Lovett v. United States

1

AARON LOVETT, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants.

No. 1:23-cv-02879 (TNM)

United States District Court, District of Columbia

September 25, 2024

MEMORANDUM ORDER

TREVOR N. McFADDEN, U.S.D.J.

Aaron Lovett alleges that, as he was returning home one night federal agents accosted him, tased him, and beat him. More officers from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) looked on and either stood idly by or actively participated. Defendants have moved to dismiss the Complaint on a host of grounds. For the reasons below, several of Lovett's claims survive, but others cannot. He failed to state a claim for relief against the federal agents because this constitutes a new context under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S 388 (1971), and special factors counsel against extending that tenuous precedent here. And though most of Lovett's claims against the MPD agents are viable, he fails to state a claim for municipal liability against the District of Columbia underMonell v. New York City Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978).

I.

The facts below come from Lovett's First Amended Complaint (Compl.), ECF No. 20, and the Court accepts them “as true” for now. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009).

Lovett is a D.C. resident who lives near the Cleveland Park neighborhood. Compl. ¶¶ 2, 14. In mid-December 2022, he was returning home in the wee hours of the morning when, after parking his car, several uniformed police officers confronted him. Id. ¶¶ 14-15, 17. As he was getting out of his truck, several officers stopped him and claimed that he lacked license plates on his vehicle. Id. ¶¶ 17-19. Although he told the officers that he did, they “continued to detain” him as they “walked around the parked vehicle and then ran a check of the plate through” a government database. Id. ¶¶ 20-21. Things went downhill from there.

That database check returned an alert that the car was stolen. Compl. ¶¶ 21. That was correct-sort of. Id. ¶ 22. The car belonged to Lovett's girlfriend, who allowed him to use it. Id. He had reported the car stolen several weeks earlier but managed to recover it and failed to notify the police. Id. Although Lovett informed the officers of this, they were unconvinced. Id. ¶¶ 22-23. Instead, they called for backup, surrounded Lovett, and began shouting orders at him. Id. ¶¶ 21, 23.

Lovett demanded to know why he was being detained, but the officers refused to answer. Compl. ¶ 28. Instead, they became physical. They “push[ed]” him, and then “instructed him to turn around and put his hands over his head.” Id. ¶¶ 28-29. Lovett complied; he turned around, faced the wall of his apartment building, and put his hands over his head as ordered. Id. ¶ 30. But the officers did not question him, search him, or handcuff him. Instead, with his face to the wall and his back to them, one of the officers tased Lovett in the back. Id. ¶¶ 30-31.

Lovett's body “started spasming” from the pain. Id. ¶ 33. He “cried out and fell over,” and was “momentarily rendered speechless.” Id. ¶¶ 32-33. Still, the officers did not relent. Instead, as Lovett writhed in pain on the ground, an officer tased him again. Id. ¶ 34. Lovett screamed out in pain, “writhing around on the cement.” Id. ¶ 35. Four of the officers “climbed onto his back and body” to subdue him. Id. They again refused to explain “why he was being detained.” Id. ¶ 36. Finally, the officers arrested Lovett and called an ambulance. Id. ¶¶ 38-39.

Lovett does not specify when the MPD officers arrived and began participating in this encounter. But he does say, generally, that “he is aware that officers from both the United States Secret Service and the Metropolitan Police Department were present at various points.” Id. ¶ 16.

II.

Defendants move to dismiss the Complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). A complaint survives a Rule 12(b)(6) challenge if, and only if, it contains “sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (cleaned up). This standard ensures that-assuming Lovett could back up everything he pleads in his Complaint-there would be some law under which the Defendants would be liable to him. So the Court “treat[s] the complaint's factual allegations as true,” Sparrow v. United Airlines, 216 F.3d 1111, 1113 (D.C. Cir. 2000), and then asks whether those allegations give rise to “the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678.

III.

Lovett sues two categories of Defendants. First, the United States and a class of known and unknown Secret Service agents. Compl. at 1-2. Call these the Federal Defendants. Second, he sues the District of Columbia and a set of unknown MPD officers. Id. Call these the District Defendants. The Court first addresses Lovett's claims against the Federal Defendants and then those against the District Defendants.

A.

