Teresa Graham v. Shannon Barnette

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

___________________________

No. 19-2512

___________________________

Teresa M. Graham

Plaintiff - Appellant

v.

Sgt. Shannon L. Barnette; Officer Amanda Sanchez; Officer Mohamed Noor; City

of Minneapolis

Defendants - Appellees

____________

State of Minnesota

Amicus Curiae

____________

Appeal from United States District Court

for the District of Minnesota

____________

Submitted: July 12, 2021

Filed: July 16, 2021

____________

Before GRUENDER, WOLLMAN, and KOBES, Circuit Judges.

____________

GRUENDER, Circuit Judge.

Teresa Graham sued Sergeant Shannon Barnette, Officer Mohamed Noor, and

Officer Amanda Sanchez (“the officers”), as well as the City of Minneapolis (“the

City”), under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Minnesota state law after the officers entered

her home, seized her, and transported her to a hospital for a mental-health evaluation,

all without a warrant. The district court 1 granted the officers and the City summary

judgment. Graham appealed. We affirmed. Graham v. Barnette, 970 F.3d 1075,

1082 (8th Cir. 2020). The Supreme Court subsequently vacated our judgment and

remanded the case for reconsideration in light of Caniglia v. Strom, 593 U.S. ---, 141

S. Ct. 1596 (2021). Graham v. Barnette, 593 U.S. ---, 2021 WL 2301963, at *1

(U.S. June 7, 2021). We have done so and once again affirm. Our prior opinion in

this case is hereby vacated, and this opinion is substituted for it.

I.

“We recount the facts of this case in the light most favorable to [Graham], the

non-moving party.” Meehan v. Thompson, 763 F.3d 936, 938 (8th Cir. 2014). In so

doing, we rely on the factual findings of the district court, see Saylor v. Nebraska,

812 F.3d 637, 642 (8th Cir. 2016), as well as audio and video recordings of the

relevant events, see Meehan, 763 F.3d at 938.

At approximately 10:00 a.m. on May 25, 2017, Graham called 911 and

reported that a man was smoking marijuana on a retaining wall behind her home. A

City police officer arrived at Graham’s address later that morning, saw no one, and

left without following up with Graham. Several hours later, Graham called the

police again and left a voicemail for the precinct’s commander, complaining that

officers did not respond to her emergency call and referencing an email she sent

earlier in the day regarding the police department’s failure to respond to a different

report she had filed. Around 6:00 p.m., a police officer returned Graham’s call and

1

The Honorable Joan N. Ericksen, United States District Judge for the District

of Minnesota.

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informed her that officers had investigated her complaint regarding the unidentified

man in her backyard.

Things then took an unusual turn. At 6:11 p.m., an anonymous informant

claiming to be Graham’s cousin called 911 and reported that Graham had called him

at work to threaten him and his family. He told the 911 operator that “this is not an

emergency” and that he “did not think [Graham] was going to do anything.” Even

so, he requested a “welfare check” because he believed Graham had a history of

mental-health issues. The operator summarized the call for the responding officers

in a comment to the incident report that read, “CLRS COUSIN WHO JUST

CALLED HIM AT WORK AND THREATENED HIM AND HIS FAMILY.” The

operator also noted that the individual requested a welfare check on Graham and that

Graham’s mental-health diagnosis was unknown.

Two hours later, Officers Noor and Sanchez arrived at Graham’s home.

Officer Sanchez recorded the encounter using a body camera. When Graham

answered the door, she demanded to know who requested the welfare check, claimed

she was being slandered, retrieved her phone to videotape the officers, accused the

police of harassing her because of her earlier complaints, and then demanded that

the officers leave. The officers apologized for disturbing Graham, left her home,

and noted in their incident report that they were unable to “check on her welfare”

because of her insistence that they leave but concluded she “appeared to be AOK.”

But the interaction between Graham and the police did not end there. At 9:05

p.m., a 911 operator reported that Graham had called three more times since the

welfare check. Graham first called at 8:20 p.m. to complain about what she viewed

as the officers harassing her in retaliation for her previous calls. The operator

described Graham as agitated as well as aggressive and suggested that Graham was

not making sense. Approximately fifteen minutes later, Sergeant Barnette returned

Graham’s call, and the two spoke briefly about Graham’s concerns. At 8:40 p.m.,

Graham called 911 again, asking to be connected to the Edina police department.

Twenty minutes later, she called once more and made the same request.

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At this time, Sergeant Barnette ordered Officers Noor and Sanchez to take

Graham into custody for an emergency mental-health evaluation as authorized by

Minnesota’s Civil Commitment and Treatment Act (“MCCTA”), Minn. Stat.

§ 253B.05, subd. 2(a) (2017), which permits an officer to seize a person for an

emergency mental-health evaluation “if the officer has reason to believe . . . that the

person is mentally ill . . . and in danger of injuring self or others if not immediately

detained.” In ordering the seizure, Sergeant Barnette relied on the officers’

interactions with Graham throughout the day, the anonymous report that Graham

had threatened her cousin, and Sergeant Barnette’s own previous interactions with

Graham through which Sergeant Barnette claimed to be aware of “some mental

health history” and a history of restraining orders.

The officers arrived for a second time at Graham’s home at 9:40 p.m. By this

time, one of Graham’s family members—a state police officer—had warned the

Edina police department that Graham may fight with police, and Sergeant Barnette

decided to join Officers Noor and Sanchez at Graham’s home. The officers wore

body cameras that recorded the encounter.

