Hudacko v. Lee

Background

Edward Allyn Hudacko sued seven remaining defendants: Rosenthal, Lee, Ehrensaft, Orr, Bigger, Harkins, and Underhill. The opinion identifies Rosenthal, Lee, and Ehrensaft as University of California, San Francisco medical or psychological professionals; Orr as the legal director of UCSF’s Child and Adolescent Gender Center; Bigger and Harkins as attorneys involved in the family-law case; and Underhill as Hudacko’s ex-wife and the mother of the minor child.

The dispute arose from a 2020 family-law case. The state court gave Underhill legal custody and authorized her to make decisions about the minor child’s health, education, and welfare without Hudacko’s consent. The custody order allowed the child to pursue UCSF services concerning gender identity and to begin hormone therapy if UCSF recommended it. It separately stated that the child could not undergo gender-identity-related surgery before age 18 without both parents’ written agreement or a court order. Hudacko alleged that defendants violated this provision when the minor received a Supprelin implant on August 4, 2021. The opinion notes that whether the implant was surgery or hormone therapy had previously been reserved for consideration on the merits.

The Second Amended Complaint asserted three causes of action: a substantive due-process claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute; fraud by concealment; and negligent infliction of emotional distress. Hudacko alleged that the defendants participated in a broader plan involving the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and concealed the plan from him.

Requests for Judicial Notice

The court denied Hudacko’s requests to take judicial notice of six historical medical studies and experiments, including Tuskegee and MKULTRA, because their existence did not concern the immediate parties and several sources were Wikipedia pages. It also denied requests concerning legal filings from other cases because those filings were irrelevant to the current parties and proceeding.

The court granted Hudacko’s request to take judicial notice of Harkins’s report, although it found the report unhelpful to his claims. The court also granted the UCSF defendants’ requests to take judicial notice that the minor was no longer a minor and of the state-court custody order.

Rooker-Feldman Argument

Defendants argued that the case was barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which generally prevents a federal district court from functioning as an appeals court reviewing a state-court judgment. The court agreed that the doctrine would bar challenges to the validity of the custody order itself. It nevertheless denied defendants’ motion under that doctrine because Hudacko’s federal claims did not require the court to review or overturn the custody order. The order was relevant to the merits, but the court was not persuaded that deciding the federal claims would undermine it.

Section 1983 Claim

A claim under § 1983 requires a plaintiff to allege both a violation of a federal right and conduct by a person acting under color of state law. The court concluded that the UCSF defendants were state actors in their individual capacities. It rejected their argument that the Second Amended Complaint alleged only official-capacity claims and explained that personal liability may arise when a state official, acting under state law, personally causes a deprivation of a federal right.

The court found that Harkins, a private attorney appointed to represent the minor in the family-law proceedings, was not a state actor. It relied on a Ninth Circuit decision holding that a state-appointed guardian ad litem’s actions were not fairly attributable to the state.

The court also considered whether Harkins, Bigger, and Underhill were “de facto state actors.” Under the joint-action test, a private person may be treated as a state actor when the person and state officials substantially cooperate to deprive someone of constitutional rights. The court held that Hudacko’s allegations of a conspiracy or “meeting of the minds” were conclusory and lacked specific supporting facts. It therefore found that Bigger, Harkins, and Underhill were not de facto state actors for purposes of § 1983.

The court next addressed qualified immunity, a protection that generally shields government officials from damages liability unless they violated a clearly established constitutional or statutory right. The court did not decide whether Hudacko’s constitutional rights were actually violated. Instead, it held that the claimed right had not been clearly established in the specific circumstances: a parent whose general medical decision-making authority had been removed by a custody order seeking to veto a particular medical procedure that the custodial parent and minor accepted.

The court also concluded that reasonable doctors or lawyers could have believed the Supprelin implant was part of, or related to, hormone therapy allowed by the custody order. The order’s correct interpretation was therefore not beyond debate. The court held that the UCSF defendants were entitled to qualified immunity.

The court granted the motion to dismiss the § 1983 claim as to Ehrensaft, Rosenthal, Lee, and Orr based on qualified immunity. It granted dismissal as to Harkins, Bigger, and Underhill because Hudacko had not pleaded facts showing they were de facto state actors. The court dismissed the § 1983 claim with prejudice.

State-Law Claims

The court exercised supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claims rather than sending them to state court, explaining that this would avoid requiring the parties to relitigate the issues there.

For fraud by concealment, the court held that Hudacko had not alleged that Rosenthal, Ehrensaft, Lee, or Underhill owed him a duty to disclose information. The court dismissed the claim as to those defendants. The court did not reconsider the claim against Orr because that claim had previously been dismissed without leave to amend. The opinion also states that Hudacko had not named Underhill in the caption, but the court considered the claim as if she had been named because leave to amend had previously been granted as to her.

For negligent infliction of emotional distress, the court held that Hudacko had not alleged facts establishing a legal duty of care owed to him. The court noted that the Second Amended Complaint repeated largely the same allegations that had previously been found insufficient. It dismissed the claim. Orr was not included in the analysis because Hudacko conceded that the claim against Orr had previously been dismissed without leave to amend.

Disposition

The court granted the motions to dismiss all causes of action. For the § 1983 claim, it granted dismissal as to Ehrensaft, Rosenthal, Lee, and Orr based on qualified immunity and as to Harkins, Bigger, and Underhill because they were not adequately alleged to be de facto state actors. It granted dismissal of the fraud-by-concealment and negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress claims because Hudacko had not pleaded all required elements. The opinion expressly states that the § 1983 claim was dismissed with prejudice but does not add a prejudice qualifier to the dismissal of the two state-law claims.