Flaskamp v. Dearborn Public Schools, 02-2435.
| Decision Date | 05 October 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-2435.,02-2435. |
| Citation | 385 F.3d 935 |
| Parties | Laura Christine FLASKAMP, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. DEARBORN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, a municipal corporation, and Sharon Dulmage, Mary Lane, Aimee Blackburn, Alex Shami, Gerald Stockwell, and Pamela Wandless, in their official capacities as members of the Board of Education for the Dearborn Public Schools, and in their individual capacities, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Lawrence P. Zatkollf, J.
Mark H. Cousens (argued and briefed), Southfield, MI, for Appellant.
Camille Horne (argued), Christine D. Oldani (briefed), Plunkett & Cooney, Detroit, MI, for Appellees.
Before: BOGGS, Chief Judge; NELSON and SUTTON, Circuit Judges.
Laura Flaskamp taught physical education in the Dearborn Public Schools. In April 2001, the board of education for the school system denied her tenure after learning that Flaskamp had a sexual or otherwise-intimate relationship with a former student within nine months of the student's high school graduation. In acting upon the school principal's recommendation that her tenure application be denied, the board relied in part on the view that the relationship had begun before graduation and in part on the view that Flaskamp had failed to be candid in addressing the school system's concerns about the relationship.
Flaskamp sued the school system and the individual board members, claiming that they had violated her right to intimate association, her right to privacy and her right to be free of arbitrary state action — all in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on each claim. Because the board in our view did not violate the Due Process Clause in any of these respects in denying Flaskamp's tenure application, we affirm the district court's judgment in favor of the board, its members and the school system.
In 1997, the Dearborn Public Schools hired Laura Flaskamp as a physical education teacher and assigned her to one of the schools within the district, Fordson High School. Under Michigan law, Flaskamp had to serve a four-year probationary period before she was eligible for tenure. See Mich. Comp. Laws §38.81(1).
In the spring of 2000, Jane Doe, a 17-year-old senior at Fordson High School, enrolled in a leadership class that gave students an opportunity to assist physical education instructors in teaching their classes. Doe registered to serve as Flaskamp's teaching assistant. Id.
As the semester proceeded, Doe and Flaskamp not only communicated with each other during the class but also began to communicate with each other outside of class through e-mail and instant messages. A friendship developed and by the end of the school year the two had given each other several cards and gifts. Flaskamp, for example, gave Doe a birthday card in May 2000 (on her eighteenth birthday), gave her a card wishing her good luck in a choir concert, gave her a graduation card and gave her a toy gun for her graduation.
During the semester, Flaskamp sent Doe an "inappropriate joke," which apparently was filled with sexual innuendos. Doe's mother happened to see the e-mail and sent Flaskamp a message explaining that the joke was offensive and demanding an apology. Flaskamp apologized to Doe's mother.
At some point during the semester, Flaskamp asked Doe to meet her at a park after school. According to Doe, Flaskamp "wanted to tell me something but she never actually said it that day"; rather, the two "just sat and hung out and talked." JA 503. After this meeting, but before graduation, Flaskamp told Doe JA 506-07. Doe responded "I [do]n't know," id., and the two proceeded to "talk[ ] about it for a little while," JA 508.
In June 2000, Flaskamp attended Doe's graduation party. That same day, Doe sent Flaskamp a note that included the following: JA 863. Flaskamp told Doe that she "was in shock that [Doe] felt this way or that she would put it down on paper and feel that deeply." JA 827.
The relationship did not end with Doe's graduation. After Doe enrolled at Eastern Michigan University, she traveled regularly to Fordson High School to visit Flaskamp. The two also continued to communicate by phone, e-mail and instant message.
In December 2000, Doe's mother came to the conclusion that her daughter's relationship with Flaskamp went beyond the "inappropriate joke" e-mail that she had intercepted the prior spring. As a result, she sent an e-mail to Flaskamp warning her to stay away from her daughter and threatening a civil suit if she did not comply. She also told Flaskamp that she planned to inform the school about the relationship, which she believed had started before Doe's graduation.
