Jefferson v. Dist. of Columbia

1

DOMINIQUE JEFFERSON, Plaintiff, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, et al, Defendants.

Civil Action No. 22-1436 (RC)

United States District Court, District of Columbia

June 29, 2023

Re Document No.: 12

MEMORANDUM OPINION

RUDOLPH CONTRERAS UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Granting in Part and Denying in Part District of Columbia's Partial Motion to Dismiss

I. INTRODUCTION

Plaintiff Dominique Jefferson brings claims against the District of Columbia and Jeannette Myrick based on his time spent in D.C Jail, including a total of five counts, and requests money damages, declaratory relief, and injunctive relief. The District moves under Rule (12)(b)(1) to dismiss Mr. Jefferson's requests for declaratory and injunctive relief. The District also moves under Rule 12(b)(6) to dismiss one count in its entirety and one theory of liability under another count. For the reasons set forth below, the Court GRANTS in part and DENIES in part the District's motion to dismiss.

II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

The Reentry and Sanctions Center (“RSC”) is a short-term residential patient facility operated by the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (“CSOSA”) that houses “defendants with mental health and substance abuse disorders” and has capacity for 102 individuals at a time. Compl. ¶¶ 8, 10, ECF No. 1. Criminal defendants held in custody may be directly released into the custody of CSOSA for a “bed-to-bed” transfer from D.C. Jail to the RSC.^[1] Compl. ¶ 17. Mr. Jefferson alleges that judges “routinely and frequently” include inpatient treatment at the RSC as a condition of probation or pre-trial release. See Compl. ¶¶ 1416. But capacity constraints at the RSC mean that defendants ordered to be released from jail into RSC placement nonetheless end up spending excess time in D.C. Jail waiting for RSC space to open. See id. ¶ 18.

On August 16, 2021, Mr. Jefferson was sentenced to serve “180 days all jail time suspended.”^[2] Compl. ¶¶ 14, 20-21. He was also sentenced to a term of probation, which included a condition that he undergo “[i]npatient [substance abuse] treatment through a residential treatment facility.” Id. ¶¶ 14, 23-24. The sentencing court ordered that Mr. Jefferson was to be immediately released from the custody of the District of Columbia Department of Corrections (“DOC”), id. ¶¶ 21-22, 25-26, “and into the custody of Representatives of CSOSA for a bed to bed treatment program.” Id. ¶ 25. That did not happen; the DOC instead continued to hold Mr. Jefferson. Id. ¶ 29. The DOC did not provide any notice “to the committing judge, to Mr. Jefferson, and to his attorney” when they decided to hold Mr. Jefferson past his release date instead of immediately transferring him into CSOSA custody. Id. ¶ 28. Mr. Jefferson was finally released to CSOSA “approximately 30 days” after his sentencing date. Id. ¶ 29.

Mr. Jefferson alleges two other recent examples of defendants who were held in DOC custody beyond the date when they should have been released to CSOSA, and asserts that DOC has a policy or custom “of holding persons ordered released to a third party until the third party comes to fetch them.” Id. ¶¶ 33, 54. He adds that DOC knows that CSOSA has a “longstanding practice” of not picking up inmates from DOC until “two or more weeks” have elapsed after the conclusion of their sentences. Id. ¶ 64. Mr. Jefferson asserts that the DOC decides to “shift[] blame” to CSOSA and other parties rather than taking active measures to avoid detaining defendants beyond their release date. Id. ¶¶ 84, 89.

Finally, Mr. Jefferson argues that Ms. Jeannette Myrick, who serves as “Lead Supervisory Legal Instruments Examiner” at DOC's Records Office, is individually at fault for his overdetention. Id. ¶¶ 99-101. He alleges that Ms. Myrick was responsible for ensuring DOC had authority to detain inmates, and that she failed to guarantee his release on his release date. Id. ¶¶ 108-09. Ms. Myrick was allegedly acting within the scope of her employment with the District during these wrongful acts. Id. ¶ 6.

Mr. Jefferson now brings suit based on his alleged wrongful overdetention. The District seeks partial dismissal of the Complaint under Rule 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), focusing on (1) Mr. Jefferson's request for declaratory and injunctive relief; (2) Mr. Jefferson's respondeat superior liability claim against the District; and (3) Mr. Jefferson's theory of liability that the DOC has an explicit policy of overdetention.

