Jane Doe v. Anoka CountyJane Doe v. Anoka County
Jane Doe was sexually assaulted in Anoka County, Minnesota. She provided evidence for a rape kit that was submitted to the Anoka County Sheriff’s office. Although Detective Larry Johnson told Doe otherwise, the Anoka County Sheriff’s office did not test Doe’s rape kit for over 16 years. Doe then sued Anoka County and the Anoka County Sheriff, James Stuart, alleging an equal protection claim
I.
In 2004, Jane Doe, then fourteen years old, was sexually assaulted in Anoka County, Minnesota. She provided evidence for a rape kit, and it was submitted it to the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office. Detective Johnson was assigned to her case. Doe gave a statement to the Sheriff’s Office identifying her assailant; he was charged with sexual assault but never convicted.2
Detective Johnson told Doe’s mother that no DNA was obtained from the rape kit. But in fact, no one had tested it. Doe was not the only person whose rape kit went untested in Anoka County. Indeed, the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office reported that in 2015 it had 495 untested rape kits in its possession, including Doe’s. In 2020, sixteen years after Doe was assaulted, the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office finally tested her rape kit. It contained DNA evidence implicating the assailant that Doe had identified in 2004. Anoka County again pursued criminal charges against him, but the disposition of his case is unknown.
On remand, the district court concluded that, in light of our decision in Pratt, Doe had standing. It then granted the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings as to Doe’s MHRA claim based on the statute of limitations and as to Doe’s negligence claim based on Sheriff Stuart and Detective Johnson’s entitlement to official immunity. It dismissed these claims with prejudice.
However, it denied the defendants’ motion as to Doe’s equal protection, failure to train, and IIED claims and rejected the defendants’ remaining immunity arguments. First, the district court concluded that Detective Johnson was not entitled to qualified immunity as to Doe’s constitutional claims or official immunity as to her IIED claim. Regarding Anoka County, the district court concluded that it was not entitled to immunity under Minnesota state law. Finally, the district court rejected Sheriff Stuart’s arguments that he should be dismissed as a party; it reasoned that Doe sued him in his official capacity and alleged events that took place during his tenure in office. The defendants appeal. Doe does not appeal the district court’s dismissal of her MHRA and negligence claims. Following the district court’s order on the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, Doe has three remaining claims: (1) a
A.
On appeal, the defendants argue that the district court erred in concluding that Doe has standing. Further, they contend that the district court improperly rejected the defendants’ qualified, official, and statutory immunity arguments. We review the district court’s denial of the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings de novo. See Ginsburg v. InBev NV/SA, 623 F.3d 1229, 1233 n.3 (8th Cir. 2010) (“As a general rule, a Rule 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings is reviewed under the same standard as a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss.“); United States v. Jones, 70 F.4th 1109, 1111 (8th Cir. 2023) (“This court reviews de novo the district court’s denial of a motion to dismiss.“).
As an initial matter, the parties dispute whether we have jurisdiction to review the district court’s conclusion that Doe has standing. Doe argues that we only have jurisdiction to consider the defendants’ immunity arguments, whereas the defendants maintain that we can consider both standing and their immunity arguments.
“Although our jurisdiction is generally limited to reviewing a district court’s final decisions ending litigation on the merits, we can immediately review a small class of collateral orders that do not terminate the underlying lawsuit.” Carmichael v. White, 163 F.3d 1044, 1045 (8th Cir. 1998) (citation omitted). One such order is the denial of a motion for judgment on the pleadings based on the Eleventh Amendment and qualified immunity. See Martinez v. Sasse, 37 F.4th 506, 508 (8th Cir. 2022); see also McDaniel v. Precythe, 897 F.3d 946, 949 (8th Cir. 2018). “Our review is limited to the immunity defense and other issues that are ‘inextricably intertwined’ with it.” McDaniel, 897 F.3d at 949 (citation omitted).
Although Doe argues that we lack jurisdiction to review the district court’s standing analysis, our cases are to the contrary. In Johnson v. Griffin, 69 F.4th 506 (8th Cir. 2023), the defendants appealed the district court’s denial of their motion to
B.
The defendants contend that Doe lacks standing because they did not cause the injuries she alleges and, in any case, a judgment against them would not redress her injuries. We review the district court’s standing conclusions de novo. McGowen, Hurst, Clark & Smith, P.C. v. Com. Bank, 11 F.4th 702, 708 (8th Cir. 2021).
“[I]n order to invoke the power of a federal court, a plaintiff must present a ‘case’ or ‘controversy’ within the meaning of Article III of the Constitution.” Braden v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 588 F.3d 585, 591 (8th Cir. 2009). “Th[e] ‘irreducible constitutional minimum of standing’ requires a showing of ‘injury in fact’ to the plaintiff that is ‘fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant,’
Doe asserts two constitutional claims—that Anoka County and Sheriff Stuart violated her equal protection rights on the basis of sex by failing to investigate sexual assault cases, the victims of which are almost exclusively women and girls, and that the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office’s training was inadequate regarding how to conduct investigations of sexual assault complaints. She also asserts a state-law IIED claim. The district court correctly identified that the Supreme Court’s decision in Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614 (1973), and the two Eighth Circuit cases applying it “figure centrally in the standing analysis here.” We go one step further: those decisions control the outcome of this case.
