PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
HEATHER BRAUN; JOSEPH L.
GOODRICH; GEORGE KEEFER; KRISTI
MORROW; ROBERT MUMMA; JOSEPH
L. RODRIGUEZ; JEREMY SOWERS;
AMBER WARD,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
GARY D. MAYNARD; MICHAEL J.
STOUFFER; D. KENNETH HORNING; No. 10-1401
JAMES V. PEGUESE; FREDERICK
WALLS; KENNETH FRICK; TONYA
LEONARD; RHONDA RALSTON; JOHN
DOE, in their individual capacities
as employees of the Maryland
Department of Public Safety and
Correctional Services,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore.
J. Frederick Motz, District Judge.
(1:09-cv-01897-JFM)
Argued: May 10, 2011
Decided: July 21, 2011
Before WILKINSON and SHEDD, Circuit Judges, and
David C. NORTON, Chief United States District Judge for
the District of South Carolina, sitting by designation.
2 BRAUN v. MAYNARD
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the
opinion, in which Judge Shedd and Judge Norton joined.
COUNSEL
ARGUED: Robert David Schulte, SCHULTE BOOTH, PC,
Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellants. Michael O’Connor
Doyle, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF
MARYLAND, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellees. ON
BRIEF: Neil Hyman, LAW OFFICE OF NEIL S. HYMAN,
LLC, Bethesda, Maryland, for Appellants. Douglas F. Gans-
ler, Attorney General of Maryland, Lisa O. Arnquist, Assis-
tant Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY
GENERAL OF MARYLAND, Baltimore, Maryland, for
Appellees.
OPINION
WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:
On August 12, 2008, officials at the Maryland Correctional
Training Center conducted a drug interdiction operation using
a portable ion scanning machine capable of detecting minute
amounts of controlled substances. Upon entering the building,
several employees and independent contractors of the Mary-
land Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services
alerted for the presence of drugs and were then searched.
Nothing turned up. The aggrieved employees filed suit, alleg-
ing principally that the searches violated their Fourth Amend-
ment rights. The district court held that the defendants were
entitled to qualified immunity and dismissed the suit.
We affirm. The prison officials in this case faced difficult
questions lying at the intersection of the Fourth Amendment’s
broad commands, the prison’s compelling needs, and technol-
BRAUN v. MAYNARD 3
ogy’s innovations. Although it was clearly established that
intrusive prison employee searches require reasonable suspi-
cion, it was far from clear that the devices at issue here could
not meet that standard. Because no clearly established federal
law placed the officers on notice that fighting contraband in
the prison environment in this manner was unlawful, we agree
with the district court that the immunity attached.
I.
According to the complaint, in the summer of 2008 defen-
dant Frederick Walls, a captain at the Maryland Correctional
Training Center ("MCTC") in Hagerstown, Maryland, and
defendant James Peguese, the Assistant Commissioner of
Security Operations, requested that the state Department of
Public Safety and Correctional Services’s ("DPSCS") Ionscan
team perform a drug interdiction operation at MCTC. Captain
Walls made this request at the direction of his supervisors,
including defendant Kenneth Horning, MCTC’s warden. The
interdiction team, employed by DPSCS, uses a scanning
device called an Ionscan to detect the presence of illicit sub-
stances on a person’s body, clothing, and belongings. After a
sample is collected, the device uses ionization to determine
the sample’s chemical identity. Through this method, the Ion-
scan can detect microscopic amounts of controlled substances.
The request was approved by MCTC and DPSCS supervi-
sory personnel. On August 12, 2008, the Ionscan team, led by
defendant Lieutenant Tonya Leonard, set up an Ionscan sta-
tion in MCTC’s visitor registration area. The complaint
alleges that before any scanning took place, all of the defen-
dants agreed that a positive result from the Ionscan machine
would be followed by a vehicle search by a K-9 or correc-
tional officer, which would itself be followed by a "strip and
visual body cavity search" regardless of whether the vehicle
search turned up any drugs. At the time, however, there was
no official policy governing strip and cavity searches of
prison employees.
