Hodge v. Jones

Decision Date19 July 1994
Docket NumberNo. 93-1182,93-1182
Citation31 F.3d 157
PartiesDavid R. HODGE; Marsha A. Hodge, his wife, individually and as parents and next friend of a minor, Joseph E. Hodge, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. M. Alexander JONES, Director of the Carroll County Department of Social Services, in his official and individual capacities; Alan L. Katz, Assistant Director of the Carroll County Department of Social Services, in his official and individual capacities; Carolyn W. Colvin, Secretary of the Department of Human Resources of the State of Maryland, in her official and individual capacities, Defendants-Appellants, and Carroll County Department of Social Services, Defendant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

ARGUED: Evelyn Omega Cannon, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, MD, for appellants. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Manassas, VA, for appellees. ON BRIEF: J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., Donna R. Heller, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, MD, for appellants. Tracy E. Mulligan, Rockville, MD, for appellees.

Before POWELL, Associate Justice (Retired), United States Supreme Court, sitting by designation, and WIDENER and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

Vacated in part, reversed in part, and remanded with instructions by published opinion. Judge WILLIAMS wrote the opinion, in which Judge WIDENER concurred. Justice POWELL wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment.

OPINION

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge:

We are presented with the question of the applicability of a qualified immunity affirmative defense in the context of a 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 (1988), action challenging the constitutionality of Maryland's maintenance of records pertaining to suspected child abuse investigations after the alleged abusive parents have been cleared of the charges by the Department of Social Services. After finding that this practice violated Plaintiffs' substantive due process right of familial privacy and procedural due process rights, the district court denied the Defendant state officials' assertion of a qualified immunity defense and granted interlocutory summary judgment to the Plaintiff-parents on the issue of liability. We reverse, holding that, because Defendants' actions violated no clearly established federal constitutional or statutory right, the district court erroneously found for Plaintiffs on the issue of liability and denied Defendants the benefit of qualified immunity, 812 F.Supp. 593.

I.
A.

On January 20, 1989, David and Marsha Hodge took their three-month-old son Joseph to the Carroll County General Hospital in Westminster, Maryland, for examination and treatment of the child's swollen right arm. The examining physician diagnosed a fractured ulna " 'without adequate historical explanation' " and, pursuant to state law, Md.Fam.Law Code Ann. Sec. 5-704(a) (1991 Repl.Vol.), contacted the Carroll County Department of Social Services (CCDSS) to report suspected child abuse. (J.A. at 15.) An investigation was initiated the next day by a Child Protective Services (CPS) caseworker and a Maryland State police officer, which ultimately yielded no evidence of abuse. The caseworker filed a report with the CCDSS classifying the case as "unsubstantiated" and "ruled out." 1 (J.A. at 15.)

Within a week of the incident, the Hodges took Joseph to two medical specialists for further examination. The specialists diagnosed the swelling as osteomyelitis, a bacterial bone infection, and performed the necessary corrective surgery. Five days after the caseworker closed his investigation, Marsha Hodge called CCDSS with news of the corrected diagnosis. On February 16, 1989, David Hodge wrote CCDSS, again informing them of the misdiagnosis and requesting a copy of any CCDSS case file on the incident. In March 1989, Defendant Alan L. Katz, Assistant Director of CCDSS, replied by letter that "[t]he Department's report reflects that suspected child abuse was ruled out and unsubstantiated," and attached a redacted copy of the case file. (J.A. at 16.)

Between February 1989 and May 1990, the Hodges engaged in a campaign of communications with Katz and other CCDSS officials and Maryland Department of Human Resources (MDHR) 2 Director Carolyn Colvin requesting, among other things, the full report and the destruction or expunction of any CCDSS file or document regarding the Hodge investigation. Each request was refused under Maryland's statutory bar against disclosure of confidential materials, pursuant to Md.Ann.Code art. 88A, Sec. 5 (1991 Repl.Vol.) and Md.Regs.Code 07.01.07, and CCDSS's purported inability to expunge the file until 1994. 3 CCDSS maintained the Hodge investigation report up to and beyond the filing date of the instant action. CCDSS also registered the names David, Marsha, and Joseph Hodge in MDHR's Automated Master File (AMF), a computerized database containing a record of every Maryland citizen who has received any services, ranging from food stamps to child protective services, from a local Department of Social Services office. The AMF information pertaining to the Hodges is alphanumerically coded and shielded by state and federal law from disclosure to the general public. 4 Md.Ann.Code art. 88A, Sec. 6 (1991 Repl.Vol. & 1993 Cum.Supp.); Md.Regs.Code 07.01.02, 07.02.07.

