Miller v. Weaver
| Decision Date | 04 April 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 20010065.,20010065. |
| Citation | 66 P.3d 592,2003 UT 12 |
| Parties | William MILLER; Joshua A. Lee; Karl Blunck; Karen Blunck; Kacey Blunck; Marlo Chappel; Michele Morley; Molly Llewellyn; Amy Thomas; Citizens of Nebo School District for Moral and Legal Values, a Utah nonprofit corporation; Kristine Burningham; Lynda Thomas; and Jeana Barney, Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. Wendy WEAVER and Utah State Board of Education, Defendants and Appellee. |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
Matthew Hilton, Springville, for appellants.
Richard A. Van Wagoner, Stephen C. Clark, Salt Lake City, for appellee.
¶ 1 Plaintiffs1 challenge the district court's dismissal of their first amended complaint against defendant Wendy Weaver (Weaver) for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted under Utah Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). We affirm.
¶ 2 Since the party moving to dismiss a complaint admits the facts as alleged and challenges the complainant's right to relief based on those facts, we accept the material allegations of the complaint as true and recite them accordingly.2 See, e.g., Hall v. Dep't of Corr., 2001 UT 34, ¶ 2, 24 P.3d 958
; St. Benedict's Dev. Co. v. St. Benedict's Hosp., 811 P.2d 194, 196 (Utah 1991). Defendant Weaver is currently a tenured faculty member at Spanish Fork High School in the Nebo School District, Utah County, Utah. She began teaching physical education and coaching the girls volleyball team at the high school in 1979, and continued to coach the team until 1997. Weaver currently teaches psychology, which she has been doing since 1988, and it is her conduct as a psychology teacher that apparently inspired the first five counts of the complaint. Specifically, Weaver administered personality tests to her students, scoring and discussing the results of those tests in class, and also required her students to keep dream journals and interpret their dreams in class. Weaver criticized and disparaged the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during class and pressured a student to express his religious and moral beliefs in a hostile class environment. Additionally, Weaver encouraged students to question traditional sources of authority and determine for themselves whether alternative "lifestyles" are right or wrong.
¶ 3 Weaver is also a lesbian, a fact publicly revealed to residents of the Nebo School District in 1997. In the summer of 1997, the Nebo District School Board (school board) attempted to restrain her speech regarding her sexual orientation, and placed a memorandum in her personnel file to that effect. Weaver was also removed from her position as the girls volleyball coach at that time. In October 1997, Weaver filed a complaint in federal district court alleging violations of her constitutional rights; she ultimately succeeded in having the unlawful restraints removed and her coaching position reinstated. See Weaver v. Nebo Sch. Dist., 29 F.Supp.2d 1279 (D.Utah 1998)
.
¶ 4 Soon after Weaver initiated her lawsuit in federal court, members of the community began submitting formal complaints about her to the school board. Joshua A. Lee, a plaintiff and student of Weaver, first complained to the school board on October 29, 1997. A petition signed by 3,000 school district residents "seeking specific redress" was presented to the school board on November 12, 1997. On December 16, 1997, another "specific request for action" was sent to counsel for the school district and the Utah Attorney General's Office by the Citizens of Nebo School District for Moral and Legal Values (Citizens of Nebo). That same day, counsel for the school district notified counsel for Citizens of Nebo that the school district would not take action within the time frame requested, and that Citizens of Nebo must pursue civil litigation to resolve their concerns.