4 BRAUN v. MAYNARD
The plaintiffs, employees and independent contractors of
the DPSCS, were scanned on their way into MCTC that
morning. While the great majority of persons tested negative,
plaintiffs each tested positive in varying degrees for the pres-
ence of drugs. The plaintiffs allege that Lieutenant Leonard
made a "judgment call" that anyone who set off an alarm
would be subject to the searches, regardless of the Ionscan’s
reading on the amount of the substance detected.
According to the complaint, the searches that took place
after the positive alert followed a roughly similar pattern. For
instance, after one plaintiff’s positive Ionscan alarm and fruit-
less vehicle search she was asked to remove her clothing
piece by piece, squat, and cough. She, like the other plaintiffs,
does not allege that she was subjected to a manual body cav-
ity search or otherwise physically touched during the visual
inspection. Her search, like those of the other plaintiffs, was
conducted by same-sex officers in a public restroom. None of
the plaintiffs allege, however, that anyone other than the
searching officers was present. After the search all plaintiffs
passed a urinalysis test.
There were a few differences in the search allegations. One
of the plaintiffs, Sergeant Robert Mumma, did not claim that
he was required to fully undress, and several of them —
George Keefer, Officer Jose Rodriguez, and Officer Jeremy
Sowers — did not indicate that they were forced to squat and
cough, though Sowers did state that he was subjected to a "vi-
sual body cavity search." Those searched claim they were not
given a sufficient chance to explain how they could have
innocently come into contact with illicit substances. Although
there appear to be no allegations that the searching officers
committed misconduct during the actual searches themselves
or that the searches themselves took more than a brief amount
of time, the plaintiffs do allege that on the day in question, the
Ionscan machine was neither operated nor operating correctly.
The plaintiffs filed suit against the previously mentioned
defendants, as well as against Secretary Gary Maynard of the
BRAUN v. MAYNARD 5
DPSCS, Commissioner Michael Stouffer of the DPSCS’s
Division of Corrections, Lieutenant Rhonda Ralston (one of
the officers who conducted the searches of the female plain-
tiffs), and Lieutenants Kenneth Frick and John Doe (who
along with Captain Walls conducted the searches of the male
plaintiffs). The district court granted the defendants’ motion
to dismiss, rejecting the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment claim
on grounds of qualified immunity and their other causes of
action for failing to state a claim. It reasoned that although
there were difficult questions regarding the usefulness of the
Ionscan machine and about the adequacy of Maryland’s
search protocols, "[u]ltimately, because the law regarding the
use of Ionscan machines was not clear at the time of the
search, the Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity."
II.
We review the district court’s decision to grant a motion to
dismiss de novo. See E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Kolon
Indus., Inc., 637 F.3d 435, 440 (4th Cir. 2011). During that
review, we accept the complaint’s factual contentions as true,
see id., though we need not accept the plaintiffs’ legal conclu-
sions, see Simmons v. United Mortg. & Loan Inv., LLC, 634
F.3d 754, 768 (4th Cir. 2011). Here, we limit our review to
the complaint itself.1
1
The plaintiffs attached a copy of an internal DPSCS report regarding
the incident to their response to the defendants’ motion to dismiss. We
generally do not consider materials other than the complaint and docu-
ments incorporated into it when evaluating that complaint under Rule
12(b)(6), though courts may consider a document attached by the defen-
dant to its motion to dismiss where the document "was integral to and
explicitly relied on in the complaint" and where "the plaintiffs do not chal-
lenge its authenticity." Am. Chiropractic Ass’n, Inc. v. Trigon Healthcare,
Inc., 367 F.3d 212, 234 (4th Cir. 2004) (quotation omitted). We do not
consider the report here because it was not explicitly relied upon in the
complaint and because the plaintiffs argued that the district court should
not consider evidence outside of the pleadings, attaching the report for
consideration only if the district court disagreed with them on this point.
