Miller v. Goggin

1

JOHN RYAN MILLER, Plaintiff v. THOMAS GOGGIN, et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 22-3329-KSM

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania

April 1, 2024

MEMORANDUM

Marston, J.

Plaintiff John Ryan Miller has brought the instant action against a variety of Octorara School District officials, the District Attorney of Chester County, and various law enforcement officials. He alleges that the enforcement of the Octorara School District's public participation policy (Policy 903) and a related conspiracy among the Defendants violated his constitutional rights. Following this Court's opinions addressing the numerous motions to dismiss filed by the over 80 defendants in this matter (Doc. Nos. 278, 283 285), Plaintiff filed an Amended Complaint in an attempt to address the various deficiencies that the Court identified. (Doc. No. 299). Before the Court now are motions to dismiss that Amended Complaint from Defendants Lisa Bowman, Jeff Curtis, Brian Fox, Sam Ganow, Jill Hardy, Matt Hurley Charlie Koennecker, Brian Norris, Michelle Orner, John Propper, Lisa Yelovich, Jared Zimmerman, (the “Octorara Defendants”) (Doc. No. 312), District Attorney Debra Ryan (Doc. No. 301), and Detective John O'Donnell (Doc No. 302). For the reasons set forth below, the Court will grant these motions in their entirety.

I. Background

The Court detailed the factual allegations underlying this action at length in its prior opinions. (Doc. No. 285; see also Doc. No. 254 (the Court's Memorandum on Defendant's motion for more definite statement in which the Court detailed the factual allegations in the initial Complaint).) Because the Amended Complaint adds little to what the Court previously described, and because the parties are intimately familiar with the factual allegations set forth in Plaintiff's Amended Complaint, we will refrain from repeating that factual background here. Instead, the Court will provide just a summary of the procedural history.

Plaintiff filed this lawsuit on August 18, 2022. (Doc. No. 1.) His original Complaint asserted ten counts against 84 defendants, arising out of alleged violations of the First Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, two federal criminal statutes, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 242, 2071, and the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act. (Id. at ¶¶ 330-412.) The Court interpreted Plaintiffs First Amendment challenge to have the following four sub-arguments: 1) Policy 903, which is the Octorara School District's policy that details the procedure for public comment at school board meetings, was unconstitutional on its face; 2) Policy 903 was unconstitutional as applied to Plaintiff; 3) the Octorara School District's social media policy was unconstitutional and 4) Defendants retaliated against Plaintiff for exercising his First Amendment rights. All Defendants filed motions to dismiss, which the Court addressed in three separate opinions. The first opinion, issued on March 31, 2023, dismissed Plaintiff's claims arising under the two federal criminal statutes, reasoning that these statutes provide no basis for private enforcement through a civil action. (Doc. No. 278.) The Court's next opinion, issued on May 4, 2023, dismissed numerous Defendants due to Plaintiff's failure to respond to their motions to dismiss. (Doc. No. 283.) And finally, on May 5, 2023, the Court issued a 58-page opinion exhaustively addressing motions to dismiss from Defendants Ryan, O'Donnell, Goggin, Sassa, Dougherty, and the Octorara Defendants. (Doc. No. 285.)

In its May 5, 2023 opinion, the Court granted Defendants' motions to dismiss with respect to most of Plaintiff's claims. First, the Court dismissed all claims against Defendants Bowman, Curtis, Ganow, Hurley, Koennecker, Norris, Yelovich, Zimmerman, and Hardy, and all claims, except the civil conspiracy claim, against Defendants Ryan, Goggin, O'Donnell, Sassa, and Dougherty due to Plaintiff's failure to allege facts demonstrating their personal involvement in the conduct at issue. (Id. at 10-17.) Second, the Court addressed Plaintiff's First Amendment claims, holding that Policy 903's requirement that individuals state their name and residency, its prohibition on participants directly addressing individual board members, and its purported bar on statements that are “abusive,” “irrelevant,” “offensive,” “inappropriate,” or “personal attacks”^[1] were constitutional on their face. (Id. at 18-28.) The Court also held that Plaintiff had not sufficiently alleged that Policy 903 was unconstitutional as applied to him because he had not shown that the Defendants wielded Policy 903 to prevent him from speaking. (Id. at 28-30.) And the Court found that the Defendants' policy of precluding all comments on their social media sites was not viewpoint specific, and thus did not violate the First Amendment. (Id. at 30-34.) Third, the Court dismissed Plaintiff's claim under the Sunshine Act, because as a matter of law, he could not bring forth such a claim against individual defendants. (Id. at 4143.) All of these claims were dismissed without prejudice (id. at 40), except for the Sunshine Act claim, which was dismissed with prejudice (id. at 43).