When the officers arrived, Graham opened the interior front door but left her

storm door locked and shut. Graham appeared angry, told the officers that she did

not call them for help, demanded that they leave her property, and slammed the front

door. Sergeant Barnette then removed the screen from the storm door to allow entry

should Graham reopen the interior door. With the interior door closed, Graham told

the officers she was fine. She then called 911 to complain that the officers would

not leave. After an extended discussion with the officers through the door, Graham

reopened the door, at which point the officers entered her home through the then-

screenless storm door and held Graham by each arm. During the encounter in her

home, Graham did not resist or threaten the officers, but she did criticize them and

threaten to sue them, alleging they were kidnapping her because of her complaints.

After several minutes, the officers placed Graham in an ambulance, noting in

the relevant paperwork that they took Graham into custody because she

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“continuously called 911 and per dispatchers was verbally agitated and not making

sense.” Graham was then transported to Southdale Fairview Hospital, where she

was evaluated and subsequently discharged after an examination demonstrated that,

while she exhibited “some paranoid behavior” and was “royally pissed,” she was

“somewhat rational” and, according to the examining physician, not “hold-able.”

Graham brought suit, asserting (as relevant here) claims under 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983 on the basis that the officers violated her Fourth Amendment rights by

conducting an unreasonable search and seizure and that they violated her First

Amendment rights by arresting her in retaliation for protected speech. 2 She also

brought § 1983 claims against the City under Monell v. Department of Social

Services, 436 U.S. 658, 690 (1978), alleging that the City’s policy regarding seizures

for emergency mental-health evaluations caused the officers’ unconstitutional

conduct and that the City’s failure to train the officers resulted in their

unconstitutional conduct. Finally, Graham brought Minnesota state-law claims

against the officers for false imprisonment, battery, assault, and negligence.

The district court entered summary judgment in favor of the officers, granting

them qualified immunity on Graham’s Fourth Amendment claims, finding that

Graham had not established a triable issue of fact regarding her retaliatory-arrest

claim, and granting the officers statutory and official immunity on Graham’s state-

law claims. The district court also entered summary judgment in favor of the City,

determining that the City’s policy concerning seizures for emergency mental-health

evaluations was not facially unconstitutional and that Graham did not plead facts

sufficient to support a claim for failure to train.

Graham appealed. We previously affirmed the district court’s judgment. See

Graham, 970 F.3d at 1082. Graham then petitioned for a writ of certiorari, arguing

2

Graham also raised claims of excessive force, property damage, and

conspiracy before the district court, but she did not raise them on appeal and has thus

abandoned them. See Griffith v. City of Des Moines, 387 F.3d 733, 739 (8th Cir.

2004).

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(as relevant here) that the doctrine we relied on to find that the officers’ warrantless

entry was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment—the so-called community-

caretaking or community-caretaker exception—did not apply to the home. 3 While

Graham’s petition was pending, the Supreme Court decided Caniglia, where it

explained that this “exception” is not actually a “standalone doctrine that justifies

warrantless searches and seizures in the home.” 141 S. Ct. at 1598. Subsequently,

it granted Graham’s certiorari petition, vacated our prior judgment in Graham’s

appeal, and remanded the matter to us for further consideration in light of Caniglia.

Graham, 2021 WL 2301963, at *1. We have reconsidered this appeal in light of

Caniglia, and we once again affirm the district court’s judgment.

II.

We first consider the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the officers

and the City on Graham’s § 1983 claims. “We review the district court’s grant of

summary judgment and qualified immunity rulings de novo.” Samuelson v. City of

New Ulm, 455 F.3d 871, 875 (8th Cir. 2006). Summary judgment is proper if, when

viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, see Mullenix

v. Luna, 577 U.S. ---, 136 S. Ct. 305, 307 (2015) (per curiam), “the movant shows

that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to

judgment as a matter of law,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A genuine dispute exists “if the

evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving

party.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986).

3

As she did before us, Graham also argued in her certiorari petition that the

doctrine of qualified immunity should be modified or “overruled.” This argument

remains foreclosed by Supreme Court and Eighth Circuit precedent. See, e.g., White

v. Pauly, 580 U.S. ---, 137 S. Ct. 548, 551 (2017) (per curiam); Lane v. Nading, 927

F.3d 1018, 1022 (8th Cir. 2019).

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A.

Graham first argues that the officers violated her clearly established Fourth

Amendment right to be free from an unreasonable search by entering her home. Pre-

Caniglia, the officers responded that their warrantless entry into her home was

reasonable under the community-caretaking exception but that, even if it was not,

they were entitled to qualified immunity as to this claim because it was not clearly

established that their actions were unreasonable in the circumstances.

A law-enforcement officer is entitled to qualified immunity unless “(1) the

facts, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, demonstrate the deprivation

of a constitutional or statutory right; and (2) the right was clearly established at the

time of the deprivation.” Walton v. Dawson, 752 F.3d 1109, 1116 (8th Cir. 2014).

Due to the “dearth of community caretaking cases,” the district court bypassed the

first prong of the analysis, see Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 664 (2012),

concluding instead that the law was not clearly established that the officers violated

Graham’s Fourth Amendment rights by entering her home without a warrant

pursuant to the community-caretaking exception. Previously, we opted to affirm

under the first prong, see, e.g., Greenman v. Jessen, 787 F.3d 882, 887 & n.10 (8th

Cir. 2015), concluding that the officers’ warrantless entry was sufficiently justified

and thus reasonable under the community-caretaking exception, Graham, 970 F.3d

at 1084-86. But Caniglia rendered our prior rationale untenable insofar as it

explained that “community caretaking” was not a “standalone doctrine” that could

justify warrantless entry into the home. See 141 S. Ct. at 1598. Accordingly, we

now affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment under the second prong

of the qualified-immunity analysis.

For purposes of the second prong, we look to “the legal rules that were clearly

established at the time” the action at issue was taken. Davis v. Hall, 375 F.3d 703,

711 (8th Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Anderson v.

Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987) (noting that this analysis turns on whether the

unlawfulness of the official’s actions was apparent “in the light of pre-existing law”).

