Doe v. City of Mansfield

• Decision Date: 08 February 2023
• Docket Number: 22-3052
• Parties: JANE DOE, an individual known to all parties moving to proceed under a pseudonym, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF MANSFIELD, OHIO, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

JANE DOE, an individual known to all parties moving to proceed under a pseudonym, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF MANSFIELD, OHIO, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 22-3052

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit

February 8, 2023

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO AT CLEVELAND

Before: McKEAGUE, WHITE, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

McKEAGUE, CIRCUIT JUDGE

This case involves the release of Mansfield Police Officer Jane Doe's personnel file in response to a records request by her workplace-subordinate. Doe's personnel file contained a polygraph report with a brief but graphic admission to prior unnatural sexual behaviors. She alleges the release of this information by the City of Mansfield and David Remy, the City's Human Resources Director, violated her constitutional right to privacy. At summary judgment, the district court denied Remy qualified immunity. Because the right in question was not clearly established, we reverse.

I.

At all relevant times, Plaintiff-Appellee Jane Doe served as a Sergeant in the Mansfield, Ohio Police Department. In this role she supervised Officer Freeman Nixon. Doe and Nixon detail two events that led to the breakdown of their relationship.

First Doe showed Nixon a picture she received of him with a "humongous penis [drawn] over his . . . body." Doe Tr. R. 51-2, PID # 526; Nixon Tr. R. 51-3, PID # 544-45. Nixon testified that when Doe showed him the picture, it was in "more of a joking manner," rather than out of concern. Nixon Tr. R. 51-3, PID # 545. Doe, for her part, testified that when she showed Nixon the photo, "[h]e laughs, I laugh. He said they're just jealous, end of conversation[.]" Doe Tr. R. 51-2, PID # 526. Nixon did not immediately report the incident, which he describes as sexual harassment.

More contention resulted when, a few months later, Nixon allegedly used department resources to wash his personal vehicle. Doe alleges that she had previously warned Nixon about this behavior, so she wrote him up for insubordination. Nixon, however, felt that Doe "lied on" him in filing this report, because he "was never given a direct order not to wash a car." Upset that Doe appeared to be treating him unfairly, and believing that her report had threatened his employment, Nixon reported Doe for the graphic photograph incident. According to Nixon, he was never updated on the status of this complaint, so after six months he made a public records request for Doe's personnel file.

Defendant-Appellant David Remy received that records request. At the time, Remy, a lawyer admitted to practice in the state of Ohio, served as the Human Resources Director for the City of Mansfield.^[1] In that capacity, Remy determined whether redactions to personnel files were required before their release. One week after Nixon made his request, Remy sent him Doe's personnel file.

Doe's personnel file contained a report with answers from a polygraph examination she completed as part of the hiring process for a job with the Ohio Highway Patrol. She did not ultimately get that job, and years later applied for a position at the Mansfield Police Department. As part of Mansfield's hiring process, the Department collected an investigative packet that included the report from her prior polygraph examination with the Ohio Highway Patrol. The report contained admissions by Doe about unwanted sexual advances by a supervisor, theft from a prior employer, driving while under the influence of alcohol, suspension from college due to low grades, and abuse in her relationship with her former fiance. At issue in this appeal, however, is a three-sentence statement (hereinafter Statement) about Doe's unnatural sexual behavior sometime between the ages of seven and eighteen. Doe maintains that the behavior described in her Statement occurred as a result of childhood sexual abuse, but she concedes that a reader might not have known as much.

Although Remy reviewed Doe's Statement before releasing her file, he considered it "[j]ust an unflattering incident in her life," part of which may have occurred while she was a minor. Remy Tr. R. 57-3, PID # 726-28. Although he recognized that such an incident would be embarrassing, possibly even humiliating, to a person, he ultimately determined that Ohio law did not provide an exception to disclosure. He did not consider federal privacy law in coming to this conclusion.

Remy testified that when unusual situations arose in the past, he had consulted the City's Law Department, but he did not consult anyone before sharing Doe's file.