6 BRAUN v. MAYNARD
To state a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, plaintiffs must
allege facts suggesting that their federal rights have been vio-
lated by state officials. However, even where an officer vio-
lated the plaintiff’s rights, he may claim immunity if the law
in question was not clearly established. See Harlow v. Fitz-
gerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982).
In keeping with courts’ reluctance to answer constitutional
questions unnecessarily, we may determine whether the con-
stitutional rights allegedly violated here were clearly estab-
lished without first determining whether those rights exist at
all. See Pearson v. Callahan, 129 S. Ct. 808 (2009). In this
case, we need not address whether the searches violated the
Constitution. Inasmuch as the law regarding Ionscans and
searches in the prison employee context was not clearly estab-
lished, the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity. We
begin by laying out that immunity’s basic principles and then
address the lack of clearly established law regarding these
searches.
A.
The basic principles surrounding qualified immunity are
well settled. Qualified immunity "strikes a balance between
compensating those who have been injured by official con-
duct and protecting government’s ability to perform its tradi-
tional functions." Wyatt v. Cole, 504 U.S. 158, 167 (1992). It
ensures that officials are not unfairly strung up for money
damages as a result of "bad guesses in gray areas." Maciar-
iello v. Sumner, 973 F.2d 295, 298 (4th Cir. 1992). It encour-
ages capable citizens to join the ranks of public servants by
removing the threat of constant litigation. See, e.g., Mitchell
v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 525-26 (1985). And it safeguards
officers’ discretion and expertise against judicial overreach-
ing. "[P]olice officers [and] prison wardens . . . routinely
make close decisions in the exercise of the broad authority
that necessarily is delegated to them." Davis v. Scherer, 468
U.S. 183, 196 (1984). Second-guessing such judgment calls
BRAUN v. MAYNARD 7
would inhibit "principled and fearless decision-making,"
Richardson v. McKnight, 521 U.S. 399, 408 (1997) (quotation
omitted), and displace experienced local administration with
more removed judicial policymaking. The real-world results
of such forays would not be salutary.
B.
The officers here are alleged to have violated the Fourth
Amendment’s proscription "against unreasonable searches
and seizures . . . ." U.S. Const. amend. IV. Applying the
Fourth Amendment has always required consideration of a
search’s context and characteristics rather than a mechanical
application of hard-and-fast rules. See, e.g., Bell v. Wolfish,
441 U.S. 520, 559 (1979) (examining the location and scope
of the search, the justification for it, and the manner in which
it was executed). Plaintiffs’ expectations of privacy are neces-
sarily conditioned by the fact of their employment in a correc-
tional institution. In recognition of these lowered
expectations, we have previously concluded that where prison
authorities "possess a reasonable and individualized suspicion
that an employee is hiding contraband on his or her person,"
they may conduct a visual body cavity search of that
employee. Leverette v. Bell, 247 F.3d 160, 168 (4th Cir.
2001).
III.
Proper notice to public officials lies at the heart of qualified
immunity. After all, it would be neither fair to individual pub-
lic servants nor conducive to effective governance to ambush
and blindside officials with sizeable damage awards. One may
legitimately agree or disagree with the use of Ionscans in
penal facilities, but that is not the question. For purposes of
this case, it has never been clearly established that a strip or
visual body cavity search after an Ionscan alarm cannot sat-
isfy Fourth Amendment standards.
8 BRAUN v. MAYNARD
A.
For several reasons, nothing in the Supreme Court’s deci-
sions or in our own indicates that a positive Ionscan result
cannot generate reasonable suspicion. First, the reasonable
suspicion standard is not an exacting one. It requires only "a
moderate chance of finding evidence of wrongdoing," Safford
Unified Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Redding, 129 S. Ct. 2633, 2639
(2009), an amount "considerably less than proof of wrongdo-
ing by a preponderance of the evidence," United States v.
Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989). And reasonable suspicion can
come from sources categorically less reliable than those that
may be relied upon to meet the higher probable cause stan-
dard. See Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 330 (1990).
