Rose Marie Reyes v. Michael Maschmeier

[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED

________________________ U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

APRIL 20, 2006

No. 05-12720

THOMAS K. KAHN

________________________

CLERK

D. C. Docket No. 04-00131-CV-FTM-29-SPC

ROSE MARIE REYES,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

MICHAEL MASCHMEIER,

Sgt., individually,

MIKE SCOTT, in his official capacity as Lee County

Sheriff, a political subdivision or county office,

Defendants-Appellees,

RODNEY SHOAP, in his official capacity as Lee

County Sheriff, a political subdivision or county office,

Defendant.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Florida

_________________________

(April 20, 2006)

Before BIRCH and MARCUS, Circuit Judges, and MILLS*, District Judge.

BIRCH, Circuit Judge:

In this case, we review a nuanced application of the Fourth Amendment in

the public employment realm. Rose Marie Reyes brought a claim under 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983 alleging that she was unconstitutionally seized when she was struck by

Michael Maschmeier, her supervisor and a sergeant in the county sheriff’s office,

and subsequently berated in an open door meeting. The district court denied the

claim, reasoning that the force used was not unreasonable, but we, however,

conclude that there was never a seizure within the constitutional meaning of that

word and AFFIRM on that ground.

I. BACKGROUND

On 12 September 2003, Maschmeier, the newly selected head of the DARE

program1 for Lee County and Reyes’s new supervisor in the sheriff’s department,

had been talking to his captain about the deficiencies in the county DARE

program. The captain asked for the DARE file, which Maschmeier had to retrieve

*

Honorable Richard Mills, United States District Judge for the Central District of

Illinois, sitting by designation.

1

Drug Abuse Resistance Education. This is a program designed to teach elementary

school children about the dangers of drugs.

2

from his office.

Returning from his office, Maschmeier saw Reyes waiting for him.

Maschmeier approached Reyes from behind and, without warning, suddenly struck

her in the back of the head with a three-ring binder containing the DARE program

materials. Maschmeier completed his meeting with the captain, walked back past

Reyes, and indicated that he was ready to meet with her about the DARE program.

Maschmeier gestured for Reyes to come into his office where he berated her so

badly that this then thirteen-year veteran of the Lee County Sheriff’s office fled

the office in tears.

For purposes of our inquiry, we assume that Maschmeier struck Reyes in the

neck without warning or purpose. This contact aggravated Reyes’s previous two

neck injuries.2 For his part, Maschmeier maintains that Reyes exaggerates the

severity of both the “tap” that signaled his knowledge that she was there to meet

with him and the invective used in the meeting.

As the newly assigned officer in charge of the DARE antidrug program,

Maschmeier had learned that Reyes and other subordinates were going home

instead of returning to the sheriff’s office when their responsibilities at the school

were over. Reyes had requested this meeting with Maschmeier because she had

2

The injury was, however, covered by workers’ compensation.

3

learned that he had spoken to the administration at her school about her

performance there. Maschmeier believed that Reyes was working for only a few

hours per week and was spending the rest of the time at home. Maschmeier

confronted Reyes with these details at the meeting. Reyes acknowledged that the

meeting in the office ended when she got upset:

Q: Did you feel as though Sergeant Maschmeier was in some manner on the

day of the incident holding you in his office against your will?

[Reyes] A: I did feel, because he was my supervisor.

....

Q: And you ultimately got upset and left his office, right?

A: Yes.

Q: He wasn’t able to stop you from leaving his office, was he?

A: No, sir.

Q: Did he ever say to you, Stop, you can’t leave?

A: No, sir.

Q: Did he try to grab you and keep you from leaving the office?

A: No, sir.

R2-49, Plaintiff’s Deposition at 59–60.

Reyes filed suit against Maschmeier, in his individual capacity, and the

Sheriff of Lee County, in his official capacity, who at various times was either

Mike Scott or Rodney Shoap. Regarding the claim against Maschmeier, the

district court granted summary judgment on alternative grounds. First, it held that

there was no excessive force violation of the Fourth Amendment. Second, it held

that Maschmeier was protected by qualified immunity because it was not clearly

4

established that these actions would constitute a constitutional violation such that

Maschmeier was on notice of his personal liability. As to the sheriff, the court

stated again that there was no constitutional violation but held in the alternative

that, even if Maschmeier violated Reyes’s Fourth Amendment rights, there was no

evidence that the sheriff was responsible for that violation.

On appeal, the parties argue about how force must be used to make a seizure

unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. These arguments skip an important

step in Fourth Amendment analysis. In the subsequent section, we do not reach

the question of whether Maschmeier’s actions were unreasonable because there

was no Fourth Amendment seizure. For this reason, we do not address the district

court’s conclusions that there was no excessive force, that Maschmeier was

entitled to qualified immunity, and that the sheriff was not responsible for Reyes’s

injury.

II. DISCUSSION

We review a district court’s decision regarding summary judgment on a

§ 1983 claim de novo. Harris v. Coweta County, 433 F.3d 807, 811 (11th Cir.

2005). We use the same legal standards as the district court and draw evidentiary

inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. Id.

