Katelyn Webb, as guardian and next friend of K.S. and D.S. and on behalf of Herself and all Others Similarly Situated; Jerimey Lay, as guardian and next friend f R.L. and C.L.; Tabitha Lay, as guardian and next friend of R.L. and C.L. Plaintiffs - Appellants
v.
Chelsea Smith, Individually and in her Official Capacity; Stacy Houck, Individually and in her Official Capacity; Mischa Martin, Individually and in her Official Capacity; Cindy Gillespie, Individually and in her Official Capacity Defendants - Appellees
Submitted: June 11, 2019
Appeal
from United States District Court for the Eastern District of
Arkansas - Little Rock
Before
GRUENDER, ARNOLD, and STRAS, Circuit Judges.
ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
Few
liberty interests are more important than the one parents
have in the care, custody, and management of their children,
or the one that parents and children have in the care and
companionship of each other. See Whisman ex. rel. Whisman
v. Rinehart, 119 F.3d 1303, 1309 (8th Cir. 1997). And
few governmental interests are more compelling than
protecting minor children from abuse or deadly harm. See
id. Unfortunately these interests sometimes clash, as
happened here, when the Arkansas Department of Human Services
took two minor children of Katelyn Webb and three minor
children of Jerimey and Tabitha Lay into protective custody.
Under
Arkansas law, DHS social workers may take a child into
emergency protective custody, without a court order, if
continued custody of the parent or guardian "presents an
immediate danger to the health or physical well-being of the
child." Ark. Code Ann. § 12-18-1001(a). That
custody may not exceed seventy-two hours, but if the
seventy-two hour limit expires on a weekend or holiday, then
custody may be extended until the next business day.
Id. at § 12-18-1001(b). When a social worker
takes a child into emergency protective custody, she must
notify DHS "and make every effort possible to
notify" the parent or guardian of, as relevant, the
child's location, the location and phone number of the
court, and the procedure for obtaining a hearing. See
id. § 9-27-313(c)(1). If DHS wishes to extend its
custody beyond seventy-two hours, it must demonstrate
"probable cause to believe that immediate emergency
custody is necessary to protect the health or physical
well-being of the juvenile from immediate danger."
See id. § 9-27-314(a)(1). If DHS does so,
"the circuit court shall issue an ex parte order for
emergency custody to remove the juvenile from the custody of
the parent," id., and that order must include
notice to the parents or guardians of their right to a
hearing within five business days after the ex parte order is
issued. See id. § 9-27-314(b)(1). The circuit
court must then hold a probable-cause hearing within five
business days after issuing the ex parte order. See
id. § 9-27-315(a)(1)(A). The hearing is limited to
"determining whether probable cause existed to protect
the juvenile" and whether it still exists. See
id. § 9-27-315(a)(1)(B)(i). So it can take ten to
fourteen days (depending on when weekends and holidays fall)
after a child has been removed before state law gives a
parent the right to be heard at a hearing.
In
Webb's case, a state juvenile court jailed her for five
days for contempt of court in a matter not relevant here and
ordered Chelsea Smith, a DHS social worker, to take
Webb's minor children into custody. Webb alleges that,
two days after completing her five days in jail (and thus
contrary to the seventy-two hour rule in §
12-18-1001(b)), DHS petitioned the juvenile court for an ex
parte order allowing it to maintain temporary protective
custody over Webb's children. The juvenile court granted
the petition and set a probable-cause hearing for seven days
(five business days) later. The day before the scheduled
hearing, the juvenile court postponed the hearing for an
unknown reason. Because the juvenile court did not hold the
hearing within five business days of issuing the ex parte
order, it appears state law was again violated. See
id. at § 9-27-315(a)(1)(A). The juvenile court
rescheduled the hearing for eight days after the initial
probable-cause hearing was scheduled. That hearing occurred
as scheduled, but when the juvenile court was about to
appoint counsel for Webb, she informed the court she
preferred different counsel. The juvenile court continued the
hearing and reset it for six days later so Webb could secure
counsel. At that hearing, the juvenile court held that
probable cause had existed at the time the children were
removed but that there was no need for DHS to continue its
custody. The juvenile court restored custody of the children
to Webb, but it also ordered that a protective-services case
be opened. In total, DHS had protective custody of the Webb
children for about twenty-eight days.
As for
the Lays, DHS social worker Stacy Houck took the Lay children
into emergency protective custody after, as the district
court said, "a serious charge of abuse was asserted
against Jerimey." Two days later DHS petitioned for an
ex parte order extending its custody, and two days after that
a juvenile court entered an ex parte order doing so. The
court held a probable-cause hearing three days later, but the
hearing did not conclude that day. The juvenile court
therefore ordered that the children be returned to the Lays
unless the attorney ad litem objected within two days. The
attorney ad litem objected, so the hearing resumed four days
after it had originally begun. At the resumption of the
hearing, the juvenile court ordered that the children be
returned to Tabitha Lay under certain conditions, including
that Jerimey Lay could not contact the children or live in
the family home. In all, the Lay children spent about eleven
days in emergency protective custody.
