Itemid Al Matar v. D.R. Borchardt et al
Filing
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MEMORANDUM Opinion and Order Signed by the Honorable John Robert Blakey on 5/19/2017. Mailed notice(gel, )
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
ITEMID AL MATAR,
Plaintiff,
v.
D.R. BORCHARDT, et al.,
Case No. 16-cv-8033
Judge John Robert Blakey
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Plaintiff Itemid Al Mater (“Plaintiff”) has brought various constitutional
claims against both individual Chicago Police Officers and the City of Chicago,
pursuant to Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978). Currently pending
before the Court is the City’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s Monell claim. [28] at 113. The motion is denied, for the reasons explained below.
I.
Background 1
On July 4, 2015, Plaintiff passed several Chicago Police Officers on the stairs
of the train stop located at the intersection of State Street and Lake. [15] at 2.
After she had walked passed the officers, they followed her up the stairs, threw her
to the ground, and ripped off her hijab and niqab.
Id.
This use of force was
unprovoked. Id. at 3. Plaintiff claims that the individual officers are liable for,
inter alia, use of excessive force, failure to intervene, false arrest, unlawful search,
and violation of her freedom of religious expression. See generally [15] at 1-8.
This section is based upon the allegations contained in Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint, [15] at 1-11,
which are taken as true for the purposes of this Opinion only.
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With respect to the City specifically, Plaintiff claims that it “has failed to
monitor, supervise or train [its] officers,” and that this “lack of supervision and
training fosters a climate in the ranks of Chicago Police Department that if a
citizen’s rights are violated they do not have to report it, can look the other way and
maintain a code of silence.” [15] at 9. Plaintiff additionally alleges that the City
has failed to adequately train its officers regarding “the sensitivity of religious
expression and freedom.” Id. at 10.
In support of these more general allegations, Plaintiff claims that:
•
The individual officers involved in the July 4 incident “have over thirty-five
(35) complaint registers lodged against them,” including one for
impermissible use of force against Defendant Borchardt that was sustained;
•
The jury verdict in Obrycka v. City of Chicago, Case No. 07-cv-2372 (N.D. Ill.)
and comments from Mayor Rahm Emanuel confirm the existence of a “code of
silence” at the Chicago Police Department; and
•
Since “2009, the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Chicago
has recorded and lodged into its organization over 50 incidents against
Chicago Police for what appears to be Islamic targeting.”
Id. at 9-10.
Plaintiff concludes by alleging that the “persistent and defiant code of silence
was a moving force behind” the constitutional harms she suffered, and as a “result
of the customs, policies and practices for the City of Chicago and [its] failure to
train,” the individual officers “ignored the rights of the Plaintiff,” as described
throughout the Amended Compliant. Id. at 10.
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II.
Legal Standard
A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) “challenges the sufficiency of the
complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.” Gen. Elec.
Capital Corp. v. Lease Resolution Corp., 128 F.3d 1074, 1080 (7th Cir. 1997). To
survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must first provide a “short and plain
statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief,” Fed. R. Civ. P.
8(a)(2), such that the defendant is given “fair notice” of what the claim is “and the
grounds upon which it rests.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007)
(quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47 (1957)).
Second, the complaint must contain “sufficient factual matter” to “state a
claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678
(2009) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570). That is, the allegations must raise the
possibility of relief above the “speculative level.”
E.E.O.C. v. Concentra Health
Servs. Inc., 496 F.3d 773, 776 (7th Cir. 2007). The plausibility standard “is not akin
to a ‘probability requirement,’ but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a
defendant has acted unlawfully.” Williamson v. Curran, 714 F.3d 432, 436 (7th Cir.
2013). The “amount of factual allegations required to state a plausible claim for
relief depends on the complexity of the legal theory alleged,” but “threadbare
recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory
statements, do not suffice.” Limestone Dev. Corp. v. Vill. Of Lemont, 520 F.3d 797,
803 (7th Cir. 2008). In evaluating the complaint, the Court accepts all well-pleaded
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allegations as true and draws all reasonable inferences in favor of Plaintiff. Iqbal,
556 U.S. at 678.
III.
Analysis
For liability to attach under Monell, a municipality’s policy, not its
employees, must be the source of the purportedly unconstitutional conduct. Id.;
Auriemma v. Rice, 957 F.2d 397, 399 (7th Cir. 1992) (“Municipalities are answerable
only for their own decisions and policies; they are not vicariously liable for the
constitutional torts of their agents.”). Consequently, a § 1983 complaint against a
municipality “must plead the existence of a custom or policy that was the direct
cause of the deprivation of a federal right.” Caldwell v. City of Elmwood, Ind., 959
F.2d 670, 673 (7th Cir. 1992). Specifically, Plaintiff must plead factual content that
would allow the Court to plausibly infer that: (1) she suffered the deprivation of a
constitutional right; and (2) an official custom or policy caused that deprivation.
