Kosey v. County of Santa Cruz

Background

Jun E. Kosey, proceeding without a lawyer, sued the County of Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department, and individual defendants. Kosey alleged that defendants failed to take appropriate action after zir reports of sexual assault and arrested zir after ze reported domestic violence on April 15, 2022. Kosey asserted claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1986, along with claims for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

The defendants moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal for failure to state a legally sufficient claim. The court considered Kosey’s third amended complaint and did not consider facts raised only in Kosey’s opposition.

Rulings on the Claims

First Amendment petition claim

The court denied the motion to dismiss claim 1. It held that Kosey sufficiently alleged a claim based on the deputy’s statement that both the reporting victim and the alleged perpetrator would be arrested in a domestic-violence case, followed by Kosey’s arrest after making the April 15 report. The court reasoned that these allegations could reasonably chill a person of ordinary firmness from reporting domestic violence in the future.

The court did not find sufficient allegations based on defendants’ failure to investigate Kosey’s three earlier sexual-assault reports. It also found insufficient allegations that statements by Kosey’s public defender were made by a municipal public official or were connected to the lawsuit. Nevertheless, the motion to dismiss claim 1 was denied because the April 15 arrest allegations stated a claim.

Fourteenth Amendment due-process and equal-protection claims

In the discussion of claim 2, the court granted the motion to dismiss the substantive due-process claim without leave to amend. The court said that the failure to investigate the earlier reports was not adequately alleged as a substantive-due-process violation and that the April 15 arrest involved a pretrial deprivation of liberty governed by Fourth Amendment principles rather than substantive due process.

In the discussion of the equal-protection claim, the court denied the motion to dismiss. It held that Kosey sufficiently alleged, under a “class of one” theory, that the Sheriff’s Department treated domestic-violence reporting victims differently from victims of other assaults by arresting the reporting victim. The court found the allegations about the earlier sexual-assault investigations insufficient, including because the alleged gender-related statements lacked enough detail.

The written conclusion conflicts with this discussion. It says the court denied the motion as to substantive due process and granted it as to equal protection without leave to amend. Because the body of the opinion states the opposite dispositions, the exact ruling on claim 2 is unclear from the supplied text.

Local-government liability

The court denied the motion to dismiss claim 3, which alleged that the County and Sheriff’s Department were liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 because a policy or custom caused the constitutional violations. The court found that the deputy’s alleged statement about categorically arresting domestic-violence reporting victims, together with Kosey’s allegation that ze encountered similarly situated women in jail, could support an alleged widespread custom or policy maintained with deliberate indifference to constitutional rights.

The court granted the motion to dismiss claim 4, alleging failure to train, without leave to amend. It found Kosey’s allegations vague and conclusory and insufficient to show that the County and Sheriff’s Department failed to train deputies to respond properly to domestic-violence reports.

Supervisor liability

The court granted the motion to dismiss claim 5, alleging supervisory liability against Sergeant Zachary West, without leave to amend. The court found the allegations vague and conclusory and tied primarily to the earlier sexual-assault reports, which did not support the surviving claims.

Defamation and civil-rights conspiracy-related claim

The court granted the motion to dismiss claim 6 for defamation without leave to amend. It stated that the court had not allowed Kosey to add new claims and that the alleged statements arose from an unrelated criminal case and matters separate from the central allegations.

The court granted the motion to dismiss claim 7 under 42 U.S.C. § 1986 without leave to amend. Section 1986 provides a claim for failing to prevent certain civil-rights violations, but the court explained that such a claim requires a valid conspiracy claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1985. It found that Kosey had not alleged facts showing an agreement among defendants to deprive zir of constitutional rights.

Emotional-distress claims

The court denied the motion to dismiss claim 8 for intentional infliction of emotional distress. It found that, taking Kosey’s allegations as true at this stage, arresting the reporting victim at a hospital after treatment for assault injuries could be extreme and outrageous conduct. The court also found that Kosey alleged severe emotional distress, including becoming despondent and seeking medical and psychological care. The surviving basis for this claim was the statement and arrest following the April 15 domestic-violence report.

The court granted the motion to dismiss claim 9 for negligent infliction of emotional distress without leave to amend. It found that Kosey had not supplied additional facts curing the deficiencies identified in the earlier order.

Individual Defendants

The court dismissed Deputies Emma Ramponi, Leland Blankenship, Detective August Waltrip, and Deputy Phillip Major because the complaint alleged that they were involved only in the earlier sexual-assault reports, which did not support surviving claims. Sergeant Zachary West remained a defendant because Kosey alleged that he approved the April 15 arrest.

More Definite Statement

The court denied defendants’ request for a more definite statement under Rule 12(e). It found that defendants had not identified allegations so vague or ambiguous that they could not reasonably prepare a response and that the motion papers showed defendants were on notice of the legal theories asserted.

Disposition

The court granted in part and denied in part the motion to dismiss without leave to amend. Specifically, the court denied the motion as to claims 1, 3, and 8; granted the motion as to claims 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 without leave to amend; and, in the body of the opinion, granted the motion as to the substantive-due-process portion of claim 2 without leave to amend while denying it as to the equal-protection portion. The conclusion section reverses those two claim-2 dispositions, creating an unresolved textual conflict.