Second, there was no reason for the searching officers to
believe that the Ionscan could not reach this threshold. Both
sides accept the fact that a properly deployed, properly func-
tioning Ionscan device can detect drugs and other chemicals.
In keeping with this recognized capability, ion scanning
machines have been widely used, see United States v.
Hernández-De La Rosa, 606 F. Supp. 2d 175, 179 (D.P.R.
2009) (noting expert testimony that "fifty thousand ion scan
devices [are] in use throughout the world"), and in a variety
of law enforcement settings, see, e.g., United States v.
Alvarez-Manzo, 570 F.3d 1070, 1073 (8th Cir. 2009) (noting
the use of ion scanning to confirm the presence of drugs in a
suspicious bag); United States v. Rodriguez-Durán, 507 F.3d
749, 755-56 & n.5 (1st Cir. 2007) (noting the use of ion scan
evidence at trial to prove that a vessel contained cocaine).
Finally, though the case law on point is particularly sparse,
several courts have found Ionscan evidence reliable enough.
See, e.g., Hernández-De La Rosa, 606 F. Supp. 2d at 187-88
(upholding the introduction of expert evidence based on
mobile ion scanning in a criminal prosecution); Mitchell v.
Dep’t of Corr., 675 So.2d 162, 165 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1996)
("Because it cannot be said that the Ionscan test is unreason-
BRAUN v. MAYNARD 9
able, we conclude that a positive test result is ‘good reason’
to conduct further reasonable search procedures of the kind
employed here and therefore may constitute a reasonable sus-
picion.").
While some courts have expressed concerns about the tech-
nology, see, e.g., United States v. Romero, 32 F.3d 641, 647
(1st Cir. 1994), none has come close to barring its use or
declaring its inability to create reasonable suspicion. In such
circumstances, it was not clearly established that the Ionscan
could not create reasonable suspicion. See Ashcroft v. al-Kidd,
No. 10-98, slip op. at 9 (U.S. May 31, 2011) ("At the time of
al-Kidd’s arrest, not a single judicial opinion had held that
pretext could render an objectively reasonable arrest pursuant
to a material-witness warrant unconstitutional.").
B.
In response to this line of reasoning, plaintiffs contend that
Leverette provided all the clearly established law needed to
put the defendants on notice: Leverette suggested that search-
ing officers must have "reasonable cause to believe that drugs
. . . are concealed in the particular place" to be searched, Lev-
erette, 247 F.3d at 168 (quoting Hunter v. Auger, 672 F.2d
668, 675 (8th Cir. 1982)), and the allegedly malfunctioning
and misused Ionscan machine could not have provided that
reasonable cause here.
This argument misfires in a number of ways. In qualified
immunity analysis, the right allegedly violated must be
defined "at a high level of particularity." Campbell v. Gallo-
way, 483 F.3d 258, 271 (4th Cir. 2007) (quotation omitted).
Otherwise, plaintiffs would be able to "transform[ ] . . . a
guarantee of immunity into a rule of pleading" by alleging
violations of well-established but highly abstract rights.
Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639 (1987). We cannot
just ask whether reasonable suspicion was clearly needed, but
rather whether a device like the Ionscan clearly could not pro-
10 BRAUN v. MAYNARD
vide that suspicion. As discussed above, this latter proposition
has not been embraced by the courts, much less in clearly
established terms.
The plaintiffs’ argument also ignores the differences
between Leverette and this case. Previous cases need not be
on all fours with the current one to clearly establish the law
for qualified immunity purposes. See Amaechi v. West, 237
F.3d 356, 362-63 (4th Cir. 2001). But they must be close
enough that "existing precedent . . . placed the statutory or
constitutional question beyond debate." al-Kidd, No. 10-98,
slip op. at 9 (U.S. May 31, 2011) (emphasis added); see also
Swanson v. Powers, 937 F.2d 965, 969 (4th Cir. 1991) (noting
that the case law must "leave no doubt that the challenged
action was unconstitutional.").