B.

Continued refusals to disclose and expunge the investigation report prompted David and Marsha Hodge, individually and as parents and next friends of Joseph Hodge, 5 to file this action against CCDSS, its Director M. Alexander Jones, Assistant Director Katz, and MDHR Secretary Colvin. The Hodges claimed that, contrary to the protections of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, maintenance of a record of "unsubstantiated" and "ruled out" child abuse violated their liberty interest in familial privacy, and that failure to provide notice and a hearing before maintaining that record violated their procedural due process rights.

Finding that Defendants maintained the Hodge investigation report without legitimate justification and entered the related entries into the AMF without a legitimate state interest or the procedural protections of Sec. 5-715, the district court granted the Hodges' motion for interlocutory summary judgment on the issue of liability. Hodge, 812 F.Supp. at 608-09. The court rejected Defendants' proffered qualified immunity defense on a determination that both the protected interest of familial privacy and the procedural safeguards ofSec. 5-715 were clearly established at the time of Defendants' acts. Id. at 607-08. Defendants have properly invoked the "collateral order" doctrine in appealing the denial of their qualified immunity defense. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2817-18, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985).

II.

Qualified immunity "is an accommodation by the courts to the 'conflicting concerns' of, on one hand, government officials seeking freedom from personal monetary liability and harassing litigation and, on the other hand, injured persons seeking redress for the abuse of official power." Hodorowski v. Ray, 844 F.2d 1210, 1216 (5th Cir.1988) (quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 638, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3038, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987)). As such, "whether an official protected by qualified immunity may be held personally liable for an allegedly unlawful official action generally turns on the 'objective legal reasonableness' of the action ... assessed in light of the legal rules that were 'clearly established' at the time it was taken." Anderson, 483 U.S. at 639, 107 S.Ct. at 3038 (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818-19, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738-39, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). We have previously held that individuals involved in the investigation of child abuse may properly assert qualified immunity in appropriate situations. Wildauer v. Frederick County, 993 F.2d 369, 373 (4th Cir.1993); see also Achterhof v. Selvaggio, 886 F.2d 826, 829-30 (6th Cir.1989) (the entry of an individual's name in a central registry as a child abuse suspect is an administrative act for which qualified immunity may be asserted).

In finding that Defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity, the district court concluded that they had violated the Hodges' "clearly established" constitutional right of familial privacy and autonomy, which it defined by referencing the Supreme Court's 1977 pronouncement that "[o]ur decisions establish that the Constitution protects the sanctity of the family precisely because the institution of the family is deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition," Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503, 97 S.Ct. 1932, 1937, 52 L.Ed.2d 531 (1977), and acknowledging the " 'private realm of family life which the state cannot enter,' " Smith v. Organization of Foster Families for Equality & Reform, 431 U.S. 816, 842, 97 S.Ct. 2094, 2108, 53 L.Ed.2d 14 (1977) (quoting Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166, 64 S.Ct. 438, 442, 88 L.Ed. 645 (1944)). Hodge, 812 F.Supp. at 607. The court also cited Bohn v. County of Dakota, 772 F.2d 1433, 1435 (8th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1014, 106 S.Ct. 1192, 89 L.Ed.2d 307 (1986), an Eighth Circuit case recognizing the privacy implications of information repositories pertaining to suspected child abuse. Hodge, 812 F.Supp. at 608.

We review the court's denial of qualified immunity de novo. Bryant v. Muth, 994 F.2d 1082, 1086 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 559, 126 L.Ed.2d 459 (1993). The Supreme Court requires that such review begin with an inquiry into whether familial privacy was indeed a clearly established constitutional right which Defendants violated by retaining the Hodge investigation report. Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U.S. 226, 231, 111 S.Ct. 1789, 1792-93, 114 L.Ed.2d 277 (1991). This requires that we focus first on the confines of the asserted liberty interest of familial privacy.

A.

Much like the foundational concept of individual privacy, see Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 152-53, 93 S.Ct....

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