In Linda R.S., the Supreme Court held that a plaintiff lacks standing to bring an equal protection claim alleging discriminatory enforcement of a statute. 410 U.S. at 619. It reasoned that “a private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of another.” Id. We applied the reasoning from Linda R.S. to conclude that the plaintiffs in Parkhurst v. Tabor, 569 F.3d 861 (8th Cir. 2009), and Pratt v. Helms, 73 F.4th 592 (8th Cir. 2023), similarly lacked standing.
Our cases establish that crime victims lack standing to assert equal protection claims against prosecutors and law enforcement officials for alleged failures to investigate. In Parkhurst, we determined that crime victims lacked standing to assert equal protection claims against Arkansas state prosecutors—explaining that although “defendants subjected to or threatened with discriminatory prosecution have standing to bring an equal protection claim, this right has not been extended to crime victims.” 569 F.3d at 865 (citation omitted). Similarly, in Pratt, we held that the plaintiff lacked standing to bring
The district court read Pratt differently. It reasoned that our statement that “a victim has no constitutional right to an investigation of a crime committed against him—at least where . . . the victim brings a class-of-one equal protection claim,” id., suggests “that Linda R.S.’s standing principles do not apply when a plaintiff alleges the failure to prosecute or investigate another resulted from class-based discriminatory animus.” We disagree. Instead, we agree with the defendants’ observations that the Pratt opinion does not suggest that we meant to create a new standing rule with its caveat regarding class-of-one equal protection claims and agree that it would be strange to interpret an opinion that denied standing as, in fact, announcing a new rule that extends standing to a new class of plaintiffs—one that was not before the Court in Pratt. We interpret Pratt’s qualification, at least as to class-of-one claims, to be included in the opinion because that was the specific claim before our Court—Pratt sued the county sheriff department officials alleging that they violated his equal protection rights by failing to investigate his assault because his assailants were related to the county’s clerk of court. 73 F.4th at 593, 595. We do not understand the qualification to mean that every non-class-of-one failure to investigate equal protection claim automatically satisfies the standing requirements. Rather, Pratt held that police decisions concerning whether and how to investigate
Finally, in Parkhurst, we relied upon the District of Maryland’s decision in Doe v. Mayor & City Council of Pocomoke City, 745 F. Supp. 1137, 1139 (D. Md. 1990); our reliance on this case further supports our conclusion that the standing analysis does not change when a plaintiff alleges class-based discrimination against officers for alleged failures to investigate. In Pocomoke City, crime victims sued local government officials for their failure to investigate crimes committed against them based on a policy of discriminating against female victims. See 745 F. Supp. at 1138. The court concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing, holding that private citizens do not have the right to “require a public official to investigate or prosecute a crime,” and it drew no distinctions based on the fact that the plaintiffs alleged class-based discriminatory animus. Id. at 1139. The claims the plaintiffs brought in Pocomoke City are virtually identical to the claims Doe brings here. Our decision in Pratt does not suggest that we intended to disclaim our prior reliance on Pocomoke City.
Although Doe relies on the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Elliot-Park v. Manglona, 592 F.3d 1003 (9th Cir. 2010), to argue that she has standing, that case is inapposite. There, the Ninth Circuit concluded that a plaintiff stated an equal protection claim by alleging that police officers exhibited racial bias in deciding not to arrest the perpetrator of a crime. Id. at 1006-07. However, standing was not considered by the litigants, the district court, or the Ninth Circuit. And, as the Fifth
Because we hold that Doe lacks standing to assert her constitutional claims, we lack jurisdiction over these claims and decline to address the defendants’ accompanying immunity arguments. See Gray v. City of Valley Park, 567 F.3d 976, 980 (8th Cir. 2009) (“[I]f a plaintiff lacks standing, the district court has no subject matter jurisdiction.” (alteration in original) (citation omitted)).
The parties do not address whether Doe’s lack of standing to assert her constitutional claims applies equally to her IIED claim against Sheriff Stuart and Detective Johnson. And Linda R.S., Parkhurst, and Pratt only discussed standing as it relates to federal constitutional claims. As such, we remand this issue to the district court for it to determine whether Doe has standing to assert this claim.
For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the district court’s judgment as to Doe’s federal claims and remand with instructions to dismiss for lack of standing. As to Doe’s state law IIED claim, we remand for the district court to consider whether she has standing.
ERICKSON, Circuit Judge, concurring.
I agree with the Court that generally crime victims lack standing to bring failure-to-investigate claims against police officers or other officials. I write separately to note that I do not believe Pratt v. Helms, 73 F.4th 592 (8th Cir. 2023), is a conclusive bar to all such constitutional claims based on an inadequate investigation. In Pratt, this Court found the plaintiff lacked standing to bring “a class-of-one equal protection claim.” Id. at 595. Here, Jane Doe alleged that the defendants failed to timely investigate her sexual assault due to an alleged discriminatory animus against women and girls. Her complaint, however, does not set forth a factual basis showing a discriminatory animus or gender discrimination sufficient to support a plausible equal protection or discrimination claim. It is for this reason that I agree dismissal of her federal claims is appropriate.