not clearly
established that Appellants’ conduct of assigning corrections officers to work with
inmates under dangerous conditions would have violated Appellees’ due process
rights and we reverse the district court’s denial of qualified immunity.
REVERSED and REMANDED.
5 17-15709