DISCLAIMER: Any unofficial case summaries below are prepared by the clerk's office
as a courtesy to the reader. They are not part of the opinion of the court.
192512P.pdf 07/16/2021 Teresa Graham v. Shannon Barnette
U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 19-2512
U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota
[PUBLISHED] [Gruender, Author, with Wollman and Kobes, Circuit Judges]
Civil case - Civil rights. For the court's prior opinion in the matter,
see Graham v. Barnette, 970 F.3d 1075 (8th Cir. 2020). The Supreme Court
vacated this court's judgment and remanded the matter for further
consideration in light of Caniglia v. Strom, 141 S.Ct. 1596 (2021). Held:
the defendant police officers were entitled to qualified immunity on
plaintiff's claim they violated her clearly established Fourth Amendment
right to be free from unreasonable searches by entering her home without a
warrant because it was not clearly established at the time of the incident
that their actions were unreasonable in light of the circumstances;
warrantless entry was reasonable under the legal rules that were clearly
established at that time; with respect to plaintiff's claim that the
officers violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable
seizure when they seized her for a mental health exam without probable
cause to believe she was a danger to herself or others, the court again
concludes that probable cause of dangerousness is the standard that must
be met for a warrantless mental-health seizure to be reasonable under the
Fourth Amendment; assuming that the officers lacked probable cause, they
were entitled to qualified immunity because their actions did not violate
clearly established law under the lower reasonable-belief standard some
Eighth Circuit precedents suggested was the requisite standard at the
time; with respect to plaintiff's claim of retaliatory arrest, the
district court did not err in granting defendants' motion for summary
judgment as no reasonable jury could conclude that retaliatory animus was
a but-for cause of plaintiff's arrest; with respect to plaintiff's claim
that the City's policy concerning seizures for emergency mental-health
evaluation was facially unconstitutional, the district court properly
granted defendants summary judgment as the policy requires probable cause
that the person is a threat to self or others; nor did plaintiff show the
City had inadequately trained police officers regarding the policy;
finally, the officers were entitled to either statutory or official
immunity on plaintiff's state law claims.