Leverette does not satisfy this condition. It discussed prison
searches based on tips by informants, perhaps the Fourth
Amendment’s most recurring characters. See Leverette, 247
F.3d at 163; see also Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266 (2000);
Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325 (1990); Illinois v. Gates, 462
U.S. 213 (1983). Leverette focused on the factors important
to the informant context: the specificity of the tip, the likely
accuracy of the informant, and the decisionmaking process
used in choosing whether or not to search. See Leverette, 247
F.3d at 168.
Leverette had nothing to say about Ionscans, or even about
new technologies generally. It is often difficult for judges, let
alone prison officials, to apply traditional Fourth Amendment
concepts to cases involving novel technology. See, e.g., City
of Ontario v. Quon, 130 S. Ct. 2619, 2629-30 (2010) (noting
the hazard of laying out broad rules regarding expectations of
privacy in employer-provided electronic communication
devices); Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 531-32 (tracing the Court’s
struggles in evaluating warrantless wiretapping). This case is
no exception. For example, a prison official can readily apply
common sense and personal experience when assessing an
BRAUN v. MAYNARD 11
informant’s reliability. But questions regarding the Ionscan’s
reliability, as well as regarding the threshold reading required
to justify a search, present not only less ploughed legal
ground but more difficult technical considerations. In other
words, Leverette cannot be easily transposed from the infor-
mant context into the Ionscan context and therefore could not
have provided clearly established law barring the searches.
C.
Allegations that the Ionscan machine was not operating
correctly and not deployed pursuant to official policy do not
alter the outcome. In conducting qualified immunity analysis,
we look to "the information possessed by the searching offi-
cials" and to what a reasonable officer would have concluded
from that information. Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641. The plain-
tiffs, however, do not allege facts indicating that those who
planned or participated in the searches had reason to know
about any machine malfunctioning. They do not allege facts
indicating that any defendant knew or had reason to know that
the Ionscan team misused the device. They do not allege facts
suggesting that the searching officers or those who planned
the interdiction operation had reason to know that the Ionscan
team’s training was so poor that its results could not be
trusted. In short, they do not allege the kind of misuse of
authority and disregard of law that should lead to monetary
damages.
IV.
Similarly, it was not clearly established that searches of the
kind alleged here would violate the Constitution if based upon
a positive Ionscan. In Leverette, the court noted that as a
search’s intrusiveness increases, the amount of particularized
information supporting it must also increase. Leverette, 247
F.3d at 168. We held, though, that "prison authorities gener-
ally may conduct a visual body cavity search when they pos-
12 BRAUN v. MAYNARD
sess a reasonable and individualized suspicion that an
employee is hiding contraband on his or her person." Id.
The defendants could not reasonably have known that the
information here would not meet these standards. It is crucial
to remember the context in which these searches took place.
As the Supreme Court has emphasized, operating a modern
prison is an "inordinately difficult undertaking." Turner v.
Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 85 (1987). The "intractable problems" of
drug smuggling and drug use within prisons, Overton v. Baz-
zetta, 539 U.S. 126, 134 (2003), only exacerbate those diffi-
culties, recreating inside prison walls the same plagues of
substance abuse and gang violence that landed many prisoners
there in the first place. Federal judicial micromanagement of
state prison administration risks unforeseen and counterpro-
ductive consequences, see Turner, 482 U.S. at 84-85, and
courts therefore afford prison administrators latitude in deal-
ing with this volatile environment and the risks it poses to the
health and safety both of prison staff and of the inmates them-
selves, see Overton, 539 U.S. at 132.
In the qualified immunity context, these factors counsel
against hastily concluding that the law clearly forbade the
officers’ conduct. Requiring prison administrators, on pain of
individual damages, to refrain from embracing technological
advances in prison administration would substitute judicial
guesswork for expert administration and hamstring innovative
efforts to resolve complex problems and to address changing
conditions within our correctional system.
