A.M. Ex Rel. F.M. v. Holmes ( 2016 )

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
PUBLISH July 25, 2016
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Clerk of Court
TENTH CIRCUIT
A.M., on behalf of her minor child,
F.M., *
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. Nos. 14-2066; 14-2183
ANN HOLMES; PRINCIPAL SUSAN
LABARGE; ARTHUR ACOSTA, City
of Albuquerque Police Officer, in his
individual capacity,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New Mexico
(D.C. Nos. 1:13-CV-00356-MV-LAM;
1:12-CV-00074-KG-CG)
Joseph P. Kennedy of Kennedy Kennedy & Ives, LLC, Albuquerque, New Mexico
(Shannon L. Kennedy and Michael L. Timm, Jr. of Kennedy Kennedy & Ives,
LLC, Albuquerque, New Mexico, with him on the briefs), for Plaintiff-Appellant.
Emil J. Kiehne of Modrall, Sperling, Roehl, Harris & Sisk, P.A., Albuquerque,
New Mexico, and Kathryn Levy, Deputy City Attorney for the City of
*
We use fictitious initials rather than a name to preserve the
anonymity of F.M., who is a minor. See Starkey ex rel. A.B. v. Boulder Cty. Soc.
Servs., 569 F.3d 1244, 1244 n.* (10th Cir. 2009). Because F.M.’s identity would
be discernible from his mother’s name, we use fictitious initials when referring to
Plaintiff-Appellant A.M. as well.
Albuquerque, New Mexico (Jennifer G. Anderson and Megan T. Muirhead of
Modrall, Sperling, Roehl, Harris & Sisk, P.A., Albuquerque, New Mexico, with
them on the briefs), for Defendants-Appellees.
Before TYMKOVICH, Chief Judge, and GORSUCH and HOLMES, Circuit
Judges.
HOLMES, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff-Appellant A.M. filed this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 on behalf
of her minor child, F.M., against two employees of the Albuquerque Public
Schools—specifically, Cleveland Middle School (“CMS”) Principal Susan
LaBarge and Assistant Principal Ann Holmes—and against Officer Arthur Acosta
of the Albuquerque Police Department (“APD”). A.M. brought several claims
stemming from two school-related events: (1) the May 2011 arrest of F.M. for
allegedly disrupting his physical-education class, and (2) the November 2011
search of F.M. for contraband. Ms. Holmes and Ms. LaBarge sought summary
judgment on the basis of qualified immunity, and the district court granted their
respective motions. The court also denied A.M.’s motion for summary judgment
on her claims pertaining to Officer Acosta after determining that Officer Acosta
was entitled to prevail on qualified-immunity grounds.
On appeal, A.M. contends that the district court erred in awarding qualified
immunity to all of the defendants. We have consolidated these matters for our
2
review. 1 Exercising jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm each
grant of qualified immunity.
I. BACKGROUND
A. May 2011 Arrest of F.M.
On May 19, 2011, CMS physical-education teacher Margaret Mines-
Hornbeck placed a call on her school-issued radio to request assistance with a
student. Officer Acosta, the school resource officer, responded to the call. As he
approached the designated classroom, he saw a student—later identified as F.M.,
who was then thirteen years old and in the seventh grade—sitting on the hallway
floor adjacent to the classroom2 while Ms. Mines-Hornbeck stood in the hallway
near the classroom door. Other students were peering through the doorway.
Ms. Mines-Hornbeck explained that F.M. had generated several fake burps,
which made the other students laugh and hampered class proceedings. After F.M.
ignored her requests to stop making those noises, Ms. Mines-Hornbeck ordered
him to sit in the hallway. F.M. nominally complied, but once he was situated in
the hallway, he leaned into the classroom entranceway and continued to burp and
laugh. This obliged Ms. Mines-Hornbeck to “hav[e] to deal with [F.M.]
1
Ms. Holmes is the sole defendant-appellee in Case No. 14-2066; Ms.
LaBarge and Officer Acosta are defendants-appellees in Case No. 14-2183. For
clarity’s sake, citations to the briefs and A.M.’s appendices include parentheticals
identifying the case number with which the cited documents are associated.
2
Ms. Mines-Hornbeck had convened her physical-education class in a
classroom that day to facilitate the students’ project presentations.
3
repeatedly” and rendered her unable to continue teaching the class. Aplt.’s App.
(No. 14-2183) at 289 (Acosta’s Dep., dated Dec. 3, 2012). Ms. Mines-Hornbeck
told Officer Acosta that she “need[ed] [F.M.] removed from [t]here” because she
could not control F.M. Id. at 288.
At some point during Ms. Mines-Hornbeck’s conversation with Officer
Acosta, F.M. interjected, saying, “That didn’t happen. No, that’s not true.” Id.
Nonetheless, based on what he had observed, Officer Acosta asked F.M. to come
with him. F.M. cooperated; he accompanied Officer Acosta to CMS’s
administrative office and waited in a chair while Officer Acosta retrieved a
computer from his patrol car.
Officer Acosta then informed F.M. that, “[b]ecause of the disruptions [he]
saw,” id. at 293, he would be arresting F.M. for interfering with the educational
process in violation of N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D), 3 which is a petty
misdemeanor offense. Once again, F.M. stated that he had done nothing wrong.
However, Officer Acosta did not “go into great detail with [F.M.],” Aplt.’s App.
(14-2183) at 292, which is to say that he did not invite further discussion of
F.M.’s version of events. Aware that he possessed complete discretion
concerning whether to arrest F.M. or issue a citation, Officer Acosta believed that
3
In full, subsection (D) reads: “No person shall willfully interfere
with the educational process of any public or private school by committing,
threatening to commit or inciting others to commit any act which would disrupt,
impair, interfere with or obstruct the lawful mission, processes, procedures or
functions of a public or private school.” N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D).
4
he had a legitimate basis to arrest (i.e., probable cause) based on (1) Ms. Mines-
Hornbeck’s statement that F.M.’s (fake) burping and other specified misconduct
prevented her from controlling her class, and (2) his observation that, when he
responded to Ms. Mines-Hornbeck’s call, “there was no more teaching going on,”
id. at 289, because Ms. Mines-Hornbeck was monitoring F.M. in the hallway.
Officer Acosta thus drafted the necessary incident report, leaving F.M. outside the
administrative office. He did not place F.M. in handcuffs at that point because
F.M. posed no flight risk and “was not combative.” Id. at 293.
When Officer Acosta advised Ms. LaBarge of his plan to arrest F.M., Ms.
LaBarge prepared a disciplinary referral slip that denoted “Police or Outside
Agency” action and imposed a one-day suspension to be served May 20, 2011.
Id. at 118 (Discipline Referral, dated May 19, 2011). She gave Officer Acosta
“the duplicate . . . Parent/Student copy” of the referral slip. Id. at 114 (LaBarge’s
Aff., dated Sept. 20, 2012). Meanwhile, pursuant to school policy, Ms. LaBarge’s
administrative assistant attempted to notify A.M. She called the two telephone
numbers listed in F.M.’s enrollment records, but to no avail: the first number had
been disconnected, and the second number lacked a functioning voicemail
account.
After completing his paperwork, Officer Acosta said to F.M., “Let’s go to
the car.” Id. at 295. F.M. responded, “Okay,” and walked to Officer Acosta’s
patrol car without incident. Id. Although he had not “laid a finger on
5
[F.M.] . . . up to th[at] point,” Officer Acosta told F.M. when they reached the
vehicle that he would be performing a pat-down search “per APD policy.” Id.
F.M. indicated that he had no weapons or contraband on his person, and Officer
Acosta found neither during the pat-down search. At that point, Officer Acosta
handcuffed F.M., placed him in the patrol car, and drove him to the juvenile
detention center.
F.M. was booked into the detention center at approximately 1:30 p.m. As
Officer Acosta expected, a detention-center staff member completed F.M.’s risk
assessment instrument before releasing F.M. to the custody of A.M. at around
2:30 p.m. Shortly thereafter, A.M. visited Ms. LaBarge at CMS to discuss F.M.’s
suspension. By both accounts, the conversation was unproductive. See id. at 18
(Compl., filed Nov. 30, 2011) (embodying A.M.’s averment that Ms. LaBarge had
unreasonably suspended F.M. without holding a hearing); id. at 115 (reflecting
Ms. LaBarge’s statement that A.M.’s demeanor “prevented [them] from having a
reasonable . . . discussion”).
F.M. served his suspension and did not return to CMS for the remainder of
the 2010–11 school year. Not surprisingly, the story of his arrest garnered some
publicity. A.M. “spoke publicly” about the incident and “provided interviews to
local news media.” Aplt.’s App. (14-2066) at 14 (Compl., filed Feb. 28, 2013).
According to Officer Acosta, news coverage of F.M.’s arrest “was on the airways
quite a bit,” much to the chagrin of school administrators. Id. at 115.
6
B. November 2011 In-School Search of F.M.
A.M. re-enrolled F.M. at CMS for the 2011–12 school year. F.M. was
attending school on November 8, 2011, the date of the second event prompting
this litigation. That morning, a CMS student approached a teacher to report
having witnessed a potential drug transaction on campus. The student recounted
having seen approximately five other students carrying small baggies containing
what appeared to be marijuana; these individuals seemed to be exchanging money
for drugs. Though unsure of the observed students’ identities, the reporting
student “gave . . . a location in the hallway where the incident took place.” Id. at
122 (Uniform Incident Report, dated Nov. 9, 2011).
Ms. Holmes was notified of the student’s report and “contacted [Officer
Acosta] on the school radio . . . in regards to [the] suspicious situation.” Id.
Officer Acosta then retrieved the school’s security-camera footage to see if it
might assist school administrators’ efforts to identify the students of interest.
During their review of the footage corresponding to the time and place described
by the reporting student, Ms. Holmes and Ms. LaBarge recognized the five
students involved in the suspicious transaction—including, as relevant here, F.M.
These students were summoned to the administrative office while school
representatives endeavored to contact the students’ parents to inform them that
their children would be searched in connection with a suspected drug transaction.
The only student for whom a parent could not be reached was F.M.
7
All of the students were searched in a conference room next to Ms.
LaBarge’s office. Several adults were present: Ms. LaBarge, Ms. Holmes, Officer
Acosta, a male teacher, and APD Officer Kiel Higgins. The first four searches
and interviews were audio-recorded. According to Officer Acosta, these four
students were asked to remove their shoes and empty their pockets. Two students
stated that they had seen marijuana, “but [they] stopped short of saying who had
it in their possession.” Id. Another student reported seeing F.M. with money.
No drugs were found on any of the first four students.
As for F.M., one of the adults videotaped his search and interview using
Officer Higgins’s lapel camera. F.M. emptied his pockets and produced $200 in
cash, including a $100 bill. 4 Ms. Holmes asked F.M. if he had anything he was
not supposed to have, and F.M. answered that he had a marijuana-leaf belt buckle.
A search of F.M.’s backpack produced, among other items, a red bandana and a
belt buckle displaying an image of a marijuana leaf. Both items violated CMS’s
prohibition of “bandanas,” “gang-related” clothing, and apparel displaying
“inappropriate messages or symbols.” Aplt.’s App. (14-2183) at 122 (Uniform
Dress Policy, filed Sept. 21, 2012).
4
F.M. explained that the cash was a birthday gift from his father.
When Ms. Holmes requested contact information for his father, F.M. was unable
to provide it. Ms. Holmes knew that F.M.’s fourteenth birthday was in August
2011 (i.e., several months prior to the search) and that CMS’s enrollment files
contained no data regarding F.M.’s father.
8
F.M. was wearing “numerous layers of clothing,” id. at 190 (LaBarge’s
Dep., dated Dec. 14, 2012), including a long-sleeved athletic shirt, a short-sleeved
shirt layered over the first shirt, a pair of jeans, two pairs of athletic shorts, and
boxer-shorts underwear. When prompted, he took off his shoes. F.M. also
complied with a request to remove his jeans and place them on a table after
demonstrating that he was wearing shorts underneath. At the school
administrators’ behest, the male teacher inspected F.M.’s waistband. He flipped
down the waistband of the first pair of athletic shorts to reveal the second pair.
The teacher left undisturbed the waistbands of F.M.’s other pair of athletic shorts
and his boxer shorts. F.M. then removed one pair of athletic shorts and his short-
sleeved shirt, which left him wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of athletic
shorts, and boxer-shorts underwear. Shortly thereafter, F.M. donned the rest of
his clothing. The search of F.M.’s person, his removed clothing, and his
backpack yielded no marijuana.
While F.M. was in the office, the school received a return phone call from
A.M. Ms. LaBarge communicated with A.M., describing the events and the items
recovered in the search of F.M. During the conversation, A.M. confirmed that
F.M. had left home carrying $200 that morning. Ms. LaBarge elected “not [to]
discipline F.M. for the suspected drug transaction due to his mother’s
corroboration of” why he possessed $200 in cash. Id. at 117. However, Ms.
LaBarge imposed a three-day in-school suspension, marking “Dress Code
9
Violation,” “General Disruptive Conduct,” and “Gang-Related Activity[—]red
bandana” on the associated referral form. Id. at 123 (Discipline Referral, dated
Nov. 8, 2011).
Later that day, Ms. LaBarge met with A.M. to explain the search and
suspension. She subsequently stated that A.M. “stormed out” after “refus[ing] to
listen” and saying “her attorney would contact [the school].” Id. After November
8, 2011, F.M. did not return to CMS.
C. Procedural History
On November 30, 2011, A.M. filed a lawsuit in New Mexico state court
against Ms. LaBarge, Ms. Mines-Hornbeck, and Officer Acosta. A.M. alleged in
the complaint that the defendants deprived F.M. of his civil rights by arresting
him in May 2011 under N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D) and by handcuffing him
while effecting the arrest—asserting Fourth Amendment violations as to both
claims. Notably, A.M. opined that a reasonable officer “should have known that
burping was not a crime” and that “no force was necessary” to facilitate the
arrest. Aplt.’s App. (14-2183) at 21. A.M. also alleged that in November 2011,
Ms. LaBarge violated F.M.’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unlawful
searches, claiming that Ms. LaBarge’s “strip-searching” of F.M. was
unreasonable. Id. at 22.
After the defendants removed the action to federal court, Ms. LaBarge and
Ms. Mines-Hornbeck filed a motion for summary judgment, asserting the defense
10
of qualified immunity. In January 2013, after opposing the motion, A.M. agreed
to the dismissal of all claims against Ms. Mines-Hornbeck and all claims against
Ms. LaBarge pertaining to the arrest. And, in reply, Ms. LaBarge re-urged that
she could avail herself of qualified-immunity protection on the claim stemming
from the search.
On April 8, 2013, the district court granted Ms. LaBarge’s motion for
summary judgment based on its finding that she was entitled to qualified
immunity. The court rested its qualified-immunity ruling on its conclusion that
A.M. had failed to demonstrate that Ms. LaBarge committed a constitutional
violation during the search of F.M. More specifically, applying the Supreme
Court’s reasoning in Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding, 557 U.S.
364 (2009), and New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985), the court found (1)
that the search of F.M. was justified at its inception because school administrators
perceived “a moderate chance of finding evidence of wrongdoing,” Aplt.’s App.
(14-2183) at 256 (Mem. Op. & Order, filed Apr. 8, 2013); and (2) that the search
was “conducted in a manner that was reasonably related . . . to the circumstances
which justified the search in the first place,” id. at 257.
In February 2013, while the claims detailed supra were still pending, A.M.
filed another state-court lawsuit against Ms. Holmes, also bringing claims related
to the November 2011 search. A.M. alleged that Ms. Holmes (1) unreasonably
searched F.M., thereby violating the Fourth Amendment; (2) commenced F.M.’s
11
search to retaliate against A.M. for speaking to the media about the May 2011
arrest, thereby allegedly violating F.M.’s First Amendment rights; and (3)
“treated F.M. differently” than “other similarly situated students” during the
search, thereby violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. Aplt.’s App. (14-2066) at 20 (Compl., filed Feb. 28, 2013). After
removing the action to federal court, Ms. Holmes moved for summary judgment
on the grounds of qualified immunity and collateral estoppel. As to the latter
ground, Ms. Holmes argued: “Plaintiff lost her claim for unlawful search against
Principal LaBarge and has simply reasserted the identical claim based on the
identical facts against Assistant Principal Holmes.” Id. at 42 (Holmes’s Mot. for
Summ. J., filed June 17, 2013).
The district court granted Ms. Holmes’s motion for summary judgment.
First, it concluded that “the elements necessary to invoke collateral estoppel
[were] met”—namely: (1) A.M. was a party to the action against Ms. LaBarge; (2)
in the prior action, the district court adjudicated A.M.’s Fourth Amendment claim
on the merits; (3) A.M. presented the same issue implicated in the prior action
(the reasonableness vel non of the search); and (4) A.M. received a “full and fair
opportunity to litigate the relevant issue.” Id. at 164, 165 (Mem. Op. & Order,
filed Mar. 31, 2014). The court also determined that dismissal of A.M.’s claims
against Ms. Holmes was “required because [Ms. Holmes] did not violate a clearly
established right in searching F.M.,” id. at 166, and “because it was not clearly
12
established that a search of a student based on reasonable suspicion could give
rise to a First Amendment retaliation claim,” id. at 171–72. Lastly, the court
rejected A.M.’s equal-protection claim after finding that A.M. had not presented
evidence to show that F.M. was treated differently from similarly situated
students.