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In other words, this inquiry “does not take into account later . . . changes in the law.”

Jackson v. Humphrey, 776 F.3d 1232, 1242 (11th Cir. 2015).

On May 25, 2017, it was well established in this circuit that the community-

caretaking exception was a standalone doctrine that alone could justify warrantless

entry into a home. See, e.g., United States v. Smith, 820 F.3d 356, 360 (8th Cir.

2016); Burke v. Sullivan, 677 F.3d 367, 372 (8th Cir. 2012); United States v.

Quezada, 448 F.3d 1005, 1007 (8th Cir. 2006). And, in the circumstances present

here, the officers’ warrantless entry did not violate Graham’s Fourth Amendment

rights under our then-extant community-caretaking jurisprudence. As we previously

explained:

Affording the officers “substantial latitude in interpreting and drawing

inferences from factual circumstances,” United States v. Washington,

109 F.3d 459, 465 (8th Cir. 1997), we . . . conclude that the warrantless

entry into Graham’s home was justified by a reasonable belief that

Graham was experiencing a mental health emergency and might harm

herself or others if not detained, see Quezada, 448 F.3d at 1007. The

officers could reasonably believe that Graham had recently made some

sort of threat to her cousin; she had called 911 five times that day and

three times within two hours; and the operator had noted that she was

“not making sense” and that each time she was argumentative,

uncooperative, and agitated; Sergeant Barnette knew Graham had a

history of restraining orders; and a second member of Graham’s family

warned the police department that she may fight the officers. When the

officers arrived at her home the second time, Graham was agitated and

refused to talk with them. She initially stated that she had not called

the police—even though Sergeant Barnette identified herself and

explained that she and Graham had spoken shortly before. When the

officers tried to enter, Graham slammed the door and called 911 again

even as the officers attempted to explain, as one officer put it, “we are

911.”

“When viewed collectively, these facts could lead a reasonable police

officer to conclude there was either a threat of violence or an emergency

requiring attention.” Burke[, 677 F.3d at 372]. . . .

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Finally, once inside the home, the officers did not expand the scope of

their search beyond that which was justified by the emergency. “The

justification for the officers’ entry ar[ose] from their obligation to help

those in danger and ensure the safety of the public,” and the officers

“carefully tailored” “the scope of the encounter” so as to “satisfy th[at]

purpose.” Smith, 820 F.3d at 361-62. Upon entry, they immediately

located Graham, secured her person so she could not harm herself or

anyone else, and limited their entry to this purpose rather than, say,

searching throughout the rest of her home or rummaging through her

belongings. See id. (explaining that the scope of the entry and search

in the emergency-aid context must be limited to determining whether

an emergency exists).

The officers thus acted reasonably when entering Graham’s home.

Graham, 970 F.3d at 1085-86.

We need not and do not unpack today Caniglia’s full ramifications for our

community-caretaking jurisprudence. Cf. Caniglia, 141 S. Ct. at 1603 (Kavanaugh,

J., concurring) (noting that the “Fourth Amendment issue” presented by warrantless

home entries done for noninvestigatory, “community caretaking” purposes is “more

labeling than substance”). Rather, we decide only that the officers’ warrantless entry

was reasonable under “the legal rules that were clearly established” in this circuit on

May 25, 2017. See Davis, 375 F.3d at 711 (internal quotation marks omitted). While

Caniglia made clear that “community caretaking” was not its own Fourth

Amendment exception that alone could justify warrantless entry into the home,

“Caniglia did not address” what “rights were clearly established” under “pre-

existing circuit law.” Luer v. Cnty. of St. Louis, --- F.4th ---, 2021 WL 2285499, at

*1 (8th Cir. June 3, 2021). Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s grant of

summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity to the officers with respect to

Graham’s Fourth Amendment warrantless-entry claim.

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B.

Graham next contends that the officers violated her Fourth Amendment right

to be free from unreasonable seizures when they seized her for a mental-health

evaluation without probable cause to believe that she was a danger to herself or

others. She also argues that probable cause was the clearly established standard at

the time, meaning the officers are not entitled to qualified immunity as to this claim.

Alternatively, she argues that even if this circuit’s standard for evaluating mental-

health seizures is a lower, “reasonable belief” standard, the officers still lacked such

justification to seize her for a mental-health evaluation under clearly established law

and thus should not be granted qualified immunity even under this lower standard.

Although the district court agreed with Graham that the officers needed

probable cause of dangerousness to seize her for a mental-health evaluation and

lacked such probable cause, it found that the probable-cause standard was not clearly

established. Accordingly, the district court granted the officers qualified immunity

as to this claim. On appeal, the officers (joined by the State of Minnesota as amicus

curiae) contended that, under circuit precedent, the officers needed only reasonable

belief of dangerousness to seize her, and the officers argued that they had such

reasonable belief here. The officers also argued that they were entitled to qualified

immunity as to this claim because their seizure of Graham did not violate clearly

established law.

Previously, we agreed with the district court that, although our case law had

engendered some confusion about the proper standard, “only probable cause that a

person poses an emergent danger . . . to herself or others” could justify a warrantless

mental-health seizure. Graham, 970 F.3d at 1088-89. But, given the ambiguity in

our case law about this issue, we held that, even if the officers lacked the requisite

probable cause, they could still be entitled to qualified immunity because the

probable-cause standard was not clearly established. Id. at 1090. And we ultimately

concluded that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity because their actions

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did not violate clearly established law under the lower reasonable-belief standard

that some of our precedents had suggested applied here. Id. at 1090-91.

