John W. ARNZEN, III; Harold Williams; Galen K. Shaffer; Edward Lee Briggs, Appellees v. Director Charles PALMER; Jason Smith; Brad Wittrock, Appellants.
No. 12-3634.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted: April 8, 2013. Filed: April 22, 2013.
713 F.3d 369
putes over its insurance contract, see
Although AEGIS‘s proposed interpretation of the endorsement‘s language and the parties’ intent may not be entirely implausible in the abstract, we agree with the district court that by agreeing in the endorsement “to submit to the jurisdiction of the Courts of the state of Missouri,” AEGIS has agreed to have, in words near the endorsement‘s beginning, “any dispute relating to this Insurance or to a CLAIM” resolved in those courts. The endorsement thus entirely supplants the condition‘s mandatory arbitration provision. And we do not see how the lack of reference in the endorsement to particular modes of dispute resolution shows that the parties did not intend to replace the mandatory arbitration provision in the policy; to the contrary, we think it highly revealing that the endorsement nowhere indicates an intent that the grant of jurisdiction that it contains refers only to pre- or post-arbitration enforcement. Even if the policy as a whole were ambiguous as to the mandatory arbitration, and we think it is not, UEC would still prevail because it would be entitled to have the ambiguity resolved in its favor, see Schmitz, 337 S.W.3d at 706.
Affirmed.
Pamela Ann Wingert, Spirit Lake, IA, for appellee.
Before BYE, ARNOLD and BENTON, Circuit Judges.
ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
Patients at the Iowa Civil Commitment Unit for Sex Offenders (CCUSO) filed a complaint under
The plaintiffs are civilly and involuntarily committed to CCUSO, a secure facility meant for the “control, care, and treatment of . . . person[s] determined to be . . . sexually violent predator[s].” See
While cameras in the common areas of CCUSO are monitored, those inside the single-user restrooms are not; instead, they record images that are generally erased within 14 to 21 days when the system records over them. The recorded images are “masked” so that most of the subjects’ bodies are covered with a black box, though several senior administrators have the ability to unmask the images if necessary for an investigation. The plaintiffs assert that the cameras placed in the single-user bathrooms are an unreasonable violation of their right to privacy, but the administrators contend that the cameras are needed to ensure the security of those committed to the institution and that the district court, when granting the injunction, failed to show sufficient “deference” to their “judgment” as “qualified professional[s],” see Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 322-23, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 73 L.Ed.2d 28 (1982).
We review the district court‘s grant of a preliminary injunction for an abuse of discretion and its factual findings for clear error. Barrett v. Claycomb, 705 F.3d 315, 320 (8th Cir. 2013). A district court should evaluate four considerations when determining whether to issue a preliminary injunction: the threat of irreparable harm to the movant, the balance between this harm to the movant and the harm an injunction will cause other parties, the probability that the movant will prevail on the merits, and the public interest. Roudachevski v. All-American Care Ctrs., Inc., 648 F.3d 701, 706 (8th Cir. 2011).
Because the probability of “[s]uccess on the merits has been referred to as the most important of the four factors,” see id., we consider it first. The Fourth Amendment protects persons against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. See, e.g., Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403, 126 S.Ct. 1943, 164 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006). The administrators contend that no search or seizure occurs if nobody views the video images (though the record shows that they have viewed some of the videos in the past) and, if there is a search or seizure here, it plainly meets the Fourth Amendment reasonableness requirements.
A search occurs under the Fourth Amendment when, as relevant here, “the government violates a subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable.” Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31-33, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001); see also United States v. Jones, — U.S. —, 132 S.Ct. 945, 950, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012). “[I]nvoluntarily civilly committed persons retain the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches that is analogous to the right retained by pretrial detainees.” Beaulieu v. Ludeman, 690 F.3d 1017, 1028 (8th Cir. 2012). Although the expectation of privacy shared by involuntarily civilly committed persons and pretrial detainees is of a “diminished scope,” see Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 559, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), neither our court nor the Supreme Court has ever outlined exactly what expectation of privacy these persons reasonably have, outside of our holding that detainees do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their jail cells, see United States v. Hogan, 539 F.3d 916, 923 (8th Cir. 2008).
