Maryland Conf. of Naacp v. Maryland Dept. of Pol., CIV. CCB-98-1098.

• Decision Date: 30 September 1999
• Docket Number: No. CIV. CCB-98-1098.,CIV. CCB-98-1098.
• Citation: 72 F.Supp.2d 560
• Parties: MARYLAND STATE CONFERENCE OF NAACP BRANCHES, et al. v. MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF STATE POLICE, et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

72 F.Supp.2d 560

MARYLAND STATE CONFERENCE OF NAACP BRANCHES, et al. v. MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF STATE POLICE, et al.

No. CIV. CCB-98-1098.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

September 30, 1999.

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Reginald T. Shuford, Law Office, New York, NY, for Maryland State Conference, NAACP Branches, Gary D. Rodwell, Johnston E. Williams, James E. Alston, Jr., Yancey Taylor, Aleshia Taylor, George W. Taylor, Jr., Eric A. Cook, Jawad Abdullah, Nelson D. Walker, Mecca Agunabo, plaintiffs.

Deborah A. Jeon, American Civil Liberties Union, Centreville, MD, Barbara Musfeldt Tapscott, Law Office, Jonathan Philip Guy, Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman, LLP, Washington, DC, Dwight H. Sullivan, ACLU of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, William J. Mertens, Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman, LLP, Washington, DC, Reginald T. Shuford, New York, NY, for George Daughtry.

Deborah A. Jeon, American Civil Liberties Union, Centreville, MD, Jonathan Philip Guy, Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman, LLP, Washington, DC, Dwight H. Sullivan, ACLU of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, William J. Mertens, Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman, LLP, Washington, DC, Reginald T. Shuford, New York, NY, for Verna A. Bailey.

Maureen Mullen Dove, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Steven Marshall Sullivan, Office of the Atty. Gen., Baltimore, MD, Mark Holdsworth Bowen, Asst. Atty. Gen., Pikesville, MD, for Department of Maryland State Police, David B. Mitchell, Jesse Graybill, George H. Hall, Vernon Betkey, Keven L. Gray, John E. Appleby, George P. Brantly, Bernard M. Donovan, Steven W. Dulski, Melvin Fialkewicz, John R. Greene, Steven L. Hohner, Clifford T. Hughes, David B. Hughes, Michael T. Hughes, Steven O. Jones, James E. Nolan, Paul J. Quill, Christopher Tideberg, Ernest S. Tullis, Michael D. Wann, Billy White, John L. Wilhelm, Defendants.

MEMORANDUM

BLAKE, District Judge.

On April 10, 1998, plaintiffs Maryland State Conference of NAACP Branches and several named individuals filed a class action lawsuit against the Maryland State Police, Col. David Mitchell, and several supervisory and individual members of the Maryland State Police ("MSP") alleging constitutional and statutory violations in connection with an alleged pattern of racially discriminatory stops, detentions and searches of minority motorists traveling on I-95 in the state of Maryland. After an initial stay was lifted in June 1998, an amended complaint was filed and preliminary discovery began, which was consolidated with discovery in the related case of Wilkins v. Maryland State Police, Civil Case No. CCB-93-468.

On August 14, 1998, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment. In October, the plaintiffs filed a four-count second amended complaint and an opposition to the motion to dismiss.¹ In December, the defendants filed a reply² and a motion to strike portions of the second amended complaint. Briefing was completed in January 1999, and the parties have continued to engage in discovery, primarily directed at the issue of class certification. No hearing is necessary to resolve the pending motions.

I. Eleventh Amendment Immunity

As both parties recognize, claims for monetary relief against state officials in their official capacity are barred by the Eleventh Amendment; claims for prospective injunctive relief are not. The plaintiffs have clarified that they seek monetary damages against state officials in their individual capacities only. Accordingly, there is no Eleventh Amendment bar to Counts II-IV.³

II. Standing

For a plaintiff to have Article III standing, three "irreducible minimum" requirements must be met: 1) the plaintiff must have suffered or be at imminent risk of suffering an injury (the "injury" requirement); 2) the injury must be fairly traceable to the defendant's conduct (the "causation" requirement); and 3) a favorable federal court decision must be reasonably capable of redressing the injury (the redressability requirement). In addition to these minimum requirements, there are prudential limitations on standing that may preclude the assertion of generalized grievances or the rights of third parties. See Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975).

