Shari Guertin v. State of Mich.
912 F.3d 907 (2019)
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Rule of Law:
A government official violates a citizen's Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right to bodily integrity when their conduct, marked by deliberate indifference, creates a life-threatening danger, such as knowingly providing contaminated water, and that conduct is so egregious as to shock the conscience.
Facts:
- As a cost-saving measure, public officials in Flint, Michigan, decided to switch the city's municipal water supply from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) to the Flint River.
- The City of Flint planned to process the water through an outdated treatment plant that officials knew was not prepared to safely treat the highly corrosive river water.
- On April 25, 2014, the City of Flint began distributing water from the Flint River without adding required corrosion-control chemicals.
- The corrosive water caused lead to leach from the city's service lines and flow into the homes of Flint residents.
- Immediately following the switch, residents complained of foul-smelling and discolored water, and soon after began experiencing skin rashes and hair loss.
- Various city and state officials repeatedly and publicly assured residents that the water was safe to drink despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
- Subsequent tests confirmed dangerously high blood-lead levels in Flint's children and identified a spike in deaths from Legionnaires' disease.
- Emergency Manager Gerald Ambrose, on two separate occasions, rejected offers from the DWSD to reconnect to its safer water supply even after problems with the Flint River water were known.
Procedural Posture:
- Shari Guertin and other Flint residents (plaintiffs) sued numerous state and city officials in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
- The complaint alleged, among other claims, a violation of their Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right to bodily integrity under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
- The defendants filed motions to dismiss, arguing for qualified immunity for the individual officials and Eleventh Amendment immunity for the City of Flint.
- The district court granted the motions in part and denied them in part, dismissing many claims and defendants but allowing the bodily integrity claim to proceed against the remaining officials.
- The defendants whose motions to dismiss were denied appealed the district court's order to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
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Issue:
Does a government official's deliberate indifference in causing a city's residents to consume lead-contaminated water, while falsely assuring them of its safety, violate the residents' clearly established Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right to bodily integrity?
Opinions:
Majority - Griffin, Circuit Judge.
Yes. Government officials' deliberate indifference to the known risks of providing contaminated water, coupled with false assurances of safety, violates the residents' clearly established Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process right to bodily integrity. The right to bodily integrity, a fundamental liberty interest, protects individuals from non-consensual, state-sponsored invasions of their person, including the introduction of life-threatening substances with no therapeutic benefit. The court found that the officials' conduct was not a split-second decision but occurred over a prolonged period, allowing for deliberation. The officials' actions, such as authorizing the use of the ill-prepared plant, failing to implement corrosion control, and then covering up the consequences by falsely assuring the public of the water's safety, were so egregious that they shock the conscience. This conduct, motivated by cost-saving, lacked any legitimate governmental purpose that could justify endangering an entire community. The court concluded this right was clearly established based on the obvious cruelty of the conduct and the logic flowing from a long line of Supreme Court bodily integrity precedents like Rochin, Harper, and Cruzan. Therefore, qualified immunity does not shield defendants Earley, Ambrose, Croft, Busch, Shekter-Smith, Prysby, and Wurfel, whose alleged actions plausibly meet the deliberate indifference standard.
Concurring-in-part-and-dissenting-in-part - McKeague, Circuit Judge.
No. The officials' conduct, while grievously wrong in retrospect, does not violate a clearly established right to bodily integrity, and therefore, the officials are entitled to qualified immunity. The dissent argues that the majority exaggerates the plaintiffs' allegations, which depict a series of mistaken judgments based on expert advice from engineering firms and regulators, rather than an intentional scheme to poison residents. This conduct amounts to negligence, not the 'conscience-shocking' behavior required for a substantive due process violation. Furthermore, the right to be free from exposure to contaminated water as a result of policy decisions is a novel concept, not a 'clearly established' right. Existing bodily integrity precedents deal with direct physical intrusions like forced medication or invasive searches, which are factually dissimilar and would not have put the officials on notice that their actions were unconstitutional.
Analysis:
This decision significantly expands the application of the substantive due process right to bodily integrity beyond traditional contexts like forced medical treatment into the realm of government-created environmental disasters. It establishes that officials can be held liable for creating a public health crisis through deliberate indifference, even without a specific intent to harm. The court's application of the 'shocks the conscience' test in this non-emergency context creates a framework for analyzing official liability based on factors like time for deliberation and the absence of a legitimate governmental purpose that justifies catastrophic risk. This precedent will likely influence future litigation against government actors in cases of gross mismanagement leading to widespread public harm, potentially making it more difficult for officials to claim qualified immunity.
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