In August 2013—i.e., after the district court granted Ms. LaBarge’s
summary-judgment motion, but before the court granted Ms. Holmes’s
motion—A.M. moved for summary judgment on her claims against Officer
Acosta. She argued that Officer Acosta committed a constitutional violation
when he arrested F.M. for interfering with the educational process under N.M.
Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D). She further asserted that Officer Acosta committed a
constitutional violation when he handcuffed F.M. and that “[c]learly established
common and statutory New Mexico [l]aw put [Officer Acosta] on notice” that
handcuffing F.M. could give rise to liability under § 1983. Aplt.’s App. (14-
2183) at 282 (A.M.’s Mot. for Summ. J., filed Aug. 15, 2013).
On September 19, 2014, after Officer Acosta responded to A.M.’s motion
and argued for qualified immunity, the district court ruled on the motion. The
court awarded qualified immunity to Officer Acosta regarding F.M.’s arrest based
on its view that “F.M.’s right to be free from arrest was not clearly established at
the time of the alleged misconduct.” Id. at 395 (Mem. Op. & Order, filed Sept.
19, 2014). It also concluded that Officer Acosta was protected by qualified
13
immunity on the excessive-force claim because A.M. had not shown that F.M.
suffered any “actual physical or emotional injury,” id. at 397, and thus had not
demonstrated that Officer Acosta committed a Fourth Amendment violation in
that regard. Not only did the court deny A.M.’s motion, it also dismissed A.M.’s
claims against Officer Acosta with prejudice.
A.M. filed timely notices of appeal from all three of the district court’s
orders granting qualified immunity to Officer Acosta, Ms. Holmes, and Ms.
LaBarge. We have consolidated these actions for our review.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
The defense of qualified immunity “protects governmental officials from
liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate ‘clearly
established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would
have known.’” Weise v. Casper, 593 F.3d 1163, 1166 (10th Cir. 2010) (quoting
Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009)); see also Mullenix v. Luna, ---
U.S. ----, 136 S. Ct. 305, 308 (2015) (per curiam) (“Put simply, qualified
immunity protects ‘all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly
violate the law.’” (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986))). This
doctrine “not only protects public employees from liability, [but] also protects
them from the burdens of litigation.” Allstate Sweeping, LLC v. Black, 706 F.3d
1261, 1266 (10th Cir. 2013); see Price-Cornelison v. Brooks, 524 F.3d 1103,
1108 (10th Cir. 2008) (noting that qualified immunity provides “a right not to
14
stand trial in the first place”). In light of these purposes, “we review summary
judgment orders deciding qualified immunity questions differently from other
summary judgment decisions.” Cortez v. McCauley, 478 F.3d 1108, 1114 (10th
Cir. 2007) (en banc) (quoting Medina v. Cram, 252 F.3d 1124, 1128 (10th Cir.
2001)).
When a defendant asserts the defense of qualified immunity, “the onus is
on the plaintiff to demonstrate ‘(1) that the official violated a statutory or
constitutional right, and (2) that the right was “clearly established” at the time of
the challenged conduct.’” Quinn v. Young, 780 F.3d 998, 1004 (10th Cir. 2015)
(quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 735 (2011)). In other words, if the
plaintiff fails to establish either prong of the two-pronged qualified-immunity
standard, the defendant prevails on the defense. See, e.g., Felders ex rel. Smedley
v. Malcom, 755 F.3d 870, 877–78 (10th Cir. 2014) (“[T]he ‘record must clearly
demonstrate the plaintiff has satisfied his heavy two-part burden; otherwise, the
defendants are entitled to qualified immunity.’” (quoting Medina, 252 F.3d at
1128)); see also Cox v. Glanz, 800 F.3d 1231, 1245 (10th Cir. 2015) (“[B]y
asserting the qualified-immunity defense, Sheriff Glanz triggered a well-settled
twofold burden that Ms. Cox was compelled to shoulder: not only did she need to
rebut the Sheriff’s no-constitutional-violation arguments, but she also had to
demonstrate that any constitutional violation was grounded in then-extant clearly
established law.”).
15
We have discretion to address either prong first, see Panagoulakos v.
Yazzie, 741 F.3d 1126, 1129 (10th Cir. 2013)—viz., where appropriate, we may
determine that “the right that [the plaintiff’s] claim implicates . . . was not clearly
established [at the relevant time],” Cox, 800 F.3d at 1247; see, e.g., Pearson, 555
U.S. at 243 (“[W]e hold that petitioners are entitled to qualified immunity
because the entry did not violate clearly established law.”). “For a constitutional
right to be clearly established, ‘[t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently
clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates
that right.’” Wilson v. Montano, 715 F.3d 847, 852 (10th Cir. 2013) (alteration in
original) (quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987)); accord
Weigel v. Broad, 544 F.3d 1143, 1154 (10th Cir. 2008).
In that regard, we exercise “special care to ‘define the clearly established
right at issue on the basis of the specific context of the case’ and, in so doing,
avoid defining the ‘case’s context in a manner that imports genuinely disputed
factual propositions.’” Felders, 755 F.3d at 885 (quoting Tolan v. Cotton, ---
U.S. ----, 134 S. Ct. 1861, 1866 (2014) (per curiam)); see Mullenix, 136 S. Ct. at
308 (“‘We have repeatedly told courts . . . not to define clearly established law at
a high level of generality.’ The dispositive question is ‘whether the violative
nature of particular conduct is clearly established.’” (omission in original)
(quoting al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 742)); Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 198
(2004) (per curiam) (noting that the clearly-established-law “inquiry ‘must be
16
undertaken in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general
proposition.’” (quoting Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001), overruled on
other grounds by Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009))).
Ordinarily, a plaintiff may show that a particular right was clearly
established at the time of the challenged conduct “by identifying an on-point
Supreme Court or published Tenth Circuit decision; alternatively, ‘the clearly
established weight of authority from other courts must have found the law to be as
[she] maintains.’” Quinn, 780 F.3d at 1005 (quoting Weise, 593 F.3d at 1167);
accord Cox, 800 F.3d at 1247. However, “we do not always require case law on
point,” Morris v. Noe, 672 F.3d 1185, 1196–97 (10th Cir. 2012) (emphasis
added), and “the Supreme Court has warned that ‘officials can still be on notice
that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances,’”
Casey v. City of Fed. Heights, 509 F.3d 1278, 1284 (10th Cir. 2007) (quoting
Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002)). “We have therefore adopted a sliding
scale to determine when law is clearly established. ‘The more obviously
egregious the conduct in light of prevailing constitutional principles, the less
specificity is required from prior case law to clearly establish the violation.’” Id.
(quoting Pierce v. Gilchrist, 359 F.3d 1279, 1298 (10th Cir. 2004)); accord
Fogarty v. Gallegos, 523 F.3d 1147, 1161 (10th Cir. 2008). Although A.M. need
not show that “the very action in question [has] . . . previously been held
unlawful, ‘in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.’”
17
Albright v. Rodriguez, 51 F.3d 1531, 1535 (10th Cir. 1995) (quoting Creighton,
483 U.S. at 640).
Lastly, in determining whether the plaintiff has satisfied the necessary two-
pronged qualified-immunity showing, courts ordinarily accept the plaintiff’s
version of the facts—that is, “the facts alleged,” Riggins v. Goodman, 572 F.3d
1101, 1107 (10th Cir. 2009)—but “because at summary judgment we are beyond
the pleading phase of the litigation, [the] plaintiff’s version of the facts must find
support in the record,” Thomson v. Salt Lake Cty., 584 F.3d 1304, 1312 (10th Cir.
2009); see York v. City of Las Cruces, 523 F.3d 1205, 1210 (10th Cir. 2008) (“As
with any motion for summary judgment, ‘[w]hen opposing parties tell two
different stories, one of which is blatantly contradicted by the record, so that no
reasonable jury could believe it, a court should not adopt that version of the
facts[.]’” (alterations in original) (quoting Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 380
(2007))).
III. DISCUSSION
Our review of the district court’s rulings concerning “[l]iability under
§ 1983 . . . , and [the] defendants’ entitlement to qualified immunity, turn[s] on
an individual assessment of each defendant’s conduct and culpability.” Pahls v.
Thomas, 718 F.3d 1210, 1233 (10th Cir. 2013). We will address A.M.’s claims
against Officer Acosta, Ms. Holmes, and Ms. LaBarge in turn.
18
A. Claims Against Officer Acosta
When A.M. moved for summary judgment on her claims against Officer
Acosta, she argued that he could not avail himself of qualified-immunity
protection. Officer Acosta then lodged his response, invoking the defense of
qualified immunity therein. Once the motion was fully briefed, the district court
concluded that Officer Acosta was entitled to qualified immunity; not only did it
deny the motion, the court also dismissed A.M.’s claims against Officer Acosta
with prejudice.
On appeal, A.M. first contends that the court erred by entering judgment in
Officer Acosta’s favor sua sponte without affording her the requisite notice set
forth in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. A.M. also seeks reversal of the
court’s grant of qualified immunity to Officer Acosta on her Fourth Amendment
unlawful-arrest and excessive-force claims. We discern no reversible error and
therefore uphold the relevant district court rulings.
1. Procedural Propriety of Summary Judgment Grant
Before granting summary judgment in favor of a non-movant—here,
Officer Acosta—the district court must “giv[e] notice and a reasonable time to
respond.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(f). The court “may grant summary judgment sua
sponte ‘so long as the losing party was on notice that [it] had to come forward
with all of [its] evidence.’” Sports Racing Servs., Inc. v. Sports Car Club of Am.,
Inc., 131 F.3d 874, 892 (10th Cir. 1997) (alterations in original) (quoting Celotex
19
Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 326 (1986)). “While the practice of granting
summary judgment sua sponte is not favored,” we will affirm the judgment when
the losing party has received adequate notice of the need to marshal evidence.
Scull v. New Mexico, 236 F.3d 588, 600 (10th Cir. 2000). Moreover, even if we
deem the court’s notice unsatisfactory, “we will still affirm a grant of summary
judgment if the losing party suffered no prejudice from the lack of notice.”
Johnson v. Weld Cty., 594 F.3d 1202, 1214 (10th Cir. 2010).
Based on our review of this case’s procedural history, we find it pellucid
that A.M. was aware that the district court planned to rule on the issue of
qualified immunity with respect to Officer Acosta. Indeed, that was one matter
on which A.M. herself requested a ruling. See Aplt.’s App. (14-2183) at 260
(reflecting A.M.’s “anticipat[ion]” in her summary-judgment motion that
“Defendant Acosta w[ould] claim qualified immunity” and requesting that the
court find that “Defendant Acosta is not entitled to qualified immunity”); see also
id. at 279–80 (arguing that “[o]nly if an officer’s use of force in a case is
objectively reasonable . . . is the defense of qualified immunity available” and
citing qualified-immunity caselaw).
But even assuming arguendo that A.M. did not know if Officer Acosta
would rely upon qualified immunity in addressing her motion—that is, whether
Officer Acosta would put forward the qualified-immunity issue for
resolution—any uncertainty would perforce have dissipated when Officer Acosta
20
actually filed his response brief. Quite unremarkably, Officer Acosta did assert
the qualified-immunity defense, and his arguments evidently prompted A.M. to
devote the lion’s share of her reply brief to the issue of qualified immunity. See
Aplt.’s App. (14-2183) at 334, 340 (entitling the two sections of her reply brief
(1) “Defendant Acosta is not entitled to qualified immunity for his arrest of F.M.
for purportedly violating [N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D)]” and (2) “Defendant
Acosta is not entitled to qualified immunity for the force exerted on F.M. as a
matter of clearly established law” (capitalization altered)). As a result, A.M. is
not situated to claim on appeal that she lacked notice that she should present
evidence (as well as legal argument) designed to forestall a potential grant of
qualified immunity to Officer Acosta.
To justify her view that she received inadequate notice of a forthcoming
qualified-immunity ruling, A.M. relies on a non-precedential order and judgment
issued by a panel of this court in 1993. See Aitson v. Campbell, 989 F.2d 507,
1993 WL 55951, at *3–4 (10th Cir. Mar. 1, 1993) (unpublished table decision).
An issue in Aitson was whether the district court erred in dismissing claims in a
sua sponte grant of absolute immunity. Critically, the defendants in that
case—members of the Oklahoma Board of Dentistry, who had revoked the
plaintiff’s professional license—had only sought qualified (not absolute)
immunity in moving for summary judgment. See id. at *3. The panel reversed
the district court’s judgment; it reasoned that, because none of the briefing
21
discussed absolute immunity, the plaintiff was prejudiced by a lack of notice that
the issue was even presented for decision. See id. at *4. Those circumstances,
however, make Aitson distinguishable. Notably, all three summary-judgment
briefs concerning Officer Acosta addressed qualified immunity in some way, and
that is precisely the kind of immunity that formed the basis for the district court’s
ruling. Accordingly, we conclude that Aitson does not avail A.M., and her
reliance on it is misplaced.
Finally, A.M. contends that she was deprived of the opportunity to come
forward with evidence of injuries she claims F.M. sustained during the
handcuffing. However, our review of the parties’ briefing belies this argument.
Most saliently, in his response brief, Officer Acosta argued that any injury to
F.M. would have been de minimis, see Aplt.’s App. (14-2183) at 322–23
(Acosta’s Resp. Br., filed Jan. 29, 2014) (arguing that F.M.’s minor status did not
render Officer Acosta’s “minimal use of force unconstitutional” in light of
“established precedent requir[ing a] . . . show[ing] [that] the force used resulted
in some substantial injury”); this argument should have reasonably apprised A.M.
it was necessary to present with her reply brief evidence concerning any physical
or emotional injury of F.M. In this regard, our precedent treats “some actual
injury” as an essential element of a claim for excessive force under § 1983.
Cortez, 478 F.3d at 1129 & n.25. A.M. was therefore on notice that she needed to
offer any evidence that she possessed regarding F.M.’s injuries from handcuff-
22
related force applied during the arrest. Bearing the foregoing in mind, we
conclude that A.M. is not entitled to reversal on this procedural basis.
In sum, we conclude that A.M. received sufficient warning that the question
of qualified immunity would be resolved in the district court’s ruling on her
motion for summary judgment. And she certainly should have understood that, if
the district court resolved the qualified-immunity issue in Officer Acosta’s favor,
that would effectively end the litigation as to him. We consequently discern no
reversible error in the court’s method of granting summary judgment to Officer
Acosta, the non-moving party.
2. Unlawful-Arrest Claim
We now address whether the district court erred in granting qualified
immunity to Officer Acosta on A.M.’s claim that he arrested F.M. without
probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment. For the reasons discussed
herein, we conclude (as the district court did) that Officer Acosta is entitled to
qualified immunity. Specifically, we affirm the court’s judgment on the ground
that the extant clearly established law in May 2011 would not have apprised a
reasonable law-enforcement officer in Officer Acosta’s position that F.M.’s
conduct in Ms. Mines-Hornbeck’s class fell outside of the scope of N.M. Stat.
Ann. § 30-20-13(D), such that there would not have been probable cause to
support an arrest of F.M. for interfering with the educational process.
23
a. Background Principles
i
“A warrantless arrest violates the Fourth Amendment unless it was
supported by probable cause.” Keylon v. City of Albuquerque, 535 F.3d 1210,
1216 (10th Cir. 2008); see Romero v. Story, 672 F.3d 880, 889 (10th Cir. 2012)
(“In the context of an unlawful arrest . . . , the law was and is unambiguous: a
government official must have probable cause to arrest an individual.” (quoting
Fogarty, 523 F.3d at 1158–59)). “Probable cause exists if facts and
circumstances within the arresting officer’s knowledge and of which he or she has
reasonably trustworthy information are sufficient to lead a prudent person to
believe that the arrestee has committed or is committing an offense.” Keylon, 535
F.3d at 1216 (quoting Romero v. Fay, 45 F.3d 1472, 1476 (10th Cir. 1995)).
When assessing whether an officer had probable cause to arrest an
individual, courts “examine the events leading up to the arrest, and then decide
‘whether these historical facts, viewed from the standpoint of an objectively
reasonable police officer, amount to’ probable cause.” Maryland v. Pringle, 540
U.S. 366, 371 (2003) (quoting Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690, 696
(1996)); accord Rojas v. Anderson, 727 F.3d 1000, 1003 n.4 (10th Cir. 2013); see
also Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 232 (1983) (noting that “probable cause is a
fluid concept—turning on the assessment of probabilities in particular factual
contexts—not readily, or even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules”).
24
“Neither the officer’s subjective beliefs nor information gleaned post-hoc bear on
this inquiry.” Manzanares v. Higdon, 575 F.3d 1135, 1144 (10th Cir. 2009).
Ultimately, “[a]ll that matters is whether [the officer] possessed knowledge of
evidence that would provide probable cause to arrest [the individual] on some
ground.” Apodaca v. City of Albuquerque, 443 F.3d 1286, 1289 (10th Cir. 2006).
