Hadiya AbdulShalaam v. Franklin County Board of Comm'rs

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 10a0652n.06
No. 09-4018 & 09-4199
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT Oct 15, 2010
LEONARD GREEN, Clerk
HADIYA ABDULSALAAM, Individually, )
and as Mother and Natural Guardian of )
Makeba Kristos, a minor, et al., )
)
Plaintiffs-Appellees/Cross-Appellants, )
)
v. ) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
) STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
FRANKLIN COUNTY BOARD OF ) SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO
COMMISSIONERS, FRANKLIN COUNTY )
CHILDREN SERVICES’S BOARD OF )
T RU S T E E S , J O H N S A R O S , a nd )
COURTNEY ALLENSWORTH, )
)
Defendants-Appellees, )
)
and )
)
AMBER SPIRES, )
)
Defendant-Appellant/Cross-Appellee. )
Before: GIBBONS and COOK, Circuit Judges; and VAN TATENHOVE, District Judge.*
PER CURIAM. Hadiya AbdulSalaam and her three daughters brought this § 1983 action
against the Franklin County Board of Commissioners, the Franklin County Children’s Services
(FCCS) Board of Trustees, and several FCCS employees—caseworker Amber Spires, supervisor
*
The Honorable Gregory Van Tatenhove, United States District Judge for the Eastern District
of Kentucky, sitting by designation.
No. 09-4018 & 09-4199
AbdulSalaam v. Franklin Cnty. Bd. Of Comm’rs, et al.
Courtney Allensworth, and Executive Director John Saros—for constitutional and common law
violations related to the Defendants’ alleged fabrication of abuse and neglect evidence. The district
court granted summary judgment to all defendants except Spires.
Spires interlocutorily appeals, claiming that absolute and qualified immunity protect her from
liability for allegedly breaching Plaintiffs’ substantive due process and First Amendment rights.
Plaintiffs cross-appeal the district court’s determinations that neither Saros nor Allensworth knew
the information they conveyed to the media or other organizations was false or acted with retaliatory
intent, and that Allensworth failed to take sufficient affirmative action to render her liable for
Spires’s misconduct.
I. Background
Hadiya AbdulSalaam, an African-American mother of four daughters (Mandisa, Makeba,
Meserete, and Masika) and one son (Mandela), converted her family to Islam when she married
Naim AbdulSalaam in 1996. The parents initiated contact with FCCS seeking help controlling their
teenage son’s behavior. Spires contends that Mandela intimated that he suffered physical abuse at
home. These allegations prompted Spires to conduct two family visits and shortly thereafter
recommend removal of the AbdulSalaam’s three minor daughters because, according to the custody
complaint, Hadiya neglected their educational needs. The district court adequately set forth the facts
underlying Plaintiffs’ claims, appropriately noting the many genuine factual disputes, and we need
not repeat them in detail here. Ultimately, more than a year after FCCS removed the children and
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No. 09-4018 & 09-4199
AbdulSalaam v. Franklin Cnty. Bd. Of Comm’rs, et al.
after extensive judicial proceedings, the Juvenile Court dismissed the complaint against the
AbdulSalaams and exonerated Hadiya.
Plaintiffs brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, complaining that the Defendants denied them
the equal protection of the law by administering FCCS services to the African-American family in
a racially discriminatory manner; violated their substantive due process by (a) infringing the
children’s free exercise of religion, (b) depriving the family of their First Amendment right to
familial association, and (c) breaching Hadiya’s Fourteenth Amendment right to direct the education
and upbringing of her daughters; and retaliated against Hadiya for her public criticism of FCCS in
violation of the First Amendment. Plaintiffs also accused Defendants of the Ohio tort, intentional
infliction of emotional distress.
Defendants moved for summary judgment on all counts. The district court found no
evidentiary support for Plaintiffs’ racial discrimination claim (noting instead that only religious
discrimination appeared to underlie FCCS’s actions), granted all defendants except Spires summary
judgment, and awarded Spires qualified immunity on Plaintiffs’ claim that FCCS’s actions infringed
the girls’ freedom of religion. The court found that qualified immunity did not, however, shield
Spires from liability for violating Plaintiffs’ right to familial association, Hadiya’s liberty interest
in directing her children’s upbringing, or Hadiya’s First Amendment rights; nor did state statutory
immunity prevent a jury from finding that Spires’s actions intentionally inflicted emotional distress.
