SUE E. MYERSCOUGH, District Judge.
Plaintiff Christina Hibbert has sued several defendants, all of whom are or were employed by the Illinois State Police (ISP), under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging the defendants violated several of her civil rights. This cause is before the Court on the Motion to Dismiss (d/e [6]) filed by Defendants Leo Schmitz, Deborah Simental, Joann Johnson, Jeffrey Jacobs, and Jeffrey Knauer. For the reasons set forth below, the motion to dismiss is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART.
The following facts come from the Complaint filed in this case (d/e [1]) by Christina Hibbert and are accepted as true at the motion to dismiss stage.
Hibbert worked for the ISP from 2001 to 2014, though she was never a sworn law enforcement officer. In November 2013, Officers Agnes Kindred-Johnson and Macharia Fortson covertly installed video cameras in Conference Rooms B and C of the ISP headquarters. Those conference rooms afford ISP employees a limited amount of personal privacy—the doors have locks—and employees sometimes use the rooms to place personal phone calls or to change clothes before working out.
Unaware of the covertly-installed cameras, Hibbert used the conference rooms to change clothes and to "engage in other personal matters," and the cameras recorded Hibbert "in a state of undress." Compl. ¶¶ 67, 71. Although the purpose of installing the cameras was to "establish that [Hibbert] and a co-worker were engaging in a romantic relationship," the Complaint does not say whether the cameras actually recorded such a liaison.
On May 6, 2014, Director Schmitz filed a complaint with the ISP Merit Board seeking administrative discipline against an ISP officer named Anthony McClure.
Prompted by Officers Simental, Johnson, and Jacobs, the ISP Merit Board issued what the Complaint alleges was a "purported subpoena." The purported subpoena was to be served on Hibbert, and read, "YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED to surrender your personal cellular phone with number [redacted] immediately."
Although the ISP did not require Hibbert to carry a cell phone, Hibbert, like many ISP employees, nonetheless carried a personal iPhone, which she had owned since 2012. Hibbert used her iPhone for normal purposes: to place and take calls; to text and email family, friends, and others including lawyers, doctors, and counselors; to take and store personal photographs; and to access the internet.
On May 20, 2014, Officer Johnson handed Hibbert the subpoena while Hibbert was at her desk at the ISP headquarters building. Hibbert indicated that she did not want to turn over her iPhone and asked whether she had to do so. Officer Johnson responded that Hibbert had no choice in the matter. Hibbert asked if she could call an attorney first, and a different "ISP official" told Hibbert that she could not and that she needed to turn over the phone immediately.
Believing that she had no choice other than to do what she was told, Hibbert handed her iPhone to Officer Johnson. Hibbert was also told to provide the password to her phone, which she understood to be "a direct order." The Complaint does not identify the person who ordered Hibbert to provide her password. Hibbert gave Officer Johnson the password.
Officer Johnson gave the phone to Knauer, a non-sworn ISP employee, who downloaded a complete digital copy of all of the information on Hibbert's iPhone, including contact information, private emails, text messages, photographs, financial information, and medical information. Knauer then gave this digital information to Officers Simental, Johnson, and Jacobs. The officers returned Hibbert's iPhone, but they retained the digital information. The ISP currently retains a complete record of the information from the iPhone.
Hibbert's employment with the ISP ended shortly afterward, on July 9, 2014.
The Complaint raises two claims. In Count 1, Hibbert claims that the taking and copying of her iPhone was an unlawful seizure under the Fourth Amendment and violated her Fourth Amendment right to privacy. Hibbert asks the Court: (1) to order ISP Director Schmitz and Officers Simental, Johnson, and Jacobs to return all copies of any information retained from her iPhone and to modify ISP policy to protect ISP employees from future Fourth Amendment violations; (2) to award Hibbert her costs and attorney's fees; and (3) to assess actual and punitive damages against Knauer and Officers Simental, Johnson, and Jacobs.
In Count 2, Hibbert claims that the covert video recording violated her Fourth Amendment right to privacy. Hibbert asks the Court: (1) to order Director Schmitz and Officer Simental to destroy all copies of any covertly recorded video of Hibbert and to modify ISP policy to ensure such recording does not occur in the future; (2) to award Hibbert her costs and attorney's fees; and (3) to assess actual and punitive damages against Officers Kindred-Johnson and Fortson.