In the present case, Officer Acosta contends that he had probable cause to
arrest F.M. for violating N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D), which provides, in
pertinent part: “No person shall willfully interfere with the educational process of
any public . . . school by committing, threatening to commit or inciting others to
commit any act which would disrupt, impair, interfere with or obstruct the lawful
mission, processes, procedures or functions of a public . . . school.” 5 Officer
Acosta alleges that he based his decision to arrest on two factors: (1) Ms. Mines-
Hornbeck’s statement that F.M.’s (fake) burping and other specified misconduct
prevented her from controlling her class, and (2) his observation that, when he
responded to Ms. Mines-Hornbeck’s call, “there was no more teaching going on,”
Aplt.’s App. (14-2183) at 289, because Ms. Mines-Hornbeck was monitoring F.M.
in the hallway. In sum, Officer Acosta asserts that F.M.’s behavior constituted an
5
As noted above, in full, subsection (D) reads: “No person shall
willfully interfere with the educational process of any public or private school by
committing, threatening to commit or inciting others to commit any act which
would disrupt, impair, interfere with or obstruct the lawful mission, processes,
procedures or functions of a public or private school.” N.M. Stat. Ann. §
30-20-13(D).
25
obvious and willful interference with the educational process—as described by
the statute—and that his (Officer Acosta’s) recognition of the interference
supplied him with the requisite probable cause to arrest F.M.
However, in the qualified-immunity context, Officer Acosta’s commission
vel non of a constitutional violation need not be the focus of our inquiry. This is
because A.M. “must demonstrate on the facts alleged both that [Officer Acosta]
violated [F.M.’s] constitutional . . . rights, and that the right was clearly
established at the time of the alleged unlawful activity.” Riggins, 572 F.3d at
1107 (emphases added). We elect to center our analysis on the clearly-
established-law question.
“As a practical matter, we implement this [clearly-established-law]
standard by asking whether there was ‘arguable probable cause’ for an arrest—if
there was, a defendant is entitled to qualified immunity.” Kaufman v. Higgs, 697
F.3d 1297, 1300 (10th Cir. 2012) (quoting Cortez, 478 F.3d at 1121); see id. (“If
we conclude that probable cause was lacking, we then must determine whether
Mr. Kaufman’s rights were clearly established, which we approach by asking
whether the officers arguably had probable cause.”). To be more specific,
[w]hen a warrantless arrest is the subject of a § 1983 action, the
defendant arresting officer is “entitled to immunity if a
reasonable officer could have believed that probable cause
existed to arrest” the plaintiff. “Even law enforcement officials
who ‘reasonably but mistakenly conclude that probable cause is
present’ are entitled to immunity.”
26
Romero, 45 F.3d at 1476 (citations omitted) (quoting Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S.
224, 227, 228 (1991) (per curiam)); see Cortez, 478 F.3d at 1120 (“Even law
enforcement officials who reasonably but mistakenly conclude that probable
cause is present are entitled to immunity.”). In other words, in the § 1983
qualified-immunity context, an officer may be mistaken about whether he
possesses actual probable cause to effect an arrest, so long as the officer’s
mistake is reasonable—viz., so long as he possesses “arguable probable cause.”
Cortez, 478 F.3d at 1121; see id. at 1120 n.15 (“Some courts have referred to this
standard as ‘arguable probable cause.’”); accord Koch v. City of Del City, 660
F.3d 1228, 1241 (10th Cir. 2011); see also Stonecipher v. Valles, 759 F.3d 1134,
1141 (10th Cir. 2014) (“Arguable probable cause is another way of saying that the
officers’ conclusions rest on an objectively reasonable, even if mistaken, belief
that probable cause exists.”); Jones v. Cannon, 174 F.3d 1271, 1283 n.3 (11th Cir.
1999) (“Arguable probable cause, not the higher standard of actual probable
cause, governs the qualified immunity inquiry.”).
We conclude that A.M. has not demonstrated that, under extant clearly
established law, a reasonable officer in Officer Acosta’s position would have had
fair warning that he lacked probable cause to arrest F.M. for interfering with the
educational process in violation of N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D). Put another
way, in our view, such an officer could have reasonably believed—even if
27
mistakenly—that the officer possessed probable cause under section 30-20-13(D)
to arrest F.M.
ii.
At the outset, we note that there are no Supreme Court or published Tenth
Circuit decisions addressing the contours of probable cause to arrest under New
Mexico’s interference-with-educational-process statute. But, as we have
explained in a case that turned on the interpretation of state law:
[W]e think it prudent to clarify . . . the role played by state law
in determining whether Plaintiff can show a violation
of . . . federal rights. Here, where the context is an alleged
[wrongful] arrest for a purported state offense, state law is of
inevitable importance. The basic federal constitutional right of
freedom from arrest without probable cause is undoubtedly
clearly established by federal cases. But the precise scope of that
right uniquely depends on the contours of a state’s substantive
criminal law in this case because the Defendants claim to have
had probable cause based on a state criminal statute. And as to
the interpretation of [that state’s] criminal law, other than the
statute itself . . . , [that state’s] Supreme Court is the ultimate
authority. So we look to the [state] Supreme Court’s decisions
when inquiring whether the Defendants’ interpretation of
the . . . statute was one that a reasonable officer would have held
at the time of [Plaintiff’s] arrest.
Kaufman, 697 F.3d at 1300–01 (emphases added) (citation omitted) (discussing
Colorado’s substantive criminal law); see also Mayfield v. Bethards, No. 15-3074,
--- F.3d ----, 2016 WL 3397503, at *3–5 (10th Cir. June 20, 2016) (looking to
Kansas law to define the contours of plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment right to be
free from unreasonable seizure of their pet dog); Wilson v. Montano, 715 F.3d
28
847, 854 (10th Cir. 2013) (in determining whether the federal constitutional right
to a prompt probable-cause determination was violated, noting that “[w]e consider
New Mexico state law insofar as it bears on the scope of each appellant’s
responsibility to ensure a prompt probable cause determination”); accord
Cherrington v. Skeeter, 344 F.3d 631, 643 (6th Cir. 2003).
When a state Supreme Court has not spoken on the question at issue, we
assume (without deciding) that a reasonable officer would seek guidance
regarding the scope of proper conduct at least in part from any on-point decisions
of the state’s intermediate court of appeals. See Richard B. Saphire, Qualified
Immunity in Section 1983 Cases and the Role of State Decisional Law, 35 A RIZ .
L. R EV . 621, 647 n.123 (1993) (“Where the relevant state court decision is not
that of the state supreme court, . . . . a decision by a state appellate court . . . for
the judicial district within which a public official works will normally be
considered a relevant, and at least a provisionally binding, source for determining
the legal standards to which the public official should conform.” (emphasis
added)); cf. Kokins v. Teleflex, Inc., 621 F.3d 1290, 1297 (10th Cir. 2010) (“[T]he
decision of an intermediate appellate state court is a datum for ascertaining state
law which is not to be disregarded by a federal court unless it is convinced by
other persuasive data that the highest court of the state would decide otherwise.”
(quoting Stickley v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 505 F.3d 1070, 1077 (10th
Cir. 2007))).
29
For clarity’s sake, however, we underscore that—even when it is essential
to discern the content of state law—the rights being vindicated through § 1983 are
federal. See, e.g., Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 146 (1979) (“Section 1983
imposes liability for violations of rights protected by the Constitution, not for
violations of duties of care arising out of tort law.”); Clanton v. Cooper, 129 F.3d
1147, 1155 n.4 (10th Cir. 1997) (“Clanton also claims that such a statement [i.e.,
a confession of an admitted coconspirator] may not support an arrest warrant
under Oklahoma law. . . . [A]n action may not be maintained under 42 U.S.C. §
1983 for a state official’s failure to adhere to state law.”).
b. Clearly-Established-Law Analysis
A.M. insists that Officer Acosta’s arrest of F.M. for his burping and other
horseplay in Ms. Mines-Hornbeck’s classroom violated clearly established law
because F.M.’s conduct patently did not rise to the level of seriousness envisioned
by N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D) and “no case [was] necessary to alert him [i.e.,
Officer Acosta] to this fact.” Aplt.’s Opening Br. (14-2183) at 40. In this regard,
A.M. reasons, “At worst, F.M. was being a class-clown and engaged in behavior
that would have subjected generations of school boys to an after-school detention,
writing lines, or a call to his parents.” Id. at 42. Moreover, A.M. contends that,
when the provisions of section 30-20-13 are read as a whole, “it is clear that the
New Mexico legislature contemplated” that the statute’s provisions would only be
violated “by actions which impede the overall public function of the school, and
30
not a classroom in the school.” Reply Br. (14-2183) at 15; see Aplt.’s Opening
Br. (14-2183) at 40 (“Any reasonable officer would understand that Section
30-20-13(D) is targeted at criminalizing the intentional act of disrupting the
overall operation of a school.”).
As germane here, in assessing whether Officer Acosta had fair notice that
his conduct would be unlawful in the circumstances he confronted (i.e., when he
was deciding whether to arrest F.M.), we are guided, first, by the text of N.M.
Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D) and, then, by any relevant state and federal decisions
interpreting its import.
i.
The determination of whether a law-enforcement officer’s reliance on a
statute makes his conduct objectively reasonable turns, inter alia, on “the degree
of specificity with which the statute authorized the conduct in question.” Mimics,
Inc. v. Vill. of Angel Fire, 394 F.3d 836, 846 (10th Cir. 2005) (quoting Roska ex
rel. Roska v. Peterson, 328 F.3d 1230, 1253 (10th Cir. 2003)). And we “resist
reading words or elements into a statute that do not appear on its face.” United
States v. Handley, 678 F.3d 1185, 1189 (10th Cir. 2012) (quoting United States v.
Sturm, 673 F.3d 1274, 1279 (10th Cir. 2012)). So do the New Mexico courts.
See, e.g., State v. Wood, 875 P.2d 1113, 1116 (N.M. Ct. App. 1994) (“This Court
will not read language into a statutory provision which is clear on its face.”);
State v. Gutierrez, 699 P.2d 1078, 1082 (N.M. Ct. App. 1985) (“This
31
interpretation [i.e., the defendant’s] requires us to read words into the statute or
ignore words that are present. This we need not do, since the statute makes sense
as written.”).
We believe the text of N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D) manifests the New
Mexico legislature’s intent to prohibit a wide swath of conduct that interferes
with the educational process. The statute renders unlawful, inter alia, the
commission of “any act which would . . . interfere with” or “disrupt” school
functioning and, thereby, “interfere with the educational process.” N.M. Stat.
Ann. § 30-20-13(D) (emphasis added). The common meaning of the word “any”
is, inter alia, “one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind.” Any, W EBSTER ’ S
T HIRD N EW I NTERNATIONAL D ICTIONARY (2002) [hereinafter W EBSTER ’ S (2002)]
(emphasis added); see id. (additionally defining the term to mean, inter alia, “one,
no matter what one” and “some no matter how great or small”). 6
To “interfere” means “to be in opposition: to run at cross-purposes[;] . . . to
act . . . so as to . . . diminish,” Interfere, W EBSTER ’ S (2002), supra; or to “prevent
6
In a variety of contexts, the New Mexico Supreme Court has
acknowledged the breadth of the term “any,” as employed by the legislature. See,
e.g., Elane Photography, LLC v. Willock, 309 P.3d 53, 61 (N.M. 2013); Key v.
Chrysler Motors Corp., 918 P.2d 350, 355–56 (N.M. 1996); see also In re Estate
of DeLara, 38 P.3d 198, 201 (N.M. Ct. App. 2001); accord United States v.
Gonzales, 520 U.S. 1, 5 (1997) (“Read naturally, the word ‘any’ has an expansive
meaning, that is, ‘one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind.’” (quoting
W EBSTER ’ S T HIRD N EW I NTERNATIONAL D ICTIONARY 97 (1976))); Ali v. Fed.
Bureau of Prisons, 552 U.S. 214, 219 (2008) (same); Nat’l Credit Union Admin.
Bd. v. Nomura Home Equity Loan, Inc., 764 F.3d 1199, 1237 (10th Cir. 2014)
(same).
32
(a process or activity) from continuing or being carried out properly,” Interfere,
N EW O XFORD A MERICAN D ICTIONARY (2d ed. 2005). See also Interference,
B LACK ’ S L AW D ICTIONARY (10th ed. 2014) (defining the term as meaning, to pose
“[a]n obstruction or hindrance”). Similarly, to “disrupt” means “to throw into
disorder[;] . . . to interrupt to the extent of stopping, preventing normal
continuance of, or destroying[] that experience,” Disrupt, W EBSTER ’ S (2002),
supra; or to “caus[e] a disturbance or problem,” Disrupt, N EW O XFORD
A MERICAN , supra.
The ordinary meaning of these statutory terms would seemingly encompass
F.M.’s conduct because F.M.’s burping, laughing, and leaning into the classroom
stopped the flow of student educational activities, thereby injecting disorder into
the learning environment, which worked at cross-purposes with Ms. Mines-
Hornbeck’s planned teaching tasks. More to the point, we cannot conclude that
the plain terms of subsection (D) would have given a reasonable law-enforcement
officer in Officer Acosta’s shoes fair warning that if he arrested F.M. for
engaging in his classroom misconduct he (i.e., the officer) would be violating
F.M.’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from an arrest lacking in probable
cause.
Though A.M. suggests that the New Mexico legislature only sought to
criminalize more serious conduct, there is no such limiting language in subsection
(D)’s plain terms, and we decline to read such a limitation into the statute. See,
33
e.g., Handley, 678 F.3d at 1189; Wood, 875 P.2d at 1116. Likewise, we discern
no textual support for A.M.’s contention that the statute evinces the legislature’s
intention to punish the specified acts (e.g., “disrupt, impair, interfere”) only when
they detrimentally impact “the overall public function of the school, and not a
classroom in the school.” Reply Br. (14-2183) at 15. And A.M. offers no
statutory analysis to bolster her conclusory assertion to this effect. 7
Accordingly, we do not believe that A.M. can carry her clearly-established-
law burden by relying solely on the plain terms of N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D).
We acknowledge, however, that when refracted through the lens of judicial
decisions, statutory language may conceivably send a warning signal that is not
readily apparent on the statute’s face. And, in this regard, A.M. maintains that
the caselaw extant at the time of F.M.’s arrest supports her view that Officer
Acosta lacked probable cause for his arrest of F.M. under section 30-20-13(D).
7
Indeed, it is not clear that A.M.’s own argument would exclude from
the ambit of section 30-20-13(D) all misconduct that occurs in the classroom
setting. Whether student misconduct impacts the school as a whole seems at least
sometimes, in A.M.’s view, to turn less on where the misconduct occurs than on
whether the misconduct is very serious—e.g., violent or otherwise egregious. In
this regard, A.M. contends that “behavior [involving] . . . physical obstruction of
a person’s lawful movement and the use of force or intimidation” would be
covered by subsection (D), Reply Br. (14-2183) at 15—even though such
wrongful action could conceivably be directed at individuals in a classroom
setting, rather than toward the school as a whole (through, for example, a threat to
bomb the school).
34
ii
The body of relevant caselaw is very limited. 8 In making its clearly-
established-law argument, A.M. principally relies on a decision of the New
Mexico Court of Appeals, State v. Silva, 525 P.2d 903 (N.M. Ct. App. 1974). We
conclude, however, that Silva does not get A.M. over her clearly-established-law
hurdle.
Silva involved a distant statutory predecessor of N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-
13. 9 Though this earlier statute included some terms that are identical to the
8
All of the New Mexico state cases during the relevant timeframe
involving N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13 focus on a different statutory subsection
than the one at issue here (i.e., subsection (D)). See Livingston v. Ewing, 652
P.2d 235, 239 (N.M. 1982) (discussing a subsection that prohibits the willful
failure to leave state-controlled property); State v. Joyce, 614 P.2d 30, 31 (N.M.
Ct. App. 1980) (same).
9
The statute at issue was N.M. Stat. Ann. § 40A-20-10 (1974). The
Silva court noted at the outset that the defendants only had standing to challenge
subsection (C) of that statute. See 525 P.2d at 905. That provision read in full:
No person shall willfully refuse or fail to leave the property of,
or any building or other facility owned, operated or controlled by
the governing board of any institution of higher education upon
being requested to do so by the chief administrative officer or his
designee charged with maintaining order on the campus and in its
facilities or a dean of a college or university, if the person is
committing, threatens to commit or incites others to commit any
act which would disrupt, impair, interfere with or obstruct the
lawful mission, processes, procedures or functions of the
institution.
N.M. Stat. Ann. § 40A-20-10(C) (1974). The statute was substantially rewritten
in 1975. See 1975 N.M. Laws, ch. 52, § 2, at 177; see also N.M. Stat Ann.
(continued...)
35
language of subsection (D), the Silva statute did not include any provision that
specifically proscribed interference with educational process. Instead, the
specific provision at issue in Silva prohibited any person from
willfully refus[ing] or fail[ing] to leave the property of, or any
building or other facility owned, operated or controlled by the
governing board of any institution of higher education upon
being requested to do so by the chief administrative officer or his
designee . . . if the person is committing, threatens to commit or
incites others to commit any act which would disrupt, impair,
interfere with or obstruct the lawful mission, processes,
procedures or functions of the institution.