5

In relevant part, The Civil Rights Act of 1871 states:

Every person who, under color of [state law] . . . subjects, or

causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States . . . to

the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities

secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the

party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other

proper proceeding for redress.

42 U.S.C. § 1983. Maschmeier, when performing his duties as a sergeant in the

Lee County Sheriff’s office, is a state actor for purposes of § 1983. Therefore,

when he acts under the color of state law, Maschmeier may not deprive Reyes of

any rights secured by the Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment. Reyes

alleges that Maschmeier violated her Fourth Amendment rights.

The application of the Fourth Amendment in unique settings, such as the

employment setting we consider today, presents difficult issues. On the one hand,

public servants “are not relegated to a watered-down version of constitutional

rights.” Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493, 500, 87 S. Ct. 616, 620 (1967). On

the other hand, “nothing in the Fourth Amendment endows public employees with

greater workplace rights than those enjoyed by their counterparts in the private

sector.” Driebel v. City of Milwaukee, 298 F.3d 622, 637 (7th Cir. 2002). These

cases bookend the contours of the Fourth Amendment inquiry posed by this case.

From the outset, we are reminded of the concerns regarding the First

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Amendment in the government workplace. In that context, the Supreme Court

observed that there is a “common-sense realization that government offices could

not function if every employment decision became a constitutional matter.”

Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 143, 103 S. Ct. 1684, 1688 (1983). Thus, it may

be that meetings in government offices are simply not constitutional matters,

which would make it unnecessary to discuss whether they are “reasonable

workplace seizures.” However, the Supreme Court has cautioned us against

Fourth Amendment proclamations that are divorced from their contexts. See, e.g.,

Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567, 572, 108 S. Ct. 1975, 1979 (1988).

Therefore, we continue with the Fourth Amendment analysis despite our intuition,

informed by common sense, that not every meeting is a constitutional matter.

In relevant part, the Fourth Amendment states, “[t]he right of the people to

be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable

searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” The Fourth Amendment broadly

declares a right of the people to be free from certain types of intrusion, which right

courts construe as a limit on government action. For there to be liability in this

case, then, there must be a government seizure and that seizure must be

unreasonable. Evans v. Hightower, 117 F.3d 1318, 1320 (11th Cir. 1997).

Because claims brought under the Fourth Amendment are context specific, a

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review of prior decisions is helpful in discerning how the Fourth Amendment

applies in the public employment context. We begin with the Supreme Court’s

treatment of workplace searches. The Supreme Court has applied the Fourth

Amendment in the private employment setting, holding that citizens have privacy

interests in their work spaces, and, therefore, employees have a protectable,

reasonable expectation of privacy against workplace searches. See Mancusi v.

DeForte, 392 U.S. 364, 367, 88 S. Ct. 2120, 2123 (1968).

When the intrusion was by a government employee’s supervisor, that is, not

by the police, the Court concluded in fragmented plurality opinions that when

there was a reasonable expectation of privacy, the Fourth Amendment still applied.

See O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 718, 107 S. Ct. 1492, 1498 (1987). In

O’Connor, an employee of a public hospital was investigated as part of an internal

inquiry by the hospital administration. Id. The Court was concerned with

“balanc[ing] the nature and quality of the intrusion on the

individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the

importance of the governmental interests alleged to justify

the intrusion.” In the case of searches conducted by a

public employer, we must balance the invasion of the

employees’ legitimate expectations of privacy against the

government’s need for supervision, control, and the

efficient operation of the workplace.

Id. at 719–20, 107 S. Ct. at 1498–99 (alteration in original and citations omitted).

8

Thus, we conclude that the Fourth Amendment regulates supervisor conduct in the

government workplace, even if the extent and manner of that regulation is unclear

under the Supreme Court’s cases.

Having established that the Fourth Amendment governs workplace searches

by government supervisors, we turn to the question of seizures by government

supervisors. We cannot find express resolution in either our own or Supreme

Court decisions regarding supervisors seizing public employees at work.3 We do,

however, find guidance regarding seizures in workplaces. “[W]hen people are at

work their freedom to move about has been meaningfully restricted, not by the

actions of law enforcement officials, but by the workers’ voluntary obligations to

their employers.” INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 218, 104 S. Ct. 1758, 1763

(1984).4 Thus, the Supreme Court implicitly recognizes that voluntary workplace

obligations may permissibly be contrasted with the kind of limits on movement

3

Seizures of public employees, in circumstances dissimilar to those of this case, have

been reviewed elsewhere. See, e.g., Driebel, 298 F.3d at 627; Aguilera v. Baca, 394 F. Supp. 2d

1203, 1214 (C.D. Cal. 2005) (holding that sheriff’s deputies were not seized for Fourth

Amendment purposes when ordered to remain at work to be questioned in connection with an

internal investigation); United States v. Fagan, 28 M.J. 64, 69 (C.M.A. 1989) (observing that a

marine instructed by his chain of command to remain at a facility for fingerprinting was not

seized for purposes of the Fourth Amendment).

