CHIANY CRUZ-ARCE, on her own behalf and as legal representative of minor child H.V.C., Plaintiff, Appellant, v. MANAGEMENT ADMINISTRATION SERVICES CORPORATION and JEANETTE VELEZ, Defendants, Appellees.
No. 20-1509
United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit
December 8, 2021
Before Howard, Chief Judge, Selya and Barron, Circuit Judges.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO [Hon. Silvia L. Carreno-Coll, U.S. District Judge]
Javier A Rivera-Vaquer and Rivera Mercado & Rivera Cordero on brief for appellant. Luis N. Blanco-Matos on brief for appellees.
I. BACKGROUND
Because this appeal arises out of a dismissal for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, see
In 2015, the plaintiff was a tenant in the Manuel A. Perez low-income housing project (the Project) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Project is owned by the Puerto Rico Department of Housing (the Housing Department) and is administered through the Puerto Rico Public Housing Administration (the PRPHA). The Housing Department or the PRPHA, in turn, contracted with a private party, defendant-appellee Management Administration Services Corporation (MAS), to manage the Project.2
The plaintiff further alleges that - while the contested eviction proceedings were pending - MAS gratuitously placed her apartment on a list of vacant units given to the Puerto Rico Police Department pursuant to a “policy and agreement.” The purpose of such a list was to help the police in identifying possible illegal arms- and drug-trafficking activities conducted in vacant apartments. After receiving this listing, the police raided the plaintiff‘s apartment, forcing the locks and ransacking the interior. The plaintiff asserts that the officers’ actions incident to the search caused her and her autistic child “severe emotional distress,” requiring medical attention.
Based on the communication breakdowns and what she deemed to be an illegal search, the plaintiff invoked section 1983 and brought this suit against MAS and its then-administrator, Leanette Velez, in the federal district court. The parties agreed to proceed before a magistrate judge. See
As pleaded, the two counts of the amended complaint that invoked section 1983 (counts 1 and 2) hinged on the question of whether the defendants were “acting under color of state law” and, thus, could be held liable as state actors. The operative allegations of the amended complaint that bore on this question were sparse. First, the plaintiff alleged that “[b]y law, the Government of Puerto Rico[,] through the Housing Department, is in charge of the operations and administration of the residential community of Manuel A Perez.” Second, she alleged that the Housing Department, “instead of administrating the residential community, entered into a services contract with [MAS] to supply the same in [its] stead.” The plaintiff made no other allegations concerning the relationship between MAS and the government of Puerto Rico, nor did her amended complaint contain any facts bearing on the issue of whether MAS was carrying out a traditional and exclusive state function.
The defendants moved to dismiss the amended complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. See
II. ANALYSIS
We review a dismissal for failure to state a claim de novo. See Haley, 657 F.3d at 46; Tambone, 597 F.3d at 441. In conducting this tamisage, we accept all well-pleaded, non-conclusory facts set forth in the complaint as true and draw all reasonable inferences therefrom to the pleader‘s behoof. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 681 (2009); Haley, 657 F.3d at 46. As relevant here, we may augment those facts and inferences with facts that are matters of public record or otherwise susceptible to judicial notice. See Haley, 657 F.3d at 46.
It is by now common ground that a complaint must contain only a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”
We begin with bedrock. Section 1983 furnishes a private right of action against any person who, while acting under color of state law, deprives another (or causes another to be deprived) of rights secured either by the Constitution or by federal law. See
Section 1983‘s “under color of state law” requirement has long been regarded as functionally equivalent to the “state action” requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment. See United States v. Price, 383 U.S. 787, 794 n.7 (1966); Perkins v. Londonderry Basketball Club, 196 F.3d 13, 17 n.1 (1st Cir. 1999). If the challenged conduct cannot be classified as state action, a section 1983 claim necessarily fails. See Santiago, 655 F.3d at 68.
In the mine-run of cases, state action will derive from the conduct of government actors, that is, government officials or employees. See, e.g., Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 936-39 (1982). Even so, when the conduct of a private party can be “fairly attributable to the State,” that conduct may constitute state action and, as such, engage the gears of section 1983. Id. at 937.
Because some constitutionally assured rights (such as the right to due process) may be manifested in a nearly infinite variety of applications, courts have resisted attempts to define with granular precision the universe of circumstances in which a private party may be considered to be acting under color of state law. See id. Notwithstanding this need for individualized consideration, we have noted three general ways in which a private party may become a state actor within the purview of section 1983. See Santiago, 655 F.3d at 68. First, a private party may be considered a state actor if it assumes a public function which, by tradition, is exclusively reserved to the state (the public function test). See id. Second, a private party may be considered a state actor if its conduct is coerced or significantly encouraged by the state (the state compulsion test). See id. Third, a private party may be considered a state actor if it and the state have entered into so symbiotic a relationship that they have become joint participants in the challenged conduct (the nexus/joint action test). See id.