Barwicks v. Dart, No. 14-cv-8791, 2016 WL 3418570, at *2 (N.D. Ill. June 22, 2016).
The requisite “official custom or policy” can take the form of: (1) an express
municipal policy; (2) a widespread, though unwritten, custom or practice; or (3) a
decision by a municipal agent with final policymaking authority. See Milestone v.
City of Monroe, Wis., 665 F.3d 774, 780 (7th Cir. 2011).
A.
White v. City of Chicago
A § 1983 municipal liability claim “need not meet any heightened pleading
standard, but rather must simply set forth sufficient allegations to place the court
and defendants on notice of the gravamen of the complaint.” Latuszkin v. City of
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Chicago, 250 F.3d 502, 504 (7th Cir. 2001); Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics
Intelligence and Coordination Unit, 507 U.S. 163, 168 (1993). The Seventh Circuit
recently underscored the expansive nature of this standard in White v. City of
Chicago, 829 F.3d 837, 839 (7th Cir. 2016), cert. denied sub nom., 137 S. Ct. 526
(2016).
In White, after a two-year narcotics investigation, the defendant police
officer applied for dozens of arrest warrants, including one for the plaintiff. Id. In a
later civil suit, the plaintiff claimed that the officer failed to present the judge who
issued the warrant with enough information to establish probable cause for the
arrest. Id. The plaintiff also alleged a Monell claim against the City of Chicago for
its supposed widespread practice of seeking arrest warrants upon the basis of
conclusory complaint forms. Id. at 841. The district court held that the plaintiff
had failed to state a Monell claim because his complaint solely stated that the
officer who arrested the plaintiff “acted in accordance with a widespread practice of
the police department of the City of Chicago when seeking a warrant.” Id. at 843.
According to the district court, this conclusory statement was not enough “to draw
the reasonable inference that the City maintained a policy, custom, or practice that
deprived [the plaintiff] of his constitutional rights.” Id.
The Seventh Circuit disagreed.
Id.
The court noted that the plaintiff’s
complaint cited his individual claim against the officer, and further alleged that the
officer’s conduct was in “accordance with a widespread practice of the police
department of the City of Chicago.” Id. at 844. Citing Leatherman, the court held
that this “was enough to satisfy the ‘short and plain statement of the claim’
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requirement of Rule 8(a)(2).” Id. According to the Seventh Circuit, the plaintiff
“was not required to identify every other or even one other individual who had been
arrested pursuant to a warrant obtained through the complained-of process.” Id.
(internal citation omitted).
B.
Plaintiff’s Monell Claim Survives Under White
As discussed supra, Plaintiff claims, inter alia, that she was subjected to: (1)
the use of excessive force; (2) false arrest; (3) an unlawful search; and (4) a violation
of her freedom of religious expression. See generally [15] at 1-8. She additionally
claims that certain individual officers failed to intervene when her rights were
being violated. Id. at 1-3. The Amended Complaint further alleges that: (1) the
“persistent and defiant code of silence was a moving force behind” the constitutional
harms she suffered; and (2) as a “result of the customs, policies and practices for the
City of Chicago and [its] failure to train,” the individual officers “ignored the rights
of the Plaintiff,” as described elsewhere in the Amended Compliant.
Id. at 10.
Finally, Plaintiff notes that since 2009, the Council for American-Islamic Relations
in Chicago “has recorded and lodged into its organization over 50 incidents against
Chicago Police for what appears to be Islamic targeting.” Id.
Quite simply, Plaintiff has plausibly alleged that: (1) she was deprived of
various constitutional rights; and (2) those same deprivations were caused by
widespread customs or practices; namely, a failure to train regarding religious
sensitivity and a code of silence.
Under White’s permissive standard, these
allegations are sufficient for the purposes of Rule 12(b)(6).
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This is not an incongruous result. Courts in this district have long recognized
that plaintiffs with Monell claims need only to “allege a pattern or practice, not put
forth the full panoply of evidence from which a reasonable factfinder could conclude
such a pattern exists.” Barwicks, 2016 WL 3418570, at *4 (emphasis in original).
In other words, Plaintiff needed only to “plead that the alleged incident is one of
many” occurring in the City of Chicago and “that a widespread practice” gave rise to
those incidents. Id. at *5. She has met this burden.
IV.
Conclusion
Defendant’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff’s Monell claim [28] is denied.
Date: May 19, 2017
Entered:
____________________________________
John Robert Blakey
United States District Judge
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