In our prior discussion of this issue, we used the “community caretaking” label

to discuss the standard under which warrantless mental-health seizures are

permissible under the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 1088. Now that Caniglia has made

clear that “there is no overarching ‘community caretaking’ doctrine,” 141 S. Ct. at

1600 (Alito, J., concurring), our use of that label seems to be a category error. That

said, the Court in Caniglia “refrain[ed]” from addressing generally the standards

governing “emergency seizures for psychiatric treatment, observation, or

stabilization.” Id. at 1601 (Alito, J., concurring). Thus, Caniglia did not affect the

substance of our reasoning or holdings on the issues Graham raises regarding her

warrantless seizure. Accordingly, we once again conclude that (1) probable cause

of dangerousness is the requisite standard; (2) assuming the officers lacked probable

cause here, they may still be entitled to qualified immunity given the ambiguity in

our case law about the requisite standard; and (3) the officers are entitled to qualified

immunity because their actions did not violate clearly established law under the

lower reasonable-belief standard some of our precedents suggested was the requisite

standard.

1.

First, we again conclude that probable cause of dangerousness is the standard

that must be met for a warrantless mental-health seizure to be reasonable under the

Fourth Amendment.

At least nine of our sister circuits have held that the Fourth Amendment

requires probable cause that a person is mentally ill and dangerous to herself or

others for a seizure for an emergency mental-health evaluation to be reasonable. See,

e.g., Myers v. Patterson, 819 F.3d 625, 632 (2d Cir. 2016); Cantrell v. City of

Murphy, 666 F.3d 911, 923 (5th Cir. 2012); Roberts v. Spielman, 643 F.3d 899, 905

(11th Cir. 2011); Cloaninger ex rel. Estate of Cloaninger v. McDevitt, 555 F.3d 324,

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334 (4th Cir. 2009); Meyer v. Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs of Harper Cnty., 482 F.3d 1232,

1239 (10th Cir. 2007); Ahern v. O’Donnell, 109 F.3d 809, 817 (1st Cir. 1997);

Monday v. Oullette, 118 F.3d 1099, 1102 (6th Cir. 1997); Sherman v. Four Cnty.

Counseling Ctr., 987 F.2d 397, 401-02 (7th Cir. 1993); Maag v. Wessler, 960 F.2d

773, 775-76 (9th Cir. 1991) (per curiam); see also Cole v. Town of Morristown, 627

F. App’x 102, 106-07 (3d Cir. 2015) (upholding as reasonable a mental-health

seizure because “the police . . . had probable cause to believe” the plaintiff “was

dangerous”); In re Barnard, 455 F.2d 1370, 1373-74 (D.C. Cir. 1971) (finding that

a plaintiff was seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when taken into

custody for an involuntary mental-health evaluation and explaining that such

seizures are unconstitutional “unless supported by probable cause”). These courts

have uniformly determined that “a seizure of a person for an emergency mental

health evaluation raises concerns that are closely analogous to those implicated by a

criminal arrest, and both are equally intrusive.” See Pino v. Higgs, 75 F.3d 1461,

1468 (10th Cir. 1996).

Some of these circuits have thought we were first movers in this area, pointing

to Harris v. Pirch, 677 F.2d 681 (8th Cir. 1982), while holding that the right to be

free from seizures for an emergency mental-health evaluation without probable

cause of dangerousness was clearly established. See, e.g., Maag, 960 F.2d at 776.

But neither Pirch nor our later cases are so clear. In Pirch, we determined that an

officer was entitled to qualified immunity after effectuating a mental-health seizure,

and in so doing we commented that “when a court evaluates police conduct relating

to an arrest its guideline is good faith and probable cause.” 677 F.2d at 686 (brackets

omitted). But, because we were evaluating whether an officer complied with a

Missouri statute that used the phrase “reasonable cause,” id. at 684, we held that the

officer was immune from suit because he acted in “good faith and had reasonable

cause” to believe the plaintiff overdosed without explaining whether reasonable

cause was as rigorous a standard as probable cause, id. at 689. Compare Navarette

v. California, 572 U.S. 393, 404 (2014) (using “reasonable cause” and “reasonable

suspicion” interchangeably to justify an investigative stop), with Stacey v. Emery,

97 U.S. 642, 646 (1878) (“If there was a probable cause of seizure, there was a

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reasonable cause. If there was a reasonable cause of seizure, there was a probable

cause.”).

Since Pirch, we have never held that reasonable belief is sufficient, nor have

we held that probable cause is required, to justify a mental-health seizure. We have

instead suggested that reasonable belief is sufficient to justify some noninvestigatory

seizures while intimating that probable cause is required in other instances.4

Compare Winters v. Adams, 254 F.3d 758, 764, 766 (8th Cir. 2001) (upholding a

brief detention of an intoxicated individual under the community-caretaking

exception and analogizing the officers’ decision to “investigate” and “briefly detain”

to investigative stops), Samuelson, 455 F.3d at 874 (finding “objectively reasonable”

the officers’ decision to transport the plaintiff to a hospital for evaluation due to his

“incoherent” statements after he was mistakenly arrested and in police custody for

breaking into his own garage), and Burke, 677 F.3d at 372-73 (stating that a “brief

detention” based on reasonable belief that it was necessary to secure the safety of an

individual “was lawful”), with Meehan, 763 F.3d at 943 (articulating a

reasonableness balancing test under the community-caretaking exception but

framing the ultimate question as one concerning whether the facts at issue gave the

officer acting “in his capacity as community caretaker” “probable cause to arrest”

the individual), and United States v. Harris, 747 F.3d 1013, 1017, 1019 (8th Cir.

2014) (same).

