Turner v. Thomas, 18-1733

• Decision Date: 19 July 2019
• Docket Number: No. 18-1733,18-1733
• Citation: 930 F.3d 640
• Parties: Robert Sanchez TURNER, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. Al THOMAS, Jr., in his individual capacity and his official capacity as Chief of Charlottesville Police Department; City of Charlottesville, Virginia ; W. Steven Flaherty, in his individual capacity, Defendants - Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

930 F.3d 640

Robert Sanchez TURNER, Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.Al THOMAS, Jr., in his individual capacity and his official capacity as Chief of Charlottesville Police Department; City of Charlottesville, Virginia ; W. Steven Flaherty, in his individual capacity, Defendants - Appellees.

No. 18-1733

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: March 21, 2019

Decided: July 19, 2019

ARGUED: Dallas S. LePierre, NEXUS DERECHOS HUMANOS ATTORNEYS, INC., Atlanta, Georgia, for Appellant. Michelle Shane Kallen, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA, Richmond, Virginia; David Patrick Corrigan, HARMAN CLAYTOR CORRIGAN & WELLMAN, P.C., Glen Allen, Virginia; Richard Hustis Milnor, ZUNKA, MILNOR & CARTER LTD, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Mario B. Williams, NEXUS DERECHOS HUMANOS ATTORNEYS, INC., Atlanta, Georgia, for Appellants. Mark R. Herring, Attorney General, Samuel T. Towell, Deputy Attorney General, Erin McNeill, Assistant Attorney General, Toby J. Heytens, Solicitor General, Matthew R. McGuire, Principal Deputy Solicitor General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF VIRGINIA, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellee W. Steven Flaherty. Jeremy D. Capps, Douglas E. Pittman, HARMAN CLAYTOR CORRIGAN & WELLMAN, P.C., Glen Allen, Virginia, for Appellee Al Thomas, Jr.

Before FLOYD, HARRIS, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Floyd wrote the opinion in which Judge Harris and Judge Richardson joined.

FLOYD, Circuit Judge:

Appellant Robert Sanchez Turner was attacked by protesters at the "Unite the Right" rally on August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Turner claims that, pursuant to a stand-down order under which police officers at the rally were instructed not to intervene in violence among protesters, officers watched his attack and did nothing to help. Turner brought suit against Al Thomas Jr., former Chief of the Charlottesville Police Department; W. Stephen Flaherty, Virginia State Police Superintendent; and the City of Charlottesville. The district court concluded that Thomas and Flaherty were entitled to qualified immunity and dismissed Turner’s complaint for failure to state a claim. We agree with the district court that the facts alleged in Turner’s complaint do not amount to a violation of clearly established law. Accordingly, we affirm.

I.

Because Turner’s claim was dismissed on the pleadings, we take as true all well-pleaded allegations in the complaint. See Nemet Chevrolet, Ltd. v. Consumeraffairs.com, Inc ., 591 F.3d 250, 253 (4th Cir. 2009). On August 12, 2017, the "Unite the Right" rally was held in Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park to protest the City’s decision to change the Park’s name from "Lee Park" and remove a Confederate monument from its grounds. Jason Kessler, leader of the far-right advocacy group "Unity & Security for America," led efforts to organize the rally.

The City granted Kessler a permit to hold the rally and informed him that heavy police presence and security would be provided. But less than a week before the event, citing traffic and safety concerns, the City revoked the permit. Kessler challenged the revocation in the Western District of Virginia on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds, and the district court reinstated the permit. According to Turner, Thomas and Flaherty were "enraged" by the decision to reinstate the permit. J.A. 24. In response, they enacted a stand-down order under which officers on duty at the rally would "refrain from intervening in any violent confrontations between white supremacists and counter-protesters unless given a direct command to do so." J.A. 25. Turner alleges that officers told protesters at the rally about the stand-down order. For example, when demonstrators asked if police planned to respond to violent attacks, at least one officer responded by saying "that’s not my job." J.A. 26.

