Braun v. Maynard

• Citation: 652 F.3d 557,32 IER Cases 966
• Decision Date: 21 July 2011
• Docket Number: No. 10–1401.,10–1401.
• Parties: Heather BRAUN; Joseph L. Goodrich; George Keefer; Kristi Morrow; Robert Mumma; Joseph L. Rodriguez; Jeremy Sowers; Amber Ward, Plaintiffs–Appellants,v.Gary D. MAYNARD; Michael J. Stouffer; D. Kenneth Horning; James V. Peguese; Frederick Walls; Kenneth Frick; Tonya Leonard; Rhonda Ralston; John Doe, in their individual capacities as employees of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

652 F.3d 557

32 IER Cases 966

Heather BRAUN; Joseph L. Goodrich; George Keefer; Kristi Morrow; Robert Mumma; Joseph L. Rodriguez; Jeremy Sowers; Amber Ward, Plaintiffs–Appellants,

v.Gary D. MAYNARD; Michael J. Stouffer; D. Kenneth Horning; James

v. Peguese; Frederick Walls; Kenneth Frick; Tonya Leonard; Rhonda Ralston; John Doe, in their individual capacities as employees of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 10–1401.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: May 10, 2011.Decided: July 21, 2011.

ARGUED: Robert David Schulte, Schulte Booth, PC, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellants. Michael O'Connor Doyle, Office of the Attorney General of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Neil Hyman, Law Office of Neil S. Hyman, LLC, Bethesda, Maryland, for Appellants. Douglas F. Gansler, Attorney General of Maryland, Lisa O. Arnquist, Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellees.Before WILKINSON and SHEDD, Circuit Judges, and DAVID C. NORTON, Chief United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina, sitting by designation.Affirmed by published opinion. Judge WILKINSON wrote the opinion, in which Judge SHEDD and Judge NORTON joined.

OPINION

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

On August 12, 2008, officials at the Maryland Correctional Training Center conducted a drug interdiction operation using a portable ion scanning machine capable of detecting minute amounts of controlled substances. Upon entering the building, several employees and independent contractors of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services alerted for the presence of drugs and were then searched. Nothing turned up. The aggrieved employees filed suit, alleging principally that the searches violated their Fourth Amendment rights. The district court held that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity and dismissed the suit.

We affirm. The prison officials in this case faced difficult questions lying at the intersection of the Fourth Amendment's broad commands, the prison's compelling needs, and technology's innovations. Although it was clearly established that intrusive prison employee searches require reasonable suspicion, it was far from clear that the devices at issue here could not meet that standard. Because no clearly established federal law placed the officers on notice that fighting contraband in the prison environment in this manner was unlawful, we agree with the district court that the immunity attached.

I.

According to the complaint, in the summer of 2008 defendant Frederick Walls, a captain at the Maryland Correctional Training Center (“MCTC”) in Hagerstown, Maryland, and defendant James Peguese, the Assistant Commissioner of Security Operations, requested that the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services's (“DPSCS”) Ionscan team perform a drug interdiction operation at MCTC. Captain Walls made this request at the direction of his supervisors, including defendant Kenneth Horning, MCTC's warden. The interdiction team, employed by DPSCS, uses a scanning device called an Ionscan to detect the presence of illicit substances on a person's body, clothing, and belongings. After a sample is collected, the device uses ionization to determine the sample's chemical identity. Through this method, the Ion-scan can detect microscopic amounts of controlled substances.

The request was approved by MCTC and DPSCS supervisory personnel. On August 12, 2008, the Ionscan team, led by defendant Lieutenant Tonya Leonard, set up an Ionscan station in MCTC's visitor registration area. The complaint alleges that before any scanning took place, all of the defendants agreed that a positive result from the Ionscan machine would be followed by a vehicle search by a K–9 or correctional officer, which would itself be followed by a “strip and visual body cavity search” regardless of whether the vehicle search turned up any drugs. At the time, however, there was no official policy governing strip and cavity searches of prison employees.

The plaintiffs, employees and independent contractors of the DPSCS, were scanned on their way into MCTC that morning. While the great majority of persons tested negative, plaintiffs each tested positive in varying degrees for the presence of drugs. The plaintiffs allege that Lieutenant Leonard made a “judgment call” that anyone who set off an alarm would be subject to the searches, regardless of the Ionscan's reading on the amount of the substance detected.