4

Amicus Minnesota argues that we rejected the probable-cause standard for

emergency mental-health seizures in Collins v. Bellinghausen, 153 F.3d 591, 596

(8th Cir. 1998), but this is not so. Instead, when evaluating the plaintiff’s Fourth

Amendment claim, we held that officers acted reasonably when they entered a home

to seize a vulnerable adult that the officers “reasonably believe[d]” needed

immediate aid. Id. And, in the context of evaluating the plaintiff’s claim that the

defendants violated her Fourteenth Amendment right to due process, we stated that

the “probable cause” requirement necessary to justify the initiation of involuntary

commitment proceedings under Iowa law was “irrelevant” to our analysis of what

the Due Process Clause demands—an issue itself distinct from what the Fourth

Amendment requires. See id.

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We think the through line of these cases is straightforward. As in the criminal

context of an investigative stop, when officers act in a noninvestigatory capacity,

they may briefly detain an individual to ensure her safety and that of the officers or

the public when the officer reasonably believes that an emergency exists requiring

the officer’s attention. But, as with other police functions, all seizures—whether

brief detentions or arrests—done for noninvestigatory purposes are governed by the

Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness balancing test. As a result, the greater the

intrusion on a citizen, the greater the justification required for that intrusion to be

reasonable. Thus, if the detention evolves into an arrest, it must be justified by

probable cause. This balancing test, ever attuned to the nature and quality of the

intrusion, comports with the Supreme Court’s instruction that reasonableness is the

touchstone of the Fourth Amendment. See Smith, 820 F.3d at 360-62 (articulating a

similar rule in the context of community-caretaking searches).

Our decision in Harris illustrates this point. There, we stated that a “seizure

of a person by a police officer acting in the officer’s noninvestigatory capacity is

reasonable if the governmental interest in the police officer’s exercise of [the

officer’s] community caretaking function, based on specific articulable facts,

outweighs the individual’s interest in being free from arbitrary government

interference.” 747 F.3d at 1017 (internal quotation marks omitted). But we also

explained that even when an officer is operating in a noninvestigatory capacity,

“[t]he scope of [an] encounter must be carefully tailored to satisfy the purpose of the

initial detention, and the police must allow the person to proceed once the officer

has completed the officer’s inquiry, unless, of course, the officer obtains further

reason to justify the stop.” Id. We continued to analyze the initial encounter and

brief detention under the standard of reasonable belief, which we analogized to the

standard required for a Terry stop, but we concluded that the later arrest of the

individual was reasonable because, in the course of the encounter, the officers

developed probable cause. Id. at 1019; see also Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 13 (1969)

(“Encounters are initiated by the police for a wide variety of purposes, some of which

are wholly unrelated to a desire to prosecute for crime.”).

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Accordingly, we now make explicit that which has long been implicit in our

case law and align our circuit with the unanimous consensus in all other circuits. We

conclude that only probable cause that a person poses an emergent danger—that is,

one calling for prompt action—to herself or others can tip the scales of the Fourth

Amendment’s reasonableness balancing test in favor of the government when it

arrests an individual for a mental-health evaluation because only probable cause

constitutes a sufficient “governmental interest” to outweigh a person’s “interest in

freedom.”5 See Harris, 747 F.3d at 1017; Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200, 208

(1979) (“The long-prevailing standards of probable cause embod[y] the best

compromise that has been found for accommodating the often opposing interests in

safeguarding citizens from rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy and in

seeking to give fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community’s protection.”

(internal quotation marks and brackets omitted)). Officers have probable cause to

arrest a person for a mental-health evaluation when “the facts and circumstances

within . . . the officers’ knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy

information are sufficient . . . to warrant a man of reasonable caution” to believe that

the person poses an emergent danger to himself or others. Cf. Baribeau v. City of

Minneapolis, 596 F.3d 465, 474 (8th Cir. 2010) (quoting Brinegar v. United States,

338 U.S. 160, 175 (1949)); Cantrell, 666 F.3d at 923 (articulating a similar

standard); Cloaninger, 555 F.3d at 334 (same).

Our confidence that the Fourth Amendment demands probable cause of

dangerousness to effectuate a mental-health arrest in this case is reinforced by the

location of this arrest: Graham’s home. As the Supreme Court has emphasized, “the

right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable

government intrusion stands at the very core of the Fourth Amendment.” Groh v.

Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 559 (2004) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted).

5

Of course, we do not mean arrest in the traditional criminal sense. Instead,

we agree with our sister circuits that taking a person into custody for an emergency

mental-health evaluation “raises concerns that are closely analogous to those

implicated by a criminal arrest, and both are equally intrusive.” See Pino, 75 F.3d

at 1468.

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For this reason, the Court has “drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house,” and

absent a warrant or probable cause and exigent circumstances, police may not seize

a person in her home. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 590 (1980).

2.

Second, we again conclude that the probable-cause standard was not clearly

established in our jurisprudence, meaning the officers may still be entitled to

qualified immunity even if they seized Graham without probable cause of

dangerousness.

“To be clearly established, a legal principle must have a sufficiently clear

foundation in then-existing precedent.” See District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S.

---, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018). This generally requires a plaintiff to “point to

existing circuit precedent that involves sufficiently ‘similar facts’ to ‘squarely

govern’” the officers’ conduct in the specific circumstances at issue, see Boudoin v.

Harsson, 962 F.3d 1034, 1040 (8th Cir. 2020) (brackets omitted), or, in the absence

of binding precedent, to present “a robust consensus of cases of persuasive

authority” constituting settled law, see De La Rosa v. White, 852 F.3d 740, 745 (8th

Cir. 2017). The plaintiff has the burden to prove that a right was clearly established

at the time of the alleged violation. Wilson v. Lamp, 901 F.3d 981, 986 (8th Cir.

2018).

Here, Graham cannot point to existing Eighth Circuit precedent that clearly

establishes the probable-cause standard because of the ambiguity in our case law

highlighted above. Indeed, in her briefing, Graham conceded as much, arguing that

Pirch clearly established the standard of probable cause but noting that our case law

“does create confusion.” And during oral argument, Graham’s counsel specifically

asked this court to “make clear” that probable cause is required in this circuit because

“there hasn’t been a case that has directly stated what the requirement is for a mental

health hold.” A right is not clearly established by “controlling authority” merely

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because it may be “suggested by then-existing precedent.” See Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at

589-90.

