Chabad Chayil, Inc. v. Sch. Bd. of Miami-Dade Cnty.

• Decision Date: 08 September 2022
• Docket Number: 21-10619
• Citation: 48 F.4th 1222
• Parties: CHABAD CHAYIL, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The SCHOOL BOARD OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA, and Miami-Dade County, Florida, Office of Inspector General, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

48 F.4th 1222

CHABAD CHAYIL, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.The SCHOOL BOARD OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA, and Miami-Dade County, Florida, Office of Inspector General, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 21-10619

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Filed September 8, 2022

Robert A. Stokv, Joshua R. Kon, Yosef Yitzchak Kudan, Stok Kon & Braverman, Fort Lauderdale, FL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Michael John Dono, Bradley Allan Silverman, Schuyler A. Smith, Hamilton Miller & Birthisel, LLP, MIAMI, FL, for Defendant-Appellee Miami-Dade County School Board.

Javier Asis Lopez, Michael Robert Lorigas, Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton, LLP, Coral Gables, FL, Thomas Ronzetti, Tucker Ronzetti, PA, Miami, FL, for Defendant-Appellee Miami-Dade County, Office of Inspection General.

Before Newsom and Marcus, Circuit Judges, and Covington,^* District Judge.

Covington, District Judge:

In 2019, following a government investigation into an afterschool program run by Plaintiff Chabad Chayil, Inc., Defendant Miami-Dade County Public Schools ("MDCPS") barred Chabad from continuing to use its facilities. Chabad sued both MDCPS and the investigating authority—Miami-Dade County's Office of Inspector General ("OIG")—for alleged violations of its federal constitutional rights. The district court dismissed those claims with prejudice and without leave to amend, and Chabad appealed. Following careful consideration and oral argument, we affirm.

I

According to the amended complaint, Chabad is a non-profit organization that runs numerous programs for the Jewish community and wider community in Miami-Dade County. As part of its programming, Chabad operated a popular afterschool program—the Community Hebrew Afterschool Program ("CHAP")—from 2008 until the end of the 2018-19 school year. By the time it ceased operations in 2019, CHAP had grown to serve approximately 200 students at two locations, Aventura Waterways K-8 ("Waterways K-8") and Virginia A. Boone Highland Oaks Elementary School ("Boone Elementary").

Chabad alleged that when it first saw the need for an afterschool program in 2008, its President, Rabbi Kievman, approached Dr. Martin Karp, a member of the MDCPS School Board. Chabad inquired as to how CHAP could utilize MDCPS facilities, and Dr. Karp directed the organization to Luis Bello, the principal of Waterways K-8. Bello procured forms from MDCPS's Facility Use Office and forwarded them to Chabad. "At Bello's direction," Chabad submitted the forms provided, and MDCPS approved Chabad's application for the 2008-09 school year. Chabad repeated the same process for the 2009-10 school year. Chabad offered the CHAP program at Waterways K-8 for the 2008-09 and the 2009-10 school years on a part-time basis.

After obtaining a funding grant, CHAP operated as a full-time program beginning in the 2010-11 school year and for every year thereafter. The year it obtained the funding, Chabad approached Bello about expanding CHAP into a full-time afterschool program, and Bello gave Chabad a different form to fill out: an MDCPS Application for Temporary Use of School Building Facilities of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools—Temporary Use Agreement ("TUA"). This form was different from the one CHAP previously filled out during the first two years of its program.

Under MDCPS policy, school administrators may approve the temporary use of school facilities for non-school educational, civic, cultural, recreational, artistic, or charitable programs. The renter must submit a TUA and prepay rental charges unless the fee is waived by MDCPS officials. MDCPS may waive the rental fee, but only if the meeting or program is open to the public and offered free of charge.¹

According to Chabad, MDCPS never communicated the fee waiver policy to Chabad and never informed Chabad that it could charge fees to its students and in turn pay rental charges to MDCPS. Similarly, Chabad alleged that the principals at Waterways K-8 and Boone Elementary requested the yearly fee waivers for CHAP, and Chabad was unaware that its use of MDCPS facilities free of charge was contingent upon CHAP offering its services for free. Nonetheless, Chabad received fee waivers each year until 2019.