Defendants Kindred-Johnson and Fortson, who are implicated in Count 2 only, filed an answer in response to the Complaint. The other defendants—Knauer, Director Schmitz, and Officers Simental, Johnson, and Jacobs (hereinafter, "Defendants")—have filed a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). They request that: (1) the Court deny Hibbert's requests for injunctive relief in both counts; (2) the Court dismiss Count 1 because the service and execution of an administrative subpoena does not constitute a Fourth Amendment search or seizure; (3) the Court dismiss Count 1 on absolute immunity grounds; and (4) the Court dismiss Count 1 on qualified immunity grounds.
A motion under Rule 12(b)(6) challenges the sufficiency of the complaint.
When considering a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), the Court construes the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, accepting all well-pleaded allegations as true and construing all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff's favor.
In the Complaint, Hibbert seeks equitable relief in the form of: (1) the return of all copies of any information Defendants obtained from her phone; (2) the destruction of any and all copies of video footage taken in the conference room; and (3) modification of ISP policies such that actions similar to the search of her phone and the videotaping of the conference room are not taken against any ISP employees in the future.
Equitable relief is unavailable except when the legal remedies available to plaintiff are inadequate, such as when the harm to the plaintiff is ongoing or there is a likelihood that the harm will recur.
Defendants argue that they do not plan to do anything with the phone information and the video footage, such that injunctive relief is an inappropriate remedy for Hibbert's "past exposure" to allegedly illegal conduct. Def. Mem. (d/e [7]) at 4. Hibbert, on the other hand, argues that she continues to suffer harm by the ISP's continued possession of the personal information from her phone and of the video footage in the form of "stress and emotional distress" from the invasion of privacy. Compl. ¶¶ 47-48, 76. The Court finds that Hibbert's claims of ongoing stress due to the continued invasion of privacy sufficiently state ongoing adverse effects to survive Defendants' motion to dismiss. Although return of the information copied from her phone and destruction of the video footage would not return Hibbert to the status quo ante, this Court may order such relief as a partial remedy to Hibbert's claim of ongoing stress caused by ISP's continued possession of such items.
However, Hibbert can no longer be affected by ISP employee policies because she is no longer an employee. Because Hibbert is no longer directly affected by ISP policies and actions towards its employees, she does not have a sufficient legal interest to pray for relief in the form of a change to ISP policies.
Count 1 of the Complaint alleges that the taking and copying of Hibbert's iPhone was an unlawful seizure and violated her Fourth Amendment right to privacy. Defendants argue that Hibbert has failed to state a claim because the facts set forth in the Count 1 do not constitute a search or seizure under the Fourth Amendment. For the following reasons, Defendants' request for dismissal of Count I for failure to state a Fourth Amendment search or seizure is DENIED.
Defendants argue that Hibbert has not stated facts constituting a search or seizure because service and execution of a subpoena issued by a government agency, which Defendants call an "administrative subpoena," on a government employee does not implicate the Fourth Amendment. Hibbert argues that the subpoena was invalid because it was beyond the scope of the Merit Board's statutory powers and because Defendants improperly treated the subpoena as a warrant. Pl. Mem. in Opp. (d/e [9]) at 8-9; Compl. ¶¶ 29-30.
The Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures are enforceable against the states by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.
A seizure occurs when a person's freedom is restrained by means of physical force or a show of authority, such as a threat of arrest.
On the other hand, the mere fact that an officer acts pursuant to a subpoena issued by a government employer does not prevent a finding that the officer used a show of authority constituting a seizure; the question is, considering all the circumstances surrounding the encounter, "whether reasonable people in the position of the subordinate officers would have feared
Here, taking the facts set forth in the Complaint as true, Officer Johnson handed Hibbert an administrative subpoena and told Hibbert that she had to relinquish her phone. Unlike the plaintiff in
However, questions of fact remain about the service of the subpoena and how Defendants obtained Hibbert's iPhone and password. Without elucidation of the circumstances surrounding the encounter, the allegation that Defendants told Hibbert she had to surrender her phone could indicate a threat of employment discipline or a show of authority signaling that Hibbert was not free to decline to comply.
Because questions of fact remain regarding the circumstances in which Defendants served the subpoena on Hibbert and took her phone, the Court cannot conclude at the motion to dismiss stage that a reasonable employee in Hibbert's shoes would not have feared arrest or detention for failing to comply with the subpoena. Consequently, the Court DENIES Defendants' request to dismiss Count 1 for failure to state a Fourth Amendment seizure.
