Amisi v. Brooks

93 F.4th 659

Bikachi AMISI, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. Lakeyta BROOKS, Defendant - Appellant,andBryan Brown; Roy Townsend, Jr., Defendants.

Bikachi Amisi, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. Roy Townsend, Jr., Defendant - Appellant,andBryan Brown; Lakeyta Brooks, Defendants.

No. 21-1960

No. 21-1962

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit

Argued: September 22, 2023

Decided: February 22, 2024

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Richmond. David J. Novak, District Judge. (3:20-cv-00218-DJN)

ARGUED: Carlene Booth Johnson, PERRY LAW FIRM, PC, Dillwyn, Virginia; Alexander Francuzenko, COOK CRAIG & FRANCUZENKO, PLLC, Fairfax, Virginia, for Appellants. Danny Zemel, THE KRUDYS LAW FIRM, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Thea A. Paolini, COOK CRAIG & FRANCUZENKO, PLLC, Fairfax, Virginia, for Lakeyta Brooks. Mark J. Krudys, THE KRUDYS LAW FIRM, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellee.

Before DIAZ, Chief Judge, and AGEE and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Diaz wrote the opinion, in which Judge Agee and Judge Harris joined.

DIAZ, Chief Judge:

When Bikachi Amisi arrived at Riverside Regional Jail for her first day as a contract jail nurse, Officer Lakeyta Brooks mistook her for an inmate and strip searched her. Amisi sued Brooks and two other jail employees under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating her Fourth Amendment rights. She also brought several tort claims under Virginia state law.

The district court denied the defendants' motions for summary judgment. It held that Brooks and her supervisor, Officer Roy Townsend, were entitled to neither qualified immunity nor good-faith immunity under Virginia law. It also held that the Virginia Workers' Compensation Act's exclusivity provision didn't bar the defendants from suit.

Finding no error, we affirm.

I.

A.

Though the parties agree on some basic facts, most of the material facts are disputed. Everyone agrees that when Amisi arrived at the jail, she didn't know where to go for her nurse orientation. While in the parking lot, Amisi found Sergeant Bryan Brown and asked for help. She wore scrubs and carried a water bottle and her lunch.

Brown directed Amisi to enter the back door of the jail's Pre-Release Center, which houses "weekender" inmates serving non-consecutive sentences. When weekenders arrive at the Center, they have "orientation" and complete the jail's intake process, including strip and pat-down searches. The Center takes weekenders' personal property, disposing of or storing it as appropriate.

The back door of the Center serves as the inmate intake entrance. It has two locked doors with a sallyport in between. The outer door is operated by the Primary Control Officer, a role Brown then held. The inner door is operated by the Intake Officer, who's stationed in the intake area, just inside the inner door. Amisi rang the buzzer, entered through both doors, and met Intake Officer Roy Townsend. Townsend told Amisi to take a seat in the Intake Area.

Before taking custody of a weekender, Pre-Release Center staff must verify that the inmate is legally committed to the facility. The Center's then-Weekend Coordinator, Nichole Roney, prepared files for the weekenders expected to attend orientation on each day. But sometimes inmates showed up on the wrong day, or their paperwork was slow to arrive from the court. Roney tried to accommodate these individuals by letting them participate in orientation even when they weren't scheduled.

Townsend didn't have a file for Amisi. He called Roney, who also didn't have paperwork for her. Roney told Townsend she would come speak with Amisi.

While Amisi was waiting, Brooks entered the intake area, having just searched an incoming inmate. Brooks directed Amisi to follow her into the women's locker room, and Amisi did. While in the locker room, Brooks and Amisi discussed Amisi's food and water bottle, and Brooks told Amisi to throw away her food. Brooks also strip searched Amisi and conducted a pat-down search after she re-dressed. Amisi then returned to the intake area.

Eventually, Roney arrived, learned Amisi worked for the jail's health contractor, and called a nurse who told her Amisi should be in the main jail for nurse orientation. The nurse retrieved Amisi from the Pre-Release Center, and Amisi completed her eight-week contract.

The rest of the facts are disputed, both between Amisi and the defendants, and between the defendants themselves.

First, the parties dispute what happened before Brooks took Amisi to the locker room. Townsend claims he asked Amisi multiple times to confirm that she was at the Center for weekender orientation. He says he asked her to sit while he verified that she should be there and then began reviewing his files and calling Roney. Townsend says he didn't see Brooks take Amisi to the locker room and only realized Amisi was missing the next time he looked up.