Nixon claims that upon receipt of Doe's file, he became concerned about Doe's fitness for the police force, especially in light of the fact that the Statement arguably relates to a component of Doe's job duties. Nixon showed another sergeant and two officers Doe's personnel file.^[2]

When Doe found out about the release of her personnel file and the dissemination of the Statement made in her polygraph report, she left work early and describes the following "six weeks of [her] life [as] a complete blur." Doe Tr. R. 57-4, PID # 752. She also had to tell her husband about the disclosed information for the first time. She suffered from depression, anxiety, and PTSD after the release of the information and sought treatment from two mental health professionals.

Following the release of her personnel file, Doe filed suit against Nixon for false light invasion of privacy and public disclosure of private facts, slander, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She also sued the City, alleging a Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process privacy claim. Doe later amended her complaint to add privacy claims against Remy, both personally and in his official capacity as the Human Resources Director for the City of Mansfield. Her husband, John Doe, also brought a loss of consortium claim that remains pending.

Doe moved for partial summary judgment on the liability element of her claims. The district court denied her motion. Nixon similarly moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted in part and denied in part his motion. Doe's intentional infliction of emotional distress claim against Nixon remains pending. Remy and the City also moved for summary judgment. The district court granted summary judgment to Remy in his official capacity but denied summary judgment on the individual capacity claims, finding Remy not entitled to qualified immunity. The district court also denied the City's motion for summary judgment. Doe v. City of Mansfield, 577 F.Supp.3d 651, 678 (N.D. Ohio 2021). Remy and the City noticed this appeal on January 21, 2022.^[3]

II.

We review de novo a district court's denial of qualified immunity on summary judgment, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. Foster v. Patrick, 806 F.3d 883, 886 (6th Cir. 2015) (citations omitted). "Qualified immunity is an affirmative defense that shields government officials performing discretionary functions from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does 'not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.'" Barrett v. Steubenville City Sch., 388 F.3d 967, 970 (6th Cir. 2004) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). Accordingly, a government official will be shielded from liability, unless the plaintiff shows: (1) a constitutional violation by defendant; and (2) that the right at issue was "so clearly established that a reasonable official in that position would have clearly understood that he or she was under an affirmative duty to refrain from such conduct." Id. (citing Rich v. City of Mayfield Heights, 955 F.2d 1092, 1095 (6th Cir. 1992)).

If the right is not clearly established, courts may choose not to reach the constitutional question. See Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 735 (2011).

III.

The right to privacy is twofold. Kallstrom v. City of Columbus, 136 F.3d 1055, 1060 (6th Cir. 1998) (explaining that cases follow "along two distinct lines"). First, there is the right to be free of state interference when making decisions regarding intimate personal matters. See Bloch v. Ribar, 156 F.3d 673, 683 (6th Cir. 1998) (citing Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)). That right is currently in major flux. See generally Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org., 142 S.Ct. 2228 (2022) (overturning Roe v. Wade). But we need not address the status of that privacy right today, because this appeal relies on a separate privacy right, and Dobbs is limited to abortion. Id. at 2277-78 ("Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion."). The second right is the right to avoid state disclosure of highly personal matters. See Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 598-600 (1977).^[4]

This second right, the informational right to privacy, concerns "an individual's right to control the nature and extent of information released about [themselves]." Bloch, 156 F.3d at 683. We interpret the right narrowly, to "only protect[] citizens from disclosure when the circumstances implicate 'personal rights that can be deemed fundamental or implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.'" Barber v. Overton, 496 F.3d 449, 455 (6th Cir. 2007) (quoting J.P. v DeSanti, 653 F.2d 1080, 1090 (6th Cir. 1981)). If the disclosed information is constitutionally protected, courts must balance the government's interest in disclosure against the individual's interest in privacy. Lee v. City of Columbus, 636 F.3d 245, 259-60 (6th Cir. 2011) (citing Kallstrom, 136 F.3d at 1061). The state action must also be narrowly tailored to further the state interest. Kallstrom, 136...