N.M. Stat. Ann. § 40A-20-10(C) (1974); see Silva, 525 P.2d at 905. The
defendants were students who refused to leave a university president’s office after
being twice asked to do so. See Silva, 525 P.2d at 904. The president was
conducting appointments in his office and voiced the concern that the students
were “disrupting his normal business.” Id. (emphasis added). This resulted in the
police arresting the students. See id.
9
(...continued)
§ 40A-20-10, historical note (“The 1975 amendment rewrote this section”).
Further, as a result of a comprehensive revision and compilation process
commissioned in 1977 by the New Mexico legislature for completion in 1978, see
1977 N.M. Laws, ch. 74, § 1, at 227; see also N.M. Stat. Ann. pamphlet 1, prelim.
matter, at iii (noting that “the statutes were completely reorganized” and that
“[t]he complete arrangement of statutes required that new numbers be assigned to
each section”), the text of the 1975 version of 40A-20-10 was
redesignated—apparently without any material alteration of terms—as N.M. Stat.
Ann. § 30-20-13, see N.M. Stat. Ann., parallel tables, at 49 (noting that section
40A-20-10 was redesignated in the 1978 compilation at section 30-20-13); cf.
Livingston, 652 P.2d at 239 (citing the N.M. Session Law that enacted the 1975
version of section 40A-20-20, see 1975 N.M. Laws, ch. 52, § 2, at 177, as the
originating source of N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13).
36
The students challenged the constitutionality of the statute, inter alia, on
First Amendment overbreadth grounds. See id. at 907 (“When a statute draws
within its prohibitory ambit conduct protected by the First and Fourteenth
Amendments it is void for overbreadth.”). But the court rejected this attack,
reasoning, as an initial matter, that the statute was actually “more narrowly
drawn” than analogous proscriptive statutes that had been upheld in the
educational context and that subsection (C) of section 40A-20-10 was “valid on
its face.” Id. at 908. More specifically, as to the statute’s narrowly drawn nature,
the court reasoned that “[i]ts operative verbs (disrupt, impair (as construed),
interfere with, obstruct), read as a whole, denote a more substantial, more
physical invasion,” than analogous statutes that, to the contrary, are broad enough
to punish conduct that merely disturbs the peace. Id. at 907. In the same vein,
the court held that, unlike such comparatively broader statutes, the statute at issue
there (i.e., subsection (C)) “requires interference with the actual functioning of
the University,” id.; it reasoned that the statute’s reference to the institution’s
mission, processes, procedures, and functions, “when read together, mean nothing
less,” id. at 908. In addition, the court ruled that the statute was constitutional as
applied, observing, among other things, that when the students’ “demands were
not met they added coercive conduct to their protected speech and their
constitutional protection ended” and, more specifically, that “[b]y refusing to
leave” the president’s office after he asked them to leave, the students
37
“substantially interfered in the functioning of the president’s business.” Id. at
908 (emphasis added).
According to A.M., Silva constitutes clearly established law for this case
and, in particular, makes clear that N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D) should be
interpreted as proscribing only conduct that (a) rises to a level of seriousness akin
to that in Silva, and (b) detrimentally impacts the actual functioning of a school,
as a whole, not just an individual classroom. Therefore, A.M. reasons that Silva
would have given a reasonable officer in Officer Acosta’s position fair warning
that he lacked probable cause to arrest F.M. under section 30-20-13(D) for “[a]t
worst, . . . being a class-clown” in Ms. Mines-Hornbeck’s classroom. Aplt.’s
Opening Br. (14-2183) at 42. We disagree.
First of all, it is not even clear that Silva is apposite in this factual and legal
context—much less clearly established law for it. A.M. has not identified any
New Mexico decisions in the relevant time period that have used Silva to define
the scope of section 30-20-13(D), and we are not aware of any. To be sure, we
freely acknowledge that there are similarities between the language of the statute
at issue in Silva (i.e., section 40A-20-10(C)) and the language of section 30-20-
13(D). Notably, in an educational context, both statutes condition liability on an
individual’s direct or indirect commission of “any act which would disrupt,
impair, interfere with or obstruct the lawful mission, processes, procedures or
functions.” N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D). Compare N.M. Stat. Ann. § 40A-20-
38
10(C) (1974) (proscribing “any act which would disrupt, impair, interfere with or
obstruct the lawful mission, processes, procedures or functions”).
However, subsection (D) is a unique statute that the New Mexico
legislature adopted in 1981 as an amendment to section 30-20-13, see 1981 N.M.
Laws, ch. 32, § 1, at 107–08, to deal with different concerns than those addressed
by the statute at issue in Silva—i.e., subsection (C) of section 40A-20-10. The
plain language of the two statutes patently reveals this fact. Significantly, the
express terms of section 40A-20-10(C) convey that the New Mexico legislature’s
objective in enacting the statute was to punish those who would willfully engage
in a comparatively narrow set of conduct—unauthorized sit-ins and other
occupations of property of colleges and other institutions of higher education.
See N.M. Stat. Ann. § 40A-20-10(C) (punishing any “person [who] shall willfully
refuse or fail to leave the property of, or any building or other facility owned,
operated or controlled by the governing board of any institution of higher
education upon being requested to do so”); see Silva, 525 P.2d at 907 (noting that
“the statute vindicates the significant government interest in the control of
campus disturbances”); see also Dan R. Price, Note, State Legislative Response to
Campus Disorder: An Analytical Compendium, 10 H OUS . L. R EV . 930, 938 & n.74
(1972–73) (discussing “campus disorder laws” and noting, with citation to N.M.
Stat. Ann. § 40A-20-10, that “[t]he single most popular enactment was a statute
that forbade interference or trespass upon notice”).
39
In sharp contrast, the plain terms of section 30-20-13(D) reveal that the
proscriptive focus of the New Mexico legislature was broader: it aimed to punish
any person who willfully, inter alia, disrupts or interferes with a school’s
“educational process”—without restricting by its terms the form in which that
process might manifest itself. See N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D) (criminally
punishing a “person [who] shall willfully interfere with the educational process of
any public or private school”). Notably, though subsection (C) of section 40A-
20-10 and subsection (D) of section 30-20-13 use some of the same language,
there is no substantive analogue of subsection (D) in any provision of section
40A-20-10. In other words, none of the latter’s provisions specifically relates to
willful interference with the educational process.
The idea that the substantive concerns of the two statutes are
different—which should be clear from their plain terms—becomes even more
obvious when one recognizes that another subsection of section 30-20-
13—subsection (C)—is substantively analogous to the exact provision at issue in
Silva—which is also designated subsection (C) (i.e., section 40A-20-10(C)). In
other words, there is a provision in section 30-20-13 that addresses subject matter
that is similar to the provision at issue in Silva. Specifically, like subsection (C)
in Silva, subsection (C) of section 30-20-13 criminalizes the willful failure to
leave certain government property (albeit not just education-related property)
40
“when requested to do so.” N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(C). 10 Given that
subsection (C) of section 30-20-13 generally addresses similar subject matter as
the statute at issue in Silva, we doubt that the New Mexico legislature also
intended for subsection (D)—the one at issue here—to address this topic. The
New Mexico courts presume that the legislature does not act in such a redundant
fashion. See, e.g., Katz v. N.M. Dep’t of Human Servs., 624 P.2d 39, 43 (N.M.
1981) (“A statute must be construed so that no part of the statute is rendered
surplusage or superfluous.”); accord State v. Javier M., 33 P.3d 1, 15 (N.M.
2001).
Thus, given that the two statues are focused on different things, we are
hard-pressed to conclude that it would have been pellucid to a reasonable officer
in Officer Acosta’s shoes that he should look to Silva for direction in seeking to
10
In full, subsection (C) reads:
No person shall willfully refuse or fail to leave the property of or
any building or other facility owned, operated or controlled by
the state or any of its political subdivisions when requested to do
so by a lawful custodian of the building, facility or property if
the person is committing, threatens to commit or incites others to
commit any act which would disrupt, impair, interfere with or
obstruct the lawful mission, processes, procedures or functions
of the property, building or facility.
N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(C). The language of this provision originated in the
1975 version of 40A-20-10, see supra note 9; the 1975 version removed the
exclusive focus on institutions of higher learning that was found in the earlier
iteration of section 40A-20-10 that Silva addressed.
41
enforce the separate provisions of section 30-20-13(D). 11 Put more broadly, given
the absence of New Mexico authority from the relevant period applying Silva to
section 30-20-13(D), and given the distinct legal contexts contemplated by,
respectively, the statute in Silva and the one in this case, it is not clear to us that
Silva is even apposite—let alone clearly established law. And, if it is not clear to
us, it a fortiori would not have been clear to a reasonable officer in Officer
Acosta’s position.
Furthermore, even assuming arguendo that such a reasonable officer would
have sought guidance from Silva, we are not persuaded that Silva would have
clearly warned that officer that he lacked probable cause under section 30-20-
11
Officer Acosta’s briefing does not advance an argument based on the
differences in sections 40A-20-10(C) and 30-20-13(D). However, it is beyond
peradventure that “we may affirm on any basis supported by the record, even if it
requires ruling on arguments not reached by the district court or even presented to
us on appeal.” Jordan v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 668 F.3d 1188, 1200 (10th Cir.
2011) (emphasis added) (quoting Richison v. Ernest Grp., Inc., 634 F.3d 1123,
1130 (10th Cir. 2011)). “[I]t is neither unusual nor unjust for this court” to do
this. United States v. Games-Perez, 695 F.3d 1104, 1109 (10th Cir. 2012) (en
banc) (Murphy, J., concurring in the den. of reh’g en banc). Moreover, such a
decisional approach is particularly acceptable and proper when, as here, the
matter at issue involves construing the plain terms of statutes—a quintessentially
legal undertaking. See Cox, 800 F.3d at 1246 n.7 (“[W]e also recognize that we
can entertain a defendant’s argument on the clearly-established-law prong under
certain circumstances, even if the argument had been forfeited in district court,
because the issue involves a pure matter of law.”); cf. United States v. Lyons, 510
F.3d 1225, 1238 (10th Cir. 2007) (“Our discretion allows us to determine an issue
raised for the first time on appeal if it is a pure matter of law and its proper
resolution is certain.”). Put more concretely, the differences between the two
statutes are patent; we need not (and do not) ignore them simply because Officer
Acosta did not bring them to our attention.
42
13(D) to arrest F.M. In this regard, we underscore that A.M. must shoulder a
“quite heavy” burden in showing that the law was clearly established by Silva.
Watson v. Univ. of Utah Med. Ctr., 75 F.3d 569, 577 (10th Cir. 1996) (quoting
Jantz v. Muci, 976 F.2d 623, 627 (10th Cir. 1992)); see also Dodds v. Richardson,
614 F.3d 1185, 1191 (10th Cir. 2010) (“Once a defendant asserts qualified
immunity, the plaintiff bears the burden of satisfying a ‘strict two-part test.’”
(citation omitted)). And, more specifically, it is not enough for A.M. to
demonstrate that, under Silva’s guidance, Officer Acosta lacked probable cause to
arrest F.M. Instead, A.M. must show that Officer Acosta lacked arguable
probable cause: viz., his belief that he possessed probable cause was not only
mistaken, it was objectively unreasonable. See, e.g., Stonecipher, 759 F.3d at
1141 (“Arguable probable cause is another way of saying that the officers’
conclusions rest on an objectively reasonable, even if mistaken, belief that
probable cause exists.”). We conclude that A.M. has failed to carry this burden.
First of all, contrary to A.M.’s suggestion, there is nothing in Silva’s text
that would have put a reasonable officer on notice that only conduct that
substantially “mirrors” the degree of seriousness of the students’ conduct in Silva,
Reply Br. (14-2183) at 18, is criminalized by subsection (D). 12 It is true that
12
To the contrary, it is worth noting that Silva’s reasoning could have
led a reasonable officer to believe on these facts he was not obliged to refrain
from arresting F.M. for his classroom horseplay just because school authorities
had other means of disciplining him, such as “after-school detention, writing
(continued...)
43
Silva describes the students’ conduct as “substantially interfer[ing] in the
functioning of the president’s business.” 525 P.2d at 908 (emphasis added). But
the court does not purport to limit its holding to wrongful conduct of comparable
seriousness.
Relatedly, even if A.M. were correct that a central upshot of Silva is that
mere disturbances of the peace—as such conduct is understood “in the school
context,” id. at 907—are not punishable under section 30-20-13(D), that would
not avail her on these facts. A reasonable officer in Officer Acosta’s shoes, who
was taking his cues from Silva, could have reasonably believed (even if
12
(...continued)
lines, or [placing] a call to his parents.” Aplt.’s Opening Br. (14-2183) at 42. In
rejecting the students’ suggestion that their arrests were improper, the Silva court
reasoned:
They [i.e., the students] argue that the president was too hasty
and could have moved his meeting elsewhere. There are . . .
answers to that argument: First, [the president] had no way of
knowing how long they would stay or how many appointments
they would disrupt. . . . [Second], “[i]t may be, as has been
suggested, that in these cases of nonviolent violation, there is
‘sense in patient forbearance despite the wrong that the action
involves.’ Patient forbearance, however, is the result of a
prudential judgment and is not constitutionally compelled.”
525 P.2d at 908 (third alteration in original) (citation omitted). Like the
university president in Silva who called for the students’ arrest, a reasonable
officer in Officer Acosta’s shoes (1) could not have known how long F.M. might
continue to provoke his classmates and teacher through his impromptu fake-
burping conduct, and (2) was not required—by the statute’s plain terms—to
exercise extraordinary (or, for that matter, ordinary) “patient forbearance,” id.
(citation omitted), while F.M.’s horseplay caused Ms. Mines-Hornbeck’s teaching
to come to a grinding halt.
44
mistakenly) that F.M.’s conduct—though he “was being a class-clown,” Aplt.’s
Opening Br. (14-2183) at 42—amounted to more than a mere disturbance of the
peace in a school setting. In that setting, Silva could be reasonably read as
suggesting that the bar is quite low for conduct to qualify as a disturbance of the
peace. Specifically, the court stated, “Normal conversational speech in an
unobstructive or undisruptive situation may yet disturb.” Silva, 525 P.2d at 907.
It logically follows perforce that, comparatively speaking, it would not take much
under Silva for a student’s conduct to constitute more than a disturbance of the
peace—that is, to be “a more substantial, more physical invasion,” in Silva’s
words. Id. In other words, one might reasonably infer from Silva that relatively
minor student conduct could exceed the boundaries that define mere disturbances
of the peace.
Here, F.M. was not merely speaking in a conversational tone (e.g., voicing
a concern or criticism to the teacher or sharing a joke with a fellow student);
instead, he was repeatedly fake-burping, laughing, and (later) leaning into the
classroom. And the effect of his conduct was not merely to disturb the good
order of Ms. Mines-Hornbeck’s classroom; rather, it was to bring the activities of
that classroom to a grinding halt. In these circumstances, a reasonable officer in
Officer Acosta’s position, who was guided by Silva, could have believed that
F.M. was doing more in the school context than disturbing the peace. More to the
point, such an officer could have believed—even if mistakenly so—that he
45
possessed probable cause under section 30-20-13(D) to arrest F.M. for interfering
with or disrupting the educational process.
Moreover, we have serious doubts whether A.M. is correct in reading Silva
as conditioning criminal liability under section 30-20-13(D) on a finding that the
conduct at issue interfered with the functioning of the school as a whole, rather
than a particular classroom of the school. To be sure, in construing the import of
the same terms found in section 30-20-13(D) (i.e., “mission, processes,
procedures or functions”), Silva stated that the statute “requires interference with
the actual functioning of the University.” 525 P.2d at 907. However, this
statement came in the context of Silva’s attempt to distinguish the statute at issue
(i.e., section 40A-20-10(C)) from analogous statutes that more broadly proscribed
conduct that merely disturbed the peace but did not necessarily interfere with
school operations. See id. In other words, the focus of Silva in this passage was
arguably on demonstrating that section 40A-20-10(C) requires actual
interference—viz., on showing that mere disturbances of the peace are
insufficient—not on establishing the proposition that any interference that the
statute proscribes must affect the school as a whole.
Indeed, Silva’s facts and actual holding tend to belie A.M.’s reading of
subsection (D)’s scope of liability. Specifically, in Silva, the students were not
arrested for disrupting the University’s operations as a whole; instead, they were
arrested for interfering with the functions of one office—the president’s. Before
46
they were arrested the president specially reported that they were “disrupting
his normal business.” 525 P.2d at 904 (emphasis added); see id. at 908 (noting
that “[b]y refusing to leave” the president’s office after he asked them to leave,
the students “substantially interfered in the functioning of the president’s
business” (emphasis added)). Therefore, insofar as a reasonable officer in Officer
Acosta’s position was looking to Silva for guidance, he could have reasoned that,
to the extent that F.M.’s conduct in the classroom interfered with Ms. Mines-
Hornbeck’s teaching activities, F.M. could be held criminally liable under section
30-20-13(D), just as the students in the president’s office in Silva were criminally
liable for interfering with the president’s business activities. 13
Our conclusion that Silva might be reasonably read as not condemning the
conduct of a reasonable officer in Officer Acosta’s position, is fortified by a 2013
federal district court decision construing the terms of N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-
13(D). See G.M. ex rel. B.M. v. Casalduc, 982 F. Supp. 2d 1235, 1240 (D.N.M.