Turner attended the rally as a counter-protester. He alleges that while he demonstrated peacefully on the sidewalk adjacent to the Park, "KKK members/sympathizers" exited the Park and began to engage with counter-protesters. J.A. 27–28. According to Turner, the "KKK members/sympathizers" attacked him for more than thirty seconds, spraying his eyes with mace, beating him with a stick, and throwing bottles of urine at him, all while police looked on and did nothing. J.A. 26. Turner alleges that despite a warning from the Department of Homeland Security that the rally could turn violent, police did not wear riot gear to patrol the rally. Approximately five hours after the rally began, officers changed into riot gear and began to clear the Park, though at that point Turner had already been attacked.

Turner brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In relevant part, Turner sought to hold Thomas and Flaherty directly liable for violation of his substantive due process rights based on the police department’s failure to protect him from violent protesters at the rally.¹

II.

We review de novo a dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), accepting all well-pleaded facts as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. See Nemet Chevrolet, 591 F.3d at 253. However, we "need not accept legal conclusions couched as facts or unwarranted inferences, unreasonable conclusions, or arguments." Wag More Dogs, LLC v. Cozart , 680 F.3d 359, 365 (4th Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). The complaint must provide "sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Ashcroft v. Iqbal , 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly , 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) ).

III.

Before us is Turner’s claim that Thomas and Flaherty violated his substantive due process rights by ordering officers at the rally not to intervene in violence among protesters. In general, a defendant’s mere failure to act does not give rise to liability for a due process violation. See DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services , 489 U.S. 189, 196, 109 S.Ct. 998, 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989). Turner seeks to avoid that rule by invoking the state-created danger exception, under which state actors may be liable for failing to protect injured parties from dangers which the state actors either created or enhanced. See Pinder v. Johnson , 54 F.3d 1169, 1176 (4th Cir. 1995). But it was not clearly established at the time of the rally that failing to intervene in violence among the protesters would violate any particular protester’s due process rights. Accordingly, we agree with the district court that Thomas and Flaherty are entitled to qualified immunity, and we affirm the dismissal of Turner’s complaint.

Qualified immunity shields state actors from liability under § 1983 liability when their "conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Wiley v. Doory , 14 F.3d 993, 995 (4th Cir. 1994) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald , 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982) ). To determine whether a defendant is entitled to qualified immunity, we ask two questions: (1) Has the plaintiff alleged a violation of a federal right? (2) Was the right at issue clearly established at the time of the alleged violation? Pearson v. Callahan , 555 U.S. 223, 236, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009). We may decide, on a case-by-case basis, which question to answer first. Id. If the answer to either question is "no," then the defendant is entitled to qualified immunity.

In this case, we begin by asking whether the right asserted by Turner was clearly established at the time of its alleged violation. To determine whether a right was clearly established, we typically ask whether, when the defendant violated the right, there existed either controlling authority—such as a published opinion of this Court—or a "robust consensus of persuasive authority," Booker v. S.C. Dept of Corr. , 855 F.3d 533, 544 (4th Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted), that would have given the defendants "fair warning that their conduct was wrongful." Williamson v. Stirling , 912 F.3d 154, 187 (4th Cir. 2018) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, we must determine whether, at the time of the rally, there existed legal authority giving Thomas and Flaherty fair warning that ordering officers not to intervene in violence among protesters would implicate the state-created danger doctrine and amount to a violation of protesters’ due process rights.

As our starting point, we turn to DeShaney v. Winnebago County , 489 U.S. at 196, 109 S.Ct. 998. There, the Supreme Court stated that because the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to protect "the people from the State, not to ensure that the State protected them from each other ... [a]s a general matter ... a State’s failure to protect an individual against private violence simply does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause." Id. at 196–97, 109 S.Ct. 998. Given that "the Due Process Clause does not require the State to provide its citizens with particular protective services," wrote the Court, "it follows that the State cannot be held liable for injuries that could have been averted had it chosen to provide them." Id . at 196–97, 109 S.Ct. 998.

There are two exceptions to the rule laid out in DeShaney . The first arises when the individual and the state have a "special relationship," such as a custodial relationship, that gives rise to an affirmative duty to protect. See id. at 199–200, 109 S.Ct. 998 ("It is the State’s affirmative act of restraining the individual’s freedom to act on his own behalf ... which is the ‘deprivation of liberty’ triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause, not its failure to act to protect his liberty interests against harms inflicted by other means."). Turner does not claim that the "special relationship" exception applies in this case.

The...