The defendants assert that the individual plaintiffs lack standing to seek injunctive relief, relying on City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 103 S.Ct. 1660, 75 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983), and O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 94 S.Ct. 669, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974). They contend that the plaintiffs cannot show a "real and immediate" rather than "conjectural" or "hypothetical" threat of injury. Lyons, 103 S.Ct. at 1665.

Lyons, however, is distinguishable from this case. Not only do the plaintiffs allege a pattern and practice of racially discriminatory stops, but also the Court has found, in the Wilkins case, that for a period of time prior to April 1997 the plaintiffs "clearly have made a reasonable showing that there was a pattern and practice of stops by the Maryland State Police based upon race" on a portion of I-95.⁴ The Lyons complaint, on the other hand, did not assert that there was a pattern and practice of applying chokeholds without provocation or, if it did state such a claim the Court found it was not supported by the record. Lyons, 103 S.Ct. at 1667, n. 7. Moreover, in Lyons, the likelihood that the plaintiff would again be subjected to a chokehold depended on his having "an encounter with the police [in which] either he would illegally resist arrest or detention or the officers would disobey their instructions and again render him unconscious without any provocation." Lyons, 103 S.Ct. at 1667. Cf. Simmons v. Poe, 47 F.3d 1370 (4th Cir.1995) (finding plaintiff lacked standing to challenge race based rape profile where circumstances supporting probable cause for arrest, even without profile, were so individualized as to be unlikely to occur again).

Here, the plaintiffs' likelihood of injury depends only on their status as a member of a minority group and their need to travel on I-95. Any "illegal" action on their part associated with the future stop need be no more than a minor, perhaps unintentional, traffic infraction; indeed, according to their allegations, they may be stopped even if no traffic violation has been committed. The plaintiffs also have reason to expect they will continue to travel on I-95. This combination of alleged past injury, an earlier pattern and practice finding, and the plaintiffs' likely future travel is sufficient to confer standing. See Suhre v. Haywood County, 131 F.3d 1083, 1090-91 (4th Cir.1997). Moreover, there is a likelihood that some members of the NAACP will be subject to stops on I-95, thereby satisfying the organizational standing requirement. See Wiley v. City of Baltimore, 48 F.3d 773, 775-76 (4th Cir.1995).

III. Supervisory Liability

Supervisory state officials may not be held liable for the unconstitutional actions of individual employees on the basis of respondeat superior; they may, however, be liable where their own conduct amounts to deliberate indifference or tacit authorization of their subordinates' activity. Slakan v. Porter, 737 F.2d 368, 372-73 (4th Cir.1984). As explained by the Fourth Circuit, a plaintiff must prove the following three elements:

(1) that the supervisor had actual or constructive knowledge that his subordinate was engaged in conduct that posed "a pervasive and unreasonable risk" of constitutional injury to citizens like the plaintiff; (2) that the supervisor's response to that knowledge was so inadequate as to show "deliberate indifference to or tacit authorization of the alleged offensive practices,"; and (3) that there was an "affirmative causal link" between the supervisor's inaction and the particular constitutional injury suffered by the plaintiff.

Shaw v. Stroud, 13 F.3d 791, 799 (4th Cir.1994).

The plaintiffs have alleged in the second amended complaint, supplemented by information obtained in the Wilkins case, a sufficient basis to support a claim for supervisory liability. MSP officials were on notice not only through statistics but also through internal memoranda and through the course of the Wilkins case of the need to take corrective action. Whether the actions taken were adequate to absolve these officials of liability under § 1983 is not appropriate for determination on the present record.⁵

Further, as to supervisory liability, the plaintiffs allege that the discretion given to troopers to detain motorists until a drug-detecting dog can "sniff" the vehicle, in the absence of articulable suspicion, is a matter of official policy that violates the Fourth Amendment. While defendants certainly may dispute this, if the plaintiffs are correct they have stated a basis for supervisory liability that requires further development.⁶ V. Qualified Immunity

Government officials performing discretionary functions are entitled to qualified immunity from liability for civil damages to the extent that "their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). As the Fourth Circuit has explained:

although the exact conduct at issue need not have been held to be unlawful in order for the law governing an officer's actions to be clearly established, the existing authority must be such that the unlawfulness of the conduct is manifest. See Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987); Pritchett v. Alford, 973 F.2d 307, 314 (4th Cir.1992).

Wilson v. Layne, 141 F.3d 111, 114 (4th Cir.1998) (en banc). "In determining whether the specific right allegedly violated was `clearly established,' the proper focus is not upon the right at its most general or abstract level, but at the level of its application to the...