III. LEGAL STANDARD

A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) does not test a plaintiff's likelihood of success on the merits; rather, it tests whether a plaintiff has properly stated a claim. Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236 (1974), abrogated on other grounds by Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982); Brewer v. District of Columbia, 891 F.Supp.2d 126, 130 (D.D.C. 2012). When reviewing a motion to dismiss, a court should presume that the complaint's factual allegations are true and construe them liberally in the plaintiff's favor. United States v. Philip Morris, Inc., 116 F.Supp.2d 131, 135 (D.D.C. 2000). The complaint must still “contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). “Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements,” are insufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss. Id. at 678. A court need not accept a plaintiff's legal conclusions as true, id., nor must a court presume the veracity of legal conclusions that are couched as factual allegations. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555.

For a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(1), the plaintiff has the burden of proving that the Court has subject-matter jurisdiction to hear his claims. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561 (1992). A court has an “affirmative obligation to ensure that it is acting within the scope of its jurisdictional authority.” Grand Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police v. Ashcroft, 185 F.Supp.2d 9, 13 (D.D.C. 2001). For this reason, “the [p]laintiff's factual allegations in the complaint . . . will bear closer scrutiny in resolving a 12(b)(1) motion than in resolving a 12(b)(6) motion for failure to state a claim.” Id. at 13-14 (quotation omitted). Additionally, under Rule 12(b)(1), the Court “may consider materials outside the pleadings in deciding whether to grant a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.” Jerome Stevens Pharms. v. FDA, 402 F.3d 1249, 1253 (D.C. Cir. 2005).

IV. ANALYSIS

A. Request for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief

In addition to money damages, Mr. Jefferson's requested relief includes “declaratory judgment and injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 law against the Government of the District of Columbia[.]” Compl. ¶ 1.^[3] The District contends that the Court does not have standing to hear this claim for relief and that the Court should dismiss under Rule 12(b)(1). See Def. Mem. Supp. Mot. to Dismiss (“Def. Mem.”) at 5, ECF No. 12.

A plaintiff must show that he has standing to sue, which is “an ‘essential and unchanging' predicate to any exercise of [the Court's] jurisdiction.” Fla. Audubon Soc'y v. Bentsen, 94 F.3d 658, 663 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560). To establish “[t]he ‘irreducible constitutional minimum'” of standing, “(i) the party must have suffered a concrete and particularized injury in fact, (ii) that was caused by or is fairly traceable to the actions of the defendant, and (iii) is capable of resolution and likely to be redressed by judicial decision.” Sierra Club v. EPA, 755 F.3d 968, 973 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (citing Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560-61). Further, a “plaintiff must demonstrate standing separately for each form of relief sought[.]” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Env't Servs., Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 185 (2000).

Relief that “aims to prevent future illegal acts often will implicate standing concerns.” Proctor v. District of Columbia, 531 F.Supp.3d 49, 59 (D.D.C. 2021) (quoting City of Houston v. HUD, 24 F.3d 1421, 1429 n.6 (D.C. Cir. 1994). If the asserted injury has not occurred, “that threatened injury must be certainly impending” in order to satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement. Clapper v. Amnesty Int'l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 401 (2013) (quotations omitted); see also Swanson Grp. Mfg. LLC v. Jewell, 790 F.3d 235, 240 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (to obtain injunctive relief, a plaintiff “must show an imminent future injury”). A “highly attenuated chain of possibilities” that might lead to injury is not sufficient to satisfy Article III standing. Clapper, 568 U.S. at 410. Even after past injuries, “[u]nless a plaintiff can show he is ‘realistically threatened by a repetition of his experience [giving rise to the injury] . . . he has not met the requirements for seeking an injunction in federal court[.]'” Chang v. United States, 738 F.Supp.2d 83, 88 (D.D.C. 2010) (alterations in original) (quoting City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 109 (1983)); Dearth v. Holder, 641 F.3d 499, 501 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (“past injuries alone are insufficient to establish standing.”). The same requirement applies to declaratory judgments. See, e.g., Johnson v. Williams, No. 6-cv-1453, 2009 WL 6810187, at *1 (D.D.C. Aug. 25, 2009) (holding that Lyons applies to both injunctive and declaratory relief); see also Haase v. Sessions, 835 F.2d 902, 911 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (“Although Lyons and its predecessors involved injunctive relief, whereas [Plaintiff] seeks declaratory relief, we do not distinguish Lyons on this basis.”).

Here the District argues that Mr. Jefferson has no standing to seek declaratory and injunctive relief because he has not shown any certainly impending future injury. See Def. Mem. ...