After reading this e-mail from Doe's mother, Flaskamp contacted Fordson's principal, Paul Smith, to tell him about Doe's mother's concerns. During her conversation with Smith, Flaskamp told him for the first time about the inappropriate e-mail message she had sent to Doe during the prior spring, explaining that she had mistakenly sent the message to everyone in her e-mail address book. She then told Smith that Doe's mother believed that Flaskamp and Doe had an inappropriate relationship. Denying the allegation, Flaskamp said that she merely had a student-teacher relationship with Doe, an explanation that Smith accepted.
The end of the 2000-2001 school year marked the four-year anniversary of Flaskamp's employment with the school district, and it required the school board to decide whether she would receive tenure. Smith held Flaskamp in high regard as a teacher and recommended her for tenure on March 15, 2001.
That same day, however, Doe's mother called Smith to arrange for a meeting to discuss Flaskamp's relationship with her daughter. When Doe's mother and Smith met four days later, she told Smith that Flaskamp's sexual-innuendo e-mail went directly to her daughter, not to everyone in Flaskamp's e-mail address book. And Doe's mother told Smith that Flaskamp and her daughter frequently communicated by e-mail and instant messages and that Flaskamp had sent as many as 15 greeting cards to Doe. According to Smith, Doe's mother believed that Flaskamp was "chasing after her daughter" and that the relationship developed while Doe was a student. JA 952.
Smith met with Flaskamp later that day, at which point Flaskamp continued to deny having an inappropriate relationship with Doe. Flaskamp later met with her union president, with the school's human resources director and again with Smith. Smith reminded Flaskamp of the serious nature of the allegations and told her to sever any ties with Doe, which Flaskamp agreed to do.
During the following week, Flaskamp had a confrontation with Doe's brother, who still was a student at Fordson. When Flaskamp asked him how Doe was doing he "exploded" and threatened Flaskamp. Flaskamp reported the incident to Smith, which prompted another meeting with Doe's mother.
At this second meeting in March 2001, Doe's mother insisted that Flaskamp instigated the confrontation with her son by asking him about his sister, and she reiterated her complaint that Flaskamp was pursuing her daughter. She also told Smith of a recent instant-messaging session between Flaskamp and her daughter that contained a number of sexually explicit references. Among other things, Flaskamp and Doe discussed showering together and sharing a bed, and both ended the instant messaging with "xoxo" and "sweet dreams." JA 852. Flaskamp added "love [yo]u very very much." Id. Relying on these messages, Smith became convinced that Flaskamp had not been truthful with him about her relationship with Doe, and he accordingly suspended Flaskamp with pay.
At the same time, Smith revised his evaluation of Flaskamp as well as his tenure recommendation. He rated Flaskamp's performance unsatisfactory and recommended that the school board deny her tenure because she had not been truthful about her interactions with Doe. On April 23, 2001, the school board unanimously agreed to deny Flaskamp tenure.
On June 27, 2001, Flaskamp filed a §1983 action against the Dearborn Public Schools and the individual members of its board for discharging her and for denying her tenure. In her complaint, she claimed that the defendants had violated several of her Fourteenth Amendment rights — her right to intimate association, her right to privacy and her right to be free of arbitrary state action.
The district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment. Acknowledging that a right to intimate association exists, the district court held that the right did not extend to Flaskamp's relationship with Doe. The court reasoned "that a relationship between close friends, even one with a sexual component to the relationship, is not the type of relationship that has played a critical role [in] shaping our Nation's culture." Flaskamp v. Dearborn Pub. Sch., 232 F.Supp.2d 730, 741 (E.D.Mich.2002). Because the Constitution did not protect Flaskamp's relationship with Doe, the court concluded, Flaskamp's "argument that she was deprived of her right to intimate association fails." Id. at 741-42.
Declining to decide whether Flaskamp had suffered a violation of her right to privacy, the court granted qualified immunity to the individual defendants because "the contours of that right were not sufficiently clear to have put Defendants on notice that they violated Plaintiff's right." Id. at 738. Flaskamp's failure to identify a municipal policy or custom resulting in a constitutional violation,...
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