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No. 09-4018 & 09-4199
AbdulSalaam v. Franklin Cnty. Bd. Of Comm’rs, et al.
Spires appeals all four adverse determinations. Plaintiffs cross-appeal, but notably abandon
their race-related claims and municipal-liability claims against Franklin County. Instead, Plaintiffs
seek to reverse the district court’s holdings that neither Allensworth nor Saros participated
sufficiently in the unconstitutional activity for a jury to find Allensworth liable on the familial
association claim or either defendant liable for First Amendment retaliation.
II. Analysis
A. Jurisdiction
We lack jurisdiction to consider whether the district court correctly determined that genuine
factual disputes precluded awarding Spires qualified immunity on Plaintiffs’ substantive due process
and First Amendment retaliation claims. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 319–20 (1995). We
accordingly dismiss Spires’s qualified immunity appeals, as she urges us to consider only factual
aspects of the lower court’s decision.
We retain jurisdiction over Spires’s appeal of the district court’s absolute immunity and state
statutory immunity denials, Ohio Rev. Code § 2744.02(C) (“An order that denies . . . the benefit of
an alleged immunity from liability as provided in this chapter or any other provision of the law is a
final order.”); Will v. Hallock, 546 U.S. 345, 350 (2006) (absolute immunity denials qualify as final
and appealable); and properly review the questions of law Plaintiffs raise on cross-appeal, Boyd v.
Baeppler, 215 F.3d 594, 596 (6th Cir. 2000).
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No. 09-4018 & 09-4199
AbdulSalaam v. Franklin Cnty. Bd. Of Comm’rs, et al.
B. Absolute and State-Statutory Immunity
We find that no jurisprudential purpose would be served by issuing a panel opinion regarding
Spires’s claims to absolute and state-statutory immunity in view of the well-reasoned,
comprehensive opinion of the district court, which the panel hereby adopts as its opinion to affirm
the district court judgment.
C. Plaintiffs’ Cross-Appeal
1. Supervisory Liability
The district court granted Saros and Allensworth summary judgment due to Plaintiffs’ failure
to clearly respond to Allensworth’s and Saros’s arguments that neither of them actively participated
in or encouraged Spires’s illegal conduct. “[T]hat failure alone,” the court held, “warrants summary
judgment in Defendants favor on that issue.” Abdulsalaam v. Franklin Cnty. Bd. of Comm’rs, 637
F. Supp. 2d 561, 578 (S.D. Ohio 2009). In the alternative, the court addressed the merits of
Plaintiffs’ claims against the two supervisors and found that Plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that
either “encouraged or condoned the actions of their inferiors.” Id. (citing Gregory v. City of
Louisville, 444 F.3d 725, 751–52 (6th Cir. 2006)).
Plaintiffs’ failure to counter the court’s primary holding moots this prong of their cross-
appeal which attacks only the court’s alternate reasoning. See United States v. Thornton, 609 F.3d
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No. 09-4018 & 09-4199
AbdulSalaam v. Franklin Cnty. Bd. Of Comm’rs, et al.
373, 380 (6th Cir. 2010) (when district court articulated two dispositive holdings, appellant’s failure
to address both prompted court of appeals to decline review of either).
2. First Amendment Retaliation
Here too, the district court rightly faulted the Plaintiffs’ failure to point to evidence in support
of the necessary “intent” element in their response to the Defendants’ summary judgment motion.
Plaintiffs’ Third Claim charged that “a motivating factor in the actions taken by Defendants after
Plaintiff and others began complaining of discrimination based on religion and race was to intimidate
and silence Plaintiff . . . .” Plaintiffs did not argue before the district court that temporal proximity
alone sufficed to establish intent. Thus, in the absence of any evidence that Saros’s motive in
responding to the newspaper was to “intimidate and silence” Plaintiffs, we discern no legal error.
III. Conclusion
We dismiss Spires’s qualified immunity appeal for lack of jurisdiction, adopt and affirm the
district court’s absolute immunity and state statutory immunity judgments, deny the cross-appeal as
moot due to Plaintiffs’ failure to challenge the district court’s supervisory-liability holding and affirm
the district court’s granting of summary judgment on Plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims.
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