Henry v. Essex, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 21925, (U.S. Ct. of App., 3d Cir., August 29, 2024)(Ambro, J.)
With each new court decision, it seems as though the significant Bivens decision is not really on life support but has been taken off the respirator so that it can be permitted to die.
An example of just how Bivens is become terminal is Henry v. Essex County Henry v. Essex, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 21925, (U.S. Ct. of App., 3d Cir., August 29, 2024)(Ambro, J.)
AMBRO, Circuit Judge
Plaintiff Judith Maureen Henry was arrested on a warrant for a different woman with the same name. She was detained for more than two weeks for a crime she did not commit. After release, Henry sued many federal and state officials for their roles in the mix-up. Among the defendants, six deputy United States Marshals (the “Marshals”) filed a motion to dismiss. They argued their qualified immunity from her suit, that Henry could not pursue her claims under the cause of action announced in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S. Ct. 1999, 29 L. Ed. 2d 619 (1971), and that her complaint failed to state claims against them. The District Court denied the Marshals’ motion. They appeal to us.
The Marshals filed an appeal with Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The circuit court reversed stating that the fact that Henry’s case are “far afield” from those the Supreme Court faced when it decided Bivens.
The current state of Bivens jurisprudence has been partially analyzed by other decisions in the circuit, and the Court announced upfront that it had “little to add.”
We first ask whether the circuit court understood its analytical job at first asking whether a plaintiff’s claim under Bivens presents a “new context” compared to the three cases where the Supreme Court explicitly authorized a Bivens remedy. When the context is distinguishable, the courts will not authorize such an action if it sees any, “reason to pause before applying Bivens in the new context.
With that thought in mind, the Court conducted its analysis.
“[O]ur understanding of a ‘new context’ is broad.” A context is new if it “is different in a meaningful way from previous Bivens cases decided by” the Supreme Court. Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120, 139, 137 S. Ct. 1843, 198 L. Ed. 2d 290 (2017). Whether a context is new is an “easily satisfied” test because “a modest extension [of the Bivens action] is still an extension.” Even “significant parallels to one of the [Supreme] Court’s previous Bivens cases” may not be enough.
This fundamental legal distinction between the TAC (which, read in the light most favorable to Henry, suggests that her arrest was both supported by a valid warrant and consistent with the Fourth Amendment) and Bivens (which dealt with a complaint that amply alleged serious violations of that Amendment) thus establishes a “meaningful” difference sufficient to make Henry’s claims premised on her arrest a new context. Ziglar, 582 U.S. at 139. Indeed, “almost parallel circumstances” to Bivens—hardly what we have here—can still result in a new context. Xi, 68 F.4th at 834 (quoting Egbert, 596 U.S. at 495).
As to Henry’s other Bivens claims, they present a new context because they “concern a different breed of law enforcement misconduct.” Xi, 68 F.4th at 834. While Bivens focused on the conduct of an arrest, Henry challenges the Marshals’ post-arrest failure to examine her claims of innocence or present her to a magistrate—a different “sort[] of action” by the Marshals, Farah v. Weyker, 926 F.3d 492, 500 (8th Cir. 2019), that “bear[s] little resemblance” to the alleged police misconduct in Bivens, and accordingly results in a new context. Ziglar, 582 U.S. at 140. That same logic applies to her failure to supervise5 and conspiracy claims.
Due to the Court’s conclusion that Henry’s Bivens claims arise in a new context, the Court would only allow them to go forward if there was no doubt that the circuit judges are at least as capable as Congress of, “weigh[ing] the costs and benefits of allowing a damages action to proceed.” Ziglar, 582 U.S. at 136. “[E]ven a single ‘reason to pause'” prohibits recognition of a Bivens action in a new context. Egbert, 596 U.S. at 492 (quoting Hernandez, 589 U.S. at 102).
Henry alleges that the Marshals are liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3)6 because they “conspired to deprive [her] of equal protection under law.” To state a claim under that statute, a plaintiff must show that “some racial, or perhaps otherwise class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus [lay] behind the conspirators’ action.” Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, 506 U.S. 263, 268-69, 113 S. Ct. 753, 122 L. Ed. 2d 34 (1993) (quoting Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 102, 91 S. Ct. 1790, 29 L. Ed. 2d 338 (1971) (alteration in original)). Henry asserts that her treatment was a result “of her lower economic status,” and her race, sex, and national origin (she is “a black woman from Jamaica”).
The Court determined that it did not need to accept what it categorizes a “bare conclusion.” No other allegations were offered to support the statement. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678-79.
Based upon the above analysis the Court reversed the order of the District Court denying the Marshals’ motion to dismiss and remand to that Court for it to dismiss Henry’s claims against the Marshals.