¶ 5 The original plaintiffs' first complaint was filed on December 23, 1997. A later, independent proceeding, which consolidated the original complaint and the first amended complaint, was initiated on May 26, 1998. We proceed based upon the contents of the first amended complaint since it was the foundation of the district court's ruling on appeal to this court. The original plaintiffs were present and former students of Weaver, students of Spanish Fork High School but not of Weaver, parents of students, grandparents of students, and taxpayers from the school district.3 The defendants were the Utah State Board of Education; Craig Jackson, Director of the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing; Jan Graham, Attorney General of Utah; and Wendy Weaver. The first amended complaint set forth ten causes of action: Counts I, II, IV, VIII, IX, and X sought judicial declarations of whether Weaver had violated various state statutes governing the conduct of teachers and psychologists; Counts III, V, and VII sought judicial declarations of whether Weaver had violated several provisions of the Utah Constitution.4
¶ 6 The original plaintiffs then filed two motions for partial summary judgment. The State followed with a motion for judgment on the pleadings, and Weaver moved the court for dismissal under rule 12(b)(6). The original plaintiffs then filed a motion to amend the first amended complaint, and included a copy of the second amended complaint. After oral arguments on all of the pending motions, the district court granted Weaver's motion to dismiss seven of the nine remaining counts (Counts I, II, III, IV, VIII, IX, and X); the motion was also granted as to dismissal of four plaintiffs who were either grandparents of high school students or parents without high school students. The district court ruled that all six statutory claims failed to meet the requirements for a declaratory judgment action. The three constitutional claims, according to the district court, met all declaratory judgment requirements, but Count III was dismissed for failure to assert a valid constitutional interest. Weaver's motion was denied as to Counts V and VII; however, these claims were subsequently voluntarily dismissed to allow appeal of a final order disposing of all claims. The district court also granted the State's motion to dismiss Jan Graham and Craig Jackson as defendants, and granted the original plaintiffs' motion to amend the first amended complaint.
¶ 7 Plaintiffs on appeal comprise one taxpayer, four former students of Weaver, one former Spanish Fork High School student, two parents of a former Spanish Fork High School student, and two former students of Weaver who were not a party to the first amended complaint. Weaver is the only defendant on appeal. Plaintiffs challenge the district court's ruling on Weaver's motion to dismiss, and present two issues for review: (1) whether the plaintiffs present legally sufficient claims for a declaratory judgment action, and (2) whether the complaints plead sufficient facts to establish a prima facie violation of the statutes and regulations at issue that would serve as a basis for declaratory judgment.
¶ 8 As an appellate court, our powers of review are limited. In cases such as this, where a district court has granted a motion to dismiss after accepting the complaint as true and testing the legal sufficiency of the claims, we grant no deference to the district court's legal conclusions. We review the district court's legal ruling for correctness, and will affirm that ruling only if it is clear the plaintiffs' complaint fails as a matter of law. First Equity Fed., Inc. v. Phillips Dev., LC, 2002 UT 56, ¶ 11, 52 P.3d 1137. Furthermore, we "may affirm the judgment appealed from `if it is sustainable on any legal ground or theory apparent on the record, even though such ground or theory differs from that stated by the trial court to be the basis of its ruling or action.'" Id. (quoting Dipoma v. McPhie, 2001 UT 61, ¶ 18, 29 P.3d 1225).
¶ 9 At the outset, we must address plaintiffs' request for de novo review of both their first and second amended complaints in this case.5 In their motion to amend the first amended complaint, the original plaintiffs attached a copy of their second amended complaint and stated that it was "filed contemporaneously with this motion." However, the second amended complaint was not actually date stamped and filed separately from the motion, and was not originally included in the record on appeal. Nor, for that matter, had the court yet granted leave to file the second amended complaint at the time it was proffered. Amended complaints that are filed without leave of the court are without legal effect; an attempted amendment cannot rise to the level of a cause of action until the court recognizes it as such. Hansen v. Dep't of Fin. Insts., 858 P.2d 184, 186-87 & n. 3 (Utah Ct.App.1993) .
¶ 10 The district court granted the original plaintiffs' motion to file second amended complaint at the same time it granted Weaver's motion to dismiss. Specifically, the district court stated that the "remaining Plaintiffs shall have 30 days from the date of this Ruling to file their Second Amended Complaint." The district court's ruling was exhaustive, addressing all of the elements of each claim and carefully indicating which parts of the first amended complaint should be further modified. The district court dismissed seven of the nine claims at issue in the first amended complaint and denied standing to at least four of the original plaintiffs. The remaining plaintiffs still had two valid constitutional claims to pursue and a roadmap for revising the claims that were dismissed.
¶ 11 By granting thirty days to the remaining plaintiffs to file a second amended complaint, the district court clearly indicated that it was not...
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