[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
6
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
7
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.”).
13