2013). We permissibly seek guidance from Casalduc regarding the clearly-
established-law question, even though it post-dates the arrest at issue here. See,
e.g., Swanson v. Town of Mountain View, 577 F.3d 1196, 1200 (10th Cir. 2009)
13
In any event, it is not readily apparent to us why a student whose
conduct disrupts and interferes with the educational processes of a classroom
should not be deemed to have impaired, in A.M.’s words, “the overall public
function of the school,” Reply Br. (14-2183) at 15—viz., disrupted or interfered
with the school’s ability to carry out its overall functions and mission, in
particular, with respect to the other students in the offending student’s classroom.
47
(“[C]ases published before the incident govern our analysis. But we also examine
cases published after the conduct in question to the extent they shed light on the
fact that the law was not clearly established at the relevant time.” (emphases
added) (citation omitted)). Specifically, in Casalduc, the dispositive issue—akin
to the one at issue here—was the propriety of awarding qualified immunity to a
school resource officer who arrested a middle-school student under N.M. Stat.
Ann. § 30-20-13(D) for sending text messages during class. Like F.M., the
Casalduc student ignored numerous requests to discontinue her behavior. As a
result, “her teacher stopped class to address [the situation].” Casalduc, 982 F.
Supp. 2d at 1240.
The district court determined that the student’s recalcitrant “conduct d[id]
not clearly fall outside the conduct prohibited by the plain language of the
statute” not only because the student had “ignored numerous requests to stop
texting during class,” but also because, “[u]nable to continue instruction, her
teacher stopped class and eventually summoned [assistance].” Id. at 1243.
Additionally, as relevant here, the court opined that a reasonable officer, guided
by Silva, could justifiably have believed that willful text-messaging could provide
probable cause to arrest under section 30-20-13(D). More specifically, the court
stated: “Assuming that a reasonable officer would be aware of Silva, a case from
almost forty years ago interpreting a precursor statute, . . . a reasonable officer
could conclude that [the student’s] conduct substantially interfered with school
48
functions.” Id. at 1244. The court thus readily concluded that the student’s right
to be free from arrest was not clearly established, and it granted qualified
immunity to the school resource officer. The reasoning of Casalduc is cogent,
and we believe it underscores the correctness of our conclusion that Silva would
not have given a reasonable officer in Officer Acosta’s position fair warning that
his conduct was unconstitutional.
In sum, if a reasonable officer in Officer Acosta’s shoes had sought
guidance from Silva, we do not believe that it would have given the officer fair
warning that, if he elected to arrest F.M., he would be doing so without probable
cause in violation of F.M.’s Fourth Amendment rights. Put another way, even if
Silva was the controlling touchstone, Officer Acosta’s belief that he had probable
cause to arrest F.M. under section 30-20-13(D) was objectively reasonable—even
if mistaken. Therefore, we conclude that A.M. cannot satisfy her clearly-
established-law burden by relying on Silva.
We recognize, however, that A.M.’s brief does not limit its caselaw-based
argument to Silva. Recognizing the paucity of New Mexico caselaw addressing
N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-13(D), A.M. contends that judicial decisions from three
other states—Colorado, Florida, and North Carolina—interpreting similar laws 14
should have apprised a reasonable officer in Officer Acosta’s shoes that he lacked
14
See Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 18-9-109(2); Fla. Stat. Ann. § 877.13(1);
N.C. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 14-288.4(a)(6).
49
probable cause to arrest F.M. In particular, she reasons that these cases “have
made common sense distinctions between school-wide threats and instances
similar to burping in class,” Aplt.’s Opening Br. (14-2183) at 43, and “[t]hese
cases highlight the unreasonableness of Defendant Acosta’s determination that
F.M.’s actions merited arrest for disrupting the functioning of [CMS],” id. at 45.
However, even assuming arguendo that the decisions A.M. cites—which
appear to be only from intermediate appellate courts—represent the controlling
law of their respective states, A.M. has not persuaded us that we should view such
a limited universe of caselaw as reflecting a “robust ‘consensus of cases of
persuasive authority’ . . . that would alter our analysis of the qualified immunity
question.” Plumhoff v. Rickard, --- U.S. ----, 134 S. Ct. 2012, 2023 (2014)
(citation omitted) (quoting al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741); see also Quinn, 780 F.3d at
1005 (noting that, absent controlling law from the Supreme Court or the Tenth
Circuit, a plaintiff may still satisfy the clearly-established-law burden by showing
that “the clearly established weight of authority from other courts . . . ha[s] found
the law to be as [she] maintains” (quoting Weise, 593 F.3d at 1167)).
Accordingly, we conclude that A.M. cannot carry her clearly-established-law
burden by relying on these cases.
In sum, we hold that it would not have been clear to a reasonable officer in
Officer Acosta’s position that his arrest of F.M. under N.M. Stat. Ann. § 30-20-
13(D) would have been lacking in probable cause and thus violative of F.M.’s
50
Fourth Amendment rights. In other words, Officer Acosta’s belief that he had
probable cause to arrest F.M. under section 30-20-13(D) was objectively
reasonable—even if mistaken—and, therefore, the district court correctly
determined that Officer Acosta is entitled to qualified immunity on A.M.’s Fourth
Amendment claim. 15
15
We are neither oblivious nor unsympathetic to “the potential future
consequences to [a] child,” such as F.M., of an arrest or other law-enforcement
sanction for seemingly non-egregious classroom misconduct; such a law-
enforcement response could potentially have a “far-reaching impact” on a child’s
ability to lead a productive life. Hawker v. Sandy City Corp., 774 F.3d 1243,
1244 (10th Cir. 2014) (Lucero, J., concurring); see Udi Ofer, Criminalizing the
Classroom: The Rise of Aggressive Policing and Zero Tolerance Discipline in
New York City Public Schools, 56 N.Y.L. S CH . L. R EV . 1373, 1375 (2011/2012)
(“The growing reliance by schools on policing tactics . . . to address misbehavior
on its own raises significant concerns. But it is even more disconcerting given
the availability of proven alternatives to securing the school environment that
avoid the collateral consequences resulting from arrests and school removals.”);
Police in Schools: Arresting Developments, T HE E CONOMIST , Jan. 9, 2016
(“[T]hose who become entangled in the justice system are likely to remain so.
The opening of a juvenile criminal record—which may not be scrubbed clean
until the age of 21—is an augury of further arrests, further convictions and
eventual imprisonment, a spiral known to researchers as the
‘school-to-prison-pipeline.’”). Yet, it is beyond cavil that “[t]he States possess
primary authority for defining and enforcing the criminal law.” Brecht v.
Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 635 (1993) (emphasis added) (citation omitted); see
generally Bushco v. Shurtleff, 729 F.3d 1294, 1304–05 (10th Cir. 2013)
(discussing states’ traditional police power when addressing Utah’s sexual-
solicitation statutory framework). It ultimately is not our place to question or
undermine the New Mexico legislature’s policy choice to criminalize interference
with the educational process and, more specifically, to (at least arguably)
proscribe the kind of classroom misconduct that led to F.M.’s arrest.
51
3. Excessive-Force Claim
A.M. also contends that Officer Acosta, by handcuffing F.M. before driving
him to the detention center, violated F.M.’s clearly established Fourth
Amendment right to be free from an excessively forceful arrest. The district court
resolved this claim on the first prong of our qualified-immunity test: it determined
that A.M. had not shown that Officer Acosta committed a constitutional violation.
Although we agree with the district court’s ultimate disposition regarding the
excessive-force claim—viz., we conclude that the court properly awarded
qualified immunity to Officer Acosta—we expressly ground our decision on the
second prong of the qualified-immunity rubric. Specifically, we conclude that the
clearly established law in existence in May 2011 would not have apprised a
reasonable police officer similarly situated to Officer Acosta that he could be held
liable under § 1983 for a Fourth Amendment violation based on handcuffing a
minor pursuant to a lawful arrest.
a. Background Principles
Under well-settled Supreme Court precedent, a law-enforcement officer’s
“right to make an arrest . . . necessarily carries with it the right to use some
degree of physical coercion . . . to effect it.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386,
396 (1989); accord Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93, 99 (2005). Nonetheless, “[t]he
degree of physical coercion that law enforcement officers may use is not
unlimited,” Cortez, 478 F.3d at 1125, and must comport with the Fourth
52
Amendment. Indeed, “all claims that law enforcement officers have used
excessive force . . . in the course of an arrest . . . should be analyzed under the
Fourth Amendment and its ‘reasonableness’ standard.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 395.
A plaintiff who successfully demonstrates that an officer “used greater force than
would have been reasonably necessary to effect a lawful arrest[] [may be] entitled
to damages resulting from that excessive force.” Cortez, 478 F.3d at 1127.
We assay a plaintiff’s excessive-force claim for objective reasonableness,
asking “whether the officer[’s] actions [were] objectively reasonable in light of
the facts and circumstances confronting [him], without regard to underlying intent
or motivation.” Weigel, 544 F.3d at 1151 (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 388); see
also Holland ex rel. Overdorff v. Harrington, 268 F.3d 1179, 1194 (10th Cir.
2001) (“The whole course of conduct of an officer in making an arrest or other
seizure . . . must be evaluated for Fourth Amendment reasonableness in light of
the totality of the circumstances.”). Guided by Graham, we consider factors such
as “the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate
threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting
arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Casey, 509 F.3d at 1281 (quoting
Graham, 490 U.S. at 396). Further, the Supreme Court has said that “for the most
part per se rules are inappropriate in the Fourth Amendment context.” United
States v. Drayton, 536 U.S. 194, 201 (2002).
53
Thus, when a defendant asserts the defense of qualified immunity in
response to a plaintiff’s excessive-force claim, the “plaintiff is required to show
that the force used was impermissible (a constitutional violation) and that
objectively reasonable officers could not have not thought the force
constitutionally permissible (violates clearly established law).” Cortez, 478 F.3d
at 1128 (emphasis added). As regards the first requirement—concerning the
commission vel non of a Fourth Amendment violation—we have said that “our
precedent requires a showing in a handcuffing case of an actual, non-de minimis
physical, emotional, or dignitary injury to succeed on a claim.” Fisher v. City of
Las Cruces, 584 F.3d 888, 899 (10th Cir. 2009); accord Koch, 660 F.3d at 1247.
This is because “[h]andcuffing claims, in essence, concern the manner or course
in which a petitioner is handcuffed,” and “[b]ecause handcuffing itself is not
necessarily an excessive use of force in connection with an arrest.” Fisher, 584
F.3d at 897.
b. Clearly Established Law
At summary judgment, the district court rejected A.M.’s excessive-force
claim on the first prong of the qualified-immunity standard after finding that she
“ha[d] not produced evidence that F.M. suffered an actual physical or emotional
injury” stemming from Officer Acosta’s use of handcuffs. Aplt.’s App. (14-2183)
at 397. The court opined that “nowhere in the summary judgment evidence [wa]s
there actual evidence that F.M. suffered any . . . trauma, much less any . . . above
54
the de minimis level.” Id. (first and second emphases added). In other words, the
district court based its ruling on the first prong of the qualified-immunity
standard—determining that A.M. failed to demonstrate that Officer Acosta’s
conduct effected a constitutional violation. A.M. now contends that the court
erred not only by failing to find a constitutional violation, but also by failing to
realize that then-extant clearly established law should have notified Officer
Acosta that he could not handcuff F.M. before transporting him to the detention
center. We elect to reach only the clearly-established-law question—that is, the
second prong of the qualified-immunity standard. On this alternative ground, 16
we conclude that A.M.’s claim fails because there was no clearly established law
indicating that F.M.’s minor status could negate Officer Acosta’s customary right
to place an arrestee in handcuffs during the arrest.
i. A.M.’s Proffered Clearly Established Law
A.M. shoulders the responsibility in the first instance “of citing to us what
[she] thinks constitutes clearly established law” for purposes of this claim.
Thomas v. Durastanti, 607 F.3d 655, 669 (10th Cir. 2010). A.M. first relies upon
the Supreme Court’s holding in Graham as the applicable clearly established law,
16
See Panagoulakos, 741 F.3d at 1129; see also SEC v. Chenery
Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 88 (1943) (observing “the settled rule that, in reviewing the
decision of a lower court, it must be affirmed if the result is correct ‘[even if] the
lower court relied upon a wrong ground or gave a wrong reason’” (quoting
Helvering v. Gowran, 302 U.S. 238, 245 (1937))); Richison, 634 F.3d at 1130
(noting our prerogative to “affirm on any basis supported by the record, even if it
requires ruling on arguments not reached by the district court”).
55
arguing: “Applying the Graham factors to this case, there was no need to
handcuff and transport F.M. to the Detention Center.” Aplt.’s Opening Br. (14-
2183) at 52. We are constrained to reject her proffer of Graham for this purpose.
Graham, though certainly an excessive-force lodestar, provides no guidance
concerning whether an officer, when effecting an arrest supported by probable
cause, must refrain from using handcuffs because the arrestee is a minor (lest he
open himself up to potential § 1983 liability). See, e.g., Cavanaugh v. Woods
Cross City, 625 F.3d 661, 664–65 (10th Cir. 2010) (explaining that Graham
speaks to the court’s duty to balance individuals’ Fourth Amendment rights
against countervailing state interests); Casey, 509 F.3d at 1281–82 (invoking
Graham in terms of overall objective reasonableness in light of a particular case’s
circumstances). Consequently, Graham does not satisfy A.M.’s clearly-
established-law burden because it defines the right at issue at an impermissibly
“high level of generality.” al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 742. Insofar as Graham applies
here, it merely instructs us regarding “general principles of the Fourth
Amendment”—that is, overarching concepts that the Supreme Court has said do
“not [render] obvious . . . that the conduct of the officer[] in this case violated the
Amendment.” Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615–16 (1999). 17
17
As we noted supra in Part II, in conducting a clearly-established-law
analysis, this circuit uses a sliding-scale approach that demands less specificity in
the clearly established law the more egregious the conduct that effects the
constitutional violation. In other words, the latter (i.e., the egregiousness of the
(continued...)
56
The only other source of law that A.M. insists would have given Officer
Acosta fair warning that F.M.’s minor-child status negated his customary right to
place an arrestee in handcuffs is a New Mexico statute governing “[c]riteria for
detention of children.” N.M. Stat. Ann. § 32A-2-11. The specific statutory
provision on which she relies states that:
a child taken into custody for an alleged delinquent act shall not
be placed in detention unless a detention risk assessment
instrument is completed and a determination is made that the
child:
(1) poses a substantial risk of harm to himself;
(2) poses a substantial risk of harm to others; or
(3) has demonstrated that he may leave the jurisdiction of
the court.
17
(...continued)
conduct) is in inverse relationship with the former (i.e., the specificity of the
clearly established law). Under such an approach, we do not gainsay that, under
certain circumstances where the excessive force is of a particularly egregious
nature (e.g., an incredibly reckless taking of a human life by a law-enforcement
officer), Graham or little more may qualify as the clearly established law that
defeats a qualified-immunity defense. See Pauly v. White, 814 F.3d 1060, 1075
(10th Cir. 2016) (“Thus, when an officer’s violation of the Fourth Amendment is
particularly clear from Graham itself, we do not require a second decision with
greater specificity to clearly establish the law.” (quoting Casey, 509 F.3d at
1284)), pet. for cert. filed (U.S. July 11, 2016) (No. 16-67); see also Browder v.
City of Albuquerque, 787 F.3d 1076, 1083 (10th Cir. 2015) (noting that hardly
any caselaw specificity was necessary in our clearly-established-law inquiry
because the appeal involved a deadly motor-vehicle accident where the officer
was “speeding on [his] own business”). It would border on the fatuous, however,
for A.M. to suggest that Officer Acosta’s treatment of F.M.—notably, his
handcuffing of him—constitutes one of those rare instances of egregious conduct
where Graham, alone, would be a sufficient source of clearly established law.
57
Id. § 32A-2-11(A). In our view, the statute does not support A.M.’s argument by
its plain terms. It patently contemplates the situation that was confronted by the
detention-center employees after F.M.’s arrival—i.e., whether to admit F.M. or
release him to the custody of his mother—but not the situation confronted by
Officer Acosta—i.e., whether to transport F.M. to the center with or without
restraints. See, e.g., State v. Steven B., 94 P.3d 854, 862 (N.M. Ct. App. 2004)
(“[The minor] objected . . . that failure to turn in paperwork did not meet the
criteria for detention. The criteria for detention under Section 32A–2–11,
however, is applicable before disposition; [the minor] was already on probation.”
(emphasis added)); cf. State v. Anthony M., 958 P.2d 107, 109–10 (N.M. Ct. App.
1998) (“The State cites this statute [section 32A-2-11(A)] for the proposition that
Child could not be detained at the Boys’ School pending court hearing on the
second delinquency petition. . . . We agree with Child that this statute does not
preclude detention at the Boys’ School. The purpose of the confinement
determines whether a child is in detention or commitment at the Boys’ School.”).
In other words, the statute clearly cannot be read as announcing any limitations
on an arresting officer’s traditional right to place an arrestee in handcuffs.
Indeed, as of May 2011, none of the extant New Mexico cases interpreting this
statute implicated the issue of handcuffing a minor pursuant to a lawful arrest.