Amisi meanwhile insists that when she arrived in the intake area, she told Townsend she "was a nurse" and it was her "first day to work there." Amisi v. Riverside Reg'l Jail Auth., 555 F. Supp. 3d 244, 255 (E.D. Va. 2021). She also says she told him it was her "orientation day," and that she had "an appointment." Id. Amisi agrees Townsend asked her to wait. But he didn't explain that he would try to verify she was in the right place, and she claims she never saw Townsend on the phone. Amisi says that Brooks spoke to Townsend, and Townsend pointed at her before Brooks took her to the locker room. Brooks then asked Amisi to follow her to the locker room without confirming Amisi was a weekender.

Complicating the picture, Brooks claims she asked both Amisi and Townsend if Amisi was there for weekender orientation and both responded affirmatively. Brooks says Townsend also gestured to Amisi and said, "The weekender for orientation is sitting on the bench." Id. And Townsend was "right there" when Brooks took Amisi to the locker room and never asked Brooks to wait. Id.

The parties also dispute what happened after Brooks took Amisi into the locker room. Brooks claims that she confirmed with Amisi she was a weekender. Brooks then asked Amisi, "How many weekends she was doing?" and Amisi said eight. Id. Brooks admits Amisi asked whether nurses had to be strip searched, but claims she told Amisi in response that "we have all type of people that work here that do weekend time."¹ J.A. 757.

Brooks and Townsend dispute the content of a conversation they had during the search. Townsend says Brooks left the locker room to ask whether the Center held food for inmates and whether they could hold a water bottle "for somebody." Amisi, 555 F. Supp. 3d at 255. Townsend says he didn't know who Brooks was talking about and couldn't see or hear what was happening in the locker room. Brooks, however, claims that she asked Townsend if Amisi could keep her food, Townsend said no, and then Townsend took Amisi's water bottle to the intake desk.

Amisi describes her interaction with Brooks differently. She says she complied with Brooks's order to follow her and did so because she thought they were going to her nurse orientation. Amisi also recounts a more detailed conversation about her lunch. She claims she asked Brooks why she couldn't bring food as she would "be working for 12 hours" and then suggested, "Maybe I can keep it and at the end of the day when I leave, I can take it home with me." Id. at 256. She expressed surprise that the jail would be feeding her.

Amisi also asserts that she specifically asked about searching employees. She claims, for example, that when Brooks told her to remove her clothes she said, "Why should I take my clothes off?" Id. She questioned whether they had "to search people who work here." Id. And she told Brooks she was a nurse and would "be working" at the jail, before asking, "[E]very day I come here, I have to take my clothes off?" Id.

Amisi says that before the search, she asked Brooks whether she could call her staffing agency, saying she wouldn't have accepted the job had she known about the strip search policy. But Brooks wouldn't let her, reiterating that she needed to undress.

Other jail employees testified that Brooks was required under jail policy to ensure Amisi was there for weekender orientation before searching her.

B.

Amisi sued Brooks, Townsend, and Brown, alleging that they violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. She also brought a variety of Virginia state law tort claims.

The defendants moved for summary judgment, challenging Amisi's claims on the merits and asserting qualified immunity and Virginia good-faith immunity. They also asserted that the Virginia Workers' Compensation Act barred Amisi's state-law claims. The district court denied their motions on all grounds.

This appeal followed.²

II.

Brooks and Townsend first argue that the district court erred in denying them qualified immunity on Amisi's § 1983 claim. We disagree.

"Qualified immunity protects officers who commit constitutional violations but who, in light of clearly established law, could reasonably believe that their actions were lawful." Henry v. Purnell, 652 F.3d 524, 531 (4th Cir. 2011) (en banc) (cleaned up). We may immediately review a district court's summary judgment denial of qualified immunity since qualified immunity "is effectively lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial." Hulbert v. Pope, 70 F.4th 726, 732 (4th Cir. 2023) (first citing Williams v. Strickland, 917 F.3d 763, 767 (4th Cir. 2019); and then citing Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985)).

Our review is limited though, so we can't consider Brooks's and Townsend's challenges to the district court's view of the facts. See Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 528, 105 S.Ct. 2806. But we may still decide whether Brooks and Townsend are entitled to qualified immunity, "considering the facts as the district court viewed them as well as any additional...