Neither is this an instance in which every reasonable officer would have

known that his conduct was unlawful due to a robust consensus of authority from

other circuits. Though, at the time the officers seized Graham, several other circuits

had determined that probable cause was the constitutional standard required to

justify a mental-health arrest, our case law was not merely silent on the issue;

instead, we had created ambiguity concerning the answer, suggesting that reasonable

belief might be sufficient to satisfy the demands of the Fourth Amendment. See

Lane v. Franks, 573 U.S. 228, 243-46 (2014) (concluding that an official was entitled

to qualified immunity because, although decisions from other circuits took one side

of an intracircuit debate, the intracircuit panel decisions conflicted). “No matter how

carefully a reasonable officer read” our precedent “beforehand, that officer could not

know that” the conduct at issue would violate our circuit’s “test.” See City & Cnty.

of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 575 U.S. 600, 616 (2015). This determination is

enough to resolve this issue as the officers are entitled to qualified immunity unless

the right is established “beyond debate.” See Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741

(2011).

3.

Third, we again conclude that the officers are entitled to qualified immunity

because their actions did not violate clearly established law under the more lenient

reasonable-belief standard that some of our precedents had suggested was the

requisite standard governing warrantless mental-health seizures.

Graham contends that even if the probable-cause standard was not clearly

established, no reasonable officer could have believed that it was lawful to seize her

because the facts known to the officers after they entered her home did not support

even the lower standard of reasonable belief that she presented an emergent danger

to herself or others. We disagree. We do not think that only a “plainly incompetent”

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officer could conclude he had arguable reasonable belief. See Mullenix, 136 S. Ct.

at 308; Waters v. Madson, 921 F.3d 725, 736 (8th Cir. 2019) (explaining that even

if officers lack reasonable suspicion for an investigative stop, they are entitled to

qualified immunity if they had arguable reasonable suspicion).

Reasonable belief “is a less exacting standard than probable cause,” Quezada,

448 F.3d at 1007, and, to be reasonable, an officer’s belief must be supported by

specific, articulable facts, see United States v. Sanders, 956 F.3d 534, 539 (8th Cir.

2020). Here, the officers believed that Graham had threatened a family member,

and a second family member warned she might fight the officers; Graham called 911

repeatedly over the previous two hours, and the operator reported that her calls were

nonsensical; Graham denied calling the police when the officers arrived; and

Graham appeared confused as to why the officers were at her home. Although

Graham maintained that she was not a threat to herself or others, the officers were

not required to believe her, particularly considering her agitated state and the prior

reports of threats.

Thus, at the very least, the facts known to the officers at the time were

sufficient to support arguable reasonable belief that Graham was experiencing a

mental-health crisis and presented an emergent danger to herself or others. Cf.

Ryburn v. Huff, 565 U.S. 469, 476-77 (2012) (“[I]t is a matter of common sense that

a combination of events each of which is mundane when viewed in isolation may

paint an alarming picture.”). Graham has offered no precedent that squarely governs

these facts such that, when considering the officers’ “observations as a whole,”

Waters, 921 F.3d at 736, every reasonable officer would have known that he lacked

a reasonable belief that Graham was an emergent danger to herself or others, see

Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 590 (explaining that, for the law to be clearly established, a

reasonable officer must be able to interpret precedent “to establish the particular rule

the plaintiff seeks to apply” and to determine that such “legal principle clearly

prohibit[s] the officer’s conduct in the particular circumstances before him”).

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* * *

The “principle at the heart” of the clearly established requirement is that “state

actors are liable only for transgressing bright lines, not for making bad guesses in

gray areas.” L.G. ex rel. M.G. v. Columbia Pub. Schs., 990 F.3d 1145, 1148 (8th

Cir. 2021). For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that, in warrantlessly seizing

Graham for a mental-health evaluation, the officers may have made a bad guess in a

gray area, but they did not transgress any “bright lines” so as to lose the protection

of qualified immunity. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s grant of qualified

immunity to the officers regarding Graham’s warrantless-seizure claim.

C.

Graham next claims that the district court erred in granting summary judgment

to the officers on Graham’s claim of retaliatory arrest because, according to Graham,

she presented sufficient evidence of retaliatory intent to create a triable issue of fact.

We disagree.

“[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.” Hoyland v. McMenomy, 869 F.3d 644, 655 (8th Cir. 2017). To

establish a First Amendment retaliatory-arrest claim, a plaintiff must show that

(1) she engaged in protected activity, (2) a government official took an adverse

action against her that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing in

the activity, (3) the adverse action was caused by the exercise of the protected

activity, and (4) the government official lacked probable cause or arguable probable

cause. Peterson v. Kopp, 754 F.3d 594, 602 (8th Cir. 2014).

To survive summary judgment, a plaintiff must show that a reasonable jury

could find that a retaliatory motive of the government official was a “but-for cause”

of the adverse action, “meaning that the adverse action against the plaintiff would

not have been taken absent the retaliatory motive.” Nieves v. Bartlett, 587 U.S. ---,

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139 S. Ct. 1715, 1722 (2019) (“It is not enough to show that an official acted with a

retaliatory motive and that the plaintiff was injured—the motive must cause the

injury.”). “The causal connection is generally a jury question, but it can provide a

basis for summary judgment when the question is so free from doubt as to justify

taking it from the jury.” Revels v. Vincenz, 382 F.3d 870, 876 (8th Cir. 2004)

(internal quotation marks omitted).