At bottom, A.M. asks us to impute to Officer Acosta awareness that N.M.
Stat. Ann. § 32A-2-11(A) would have required him to consider factors related to a
58
hypothetical detention-center placement before handcuffing F.M. in an arrest
supported by probable cause. This we cannot do: no court has found that N.M.
Stat. Ann. § 32A-2-11(A) imposes a requirement of that nature on officers
effecting lawful arrests and the plain terms of the statute do not evince such a
command. Furthermore, we likewise cannot conclude that any such requirement
would be grounded in the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g., United States v.
Gonzales, 535 F.3d 1174, 1182 (10th Cir. 2008) (“[W]e have indicated that
compliance with state [statutes] may be relevant to our Fourth Amendment
reasonableness analysis, [but] we have never held it to be determinative of the
constitutionality of police conduct.”). Therefore, the statute is far from being
clearly established law for our purposes.
ii. Our Survey of the Law
Because neither of A.M.’s cited sources can serve as the extant clearly
established law governing her excessive-force claim, “we could hold that [A.M.]
has not properly laid the groundwork to defeat [Officer Acosta’s] assertion of
qualified immunity.” Cox, 800 F.3d at 1247. Nonetheless, we have taken the
additional step of surveying the caselaw extant at the time of the arrest that would
have guided Officer Acosta’s “endeavors to conform his . . . conduct to
constitutional norms.” Id. We have determined that the applicable clearly
established law in May 2011 would not have apprised a reasonable officer
similarly situated to Officer Acosta that handcuffing F.M. would run afoul of the
59
Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive force. We thus conclude that A.M.
has failed to satisfy her burden on the clearly-established-law prong of the
qualified-immunity standard. Officer Acosta is entitled to qualified immunity on
A.M.’s excessive-force claim.
Because A.M. has intimated that F.M.’s handcuffing was a humiliating
experience, we first address the Supreme Court’s decision in Atwater v. City of
Lago Vista, 532 U.S. 318 (2001). There, the Court addressed whether an
“inconvenient and embarrassing” arrest for various motor-vehicle violations, and
the officer’s concomitant handcuffing of the arrestee (an adult), flouted
constitutional norms. Id. at 355. The officer yelled at the arrestee, “said that he
had ‘heard [the arrestee’s] story two-hundred times,’” id. at 324 (citation
omitted), and handcuffed the arrestee before placing her in a patrol car. On that
set of facts, the Court concluded that the arrest was not “made in an
‘extraordinary manner, unusually harmful to [the arrestee’s] privacy
or . . . physical interests.’” Id. at 354 (omission in original) (quoting Whren v.
United States, 517 U.S. 806, 818 (1996)). The Court explained:
[The] arrest was surely humiliating, . . . but it was no more
harmful to . . . privacy or . . . physical interests than the normal
custodial arrest. She was handcuffed, placed in a squad car, and
taken to the local police station . . . [, which was] inconvenient
and embarrassing to [her], but not so extraordinary as to violate
the Fourth Amendment.
Id. at 354–55 (second and third omissions in original) (quotations omitted).
60
We have interpreted the substance of Atwater as an endorsement of an
officer’s right to use handcuffs when conducting an otherwise legally proper
arrest. In Cortez, for instance, we “ha[d] little difficulty concluding that a small
amount of force, like grabbing [the plaintiff] and placing him in the patrol car,
[wa]s permissible in effecting an arrest under the Fourth Amendment.” 478 F.3d
at 1128 (citing Atwater, 532 U.S. at 354–55). We then characterized Atwater as
instructing that, standing alone, embarrassment associated with handcuffing
during a lawful arrest cannot support an actionable excessive-force claim. See id.
Similarly, in Petersen v. Farnsworth, after noting that the arrestees “did not have
[significant] security concerns,” we unequivocally read Atwater as “establish[ing]
that defendants charged with non-violent and non-jailable crimes do not enjoy a
constitutional right to be free from all restraints.” 371 F.3d 1219, 1223 (10th Cir.
2004). In light of these post-Atwater decisions, we confidently conclude here that
a reasonable officer in Officer Acosta’s position would have understood Atwater’s
general acceptance of handcuffing incident to a lawful arrest to indicate that, in
the ordinary course, handcuffing any arrestee—absent some injury specifically
caused by the application of the cuffs—is lawful.
Our holding in Fisher is congruent with this conclusion. There, in
assessing the “manner or course in which [the plaintiff] [wa]s handcuffed,”
Fisher, 584 F.3d at 897, we stated that “in nearly every situation where an arrest
is authorized, or police reasonably believe public safety requires physical
61
restraint, handcuffing is appropriate,” id. at 896. And we underscored that “in
handcuffing cases, a plaintiff must establish some non-de minimis actual injury.”
Id. at 898. Put succinctly, Fisher lends support to our view that the right A.M.
asserts on F.M.’s behalf—a minor’s freedom from restraint during a
constitutionally sound arrest—was not clearly established in May 2011.
Of course, we recognize that neither Atwater nor Fisher involved the
distinguishable, critical factor of minor-child status. However, it appears that no
subsequent published Tenth Circuit decision has taken that variable into
consideration in the excessive-force calculus. But we note a recent observation of
a panel of this court, in an unpublished order and judgment, that it “ha[d]
uncovered no case law (and the parties cite[d] to none) applying a different
standard when the victim of the alleged excessive force is a minor.” Hawker v.
Sandy City Corp., 591 F. App’x 669, 674 n.8 (10th Cir. 2014) (emphasis added).
Along these same lines, we have not uncovered any cases extant at the time
of F.M.’s arrest that describe the state of the law and the right at issue as A.M.
does. In fact, our study of the relevant caselaw cuts against any reasonable
conclusion that a minor’s purported right to avoid handcuffing during a lawful
arrest was clearly established in May 2011. See Hedgepeth ex rel. Hedgepeth v.
Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth., 386 F.3d 1148, 1155–56 (D.C. Cir. 2004)
(noting, in a case involving the handcuffing of a twelve-year-old girl, where the
officer had probable cause to arrest: “the right at issue in this case is the right of
62
freedom of movement when there is probable cause for arrest. . . . [T]his
definition does not depend on the challenged classification—minority
status—itself. . . . The law of this land does not recognize a fundamental right to
freedom of movement when there is probable cause for arrest.” (citations
omitted)); cf. Gray ex rel. Alexander v. Bostic, 458 F.3d 1295, 1305–07 (11th Cir.
2006) (deeming it unreasonable to handcuff a nine-year-old student who had
cooperated with officers and was not engaging in further disruptive behavior, but
noting: “Deputy Bostic’s purpose in handcuffing [the child] was simply to punish
her and teach her a lesson. Every reasonable officer would have known that
handcuffing a compliant nine-year-old child for purely punitive purposes is
unreasonable.” (emphasis added)). And a number of legal commentators have
likewise concluded—though many have lodged vociferous objections in doing
so—that restraining minors during arrest procedures is commonplace in many
jurisdictions. 18 In light of the foregoing analysis, we are unwilling to conclude
18
See, e.g., Kim M. McLaurin, Children in Chains: Indiscriminate
Shackling of Juveniles, 38 W ASH . U. J.L. & P OL ’ Y 213, 232 (2012) (“Despite the
many constitutional and ethical arguments against the blanket use of shackles
[i.e., handcuffs or leg irons] on juveniles without any showing of need, most
states continue to do so [on] a daily basis.”); Ofer, supra, at 1376–77 (observing
that “stories of children getting . . . handcuffed” “now appear regularly in the
media”); Bernard P. Perlmutter, “Unchain the Children”: Gault, Therapeutic
Jurisprudence, and Shackling, 9 B ARRY L. R EV . 1, 6 (2007) (“Throughout Florida,
juveniles in secure detention routinely appear before judges wearing metal
handcuffs . . . regardless of age . . . or alleged offense.”); Ira P. Robbins,
Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transportation Industry and
the Potential for Abuse, 51 A M . C RIM . L. R EV . 563, 585 (2014) (“At the state
(continued...)
63
that Officer Acosta could have had fair warning that his conduct during F.M.’s
arrest would have constituted a Fourth Amendment excessive-force violation.
In short, we hold that the then-extant clearly established law would not
have apprised a reasonable officer in Officer Acosta’s position that F.M.’s minor-
child status should have negated his time-honored right to use handcuffs in
effecting F.M.’s arrest. For these reasons, we conclude that the district court
correctly awarded qualified immunity to Officer Acosta on this Fourth
Amendment claim.
18
(...continued)
level, the standards for the transportation of juvenile offenders vary. . . . The
regulations in Cincinnati, Ohio contain the uncommon requirement that all
juveniles ‘remain handcuffed during all phases of transportation and processing.’”
(citation and footnote omitted)); cf. Gabe Newland, Comment, A Solution to
Michigan’s Child Shackling Problem, 112 M ICH . L. R EV . F IRST I MPRESSIONS 161,
168–70 (2014) (noting that many states, including New Mexico, are developing a
presumption against shackling (which includes handcuffing) children appearing in
court).
64
B. Claims Against Ms. Holmes 19
Next, we address A.M.’s claims against Ms. Holmes alleging violations of
the Fourth, First, and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court awarded
summary judgment on qualified-immunity grounds to Ms. Holmes on all of these
claims. We conclude that it was correct in doing so. We acknowledge that the
district court also ruled against A.M. on her Fourth Amendment claim on
collateral-estoppel grounds, in light of the court’s prior resolution of A.M.’s
Fourth Amendment claim against Ms. LaBarge. However, because we uphold on
the merits the district court’s qualified-immunity determinations involving Ms.
Holmes—including its ruling on the Fourth Amendment claim—we need not (and
therefore do not) opine on the correctness of the district court’s collateral-
estoppel resolution of A.M.’s Fourth Amendment claim against Ms. Holmes.
1. Unreasonable-Search Claim
A.M. first contends with respect to Ms. Holmes that “the district court erred
in finding that F.M.’s Fourth Amendment rights were not clearly established”
19
We note that A.M. provides her Fourth Amendment unreasonable-
search arguments in her opening brief in the Holmes appeal, even though the
district court only reached the merits of this claim in ruling on Ms. LaBarge’s
summary-judgment motion. A.M.’s briefing approach is presumably explained by
the fact that, in the Holmes appeal, she challenges the court’s collateral-estoppel
ruling (wherein the court viewed the LaBarge matter as the “prior action”) before
arguing alternatively that the court improperly awarded qualified immunity to Ms.
Holmes on her Fourth Amendment unreasonable-search claim. In her opening
brief in the LaBarge appeal, A.M. incorporates and adopts her (Holmes)
unreasonable-search arguments by reference.
65
under extant caselaw as of November 8, 2011 (the date of the in-school search).
Aplt.’s Opening Br. (14-2066) at 32 (capitalization altered). Although the district
court did base this aspect of its ruling on its determination that any constitutional
right would not have been clearly established, in the exercise of our discretion,
see Panagoulakos, 741 F.3d at 1129, we elect to resolve the issue on the first
prong of the qualified-immunity standard. See Richison v. Ernest Grp., Inc., 634
F.3d 1123, 1130 (10th Cir. 2011) (“[W]e may affirm on any basis supported by
the record, even if it requires ruling on arguments not reached by the district
court . . . .”). We conclude that the court correctly granted qualified immunity to
Ms. Holmes on the unreasonable-search claim because, on A.M.’s version of the
facts (insofar as they are borne out by the record), the search of F.M. was
supported by reasonable suspicion. Thus, we rest our affirmance regarding this
claim on our specific conclusion that A.M. has failed to carry her burden of
demonstrating that Ms. Holmes committed a Fourth Amendment violation.
Among other rights, the Fourth Amendment safeguards individuals’
“right . . . to be secure in their persons . . . and effects[] against unreasonable
searches.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. “The Fourth Amendment ‘requires a
balancing of the need for the particular search against the invasion of personal
rights that the search entails.’” 20 Archuleta v. Wagner, 523 F.3d 1278, 1283 (10th
20
Usually, the analytical touchstone in our Fourth Amendment
unlawful-search cases is twofold: “we first consider whether there was an
(continued...)
66
Cir. 2008) (quoting Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 559 (1979)). It is presently
“understood to apply within the school setting, and it is not limited to actions
taken for law enforcement purposes.” Couture v. Bd. of Educ. of Albuquerque
Pub. Schs., 535 F.3d 1243, 1250 (10th Cir. 2008).
“With limited exceptions, a search . . . requires either a warrant or probable
cause.” Narotzky v. Natrona Cty. Mem’l Hosp. Bd. of Trs., 610 F.3d 558, 567
(10th Cir. 2010) (citing Camara v. Mun. Ct., 387 U.S. 523, 528–29 (1967)); see
Safford, 557 U.S. at 369 (“The Fourth Amendment [protection] . . . against
unreasonable searches . . . generally requires . . . probable cause for conducting a
search.” (citation and quotations omitted)). One such exception applies in this
case—for, as the Supreme Court has specifically noted, “[t]he warrant
requirement . . . is unsuited to the school environment.” T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 340;
accord Fuerschbach v. Sw. Airlines Co., 439 F.3d 1197, 1203–04 (10th Cir.
2006). The Court has determined that this is so because “[a]lthough the
underlying command of the Fourth Amendment is always that searches . . . be
reasonable, what is reasonable depends on the context within which a search takes
place.” T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 337. Likewise, the Court has expressly recognized
“that the school setting ‘requires some modification of the level of suspicion of
20
(...continued)
expectation of privacy in the area searched. If so, we . . . determine whether the
search was [objectively] reasonable under the circumstances.” Narotzky v.
Natrona Cty. Mem’l Hosp. Bd. of Trs., 610 F.3d 558, 567 (10th Cir. 2010).
67
illicit activity needed to justify a search,’” Safford, 557 U.S. at 370 (quoting
T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 340)—viz., in-school searches do not require a predicate
finding of probable cause.
The New Jersey v. T.L.O. Court thus held that “the accommodation of the
privacy interests of schoolchildren with [administrators’] substantial need . . . to
maintain order in the schools does not require strict adherence to the requirement
that searches be based on probable cause” and that “the legality of a search of a
student should depend simply on the reasonableness, under all the circumstances,
of the search.” 469 U.S. at 341. As the Court has explained more recently, “[t]he
lesser standard for school searches could as readily be described as a moderate
chance of finding evidence of wrongdoing.” Safford, 557 U.S. at 371. We have
understood these holdings to mean that a school search “need only be [1]
‘justified at its inception’ and [2] ‘reasonably related in scope to the
circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.’” Couture, 535
F.3d at 1250 (quoting Edwards v. Rees, 883 F.2d 882, 884 (10th Cir. 1989)); see
also Jones v. Hunt, 410 F.3d 1221, 1229 (10th Cir. 2005) (observing that a state
defendant in a school search or seizure is “scrutinized under the minimal
requirements of Terry [v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)]”).
a. Justified at Inception
T.L.O. makes clear that ordinarily “a search of a student by a . . . school
official will be ‘justified at its inception’ when there are reasonable grounds for
68
suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is
violating either the law or the rules of the school.” 469 U.S. at 341–42 (footnote
omitted). The official need not possess absolute certainty that a search will
produce such evidence; rather, “sufficient probability . . . is the touchstone of
reasonableness” in the school-search context. Id. at 346 (quoting Hill v.
California, 401 U.S. 797, 804 (1971)).
A.M. asserts that the search of F.M. was not justified at its inception due to
“the absence of any particularized evidence pointing to possession of drugs on the
person of F.M.” Aplt.’s Opening Br. (14-2066) at 34. We disagree. In fact, the
record clearly bespeaks Ms. Holmes’s awareness of a considerable quantum of
particularized evidence when she initiated the challenged search. A student
anonymously reported seeing F.M. participating in a suspected drug transaction
on school grounds. It would have been reasonable for Ms. Holmes to take this
report seriously, given CMS’s apparently ongoing problem of student drug-
trafficking. In this regard, Officer Acosta confirmed not only that CMS had “a lot
of issues with drugs,” but also that he had made several in-school arrests related
to marijuana. Aplt.’s App. (14-2066) at 117.
Acting on the student report, Ms. Holmes perused security-camera footage
depicting the time and location provided by the reporting student. Ms. Holmes’s
review bolstered the student’s “tip”: she saw F.M. standing in a closed circle of
students—apparently holding a roll of money and passing something to other
69
students in the cohort. In light of her observations, she summoned the students
depicted in the video to the administrative office. Interviewing and searching
F.M.’s four identified peers revealed the following: two students said they had
seen someone with marijuana at school that day; another student said F.M. was
carrying cash; and at least three students said that the “circle” incident involved
marijuana. Guided by the relaxed standard of T.L.O., we are satisfied that this
information suggested a reasonable probability that marijuana (or evidence of
other illegal-drug possession or distribution) might be found by searching the
fifth student involved, F.M. 21 T.L.O. only requires “reasonable grounds” for
believing that a search will unearth evidence of wrongdoing, 469 U.S. at 342
(emphasis added), and in this case the foregoing evidence, taken together,
rendered sufficiently reasonable the expectation that evidence of rule violations
might be found in a search of F.M.
A.M. also urges us to accord the initial tip of a suspected drug transaction
less credence because of the reporting student’s anonymity. However, the student
was not entirely anonymous; he or she was merely unknown to F.M. and A.M.