The Federal Defendants have not moved to dismiss the claims against the United States, so those endure. That means the only claims to address here are those against the Secret Service officers. These claims, which purport to proceed under the inferred constitutional cause of action identified in Bivens, 403 U.S. at 392, assert violations of Lovett's Fourth Amendment rights. Namely, unreasonable seizure, Compl. ¶¶ 111-20; excessive force, id. ¶¶ 121-35; failure to intervene, id. ¶¶ 136-47; and conspiracy to commit constitutional violations, id. ¶¶ 149-59. But each of these claims falters for the same reason: Lovett lacks a cause of action.

Lovett tries to sue the Secret Service officers directly under the Constitution. But the Constitution “does not in so many words provide for its enforcement by an award of money damages.” Bivens, 403 U.S. at 396. Rather, the Constitution generally establishes primary rules regulating the conduct of state actors and leaves it to Congress to decide how and when to allow enforcement of those rules. See Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482, 491 (2022). Congress has not chosen to authorize suits against federal officials for all constitutional violations. Hernandez v. Mesa, 589 U.S. 93, 101 (2020).

Instead, for the first two hundred years of this nation's history, individuals seeking recourse for federal officers' violations of their constitutional rights would proceed through ordinary tort suits. That is, the aggrieved citizen would sue the federal officer in tort, asserting a state cause of action-say, trespass to chattels or battery. See Buchanan v. Barr, 71 F.4th 1003, 1014 (D.C. Cir. 2023) (Walker, J., concurring). The federal officer would raise public authority as a defense, arguing, essentially, that the exercise of his official duties permitted him to trespass or to batter the plaintiff. Id. In reply, the plaintiff would then show that the officer's conduct violated the Constitution, and that a public authority defense was therefore unavailable to him. Id.; see also Mesa, 589 U.S. at 115-16 (Thomas, J., concurring).

Bivens represented a novel departure from this practice. Under Bivens, plaintiffs no longer needed to identify any cause of action to bring a claim that a federal official violated their Fourth Amendment rights. Bivens, 403 U.S. at 392. Instead, Bivens itself supplied the cause of action. Id. In quick succession, the Court extended its new inferred cause of action twice: first to a Fifth Amendment Due Process claim, then to an Eighth Amendment Cruel and Unusual Punishment claim. See generally Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228 (1979); Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14 (1980).

But the Supreme Court has now corrected course. Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120, 13132 (2017). Since 1980, the Court has refused on no fewer than 11 occasions to extend Bivens any further. Boule, 596 U.S. at 486. It has refrained, though, from overruling Bivens altogether. Id. at 491. Instead, it has left it as a kind of “law trapped in amber.” Cf. United States v. Rahimi, 144 S.Ct. 1889, 1897 (2024). Bivens thus applies to the situations at issue in Bivens, Davis, and Carlson-and not much else. See Buchanan, 71 F.4th at 1007.

Courts being asked to invoke Bivens follow a two-step approach. First, they ask whether the claim involves “a new Bivens context.” Boule, 596 U.S. at 492. That is, whether their case is “different in a meaningful way” from Bivens, Davis, or Carlson. Ziglar, 582 U.S. at 139. That may be if the defendants are of a different type than the DEA agents in Bivens. Id. at 140. Or because the right asserted is different. Id. Or because the action is framed at a different level of generality. Id. The list goes on. Id. The point is, if there is any meaningful deviation from the contours of the three recognized Bivens cases, a new Bivens context is involved.

With no new context, courts treat Bivens as the controlling precedent and allow the claim to proceed. Buchanan, 71 F.4th at 1007; see also Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am. Exp., Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 (1989). But if the case does present a new Bivens context, courts then ask whether there are any “special factors” that indicate “that the Judiciary is . . . less equipped than Congress to weigh the costs and benefits of allowing a damages action to proceed.” Boule, 596 U.S. at 492 (cleaned up). “If there is even a single reason to pause before applying Bivens in a new context, a court may not recognize a Bivens remedy.” Id. (cleaned up).

Now to apply those principles to this case. The Federal Defendants argue that this is a new Bivens context, and that the Court may not recognize a Bivens remedy here. They are right.

First this case arises in a new Bivens context. To start, at least two of the claims against...