For instance, in Baribeau, we denied officers qualified immunity on a claim

of unreasonable seizure when they arrested and detained protestors without arguable

probable cause to believe the protestors either engaged in disorderly conduct or

displayed a simulated bomb. 596 F.3d at 481. Even so, we granted the officers

summary judgment on the plaintiffs’ retaliatory-arrest claim because no “reasonable

jury could find that retaliatory animus was a . . . ‘but-for’ cause” of the arrests where

the evidence demonstrated that the officers made the arrest after observing a young

girl become frightened by the plaintiffs’ appearance, and because the evidence

demonstrated that the decision to arrest the plaintiffs was “based on an actual but

overly exaggerated belief that the plaintiffs violated the WMD statute.” Id.

Given the information available to the officers in this case, we likewise

determine that no reasonable jury could conclude that retaliatory animus was a but-

for cause of Graham’s arrest. As in Baribeau, there is no evidence that the officers’

actions were based on anything other than perhaps “an actual but overly exaggerated

belief” that Graham was experiencing a mental-health emergency and presented a

threat either to herself or to others. And though the temporal proximity of Graham’s

protected activity and her subsequent arrest is relevant, it is not enough on its own

to create a triable issue of fact regarding cause where no other record evidence

supports finding a retaliatory motive and there is evidence that the officers acted in

good faith. See Wilson v. Northcutt, 441 F.3d 586, 592 (8th Cir. 2006) (“Temporal

proximity is relevant but not dispositive.”); see also Williams v. City of Carl

Junction, 480 F.3d 871, 877-78 (8th Cir. 2007) (holding that the plaintiff had not

demonstrated retaliatory animus sufficient to support a retaliatory-prosecution claim

under the First Amendment where he “presented no evidence”—other than the

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traffic ticket itself—“that the officer who issued [the] citation harbored any

retaliatory animus against him”).

Thus, the district court properly granted the officers summary judgment on

Graham’s retaliatory-arrest claim.

D.

Graham next contends that the City’s policy concerning seizures for an

emergency mental-health evaluation caused the officers to violate her Fourth

Amendment rights because the policy was facially unconstitutional. In the

alternative, Graham argues that the City should be liable because it was

deliberatively indifferent to her constitutional rights and failed to train the officers

properly. We conclude that the district court did not err in granting the City

summary judgment.

“A municipality may be liable under § 1983 where ‘action pursuant to official

municipal policy of some nature caused a constitutional tort.’” Hollingsworth v. City

of St. Ann, 800 F.3d 985, 991-92 (8th Cir. 2015) (quoting Monell, 436 U.S. at 691).

When a city’s policy is facially unconstitutional, we have recognized that “resolving

[the] issues of fault and causation is straightforward.” Szabla v. City of Brooklyn

Park, 486 F.3d 385, 389-90 (8th Cir. 2007) (en banc). In that instance, “[t]o establish

a constitutional violation, no evidence is needed other than a statement of the

municipal policy and its exercise.” Id.

The relevant portion of the MCCTA provides that an officer may seize a

person for an emergency mental-health evaluation and transport that person to “a

licensed physician or treatment facility if the officer has reason to believe . . . that

the person is mentally ill . . . and in danger of injuring self or others if not

immediately detained.” Minn. Stat. § 253B.05, subd. 2(a) (emphasis added). In

compliance with the statute, the City’s policy allows an officer to take a person with

mental illness into custody “if there is a reason to believe the person poses a threat

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to himself or others.” The policy further directs that “[t]he threat does not have to

be imminent.”

The district court initially denied the City summary judgment, determining

that the phrase “reason to believe” was inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment’s

probable-cause requirement for a mental-health seizure. After the City filed a

motion for reconsideration, the district court determined that it had “made a manifest

error of law” by failing to construe the phrase “reason to believe” to require probable

cause.

We agree that the policy is not facially unconstitutional. First, “reason to

believe” is commonly used to mean probable cause. For instance, in United States

v. Quintana, we analyzed the meaning of the phrase “reason to believe” in a federal

immigration statute relating to arrests of undocumented aliens and concluded that

the phrase means “constitutionally required probable cause.” 623 F.3d 1237, 1239

(8th Cir. 2010); see also United States v. Stead, 422 F.2d 183, 184 n.1 (8th Cir. 1970)

(per curiam) (“Probable cause exists since a prudent man would have had reason to

believe that this defendant had committed a felony.”). Other circuits have come to

similar conclusions when interpreting statutes governing mental-health seizures. In

Cantrell, for example, the Fifth Circuit interpreted the Texas Health and Safety

Code’s use of “reason to believe” to require probable cause. 666 F.3d at 923.

Second, the policy’s language stating that the threat presented “does not have

to be imminent” does not make the policy facially unconstitutional. To be sure, a

mental-health seizure must be justified by probable cause that the person subject to

the arrest presents an emergent threat of harm to herself or others, but government

officials need not wait to intervene until an individual is a split second away from

harming herself or others. See Meyers v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec. Admin., 801 F. App’x

90, 95 (4th Cir. 2020) (per curiam) (“‘Imminent’ means ‘threatening to occur

immediately; dangerously impending’ or ‘[a]bout to take place.’” (quoting Black’s

Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019)); United States v. Hardeman, 449 F. App’x 408, 410

(5th Cir. 2011) (per curiam) (defining imminent as “impending; on the point of

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happening”). The Fourth Amendment does not demand that police wait until a

suicidal citizen has raised a gun to her temple before officers may intervene. See

Caniglia, 141 S. Ct. at 1604 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (explaining that “the

Court’s exigency precedents” do not require that the harm be “mere moments

away”). Instead, it requires only that a prudent person would have reason to believe

that the individual subject to the seizure presents a threat to herself or others such

that an order of a court or other authority cannot be obtained in time to prevent the

anticipated harm or injury. See Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 509 (1978)

(explaining that police may rely on the exigent-circumstances or emergency-aid

exceptions when “there is compelling need for official action and no time to secure

a warrant”); Caniglia, 141 S. Ct. at 1602 (Alito, J., concurring) (noting that

circumstances are “exigent” when “there is not enough time to get a warrant”). As

a result, the policy is not facially unconstitutional because it does “not affirmatively

sanction” an unconstitutional action. See Szabla, 486 F.3d at 392.

