Floyd v. Santa Clara Department of Correction

Background

Michael Devin Floyd sued 24 individual defendants under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law allowing claims for constitutional violations by government officials, along with Santa Clara County and several county subdivisions. The claims arose from events after San Jose Police Department officers arrested Floyd on August 18, 2021, and brought him to the Santa Clara County Main Jail.

Floyd spent about four hours secured to a chair in the Main Jail intake lobby. Officers escorted him to a toilet twice. He later requested a telephone call and requested to use the restroom while being taken to a transport van, but officers told him he could make a call and use the restroom after arriving at Elmwood Correctional Facility.

At Elmwood, Floyd refused for about ten hours to change from civilian clothes into jail clothing, despite officers’ statements that he could make a telephone call after doing so. During that period, he used the restroom twice. An emergency response team first tried to move him to his cell, but Floyd resisted by pulling away, tensing his extremities, refusing to walk, and otherwise making movement difficult or impossible. The team resecured him to his seat and left. Later, Floyd did not resist when the team returned, and officers moved him to his cell in a wheelchair without using force or injuring him. Once in his cell, Floyd was told that a telephone was available in the dorm but that he had to wait his turn.

Summary-judgment standard

The court applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56. Summary judgment is appropriate when the evidence shows no genuine dispute over a fact that could affect the outcome and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The court considered admissible evidence and did not give weight to unsupported claims that video footage had been altered.

Excessive-force claims

The court granted summary judgment on Floyd’s excessive-force claims. Because Floyd was a pretrial detainee, the court asked whether the force was objectively reasonable under the circumstances, including the need for force, the amount used, Floyd’s injuries, efforts to limit the force, the security problem, the threat perceived by officers, and Floyd’s resistance.

The court found no genuine factual dispute about the reasonableness of the officers’ conduct. The emergency response team stopped trying to move Floyd when he resisted rather than escalating the force. The court also found that particular officers used force directed at specific safety concerns, such as preventing headbutting, controlling Floyd’s movements, and securing his arms. Floyd’s injuries apparently consisted of bruises from handcuffs, and the evidence showed that the injuries were connected to his resistance. The court also noted that the officers used no force when they returned and Floyd did not resist. The court granted summary judgment on this category of claims.

Phone-access claim

Floyd based his phone-access claim on California Penal Code section 851.5, which gives pretrial detainees a right to make three free telephone calls immediately upon booking and, except when physically impossible, no later than three hours after arrest. The statute also provides that calls must be allowed immediately upon request or as soon as practicable. The court recognized that the statute creates a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The court did not decide whether the statutory right ended three hours after arrest. It instead held that the legal uncertainty about the statute’s scope entitled the individual defendants to qualified immunity. Qualified immunity protects government officials from damages when the law did not clearly establish that their conduct was unlawful.

The court also stated that, even if section 851.5 applied beyond three hours after arrest, defendants had to provide a call as soon as practicable after Floyd requested one. The court found that the delay was largely caused by Floyd’s refusal to change into jail clothing and that officers repeatedly told him that cooperating would allow him to reach his housing unit and use the telephone sooner. The court therefore held that the conduct did not clearly violate the statute and granted summary judgment to the individual defendants on the phone-access claim.

Restroom-access claim

The court granted summary judgment on Floyd’s restroom-access claim. The Fourteenth Amendment requires adequate sanitation for pretrial detainees, but the court explained that a short-term restroom deprivation that does not pose a serious threat of harm generally is not sufficiently serious to support a constitutional claim.

The record showed that Floyd used the restroom twice at the Main Jail and twice at Elmwood. He testified that he waited no more than five minutes when he asked to use the restroom at the Main Jail, and the evidence showed that he first used the restroom at Elmwood within an hour of arriving. He also never involuntarily urinated or defecated outside a restroom. The court concluded that any temporary denial did not amount to a substantive due process violation.

County liability claim

Floyd also brought a municipal-liability claim under Monell v. Department of Social Services. A Monell claim requires a constitutional deprivation, a government policy, practice, or custom, deliberate indifference to the relevant constitutional right, and a showing that the policy, practice, or custom was the moving force behind the violation.

The court held that Floyd did not establish a constitutional deprivation based on excessive force or restroom access, and it found it unnecessary to decide whether he had shown one based on phone access. Independently, the County claim failed because Floyd offered no evidence of a County policy, practice, or custom of refusing telephone calls. His assertion that the County had a culture of refusing such requests was supported only by a single lawsuit from more than fifteen years earlier, which the court found insufficient.

Disposition

Judge Charles R. Breyer granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment in full. The opinion states that summary judgment was granted in favor of defendants on all counts.