Webb
and the Lays filed this lawsuit on behalf of themselves and
their children against the social workers involved in their
cases and two of their DHS supervisors, all in their
individual and official capacities. Asserting violations of
the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S.
Constitution, the plaintiffs raised, as the district court
interpreted their complaint, "four categories of federal
claims." They complained, first, that the social workers
unconstitutionally seized their children because they lacked
a reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect and filed
petitions to remove the children that contained knowingly
false allegations; second, that the social workers deprived
them of an opportunity to be heard in a timely manner after
the seizures; third, that the DHS supervisors failed to train
and supervise the social workers and established policies
that led to the constitutional violations; and fourth, on
behalf of themselves and a proposed class of similarly
situated people, that the Arkansas statutes governing
post-deprivation proceedings for the parents of children
taken into emergency protective custody are facially
unconstitutional.
The
defendants moved to dismiss the complaint on the grounds
that, as relevant here, the plaintiffs lacked standing and
failed to state a claim. The district court rejected the
defendants' argument that, since the alleged injuries
were not fairly traceable to the defendants, the plaintiffs
lacked standing. The court pointed out, however, that a
decision striking down the statutes governing
post-deprivation proceedings might not redress the harms the
plaintiffs sustained because those harms had already occurred
and would not necessarily occur again. In other words,
according to the district court, that claim was moot because
the plaintiffs had not demonstrated any continuing, present
adverse effects entitling them to declaratory or injunctive
relief. The district court also held that the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine barred the plaintiffs'
claims against the individual social workers for
unconstitutionally seizing their children by filing petitions
containing false allegations. Finally, the district court
dismissed the due-process claim against Houck because she had
promptly initiated judicial proceedings after seizing the Lay
children; the court declined to dismiss the related claim
against Smith and her DHS supervisors because Smith did not
promptly initiate proceedings to remove the Webb children.
Both
parties asked the court to reconsider its decision, and the
plaintiffs moved for leave to file an amended complaint to
cure some of the deficiencies the court had identified
relating to mootness. After considering some of the
transcripts of the state court proceedings, the district
court dismissed the action in full. (The plaintiffs do not
take issue with the court's decision to consider those
transcripts.) The district court also denied plaintiffs leave
to amend their complaint, on the ground that amendment would
be futile; but it nonetheless considered the new information
alleged in the proposed amended complaint to hold that the
plaintiffs indeed had standing and that their claims were not
moot. The court considered new allegations that the adult
plaintiffs were Arkansas residents of childbearing age, that
many of the child plaintiffs were still minors, and that the
families' prior dealings with DHS increased the odds
"that another situation with DHS will occur." The
district court reasoned that these new facts had
"established a reasonable likelihood that they may be
subject to having their children taken into protective
custody by DHS in the future," so their claims were not
moot.
Despite
that finding, the district court declined to rule whether the
Arkansas statutes at issue are facially unconstitutional,
explaining that "[t]here is no binding authority on
point and this Court will not, under the guise of
interpreting the constitution, create a rule that would
render the Arkansas statutes facially invalid" given the
difficulty of raising a successful facial challenge. The
court stood by its other rulings, except that the transcripts
and other record materials from the state court proceedings
showed that Smith had initiated judicial proceedings
promptly, so the claims against her and her DHS supervisors
were dismissed. The plaintiffs appealed, arguing that the
district court erred in dismissing their claims.
The
defendants noted in their brief on appeal that, though they
"do not concede that [the plaintiffs] have standing,
they do not address this issue in this appeal." We
nonetheless begin with a consideration of whether the
plaintiffs have presented an Article III case or controversy
because we have an independent obligation to assure ourselves
of subject-matter jurisdiction, even when no party raises the
issue. See Oglala Sioux Tribe v. Fleming, 904 F.3d
603, 609 (8th Cir. 2018). Plaintiffs must demonstrate they
have standing for each claim they bring and for each form of
relief they seek. Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates,
Inc., 137 S.Ct. 1645, 1650 (2017).
We have
no difficulty concluding that the plaintiffs have standing to
seek damages, to the extent they do so, against the
individual defendants. Though the defendants below challenged
whether the plaintiffs' injuries were "fairly
traceable" to the defendants' conduct, a requirement
for standing, see id., we agree with the district
court that, since "the seizure of the children did lead
to the court proceedings," and the complaint alleges
those seizures were unlawful, the plaintiffs have done enough
at this stage to demonstrate standing. As explained later in
this opinion, we do not think ultimate responsibility for the
plaintiffs' alleged due-process injuries rests with the
defendants. But the fairly-traceable inquiry is much more
forgiving than the merits-based, tort-causation inquiry. If
the two inquiries were coterminous, they would collapse into
one another, and a court could never reject a plaintiff's
claim on the merits for lack of ...