To defeat a motion to dismiss predicated on the “under color of state law” requirement, a plaintiff need not specifically allege which of these three tests applies in her particular case. Cf. Bennett v. Schmidt, 153 F.3d 516, 518 (7th Cir. 1998) (explaining that “[c]omplaints need not plead law or match facts to every element of a legal theory“). Nor must the plaintiff intone some catechism of magic words to describe the relationship between the private party and the state. In the last analysis, the allegations in the complaint, supplemented with reasonable inferences therefrom and matters susceptible to judicial notice, must comprise a factual predicate sufficient to render it plausible that one of these tests can be satisfied. See Mead v. Indep. Ass‘n, 684 F.3d 226, 232 (1st Cir. 2012).
Here, the plaintiff stakes her section 1983 claims solely on the public function test.4 But even when we take as true all well-pleaded facts set forth in the amended complaint and draw all reasonable inferences therefrom in the plaintiff‘s favor, the function that the plaintiff has attributed to the defendants is not plausibly a public function that, by tradition, is exclusively reserved to the state. We explain briefly.
The public function test “is designed to flush out a State‘s attempt to evade its responsibilities by delegating them to private entities.” Perkins, 196 F.3d at 18-19. This test prevents a state from shirking its traditional and exclusive sovereign responsibilities by the simple expedient of recruiting a private party to act in its stead. See Ponce v. Basketball Fed‘n of P.R., 760 F.2d 375, 379 (1st Cir. 1985). So, too, it prevents a state from turning a blind eye to unconstitutional conduct committed
Importantly, the public function test does not turn solely on whether a private party is performing some public function (that is, a public purpose being executed on behalf of the state). It turns instead on whether the public function is one that has been “traditionally exclusively reserved to the State.” Jackson v. Metro. Edison Co., 419 U.S. 345, 352 (1974); see Santiago, 655 F.3d at 69 (explaining that “[e]xclusivity is an important qualifier, and its presence severely limits the range of eligible activities“). The Supreme Court has found this aspect of the test to be satisfied only in narrowly circumscribed contexts - contexts in which a particular function rests at the core of a state‘s sovereign responsibilities. These contexts include the administration of elections, see Nixon v. Condon, 286 U.S. 73, 89 (1932); the management of a town in which the private party serves almost all the functions of government, see Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 509 (1946); the administration and provision of health care in prisons, see West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, 54 (1988); and - in special circumstances - the operation of a municipal park, see Evans v. Newton, 382 U.S. 296, 301 (1966).
Cases in which courts have rejected claims that the public function test has been satisfied are equally illuminating. Many of those cases involve services rendered by private parties in areas that are highly regulated, proximate to social welfare programs, or both. For example, courts have held that the public function test has not been satisfied when a private party has assumed responsibility for the bonded warehousing of guns confiscated by state police, see Jarvis v. Village Gun Shop, Inc., 805 F.3d 1, 11-12 (1st Cir. 2015); the involuntary commitment of the mentally ill, see Estades-Negroni v. CPC Hosp. San Juan Capestrano, 412 F.3d 1, 8-9 (1st Cir. 2005); the education of disadvantaged high school students, see Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 U.S. 830, 842 (1982); and the transportation of students to and from public schools, see Santiago, 655 F.3d at 69-70.
These authorities guide our inquiry. The plaintiff argues, in effect, that low-income public housing, by definition, is the exclusive responsibility of the state. But placing the adjective “public” as a descriptor of any service would operate to place that service exclusively in the public domain. We reject so facile a use of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It would defeat the purpose of the public function test if qualifying functions could be defined tautologically by plaintiffs.
The short of it is that the outcome of the public function test does not depend on creative labeling. It is the historical facts that matter most. See, e.g., id. at 70 (noting history of school buses in public function test analysis); Rockwell v. Cape Cod Hosp., 26 F.3d 254, 258-60 (1st Cir. 1994) (surveying history of involuntary commitment of mentally ill persons when deciding whether public function test has been satisfied). Although we do not gainsay that the state is the exclusive provider of state-owned low-income housing, it is not - and has not been - the exclusive provider of low-income housing writ large.
The crux of the matter is that the provision of low-income housing has never been exclusive to the government, either in Puerto Rico or elsewhere in the United
In an effort to change the trajectory of the debate, the plaintiff relies heavily on the purposes and functions of the PRPHA under Puerto Rico law. In particular, she cites a statute that created the PRPHA. See
We do not quarrel with the plaintiff‘s description of what Puerto Rico law provides. But nothing in the statutory scheme suggests - let alone requires - that the administration and provision of low-income housing in Puerto Rico is the exclusive prerogative of the state. By the same token, the other housing regulations (federal and state) mentioned by the plaintiff, see, e.g., Admission to, and Occupancy of, Public Housing,
To withstand a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, a plaintiff must plead “sufficient factual matter . . . to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.‘” Haley, 657 F.3d at 46 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678). In this instance, the plaintiff has failed to marshal facts sufficient to render plausible her claim that the defendants were exercising powers “traditionally exclusively reserved to the State.” Jackson, 419 U.S. at 352. It follows inexorably that the district court did not err in determining that the plaintiff‘s amended complaint failed to state a claim under section 1983. Consequently, the district court did not err in granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss.5
III. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above, the judgment of the district court is
Affirmed.
SELYA
CIRCUIT JUDGE