4

In Delgado, the Court concluded that workers in two factories were not seized for

Fourth Amendment purposes when the INS placed agents near the exits of the factories. 466

U.S. at 218, 104 S. Ct. at 1763.

9

that result from law enforcement action.5 We conclude, therefore, that, as an

initial matter, a claim that a government supervisor has seized a public employee

in violation of the Fourth Amendment must allege circumstances that implicate

more than the obligations that arise from the employment relationship. This

affirms our conclusion that meetings attended by government employees are not

seizures for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.

However, workplace interactions can become seizures. Cf. Delgado, 466

U.S. at 215, 104 S. Ct. at 1762 (observing that a consensual encounter with the

police becomes a seizure regulated by the Fourth Amendment when the

interlocutor is arrested). Such a seizure would be “a governmental termination of

freedom of movement,” Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 597, 109 S. Ct.

1378, 1381 (1989), in circumstances when “a reasonable person would have

believed that he was not free to leave,” Chesternut, 486 U.S. at 573, 108 S. Ct. at

1979 (quotations omitted). The clearest example of this type of transformation is

from a citizen’s consensual conversation with law enforcement personnel to an

arrest of that citizen. See Delgado, 466 U.S. at 215, 104 S. Ct. at 1762.

5

At this point, we distinguish between the government as law enforcer and government

as employer. See Driebel, 298 F.3d at 637 (“[I]n cases involving the constitutional rights of

police officers, courts must distinguish between a police department’s actions in its capacity as

an employer and its actions as the law enforcement arm of the state.”).

10

As to the matter before us, Reyes’s allegation fails to state a claim under the

Fourth Amendment. She asked to meet with Maschmeier in the context of his

position as her supervisor. In the resulting meeting, Maschmeier discussed the

amount of time Reyes spent conducting the duties of her office and counseled her

that, under the circumstances, going home instead of returning to the office was

unacceptable. Such meetings are the daily business of the public servant, and,

although we find that Reyes’s allegations of Maschmeier’s conduct, if true, are

disturbing as a professional matter, her allegations do not remove the case from

the employment setting. That is, Reyes’s allegations do not change the

fundamental dynamic between her and Maschmeier from an employment

relationship into a situation where Maschmeier is acting as a law enforcer.6

Furthermore, the meeting between Reyes and Maschmeier was not

transformed into a Fourth Amendment seizure by Maschmeier’s conduct. Reyes

provides no evidence that indicates a restraint on her ability to move. Although

6

Although we resolve the case by adapting the traditional Fourth Amendment analysis to

the workplace, we leave for another day—principally because the argument was neither

presented nor briefed to us—the question of whether there must be governmental authority to

seize before there can be an unlawful government seizure. With this caveat, we do not mean to

disturb any statutory inquiry regarding the scope of employment or color of state law analysis.

However, insofar as the Fourth Amendment is a limitation on government power, it seems

reasonable to inquire into the authority for the contested exercise of coercive governmental

power prior to pursuing a formulaic analysis of whether the actions of state employees appear

improper. Such a distinction focuses claims of constitutional violation on actions properly

attributable to the government, leaving other claims to state tort law.

11

Reyes claims that she felt like she was not able to leave the meeting, those claims

are based in the supervisor-employee relationship and are therefore not indicators

that something more had transformed the meeting into a Fourth Amendment

seizure. However, most tellingly, Reyes left the meeting at the moment of her

choosing. We conclude that the interaction between Maschmeier and Reyes does

not present the exercise of governmental authority akin to an arrest.

Nor is our analysis changed by the cases that support the proposition that

contact can functionally seize a person. See Harris v. Coweta County, 433 F.3d

807, 816 (11th Cir. 2005) (“[R]amming [a] vehicle under the facts alleged here, if

believed by a jury, would violate [the victim’s] constitutional right to be free from

excessive force during a seizure.”); Pruitt v. City of Montgomery, 771 F.2d 1475,

1478 (11th Cir. 1985) (“[T]he shooting itself was a ‘seizure’ within the meaning of

the Fourth Amendment.”). Under a liberal reading of those cases, the contact at

issue in this case fails to approach the established threshold, which left the victim

in each case unable to move. Thus, even adding the gratuitous contact at issue in

this case to the subsequent job-related meeting fails to transform the actions in

question into a constitutional seizure.

For these reasons, we conclude that Reyes was not seized for purposes of

the Fourth Amendment. Because there was no Fourth Amendment seizure, there

12

was no Fourth Amendment violation and there is no liability under 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983 for either Maschmeier, individually, or Sheriff Scott, in his official

capacity. We do not reach the other grounds discussed by the district court in the

disposition of this case.7

III. CONCLUSION

We have reviewed Reyes’s claim that her supervisor’s conduct violated her

rights under the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable searches and

seizures. We do not consider whether Maschmeier’s conduct was unreasonable,

because there was no seizure in this case. AFFIRMED.

7

Rowe v. Schreiber, 139 F.3d 1381, 1382 n.2 (11th Cir. 1998) (“We may affirm a

decision on any adequate grounds, including grounds other than the grounds upon which the

district court actually relied.”).

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