Because the teacher who relayed the tip to Ms. Holmes was aware of the student’s
21
We are not persuaded by A.M.’s suggestion that Ms. Holmes’s
failure to find marijuana on the other four students eviscerated the reasonableness
of her expectation that marijuana would be found on F.M. Indeed, given Ms.
Holmes’s growing, evidence-based suspicion that someone in the group possessed
marijuana, she might logically have interpreted the first four fruitless searches as
mildly increasing the probability of discovering marijuana on F.M.’s person or
effects.
70
identity, it ineluctably follows that Ms. Holmes could have identified and
confronted the student if the report had proven false. And the tip, though not
conclusively so, was at least strongly substantiated by surveillance footage. In
these respects, the student’s report resembles one made in an anonymous 911 call
in Navarette v. California, --- U.S. ----, 134 S. Ct. 1683 (2014)—a call the
Supreme Court deemed sufficiently reliable for purposes of reasonable suspicion
because (1) the 911 system could have unmasked the anonymous caller in the
event of a false alert, and (2) subsequent investigation corroborated the caller’s
report. See 134 S. Ct. at 1689–90. Ultimately, given our well-settled rule that
“there is no need to establish the veracity of [an] informant” when “there is
sufficient independent corroboration of [the] informant’s information,” United
States v. Artez, 389 F.3d 1106, 1111 (10th Cir. 2004) (quoting United States v.
Danhauer, 229 F.3d 1002, 1006 (10th Cir. 2000)), we conclude that the report
that provided the impetus for the search bolstered Ms. Holmes’s reasonable
suspicion of wrongdoing by F.M.
In addition, A.M. contends that the passage of a few hours’ time between
the alleged drug transaction and the search of F.M. extinguished any reasonable
suspicion Ms. Holmes might have possessed. We disagree. Although the Safford
Court did opine that “if [a report] had been [made] a few days before, that would
weigh heavily against any reasonable conclusion that [the student] presently had
[contraband] on her person,” 557 U.S. at 376 (emphasis added), that hypothetical
71
situation is obviously distinguishable. A.M. has never alleged a hiatus of that
duration, and, on this record, she could not reasonably do so. The fact that a few
hours elapsed between the student’s report and the search of F.M. does not shake
our confidence in the reasonableness of Ms. Holmes’s belief—grounded in
statements of other students and video evidence—that there was at least a fair
probability that F.M. was carrying contraband.
Again, given all of these factors, we conclude that the record demonstrates
articulable and particularized indicia of a sufficient probability of wrongdoing by
F.M. This plainly satisfies the T.L.O. Court’s controlling formulation of the
school-search rubric; consequently, we conclude that the search of F.M. was
justified at its inception.
b. Reasonable in Scope
Once the search of F.M. began, it could remain constitutionally sound only
insofar as it was “permissible in its scope” by using measures “reasonably related
to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive” under the totality of
the circumstances. T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 342; see Brannum v. Overton Cty. Sch.
Bd., 516 F.3d 489, 496 (6th Cir. 2008) (“[I]t is necessary . . . that the [search]
method chosen was, in the circumstances, justifiably intrusive in light of the
purpose of the policy being carried out.”). We conclude that it was.
To begin, it is settled under Safford that a search of a student which is
justified at its inception is also justified as to outer clothing and a backpack.
72
Pursuant to Safford, “[i]f a student is reasonably suspected of giving out
contraband [items], [he] is reasonably suspected of carrying them on [his] person
and in the carryall that has become an item of student uniform in most places
today”—that is, the backpack. 557 U.S. at 373–74. Safford suggests that this is
true as a matter of logic: “if ‘[a school administrator’s] reasonable suspicion of
[contraband] distribution were not understood to support searches of outer clothes
and backpack, it would not justify any search worth making.’” Id. at 374 (citation
omitted). Here, A.M. argues that the search of F.M. transcended outer clothing
and effects; she claims it ventured into the realm of an unjustified strip search.
Before asking F.M. to remove any clothing, Ms. Holmes obtained certain
clues from his pockets and backpack suggesting the possibility of a drug
transaction. Namely, she found $200 in cash—an arguably unusual amount of
money for a middle-school student to carry, and certainly a relevant factor in a
drug-related investigation. See, e.g., United States v. Wagoner Cty. Real Estate,
278 F.3d 1091, 1094 (10th Cir. 2002) (assigning significance to “several hundred
dollars in cash” uncovered in a search for contraband); United States v. Mendoza-
Salgado, 964 F.2d 993, 1008 (10th Cir. 1992) (noting that “courts generally view
items such as . . . large quantities of cash . . . as ‘tools of the trade’ for
distributing illegal drugs”). Ms. Holmes also found a belt bearing the image of a
marijuana leaf, which at least reasonably indicated F.M.’s interest in, or
affiliation with the use of, marijuana. See, e.g., United States v. Salgado, 761
73
F.3d 861, 865–66 (8th Cir. 2014) (“[The officer] also observed . . . [a] jacket
embroidered with a large marijuana leaf in the back seat, and reasonably
associated it with potential drug activity.”); Lorenzo v. City of Tampa, 259 F.
App’x 239, 240 (11th Cir. 2007) (per curiam) (deeming relevant to the issue of
probable cause handbills depicting “a picture of a marijuana leaf”). Finally, Ms.
Holmes found a bandana, which we have considered “gang-related clothing” in
describing evidence obtained in searches. See United States v. Roach, 582 F.3d
1192, 1198 (10th Cir. 2009). These foregoing items provided support to continue
the search of F.M.
Though for purposes of qualified immunity we ordinarily do accept the
facts that a plaintiff like A.M. alleges, we do so only insofar as those facts have a
basis in the record—as relevant here, only insofar as A.M.’s account of the search
does not patently conflict with the record’s video footage. See, e.g., Thomson,
584 F.3d at 1312. The video demonstrates that F.M. was first asked to remove his
shoes and his jeans, leaving him in a short-sleeved shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, two
pairs of athletic shorts, and boxer-shorts underwear. He then flipped down the
waistband of his outer pair of athletic shorts, but he left undisturbed the
waistbands of his other pair of athletic shorts and his boxer shorts. Finally, he
removed his outer pair of athletic shorts and his outer (short-sleeved) shirt so that
when the search concluded, he was still wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of
74
athletic shorts, and underwear. Soon afterward, he got dressed as he had been
prior to the search.
Based on this sequence of events, we believe A.M. stretches the term “strip
search” beyond recognition in her attempt to apply it here. 22 The video
unequivocally shows that F.M. was only prompted to remove outer clothing and
that he was wearing additional layers of non-intimate street clothing underneath
the removed items. Thus, because the scope of the search at all times remained
reasonable, the search satisfied the strictures of the Fourth Amendment.
Comparing the search of F.M. to the search at issue in Safford underscores
why Ms. Holmes did not allow the search to become unreasonable in scope. In
Safford, a thirteen-year-old female student was suspected of possessing
prescription pain-relief pills. Acting on a report that the student was distributing
the pills, the school nurse asked her “to remove her jacket, socks, and shoes,
leaving her in stretch pants and a T-shirt (both without pockets).” Safford, 557
U.S. at 369. The nurse then asked her to remove her shirt and pants, “to pull her
bra out and to the side and shake it, and to pull out the elastic on her underpants,
22
Although we conclude that the facts of this particular search do not
implicate a genuine strip search, we note the potential for ambiguity in future
cases because the Supreme Court did not explicitly define the term in Safford.
See, e.g., Diana R. Donahoe, Strip Searches of Students: Addressing the
Undressing of Children in Schools and Redressing the Fourth Amendment
Violations, 75 M O . L. R EV . 1123, 1153 (2010) (opining that “it will be difficult
for school officials and courts to determine whether a strip search has actually
occurred using a sliding scale test because the [Safford] Court refused to label or
define the term ‘strip search’”).
75
thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree.” Id. The Court found
no constitutional violation in searching the student’s outer clothing because that
conduct (1) was justified by a fair probability of discovering evidence of
wrongdoing, and (2) was related to the scope of a search for prohibited pills. But
the Court reached a different conclusion as to the school nurse’s second step of
requiring the student to manipulate her undergarments.
Specifically, the Court held that the second aspect of the challenged search
violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches because:
[t]he very fact of [the student’s] pulling her underwear away
from her body in the presence of the [school] officials who were
able to see her necessarily exposed her breasts and pelvic area to
some degree, and both subjective and reasonable societal
expectations of personal privacy support the treatment of such a
search as categorically distinct, requiring distinct elements of
justification on the part of school authorities for going beyond a
search of outer clothing and belongings.
[The student’s] subjective expectation of privacy against such a
search is inherent in her account of it as embarrassing,
frightening, and humiliating.
Id. at 374–75. The distinction appears clear: whereas reasonable suspicion (as
enunciated in T.L.O.) supporting a fair probability of finding contraband permits a
search of outer clothing, a higher level of justification is necessary to proceed
with a search that will expose a student’s intimate areas.
Unlike the student in Safford, in this case F.M. was at all times covered by
at least one pair of pants (athletic shorts), one shirt, and underwear. The search
76
of F.M. can therefore only be fairly characterized as implicating outerwear, even
though it involved more than one layer of clothing. Mindful that the reporting
student claimed to have seen baggies of marijuana, we conclude that asking F.M.
to remove more than one external article of clothing was consistent with the
objective of detecting small items. In light of the foregoing, we are satisfied that
the search of F.M. was not excessively intrusive in its scope; rather, we hold that
it was thoroughly reasonable in that regard.
In sum, we conclude that Ms. Holmes’s search of F.M. was supported by
reasonable suspicion as required by the Supreme Court’s holding in T.L.O. The
search was both justified at its inception and reasonable in scope. Accordingly,
A.M. has failed to demonstrate any Fourth Amendment violation premised on an
unreasonable search by Ms. Holmes. We therefore affirm the district court’s
grant of qualified immunity to Ms. Holmes on this claim.
2. Retaliation Claim
Next, A.M. alleges that Ms. Holmes searched F.M. in retaliation for A.M.’s
exercise of her First Amendment rights—viz., that the search was a reprisal for
A.M.’s remarks to the media about the May 2011 arrest. The district court
granted qualified immunity to Ms. Holmes on this claim, reasoning: “Because the
search was objectively supported by reasonable suspicion, even assuming
arguendo that Defendant was motivated by retaliatory animus, . . . that would not
be enough to violate clearly established law.” Aplt.’s App. (14-2066) at 169.
77
We, too, conclude that Ms. Holmes is entitled to qualified immunity on A.M.’s
First Amendment retaliation claim. Recognizing that we may affirm on any
ground supported by the record, 23 we deem it appropriate to affirm on the ground
that there was no evidence that Ms. Holmes’s search of F.M. was substantially
motivated by A.M.’s exercise of her First Amendment rights.
“[T]he law is settled that as a general matter the First Amendment prohibits
government officials from subjecting an individual to retaliatory actions . . . for
speaking out.” Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250, 256 (2006). To prevail on a
First Amendment retaliation claim, a plaintiff must show:
(1) that she was engaged in a constitutionally protected activity;
(2) that a defendant’s action caused her to suffer an injury that
would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to
engage in that activity; and (3) that a defendant’s action was
substantially motivated as a response to her exercise of her First
Amendment speech rights.
Becker v. Kroll, 494 F.3d 904, 925 (10th Cir. 2007); accord Buck v. City of
Albuquerque, 549 F.3d 1269, 1292 (10th Cir. 2008).
23
See, e.g., Ellis v. J.R.’s Country Stores, Inc., 779 F.3d 1184, 1192
(10th Cir. 2015) (“[W]e can affirm on any ground supported by the record, so
long as the appellant has had a fair opportunity to address that ground.” (quoting
Alpine Bank v. Hubbell, 555 F.3d 1097, 1108 (10th Cir. 2009))); Schanzenbach v.
Town of Opal, 706 F.3d 1269, 1272 (10th Cir. 2013) (“We can affirm on any
ground supported by the record, so long as the appellant has had a fair
opportunity to address that ground.” (quoting Merrifield v. Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs,
654 F.3d 1073, 1077 (10th Cir. 2011))); Vaughn v. Epworth Villa, 537 F.3d 1147,
1150 (10th Cir. 2008) (“[W]e may affirm on any basis supported by the record,
even though not relied on by the district court.” (quoting Seegmiller v. LaVerkin
City, 528 F.3d 762, 766 (10th Cir. 2008))).
78
Ms. Holmes has raised the defense of qualified immunity. First, she argues
that it was not clearly established in November 2011 that she could be subject to a
viable First Amendment retaliation claim predicated on her decision to conduct an
in-school search of a student that was supported by reasonable suspicion. Second,
in the alternative, Ms. Holmes argues that she may avoid § 1983 liability because
A.M. has failed to offer any evidence that Ms. Holmes’s search was substantially
motivated by a desire for retaliation. Because we agree with Ms. Holmes’s
second alternative argument, we need not reach the merits of her first.
In order to establish liability for any claim brought under § 1983, and to
defeat a claim of qualified immunity, a plaintiff must present evidence of “a
violation traceable to a defendant-official’s ‘own individual actions.’” Pahls, 718
F.3d at 1225 (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 676 (2009)). “Because §
1983 . . . [is a] vehicle[] for imposing personal liability on government officials,
we have stressed the need for careful attention to particulars, . . . . ‘[I]t is
particularly important’ that plaintiffs ‘make clear exactly who is alleged to have
done what to whom, . . . as distinguished from collective allegations’”—more
specifically, “it is incumbent upon a plaintiff to ‘identify specific actions taken by
particular defendants’ in order to make out a viable § 1983 . . . claim.” Id. at
1226 (third alteration and third omission in original) (citations omitted). Thus,
we have made clear that “[t]o make out [a] viable § 1983 . . . claim[] and to
overcome defendants’ assertions of qualified immunity,” a plaintiff “must do
79
more than show that their rights ‘were violated’ or that ‘defendants,’ as a
collective and undifferentiated whole, were responsible for those violations,” and
a “[f]ailure to make this [more particularized, defendant-specific] showing both
dooms plaintiffs’ § 1983 . . . claim[] and entitles defendants to qualified
immunity.” Id. at 1228.
More specifically, in cases where plaintiffs have presented enough
individualized evidence of a substantial motive to retaliate to establish § 1983
liability for a First Amendment retaliation claim, we have emphasized that the
evidence indicated that each individual defendant had such a substantial motive.
For example, in Howards v. McLaughlin, 634 F.3d 1131 (10th Cir. 2011), rev’d
on other grounds sub nom. Reichle v. Howards, 132 S. Ct. 2088 (2012), we
concluded that the plaintiff Mr. Howards had provided sufficient evidence to
deprive each of the defendants, Agents Doyle and Reichle, of qualified immunity
on his First Amendment retaliation claim because the evidence indicated that each
defendant agent may have been substantially motivated by Mr. Howards’s speech
when they arrested him. Specifically, we reasoned that Mr. Howards had
provided evidence that: (1) Agent Doyle overheard Mr. Howards’s speech and
admitted that the comment “disturbed” him, (2) Agent Reichle was told about Mr.
Howards’s speech by both Agent Doyle and Mr. Howards himself, and upon being
told, he “became visibly angry,” and (3) Agent Reichle admitted that he
considered Mr. Howards’s speech when deciding to arrest him. Howards, 634
80
F.3d at 1145 (quoting the record). Howards illustrates our focus on whether the
plaintiff has presented individualized evidence that each defendant possessed a
substantial motive to retaliate in order to support liability under § 1983 and
overcome a claim of qualified immunity. Applying this general principle here, it
is clear that A.M. must show by reference to individualized evidence that Ms.
Holmes’s search of F.M. was substantially motivated by a personal desire to
retaliate against A.M. for her exercise of free speech. A.M. has failed to carry
this proof burden.
A.M. relied solely on Officer Acosta’s testimony to show that Ms. Holmes
had a substantial motive to retaliate against her. Specifically, in response to the
motion for summary judgment, A.M. argued that “the testimony of Officer Acosta
proves shows [sic] that Plaintiff’s actions in contacting the media after the arrest
of F.M. caused angst among the administration of [CMS] for which F.M. was
thereafter retaliated against.” Aplt.’s App. (14-2066) at 100. More specifically,
A.M. argued that Officer Acosta’s testimony showed that
Defendant [i.e., Ms. Holmes] and other school administrators
were bothered by Plaintiff’s exercise of her First Amendment
rights when she contacted the media after the arrest of F.M. for
burping, to the extent that “for the reasons of everything that
happened in May, the idea was we’re going to make sure we
cross ou[r] Ts and dot our Is on this go-round” when F.M. was
targeted for a strip search.
Id. at 89 (quoting Acosta testimony).
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However, in truth, Officer Acosta’s testimony (overall) is generalized and,
notably, not specifically focused on Ms. Holmes’s conduct. Officer Acosta
testified that media reporting of F.M.’s arrest in May 2011 “really bothered the
administration,” “bothered Ms. Labarge,” and “bothered a lot of the teachers,”
including Ms. Mines-Hornbeck. Id. at 115 (Acosta’s Dep., dated Dec. 3, 2012).
Officer Acosta elaborated that he “just kn[e]w that the general atmosphere in the
school was kind of—you know, people were just upset at seeing it.” Id. at 116.
