IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
____________________
No. 98-50434
Summary Calendar
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LEON BURNEY,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
JOHN CARRICK; MARILYN SANDERS,
Defendants-Appellees.
_________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Texas
(MO-97-CV-5-F)
_________________________________________________________________
January 21, 1999
Before KING, Chief Judge, BARKSDALE and STEWART, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
Plaintiff-appellant Leon Burney alleges that defendants-
appellees John Carrick and Marilyn Sanders violated his due
process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment by releasing his
daughter from a state hospital into the custody of a non-
custodial parent. The district court granted defendants-
appellees summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds. We
affirm.
*
Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that
this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except
under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. R. 47.5.4.
I. FACTUAL & PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
In 1992, plaintiff-appellant Leon Burney separated from and
ultimately divorced Georgia Scott. At that time, Georgia Scott
moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, maintaining custody of their
eleven-year-old daughter, Christina Burney. In July 1995,
Christina became involved in violent altercations with her mother
and stepfather. Georgia Scott agreed to allow Christina to live
with her father in Texas, and Burney was awarded legal custody of
Christina by a New Mexico judge on August 23, 1995.
Christina’s violent behavior continued, however, and Burney
authorized Christina’s detention at a state hospital on August
11, 1995. Christina’s treatment team at the hospital included
defendants-appellees Marilyn Sanders, a social worker, and John
Carrick, a physician. After several months of treatment, the
treatment team searched for an adequate placement site for
Christina and suggested as early as November 1995 that Christina
was ready for placement.
Conflict existed between Burney and the hospital treatment
team as to an adequate placement for Christina. Burney provided
the hospital a copy of the court order awarding him custody of
Christina, and he informed the hospital that Christina should not
be released to her mother. The treatment team discussed placing
Christina with her father, but Christina threatened to run away
or kill herself if she had to live with him. The team also
sought group-home placement, but was unable to find a home
willing to accept Christina because of her history of aggressive
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behavior.
The treatment team became more concerned with determining a
suitable placement for Christina when the team noted that she was
developing institutional behavior and becoming too attached to
the hospital’s staff in January 1996. The team found that
patients like Christina tend to regress as the confinement period
grows longer, but its search for an adequate group-home placement
continued to be unsuccessful. Furthermore, Christina continued
to distrust her father and “fell apart” when the option of living
with him was discussed. By March 1996, the treatment team had
exhausted all group-home options and determined that her mother’s
house constituted the “least harmful” alternative. The team also
concluded that Christina no longer required in-patient treatment
and it was therefore concerned about the legality of her
continued detention.
While the treatment team pursued placement, Burney continued
to insist that Christina could not be released to her mother.
Sanders did not believe Burney’s assertion that Christina could
not be released to her mother and had grave concerns about
releasing Christina to her father. Sanders therefore asked the
judge who had issued the custody order about appropriate
placement. The judge recommended that Christina write a letter
requesting a change of custody back to her mother. Christina,
with the assistance of Sanders, wrote two such letters in March
1996.
The judge conducted a hearing regarding Christina’s request
3
on April 2, 1996. The judge stated that the State of Texas now
had legal custody of Christina and could determine where she
should be placed. On the basis of this presumption, the judge
denied Christina’s request for a change of custody, but he did
not enter a written order until April 18, 1996. Sanders, who was
not present at the hearing, learned about the details of the
hearing from Georgia Scott. Sanders believed that the judge’s
presumption that Texas had custody of Christina was false because
Burney had authorized her detention at the state hospital and
therefore maintained custody. Sanders sent a facsimile to the
judge on April 3, 1996, informing him of Christina’s status and
seeking to clarify whether the hospital could release Christina
to her mother. The judge did not respond to the facsimile,
however, and on April 4, 1996, his secretary told Sanders that he
“would not be cutting any more orders.”
The hospital purchased a ticket for Christina to return to
Albuquerque on April 5, 1996, and released Christina to her
mother. The hospital made this decision based on its conclusion
that placement with her mother was in Christina’s best interest
and its belief that the New Mexico judge had effectively
permitted them to do so despite the 1995 custody order. Burney
sought Christina’s return in New Mexico courts, but he was
unsuccessful. In April 1997, the New Mexico judge modified the
custody order to provide Georgia Scott with physical custody.
Christina celebrated her eighteenth birthday in May 1998.
Burney filed this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in Texas state
4
court on November 25, 1996, alleging that Carrick and Sanders
deprived him of his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights by
infringing on his relationship with his daughter. Carrick and
Sanders removed the suit to the United States District Court for
the Western District of Texas under 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b). Carrick
and Sanders asserted that their actions releasing Christina to
her mother are protected from suit by qualified immunity, and the
district court granted them summary judgment on that ground.
Burney timely appealed.
II. DISCUSSION
Burney alleges that the district court erred in granting
Carrick and Sanders summary judgment on the basis of qualified
immunity. Burney asserts Carrick and Sanders are not entitled to
qualified immunity because they knowingly and intentionally
violated the custody order by releasing Christina into the
custody of a non-custodial parent. Burney contends that because
a reasonable official would understand that Carrick’s and
Sanders’s actions violated the custody order, their actions
violated his clearly-established due process rights and were not
objectively reasonable.
We review de novo a grant of summary judgment on the basis
of qualified immunity. See Correa v. Fischer, 982 F.2d 931, 932
(5th Cir. 1993). Summary judgment is appropriate if “there is no
genuine issue of material fact and . . . the moving party is
entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P.