According to the complaint, the searches that took place after the positive alert followed a roughly similar pattern. For instance, after one plaintiff's positive Ionscan alarm and fruitless vehicle search she was asked to remove her clothing piece by piece, squat, and cough. She, like the other plaintiffs, does not allege that she was subjected to a manual body cavity search or otherwise physically touched during the visual inspection. Her search, like those of the other plaintiffs, was conducted by same-sex officers in a public restroom. None of the plaintiffs allege, however, that anyone other than the searching officers was present. After the search all plaintiffs passed a urinalysis test.

There were a few differences in the search allegations. One of the plaintiffs, Sergeant Robert Mumma, did not claim that he was required to fully undress, and several of them—George Keefer, Officer Jose Rodriguez, and Officer Jeremy Sowers—did not indicate that they were forced to squat and cough, though Sowers did state that he was subjected to a “visual body cavity search.” Those searched claim they were not given a sufficient chance to explain how they could have innocently come into contact with illicit substances. Although there appear to be no allegations that the searching officers committed misconduct during the actual searches themselves or that the searches themselves took more than a brief amount of time, the plaintiffs do allege that on the day in question, the Ionscan machine was neither operated nor operating correctly.

The plaintiffs filed suit against the previously mentioned defendants, as well as against Secretary Gary Maynard of the DPSCS, Commissioner Michael Stouffer of the DPSCS's Division of Corrections, Lieutenant Rhonda Ralston (one of the officers who conducted the searches of the female plaintiffs), and Lieutenants Kenneth Frick and John Doe (who along with Captain Walls conducted the searches of the male plaintiffs). The district court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss, rejecting the plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claim on grounds of qualified immunity and their other causes of action for failing to state a claim. It reasoned that although there were difficult questions regarding the usefulness of the Ionscan machine and about the adequacy of Maryland's search protocols, “[u]ltimately, because the law regarding the use of Ionscan machines was not clear at the time of the search, the Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity.”

II.

We review the district court's decision to grant a motion to dismiss de novo. See E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Kolon Indus., Inc., 637 F.3d 435, 440 (4th Cir.2011). During that review, we accept the complaint's factual contentions as true, see id., though we need not accept the plaintiffs' legal conclusions, see Simmons v. United Mortg. & Loan Inv., LLC, 634 F.3d 754, 768 (4th Cir.2011). Here, we limit our review to the complaint itself. ¹

To state a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, plaintiffs must allege facts suggesting that their federal rights have been violated by state officials. However, even where an officer violated the plaintiff's rights, he may claim immunity if the law in question was not clearly established. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982).

In keeping with courts' reluctance to answer constitutional questions unnecessarily, we may determine whether the constitutional rights allegedly violated here were clearly established without first determining whether those rights exist at all. See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009). In this case, we need not address whether the searches violated the Constitution. Inasmuch as the law regarding Ionscans and searches in the prison employee context was not clearly established, the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity. We begin by laying out that immunity's basic principles and then address the lack of clearly established law regarding these searches.

A.

The basic principles surrounding qualified immunity are well settled. Qualified immunity “strikes a balance between compensating those who have been injured by official conduct and protecting government's ability to perform its traditional functions.” Wyatt v. Cole, 504 U.S. 158, 167, 112 S.Ct. 1827, 118 L.Ed.2d 504 (1992). It ensures that officials are not unfairly strung up for money damages as a result of “bad guesses in gray areas.” Maciariello v. Sumner, 973 F.2d 295, 298 (4th Cir.1992). It encourages capable citizens to join the ranks of public servants by removing the threat of constant litigation. See, e.g., Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 525–26, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). And it safeguards officers' discretion and expertise against judicial overreaching. “[P]olice officers [and] prison wardens ... routinely make close decisions in the exercise of the broad authority that necessarily is delegated to them.” Davis v. Scherer, 468 U.S. 183, 196, 104 S.Ct. 3012, 82 L.Ed.2d 139 (1984). Second-guessing such judgment calls would inhibit “principled and fearless decision-making,” Richardson v. McKnight, 521 U.S. 399, 408, 117 S.Ct. 2100, 138 L.Ed.2d 540 (1997) (quotation omitted), and displace experienced local administration with more removed judicial policymaking. The real-world results of such forays would not...