Hibbert also alleges that Defendants violated her Fourth Amendment right to privacy by copying and maintaining a copy of the personal information contained on Hibbert's iPhone. Defendants argue that the Complaint fails to state a Fourth Amendment search.
To state a Fourth Amendment search, a plaintiff must establish that the official's action infringed "an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable."
The Complaint alleges that Hibbert had a subjective expectation of privacy in her iPhone. Compl. ¶ 44. Whether an employee's expectation of privacy is reasonable is determined on a case-by-case basis, taking into account a particular office's practices and procedures.
The Court finds that the facts as alleged in the Complaint indicate that Hibbert had a reasonable expectation of privacy in her phone. The nature of "smart" phones is that they contain an immense amount of information about the user.
Indeed, the Complaint alleges that Hibbert's phone contained personal information including communications with friends, family, physicians, private photographs, and personal financial information. Compl. ¶ 45. Further, the phone at issue here was Hibbert's personal cell phone, rather than an employer-issued phone. The phone was also password-protected. The Complaint further alleges that ISP did not prohibit employees from having their personal cell phones while at work and that most administrative ISP employees, like Hibbert, carried their personal cell phones in the office.
By copying the full set of information on the phone, Defendants infringed on that reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court accordingly finds that the Complaint sufficiently alleges a search under the Fourth Amendment.
Defendants request dismissal of Count 1 on the basis of absolute immunity. Quasi-judicial bodies are entitled to absolute immunity when carrying out duties that are functionally equivalent to those of a judge or prosecutor.
However, the actions Defendants took to enforce the subpoena consisted of serving it on Hibbert and making statements to ensure her compliance, ordering her to provide the phone's password, and copying the information from the phone. In those respects, the nature of Defendants' actions cannot reasonably be interpreted as those of a judge or prosecutor. Rather, such actions are the investigative actions of an executive branch of government, and thus are not entitled to absolute immunity.
Defendants also seek dismissal of Count 1 on the grounds of qualified immunity. Defendants are shielded from civil damages claims by qualified immunity if they did not violate a clearly established constitutional or statutory right.
A right is clear if it provides reasonable notice to government officials that certain conduct violates the constitutional right.
Reasonable notice does not require that the exact action at issue has previously been held unlawful, so long as its unlawfulness is "apparent."
In this case, the particularized right at issue in Count I is Hibbert's right to be free from Defendants' taking her personal smart phone pursuant to an administrative subpoena, when the officers serving the subpoena said Hibbert had to relinquish the phone, denied her request to speak with her attorney prior to complying, and said that Hibbert must immediately comply, and then made a complete digital copy of the entire contents of the phone. Yet, the Court is unaware of existing case law that addresses these particular circumstances. Nonetheless, the Court finds that the relevant caselaw made the unlawfulness of the facts pled in Count I of the Complaint clear.
Defendants argue that any right to be free from an administrative subpoena for a personal cell phone was unclear because no existing case so holds. However, such a formulation of the right at issue fails to take into account the manner in which the officers served the subpoena and the purpose of the search.
It was clearly established at the time of the seizure of the phone that, while a threat of disciplinary action by an employer does not rise to the level of a seizure, service of an administrative subpoena can rise to the level of a Fourth Amendment seizure if the officer uses a show of authority such that the individual does not feel free to refuse.
It was also clear that the scope of a warrantless workplace search must be reasonably related to the purpose of the search. A government employer does not need a warrant for a work-related search; such searches need only be reasonable in the circumstances.
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The Complaint does not allege any purpose for the search in this case. Because the purpose of the search remains a question of fact, the Court cannot conclude that Defendants did not conduct an unreasonable search by copying the entire contents of Hibbert's phone. If, as implied by the pleadings, the purpose of the search was to investigate workplace misconduct related to an office romance, Defendants were on notice that failure to limit the search to certain types of data, such as communications with certain individuals or made during certain time periods, violates the Fourth Amendment.
Finally, it was well-established that the warrant exception for work-related searches only applies if the purpose of the search was in fact work-related.
From the facts pled in the Complaint, the Court cannot conclude that Defendants did not violate a clear constitutional right and were entitled to qualified immunity. Defendants' request for dismissal of Count 1 on the basis of qualified immunity is accordingly DENIED.
For the reasons above, Defendants' motion to dismiss (d/e [6]) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. Specifically:
Hibbert's request for damages in Count 2, which the motion to dismiss does not address, also survives.