56(c). The substantive law determines which facts are material,
5
and the court must view these facts and the inferences to be
drawn from them in the light most favorable to the party opposing
the motion. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242,
248 (1986); Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio
Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587-88 (1986).
It is well established that we must engage in a two-step
inquiry to determine if a defendant is entitled to qualified
immunity. See Sanchez v. Swyden, 139 F.3d 464, 466 (5th Cir.),
cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 170 (1998); Kiser v. Garrett, 67 F.3d
1166, 1170 (5th Cir. 1995). First, we must determine whether a
public official’s conduct deprived the plaintiff of a “clearly
established” constitutional right. See Siegert v. Gilley, 500
U.S. 226, 231 (1991); Kiser, 67 F.3d at 1170. The assertion of a
general constitutional right that is clearly established is not
sufficient; “the right the official is alleged to have violated
must have been ‘clearly established’ in a more particularized,
and hence more relevant, sense . . . [so] that a reasonable
official would understand that what he is doing violates that
right.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987); see
Sanchez, 139 F.3d at 467 (noting that the “federal courts of
appeal have taken an especially strict approach to determining
whether a constitutional right is cognizable, thus resolving any
doubts in the law against § 1983 plaintiffs”); Kiser, 67 F.3d at
1170. Second, “a public official may successfully assert the
defense of qualified immunity even though the official violates a
person’s civil rights, provided the official’s conduct was
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objectively reasonable.”1 Sanchez, 139 F.3d at 467.
Burney argues that the Supreme Court recognized a
constitutional right to family integrity in Santosky v. Kramer,
455 U.S. 745 (1982), and Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645
(1972). Burney alleges that the conduct of Sanders and Carrick
“goes beyond the abstract liberty interest” because the custody
order names him as Christina’s legal guardian, and Sanders and
Carrick intentionally disregarded the court order. Burney states
that “[t]he contours of the court order are sufficiently clear
that a reasonable official would understand that they were doing
[sic] was violating the provisions of the court order.”
Burney’s assertion of a constitutional right to family
integrity is too general to defeat a motion for summary judgment
based on qualified immunity. We rejected a similar argument in
Hodorowski v. Ray, 844 F.2d 1210, 1217 (5th Cir. 1988),
describing the right to family integrity as “nebulous” and
stating: “We think that the district court’s formulation of the
right was too general. It is beyond dispute that many aspects of
family integrity possess constitutional stature. But reasonable
government officials, knowing only that they must not infringe on
family integrity, would not necessarily know just what conduct
was prohibited.” Id. We also found that the two cases relied on
by the district court in that case, Santosky and Stanley,
1
Sanders and Carrick argue that qualified immunity is
appropriate because their conduct was objectively reasonable.
Because we find no evidence suggesting Sanders and Carrick
infringed clearly-established constitutional rights, we do not
reach this argument.
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“highlight the unsuitability of such a general right to fix
liability in particularized circumstances.” Id.
Our decision in Hodorowski reflects our understanding of the
difficult and important decisions social workers such as Sanders
face when trying to balance parental rights against the prospect
that a child is in immediate danger. We have noted that “because
an interest in family integrity ‘must always be balanced against
the governmental interest [in the health, education, and welfare
of children as future citizens], it is difficult, if not
impossible, for officials to know when they have violated
“clearly established” law.’” Doe v. Louisiana, 2 F.3d 1412, 1418
(5th Cir. 1993) (quoting Frazier v. Bailey, 957 F.2d 920, 929
(1st Cir. 1992)). We find this principle especially applicable
in considering the limited choices that Sanders and Carrick faced
here. Sanders and Carrick could either (1) place Christina with
her father despite her resistance and their belief that it was
not in her best interest; (2) place her with her mother despite
the uncertain status of the custody order, or (3) risk her
developing regressive behavior and possibly infringe her rights
by continuing to detain her. Sanders and Carrick acted in what
they believed was the best interest of Christina, and we decline
to impose liability on them on the basis of Burney’s assertion of
a “nebulous” interest in family integrity.
Burney’s allegation that Carrick and Sanders intentionally
violated the custody order adds nothing to his argument that
their conduct violated clearly-established constitutional law.
8
Burney fails to allege any source of law supporting his assertion
that a state hospital that places a troubled youth with a parent
not designated as custodial in a custody order deprives the other
parent of due process rights, and we find none. In fact, the
Eighth Circuit found that social workers who disregarded a court-
ordered reunification plan were nonetheless entitled to qualified
immunity and did not violate a parent’s constitutional rights.
See Ebmeier v. Stump, 70 F.3d 1012, 1012-13 (8th Cir. 1995). The
court stated: “We take this opportunity to emphasize that
violations of state laws, state-agency regulations, and, more
particularly, state-court orders, do not by themselves state a
claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Section 1983 guards and vindicates
federal rights alone.” Id. at 1013; see Davis v. Scherer, 468
U.S. 183, 194 (1984) (holding that officials sued for
constitutional violations do not lose their qualified immunity
merely because their conduct violates a state statutory or
administrative provision). We therefore agree with the district
court that no genuine issue exists as to whether Burney’s claims
are supported by clearly-established constitutional law and that
Sanders and Carrick are entitled to qualified immunity.
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we find that the district court
correctly granted summary judgment in favor of defendants-
appellees. The judgment is AFFIRMED.
9