With this context in mind, it was not clearly established
that the searches here could not meet Leverette’s standard. As
the complaint asserts, an Ionscan can detect the presence of
drugs on a person’s clothing or possessions. It defies belief,
then, to think that a positive Ionscan test gives no indication
that someone is "hiding contraband on his or her person," as
prison employees are unlikely to waltz into prison with con-
traband "hidden" only on their shirts. Indeed, given the nature
BRAUN v. MAYNARD 13
of prison security, it is likely that an employee smuggler
would place the contraband in a fairly concealed location on
his person. We need not and do not hold that positive Ionscan
results will always justify a strip search; nonetheless, it was
not clearly established that the Ionscan results obtained here
could not.
We note finally that the alleged searches were conducted in
a largely professional manner. Although any search like these
will of necessity be intrusive, the officers took steps to limit
that intrusion. There are no allegations that the plaintiffs were
subjected to manual body cavity searches or physically
touched during the searches. According to the complaint,
same-sex officers conducted the searches, and though they
conducted them in a public restroom, the plaintiffs do not
allege that anyone else was present. Moreover, the plaintiffs
do not claim that the searches themselves took an excessive
amount of time or that they were harassed or demeaned dur-
ing them. If, as some of the plaintiffs contend, they were later
subjected to demeaning commentary because of the searches,
that does not serve to render the searches themselves uncon-
stitutional. We do not for a moment minimize the sensitivity
of searches such as these, but that does not lead to the conclu-
sion that the officers were carrying out indisputably important
correctional functions in violation of clearly established fed-
eral law.2
V.
Given the constitutional values at stake in this case, prison
authorities would do well to construct regimes that balance
solicitude for the human dignities protected by the Fourth
Amendment with what are undeniably pressing institutional
2
The district court’s dismissal of plaintiffs’ state law claims was not
appealed. We have also reviewed the district court’s rejection of the plain-
tiffs’ supervisory liability claims and have found no reason to disagree
with its decision to dismiss them.
14 BRAUN v. MAYNARD
needs. See Leverette, 247 F.3d at 166 ("[W]e must balance the
government’s need for the particular search against the inva-
sion of personal rights entailed by the search.").
Intermediate steps such as interviews, consultation of
employment histories and job duties, pat-downs, and other
less invasive measures may render more problematic intru-
sions unnecessary after every Ionscan alert. We of course do
not suggest that strip searches are invariably out of bounds,
but such searches plainly are a demeaning form of treatment,
see Wood v. Clemons, 89 F.3d 922, 928 (1st Cir. 1996), and
one that should not be visited casually by an institution upon
its own employees. Clearer policies addressing the reliability
of different Ionscan readings and training guidelines for Ion-
scan operators may spare institutions later headaches in court.
Such policies are for prison experts to develop, not the
courts. Running a prison is challenging even in the best of cir-
cumstances, see Thornburg v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 407
(1989), and the presence of contraband in prisons threatens to
make a tense environment more combustible still. The offi-
cials here sought to thwart this threat by using advanced tech-
nology and employee searches, an area in which law was
sparse and lines were anything but clearly set.
To impose monetary liability on these defendants in this
uncertain landscape would essentially make them scapegoats
for society’s underlying ambivalence about the costs and ben-
efits of new devices and instruments. The Fourth Amend-
ment’s broad standards are often difficult to apply in the
prison and technology contexts, let alone both, and nothing
from the Supreme Court or this court clearly prohibited the
officials from addressing their pressing needs in this way.
Whatever exception might be taken to their actions, there
should be no exception to the proposition that officials placed
in tough spots are entitled to fair notice that what they did vio-
lated federal law. See, e.g., Crawford-El v. Britton, 523 U.S.
574, 591 (1998) (noting the "obvious unfairness" of imposing
BRAUN v. MAYNARD 15
liability on officials whose conduct did not violate clearly
established federal law). The defendants here did not receive
that notice, and the judgment of the district court is accord-
ingly affirmed.
AFFIRMED