The Court did permit three claims to go forward, albeit in a limited manner. First, the Court held that Plaintiff had sufficiently alleged a claim for First Amendment retaliation against Defendants Orner, Fox, and Propper related to their alerting the police when Plaintiff arrived at his second school board meeting.^[2] (Id. at 36-39.) However, the Court dismissed Plaintiffs First Amendment retaliation claim related to Orner and Fox's purported false report to the state police that Plaintiff was being disruptive during a March 21, 2022 school board meeting, reasoning that the facts in the Complaint showed Plaintiff had in fact been disruptive. (Id. at 39-40.) Second, the Court held that Plaintiff had stated a class of one equal protection claim under the Fourteenth Amendment against Defendants Orner, Fox, and Propper, through his allegation that his removal from the school board meeting and subsequent ban from school property was arbitrary and different than how the school board treated other disruptive participants. (Id. at 43-47.) And finally, the Court held that Plaintiff had stated a claim for civil conspiracy under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Defendants O'Donnell and Ryan as to the First Amendment retaliation claim, but not as to his equal protection clause claim. (Doc. No. 47-52.) However, the Court found that these conspiracy claims were redundant to other existing claims against Defendants Orner, Fox, and Propper, and therefore dismissed these claims with prejudice. The Court also dismissed these claims without prejudice against Defendants Goggin, Sassa, and Dougherty, for lack of personal involvement. (Id.)

The Court granted Plaintiff leave to file an amended complaint if he could address the various deficiencies set forth in the Court's opinion. (Id. at 40, 52.) And after requesting and receiving an extension (Doc. Nos. 292, 293), Plaintiff filed his Amended Complaint on June 23, 2023 (Doc. No. 299).

Plaintiff's Amended Complaint appears to consist of his entire original complaint, including those claims previously dismissed with prejudice (Counts VIII and IX), with additional commentary in redline under most paragraphs.^[3] (Doc. No. 299.) With the few substantive exceptions identified later in this opinion, this commentary largely consists of Plaintiff referring to his proposed supplemental complaint (see, e.g., id. at ¶¶ 338-412), lamenting the dismissal of other Defendants (see, e.g., id. at ¶¶ 21, 202, 365), asserting that he has evidence to present to the jury without detailing the nature of this evidence (see, e.g., id. at ¶¶ 47-48, 51-56, 129), describing the off-ramp he has provided to Defendants (see, e.g., id. at ¶¶ 164, 288, 355, 365, 437), and outlining his hopes on what discovery might reveal (see, e.g., id. at ¶¶ 84, 87, 89, 96-97).^[4] All remaining Defendants subsequently filed motions to dismiss. (Doc. Nos. 301, 302, 312.)

The same day that he filed his Amended Complaint, Plaintiff also filed a motion for leave to file a supplemental complaint. (Doc. No. 300.) Plaintiff had previously sought such leave (Doc. No. 294), but the Court denied it without prejudice due to his failure to attach his proposed supplement. (Doc. No. 295.) After receiving and reviewing briefing as to this issue, the Court denied Plaintiff leave to file a supplemental complaint. (Doc. No. 325.)

II. Legal Standard

“To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must 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) (quotation marks omitted). “A claim has facial plausibility when the Plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id. “The plausibility standard is not akin to a ‘probability requirement.'” Id. Factual allegations must be “enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level,” and a “complaint may proceed even if it strikes a savvy judge that actual proof of those facts is improbable, and that a recovery is very remote and unlikely.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555-56 (2007) (quotation marks omitted).

That said, “[t]he tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions. Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements do not suffice.” Ashcroft, 556 U.S. at 678; see also Bell Atl. Corp., 550 U.S. at 555 (explaining that the Plaintiff must “provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief,” which “requires more than labels...