The Fifth Circuit recently held that two high school softball coaches had qualified immunity from liability for allegedly outing a lesbian student to her mother. Wyatt v. Fletcher, 718 F.3d 496 (5th Cir. 2013).
Plaintiff Barbara Wyatt brought suit on behalf of her minor daughter S.W. against two high school softball coaches. The suit alleged that the coaches questioned S.W. in a locked locker room about S.W.'s relationship with an 18-year-old woman, and then revealed S.W.'s sexual orientation to her mother in a subsequent parent conference. Wyatt claimed that the coaches' disclosure of S.W.'s sexuality to Wyatt violated S.W.'s Fourteenth Amendment right to privacy. She also alleged that the coaches' disciplinary confrontation of S.W. in a locked locker room constituted an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment.
The issue before the Fifth Circuit was the coaches' defense of qualified immunity, which protects government officials from liability when they reasonably could have believed that their conduct was legal. In order for a plaintiff to overcome a defense of qualified immunity, she must: (1) allege that the defendant violated a clearly established constitutional or statutory right; and (2) show that the defendant's...