Where an official policy is lawful on its face, a plaintiff nevertheless may

establish liability by showing that a municipality caused the constitutional violation

by providing “inadequate training” for its employees. Parrish v. Ball, 594 F.3d 993,

997 (8th Cir. 2010). To establish such liability, a plaintiff must show that (1) the

municipality’s “training practices [were] inadequate,” (2) the municipality was

“deliberately indifferent” to the plaintiff’s rights when adopting the training

practices such that the “failure to train reflects a deliberate or conscious choice,” and

(3) the plaintiff’s injury was “actually caused” by the “alleged deficiency” in the

training practices. Id.

Graham has not met this standard for two reasons. First, she advances no

evidence concerning other mental-health seizures, so she has not shown a history of

the City’s officers committing unreasonable seizures such that the need for

additional training was plain. See Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs of Bryan Cnty. v. Brown,

520 U.S. 397, 407-08 (1997). The Supreme Court has held that a “pattern of similar

constitutional violations” is “ordinarily necessary” to establish municipal

liability, Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 62 (2011), unless “the need for more

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or different training is so obvious and the inadequacy [is] so likely to result in the

violation of constitutional rights” that the municipality can be said to have been

“deliberatively indifferent to the need,” City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 390

(1989). Here, there is no evidence of past violations, and what happened to Graham

is not “so obviously” the consequence of a systemic lack of training, as opposed to

the decisions of individual officers, that the need for different or additional training

was plain. See Dick v. Watonwan Cnty., 738 F.2d 939, 942 (8th Cir. 1984) (noting

that an “isolated incident” is “not enough to establish a policy or custom”).

Second, “the lack of clarity in the law” concerning the appropriate standard of

cause needed to justify a mental-health hold “precludes a finding that the

municipality had an unconstitutional policy at all, because its policymakers cannot

properly be said to have exhibited a policy of deliberate indifference to

constitutional rights that were not clearly established.” Szabla, 486 F.3d at 394; see

also Hollingsworth, 800 F.3d at 992 (“While a single constitutional violation arising

out of a lack of safeguards or training may be sufficient to establish deliberate

indifference where the need for such safeguards or training is obvious, a

municipality cannot exhibit fault rising to the level of deliberate indifference to a

constitutional right when that right has not yet been clearly established.” (internal

quotation marks omitted)). In other words, because the right at issue was not clearly

established, Graham cannot meet the “demand that deliberate indifference in fact be

deliberate.” Arrington-Bey v. City of Bedford Heights, 858 F.3d 988, 995 (6th Cir.

2017) (discussing and adopting the Eighth Circuit’s approach).

Accordingly, the district court correctly entered summary judgment in favor

of the City on Graham’s Monell claims.

III.

We next consider the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the

officers on Graham’s state-law claims. Graham contends that the district court

improperly granted summary judgment to the officers on her claims of false

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imprisonment, battery, assault, and negligence because it erroneously concluded that

they were entitled to statutory and official immunity under Minnesota law. We

review de novo the application of state statutory and official immunity. See Boudoin,

962 F.3d at 1044; Johnson v. City of Minneapolis, 901 F.3d 963, 972 (8th Cir. 2018).

We conclude that the district court did not err.

The MCCTA includes a statute-specific immunity section that provides:

All persons acting in good faith, upon either actual knowledge or

information thought by them to be reliable, who act pursuant to any

provision of this chapter or who procedurally or physically assist in the

commitment of any individual, pursuant to this chapter, are not subject

to any civil or criminal liability under this chapter.

Minn. Stat. § 253B.23, subd. 4. Thus, all persons who in good faith participate in

the civil-commitment process, including by seizing someone for an emergency

mental-health evaluation, are immune from any civil or criminal liability, regardless

of whether the detained person is actually committed. Losen v. Allina Health Sys.,

767 N.W.2d 703, 709 (Minn. Ct. App. 2009) (holding that the MCCTA

“encompasses the good-faith decision whether to place an emergency hold on a

proposed patient, even if the result of that decision is that no hold is placed”). The

grant of immunity provides complete immunity from suit. Dokman v. Cnty. of

Hennepin, 637 N.W.2d 286, 297 (Minn. Ct. App. 2001).

Just as Graham has not demonstrated a triable issue of fact as to whether the

officers had the requisite retaliatory animus to support her First Amendment

retaliatory-arrest claim, she has not shown a triable issue of fact regarding the good-

faith belief of the officers when they seized her for a mental-health evaluation. See

supra Section II.C. She simply advances no evidence that the officers acted in bad

faith. They are thus entitled to statutory immunity.

For similar reasons, the officers also are entitled to official immunity. Under

Minnesota law, a public official is entitled to official immunity when his conduct

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requires the exercise of discretion or judgment and there is no evidence that he acted

maliciously or in bad faith. Johnson v. Morris, 453 N.W.2d 31, 41 (Minn. 1990);

Elwood v. Rice Cnty., 423 N.W.2d 671, 679 (Minn. 1988). “In determining whether

an official has committed a malicious wrong, we consider whether the official has

intentionally committed an act that he or she had reason to believe is prohibited.”

Hassan v. City of Minneapolis, 489 F.3d 914, 920 (8th Cir. 2007). Here, the officers

could not have acted in a manner that they believed to be unlawful when seizing

Graham because, as discussed above, the law was not clearly established. See id.

IV.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary

judgment.

__________________________

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