He noted that “[t]he one thing that [he] c[ould] recall that Ms. Labarge told [him]
[was] . . . [the school] had just got an award,” and Ms. LaBarge “was upset at the
fact that . . . there could have been something positive to cover [instead of the
negative news of the arrest].” Id. Officer Acosta added that “when we dealt with
[F.M.] in November, for the reasons of everything that happened in May, the idea
was we’re going to make sure we cross our Ts and dot our Is on this go-round.”
Id. at 115. These statements provide the only evidentiary support for A.M.’s
claim that Ms. Holmes’s search was substantially motivated by a desire to
retaliate against A.M. because she spoke to the media about F.M.’s May 2011
arrest.
Even viewed in the light most favorable to A.M., this evidence falls far
short of showing that Ms. Holmes’s search was substantially motivated by a
desire to retaliate against A.M. for her remarks to the media. Critically, Officer
Acosta never suggested that Ms. Holmes was upset by the media reporting. In
82
fact, he never testified that Ms. Holmes was even aware that A.M. had spoken to
the media. Moreover, Officer Acosta never suggested that anyone—not even Ms.
Labarge or Ms. Mines-Hornbeck (the only two individuals whose reactions he
could specifically remember)—was upset at A.M. for speaking to the media. This
lack of particularized evidence is simply not sufficient to support liability under
§ 1983, or to defeat Ms. Holmes’s claim of qualified immunity. See Pahls, 718
F.3d at 1226 (“[I]t is incumbent upon a plaintiff to ‘identify specific actions taken
by particular defendants’ in order to make out a viable § 1983 . . . claim.”
(citation omitted)); id. at 1228 (“To make out [a] viable § 1983 . . . claim[] and to
overcome defendants’ assertions of qualified immunity, plaintiffs . . . . must do
more than show that their rights ‘were violated’ or that ‘defendants,’ as a
collective and undifferentiated whole, were responsible for those violations. . . .
Failure to make this showing both dooms plaintiffs’ § 1983 . . . claim[] and
entitles defendants to qualified immunity.”).
Furthermore, to the extent that a reasonable jury could derive any inference
from Officer Acosta’s testimony that Ms. Holmes possessed a retaliatory motive
against A.M.—and to be clear, it could not—any such inference would be
significantly weakened by the delay between when A.M. spoke to the media about
F.M.’s arrest and when Ms. Holmes searched F.M. The search occurred nearly
six months after A.M. spoke with the media about F.M.’s arrest. We have said
that “a long delay” between the exercise of free speech and the allegedly
83
retaliatory conduct “tend[s] to undermine any inference of retaliatory motive and
weaken the causal link.” Maestas v. Segura, 416 F.3d 1182, 1189 (10th Cir.
2005). We conclude that A.M. has failed to present sufficient evidence that,
when Ms. Holmes searched F.M., she possessed a substantial retaliatory motive
with respect to A.M. based on comments that A.M. made to the media nearly six
months prior to the search.
In sum, based on the foregoing, we conclude that Ms. Holmes is entitled to
qualified immunity on this claim, and the district court correctly granted summary
judgment for her. See, e.g., Trant v. Oklahoma, 754 F.3d 1158, 1170–71 (10th
Cir. 2014) (concluding that the district court “correctly granted summary
judgment for Jordan” because “Trant has pointed to no evidence, besides temporal
proximity, that Jordan’s comments were substantially motivated by Trant’s
protected speech or that Jordan made his comments with a retaliatory intent”).
Before turning to A.M.’s next contention of error regarding the district
court’s equal-protection ruling, we pause to underscore the fairness of our
decision to resolve A.M.’s First Amendment retaliation challenge on this
alternative evidentiary-sufficiency ground. It is true that Ms. Holmes did not
move for summary judgment on the First Amendment retaliation claim based on
the evidentiary-sufficency ground; instead, she contended that there was not
clearly established law to support the claim. However, it is patent to us that A.M.
84
had a fair opportunity to address the evidentiary-sufficiency issue before the
district court and to make a record regarding it.
Indeed, although Ms. Holmes did not raise the issue of evidentiary
sufficiency in the district court, A.M. did. Specifically, in response to Ms.
Holmes’s motion for summary judgment, A.M. argued that Ms. Holmes’s search
was substantially motivated by a desire to retaliate, and she cited Officer Acosta’s
testimony to support this argument. Ms. Holmes then replied to A.M.’s
evidentiary-sufficiency argument by contending that A.M. “provide[d] no factual
support for her claim that Defendant Holmes was upset by Plaintiff’s decision to
speak to the media about the arrest.” Aplt.’s App. (14-2066) at 143. In the
district court, therefore, the parties took positions on whether A.M. had provided
sufficient evidence of a substantial motive to retaliate; they briefed the issue and
submitted evidence regarding it.
Furthermore, on appeal, A.M. has tackled Ms. Holmes’s alternative
evidentiary-sufficiency argument head-on and never suggested that it would be
unfair for us to consider the merits of it. Indeed, A.M. has clarified in her reply
brief that “[t]he parties agree that ‘[t]o make a First Amendment retaliation claim,
“a plaintiff must show that . . . the government’s actions were substantially
motivated as a response to his constitutionally protected conduct.”’” Reply Br.
(14-2066) at 22 (second alteration in original) (quoting Stonecipher, 759 F.3d at
1147). A.M. then has proceeded to argue that she provided sufficient evidence of
85
a substantial motive to retaliate in this case. Moreover, A.M. has argued in
conclusion that “it was error for the District Court to grant Holmes summary
judgment on A.M.’s First Amendment retaliation claim both on the ground that
the claim was not clearly established and on Holmes’ asserted alternative ground
that A.M. failed to provide evidence of retaliatory animus.” Id. at 24–25. In sum,
A.M. has had a fair opportunity to respond to the evidentiary-sufficiency issue:
specifically, we note that (1) she was the one who first raised the issue in the
district court, (2) the parties briefed and provided evidence on the issue in the
district court, (3) A.M. has never asserted that it would be unfair for us to resolve
the First Amendment retaliation claim on this ground, and (4) to the contrary,
A.M. has continued to engage the issue on the merits.
As we turn to A.M.’s challenge to the district court’s equal-protection
ruling, we briefly reprise our merits conclusion here: Ms. Holmes is entitled to
qualified immunity on A.M.’s First Amendment retaliation claim because A.M.
has failed to provide sufficient evidence to raise a triable issue that Ms. Holmes’s
search of F.M. was substantially motivated by a desire to retaliate against A.M for
her exercise of free speech.
3. Equal-Protection Claim
A.M. alleges that Ms. Holmes searched F.M. in a more intrusive fashion
than she did the other four students. Accordingly, she submits that Ms. Holmes
singled F.M. out for a markedly different search in violation of F.M.’s right to
86
equal protection, as safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment. We conclude
that, on this record, A.M. has failed to set forth a legally cognizable Fourteenth
Amendment equal-protection claim (and, more specifically, the “class-of-one”
variant of such a claim). Consequently, we affirm the district court’s grant of
summary judgment to Ms. Holmes on this claim.
“The Equal Protection Clause ‘is essentially a direction that all persons
similarly situated should be treated alike.’” Kitchen v. Herbert, 755 F.3d 1193,
1222 (10th Cir.) (quoting City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432,
439 (1985)), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 135 S. Ct. 265 (2014). Generally
speaking, equal-protection jurisprudence is “concerned with governmental action
that disproportionately burdens certain classes of citizens.” Kan. Penn Gaming,
LLC v. Collins, 656 F.3d 1210, 1215–16 (10th Cir. 2011); see Price-Cornelison,
524 F.3d at 1109 (discussing equal-protection claims based on governmental
conduct involving, inter alia, “suspect” or “quasi-suspect” classifications of
groups); accord Hassan v. City of New York, 804 F.3d 277, 298 (3d Cir. 2015)
(“At a minimum, intentional discrimination against any ‘identifiable group’ is
subject to rational-basis review, which requires the classification to be rationally
related to a legitimate governmental purpose. Where a ‘quasi-suspect’ or
‘suspect’ classification is at issue, however, the challenged action must survive
‘intermediate scrutiny’ or ‘strict scrutiny.’” (citation omitted)); see also Vasquez
v. Cooper, 862 F.2d 250, 251–52 (10th Cir. 1988) (“Unless it provokes strict
87
judicial scrutiny, a state practice that distinguishes among classes of people will
typically survive an equal protection attack so long as the challenged
classification is rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose.”).
But this is not always so; the equal-protection inquiry does not always
relate to groups. Indeed, in Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, the Supreme Court
carved out a “class of one” equal-protection claim; it held that a plaintiff may
state such a claim by alleging that he or she “has been intentionally treated
differently from others similarly situated and that there is no rational basis for the
difference in treatment.” 528 U.S. 562, 564 (2000) (per curiam); see also 3
Ronald D. Rotunda & John E. Nowak, T REATISE ON C ONSTITUTIONAL L AW :
S UBSTANCE AND P ROCEDURE § 18.2(a) (5th ed. 2012) (“If the government applies
the law in a certain manner to all persons except a single individual, that single
individual may bring an equal protection claim against the government even
though the individual is ‘a class of one.’”). Where, as here, a plaintiff brings a
class-of-one claim, she must demonstrate (1) that “other ‘similarly situated’
individuals were treated differently” from her, and (2) that “there is no ‘rational
basis’ for [the different treatment].” SECSYS, LLC v. Vigil, 666 F.3d 678, 688–89
(10th Cir. 2012) (citations omitted).
“We have approached class-of-one claims with caution, wary of ‘turning
even quotidian exercises of government discretion into constitutional causes.’”
Kan. Penn Gaming, 656 F.3d at 1216 (quoting Jicarilla Apache Nation v. Rio
88
Arriba Cty., 440 F.3d 1202, 1209 (10th Cir. 2006)). Our circumspection in this
regard stems from the fact that when “[l]ooking only at one individual, . . . there
is no way to know whether the [alleged] difference in treatment was occasioned
by legitimate or illegitimate considerations without a comprehensive and largely
subjective canvassing of all possible relevant factors.” Jennings v. City of
Stillwater, 383 F.3d 1199, 1213–14 (10th Cir. 2004). In other words, the sample
size in a class-of-one claim is obviously too small to permit a plaintiff to paint the
contours of the claim in broad brushstrokes. “It is therefore imperative for the
class-of-one plaintiff to provide a specific and detailed account of the nature of
the preferred treatment of the [allegedly] favored class.” Id. at 1214. This is
because, at its core, “[t]he Equal Protection Clause . . . . keeps governmental
decisionmakers from treating differently persons who are in all relevant respects
alike.” Taylor v. Roswell Indep. Sch. Dist., 713 F.3d 25, 54 (10th Cir. 2013)
(quoting Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 10 (1992)).
In this case, A.M.’s endeavor to state a class-of-one claim necessarily fails
because she cannot “first establish that others, ‘similarly situated in every
material respect[,]’ were treated differently” from F.M. during the in-school
search. Kan. Penn Gaming, 656 F.3d at 1216 (quoting Jicarilla, 440 F.3d at
1210). Reduced to its essence, her argument is that other students searched that
day—“none [of whom] were asked to remove articles of clothing,” Aplt.’s
Opening Br. (14-2066) at 52—were treated differently from F.M., who was asked
89
to remove some outerwear. This skeletal argument does not advance A.M.’s
cause for at least two reasons.
First, it is not clear from the record whether, as A.M. maintains, F.M. was
the only student required to remove clothing during the search for contraband.
Only the search of F.M. was video-recorded, which significantly impedes our
ability to review the searches of the remaining students. A.M. consequently relies
exclusively on Officer Acosta’s description of the searches in setting out her
class-of-one claim—an account which, in our view, reveals little of material
significance. Officer Acosta testified that the searches were conducted
“consistently with each student, from what [he] remember[ed] seeing,” and that
they involved “going through the backpack[s], empty[ing] . . . pockets, things of
that nature.” Aplt.’s App. (14-2066) at 119. But, critically, he stated more than
once that he did not recall whether any student—including F.M.—had been asked
to remove specific articles of clothing. See id. (noting that F.M. “may have”
taken off a shirt, that he “couldn’t tell you one way or other” if any other male
students were required to remove clothing, and that the female student, at best,
“may have taken off her shoes”). It is thus evident, from that limited testimony,
that Officer Acosta’s recollection of events cannot offer the “specific and detailed
account of the nature of the preferred treatment of the favored class” necessary to
form the basis of a class-of-one equal-protection claim. Jennings, 383 F.3d at
1214.
90
Second, even assuming arguendo that only F.M. was directed to remove
clothing when searched, A.M. has not demonstrated that Ms. Holmes’s treatment
of F.M. differed from her treatment of similarly situated students. We conclude
that A.M.’s contrary assertion that “the conduct that was attributed to
F.M.’s . . . search was no different than that of the other students involved in the
alleged transaction,” Aplt.’s Opening Br. (14-2066) at 54, is not supported by the
record and utterly unpersuasive. In point of fact, A.M. identifies in her opening
brief several obvious reasons why Ms. Holmes could have viewed F.M.’s
circumstances as distinct from those of his peers: “because F.M. voluntarily
handed over the novelty marijuana leaf belt buckle, because Holmes found a
bandana in his back-pack, and because F.M. had more cash on him that day than
Holmes thought the average student should.” Id. at 52. It is undisputed that
F.M., and F.M. alone, presented these issues. In other words, there is no evidence
that any of the other searched students possessed a bandana that possibly
suggested gang affiliation, a belt buckle that suggested interest in marijuana, or
an unusually large amount of cash. F.M. possessed all three suspicious items,
which patently demonstrates that he was not similarly situated “in every material
respect,” Jicarilla, 440 F.3d at 1210, to the other students that Ms. Holmes
91
searched. These differences suffice to defeat a claim of irrational differences in
treatment 24 from other students similarly situated.
In sum, we conclude that, on the record before us, F.M. was not similarly
situated to the other students searched in November 2011. Therefore, the district
court properly determined that A.M.’s class-of-one equal-protection claim was
deficient as a matter of law. We accordingly affirm the district court’s grant of
summary judgment to Ms. Holmes on A.M.’s Fourteenth Amendment claim.
C. Claims Against Ms. LaBarge
Lastly, A.M. contends that the district court committed reversible error
when it granted summary judgment to Ms. LaBarge on the Fourth Amendment
unreasonable-search claim. The district court awarded qualified immunity to Ms.
LaBarge after finding that A.M. had not carried her burden of demonstrating that
Ms. LaBarge committed a constitutional violation with respect to F.M. It
specifically concluded, with reference to the Supreme Court’s holdings in Safford
and T.L.O., that the November 2011 in-school search was justified at its inception
and reasonable in scope.
In challenging the merits of the district court’s Fourth Amendment
qualified-immunity decision with respect to Ms. LaBarge, A.M. limits her
24
We note as well that in any event, based upon our Fourth
Amendment unreasonable-search analysis supra, the search of F.M. could hardly
be deemed irrational conduct devoid of any legitimate state objective. See Olech,
528 U.S. at 564.
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briefing to incorporating the arguments she made in her brief in A.M. v. Holmes,
No. 14-2066 (i.e., the related appeal with which A.M. v. LaBarge, No. 14-2183,
has been consolidated). Ms. LaBarge likewise incorporates by reference the
arguments advanced in Ms. Holmes’s appellate response brief regarding the
validity of the search. See Fed. R. App. P. 28(i) (“In a case involving more than
one appellant or appellee, including consolidated cases, any number of appellants
or appellees may join in a brief, and any party may adopt by reference a part of
another’s brief.”). We have fully addressed all of the parties’ relevant
contentions in Part III.B.1, supra, in concluding that the district court properly
awarded qualified immunity to Ms. Holmes on A.M.’s Fourth Amendment
unreasonable-search claim. We discern no basis for following a different course
insofar as this claim implicates Ms. LaBarge’s conduct.
Accordingly, for the same reasons set forth in Part III.B.1, supra—i.e.,
based on the same rationale we used to resolve the Fourth Amendment claim in
the Holmes appeal—we conclude that the district court did not err in finding that
A.M. did not show that Ms. LaBarge committed a Fourth Amendment violation in
searching F.M. We therefore affirm the court’s grant of qualified immunity to
Ms. LaBarge on this claim.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the reasons discussed above, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district
court in its three orders resolving A.M.’s claims against Officer Acosta, Ms.
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Holmes, and Ms. LaBarge. Regarding Officer Acosta, we: (1) conclude that the
district court did not issue an improper sua sponte grant of summary judgment in
his favor; (2) AFFIRM the court’s grant of qualified immunity to him on A.M.’s
Fourth Amendment unlawful-arrest claim; and (3) AFFIRM the court’s grant of
qualified immunity to him on A.M.’s Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim.
With respect to Ms. Holmes, we: (1) AFFIRM the court’s grant of qualified
immunity to her on A.M.’s Fourth Amendment unreasonable-search claim; (2)
AFFIRM the court’s grant of qualified immunity to her on A.M.’s First
Amendment retaliation claim; and (3) AFFIRM the court’s grant of summary
judgment to her on A.M.’s Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection claim.
Finally, as regards Ms. LaBarge, we AFFIRM the court’s grant of qualified
immunity to her on A.M.’s Fourth amendment unreasonable-search claim.
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