Beginning in approximately 2017, the OIG began investigating Chabad in response to an anonymous complaint. The anonymous complaint read in pertinent part:

School board member Dr. Martin Karp and his assistant, Gerald Bloomstein[,] have aided a religious organization named Chabad Chayil, which they are friendly with and participate in their programs by helping them gain access to using School [Board] [p]roperty for free under the claim that the organization does not collect any funds for its services of aftercare. In fact, the organization ... does charge [fees] for its services and has been fraudulently filling out paperwork submitted and accepted by the [S]chool [B]oard indicating that it does not collect funds and so gets to use the buildings for no money at all.

The OIG investigated the claims, with Chabad's cooperation, and in June 2019 the OIG sent Chabad a 37-page draft report of its investigation (the "Draft Report"). Chabad submitted a response to the Draft Report in July 2019, and the OIG published its Final Report in September 2019.

Chabad claims that both Reports were legally and factually inaccurate, biased, misguided, and prejudicial. Namely, Chabad takes issue with OIG's accusations that (1) Chabad made misrepresentations on its TUAs in order to gain free use of MDCPS facilities; (2) Dr. Karp and his chief of staff pressured MDCPS staff into approving Chabad's applications and fee waivers; (3) Chabad circumvented the School Board's process for having an afterschool program at a MDCPS facility; (4) Chabad improperly operated CHAP without the required state licensing; and (5) it violated state law by failing to do background checks on CHAP staff.

According to the amended complaint, MDCPS allowed Chabad to continue using school facilities for free during the pendency of the OIG's investigation. During this time, Chabad used the school board's online reservation system to reserve space at Waterways K-8 and Boone Elementary to operate CHAP for the 2019-20 school year. Chabad alleged that "one day before the start of the 2019-20 school year," MDCPS Chief Financial Officer Ron Steiger informed Chabad that, based on the Draft Report, it would not be permitted to use MDCPS facilities for the 2019-20 school year. Chabad objected to having its application denied on the basis of a Draft Report and before it had the chance to submit a response.

Chabad further alleged that "during this same period, Chabad Chayil's counsel encountered [MDCPS Superintendent Alberto Carvalho] at a charitable event and Carvalho assured him that MDCPS would work out an accommodation with Chabad Chayil." However, once the OIG issued its Final Report, MDCPS formally denied Chabad's online space reservation and "[d]espite numerous assurances by Carvalho that an accommodation for CHAP would be worked out, MDCPS, through Carvalho and Steiger[,] eventually told Chabad Chayil that it would never allow Chabad Chayil to use MDCPS facilities because the OIG's Final Report found that Chabad Chayil made misrepresentations on its TUAs."

Based upon these allegations, Chabad brought the following claims against MDCPS alone: (1) violation of the "Free Expression Clause of the First Amendment" pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Count II); (2) violation of various provisions of the Florida Constitution; and (3) violations of Florida state law. Chabad brought the following claims against both MDCPS and OIG pursuant to Section 1983 : (1) violation of its First Amendment right to freely exercise its religion (Count I); (2) violation of its equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment (Count III); and (3) deprivation of its right to procedural due process under the Fourteenth Amendment (Count IV).² Chabad also sought declaratory and injunctive relief.

MDCPS and OIG filed separate motions to dismiss. The district court dismissed all four of Chabad's federal constitutional claims against MDCPS because it had failed to allege facts sufficiently demonstrating that any of the identified School Board officials had final policymaking authority as required to support liability under Monell v. Department of Social Services , 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). The district court dismissed the Section 1983 Free Exercise claim against OIG for similar reasons, namely, for failure to allege facts establishing an official OIG policy or custom that would render OIG liable for the alleged constitutional violation. The district court further dismissed Chabad's Equal Protection and Due Process claims on the merits.

The district court also denied Chabad leave to further amend its complaint, finding Chabad's request for leave to amend "both procedurally deficient and lacking in substantive support." Finally, considering its dismissal of the federal claims, the district court refused to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claims. Having dismissed the amended complaint in its entirety, the district court closed the case. This appeal followed.

II

We review the grant of a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) de novo , accepting the allegations in the complaint as true and construing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Jackson v. BellSouth Telecomms. , 372 F.3d 1250, 1262 (11th Cir. 2004). We review a district court's denial of leave to amend a complaint for an abuse of discretion. Coventry First, LLC v. McCarty , 605 F.3d 865, 869 (11th Cir. 2010).

III

A. Claims against MDCPS

MDCPS may only be held liable where "the action that is alleged to be unconstitutional implements or executes a policy statement, ordinance, regulation, or decision officially adopted and promulgated by that body's officers." Monell , 436 U.S. at 690, 98 S.Ct. 2018. "[I]t is when execution of a government's policy or custom, whether made by its lawmakers or...