After we determine that the government‘s action is indeed a search, as we did here, we apply a so-called “balancing test” to determine whether the search or seizure of involuntarily committed individuals is reasonable, considering the “scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is conducted, the justification for initiating it, and the place in which it is conducted.” See Serna v. Goodno, 567 F.3d 944, 949 (8th Cir. 2009), cert. denied, 558 U.S. 972, 130 S.Ct. 465, 175 L.Ed.2d 312 (2009) (quoting Bell, 441 U.S. at 559, 99 S.Ct. 1861). We “must defer to the judgment of correctional officials unless the record contains substantial evidence showing their policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of institutional security.” Beaulieu, 690 F.3d at 1029 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
The administrators point to our precedents allowing strip searches of civilly committed individuals for the purpose of finding contraband, see id. at 1027-30; Serna, 567 F.3d at 947-48, 952-56, and argue that their placement of the video cameras in the current circumstances is as necessary and justified as the strip searches in those cases. But the justification for those searches is quite different from the one offered for the video cameras here. In the cases the administrators rely on, the searches were meant to prevent dangerous contraband from entering the facilities, an immediate risk that was most easily prevented by strip searches. And we cautioned in Serna that if “the triggering evidence had been a prohibited but relatively benign object, . . . it would have been seemed, on balance, less reasonable to move quickly towards a method of searching that is so highly and personally invasive,” id. at 951. Here, however, neither the “triggering evidence” nor the means to prevent its harms are analogous to those in the earlier cases. Although unmonitored cameras may sometimes deter illicit behavior and help with investigations, they do not provide the administrators with immediate alerts concerning patient safety or directly prevent assaults or dangerous acts. They are instead an after-the-fact investigative tool: By the time the video is viewed, the harm has already happened.
While we do not “strictly apply a ‘less intrusive means’ test” for searches, see Beaulieu, 690 F.3d at 1029, we consider the availability of less intrusive techniques when assessing the reasonableness of a challenged procedure, see Serna, 567 F.3d. at 955. Here we are confident that there are less intrusive methods that the administrators can use to prevent various illicit activities by patients. As the district court suggested, and the administrators concede, allowing the doors of the bath-rooms
We conclude, moreover, that the district court did not clearly err, see Rogers Group, Inc. v. City of Fayetteville, Ark., 629 F.3d 784, 790 (8th Cir. 2010), by finding that the plaintiffs established a threat of irreparable harm. “In order to demonstrate irreparable harm, a party must show that the harm is certain and great and of such imminence that there is a clear and present need for equitable relief.” Iowa Utilities Bd. v. F.C.C., 109 F.3d 418, 425 (8th Cir. 1996). In their affidavits, the plaintiffs aver that the placement of the cameras cause them several kinds of irreparable harm: In addition to experiencing the general discomfort and embarrassment that might be expected from having a camera placed in the bathroom, the plaintiffs say that they are uniquely sensitive to the camera placement as several of them suffered significant sexual abuse during their lives and that having the cameras in these bathrooms interferes with their treatment and thus their potential release from civil commitment. After reviewing the affidavits, the district court found that the plaintiffs had “persuasively report[ed] significant on-going trauma and distress related to the placement of cameras in their bathrooms, which they, in sometimes eloquent and disturbing detail, equate with their previous experiences of victimization.”
The district court also determined that the patients’ interests in this case outweighed injuries that the injunction would inflict on other parties. The administrators contend that the injunction reduces patient safety in the CCUSO and assert that the district court did not give enough weight to their interest in preventing consensual sexual encounters among the patients. The administrators also suggest that there are no other reasonably effective safety measures than the video cameras. But we note again that while they might deter unsafe behaviors, the video cameras provide no immediate safety alert to the administrators and only provide evidence of past infractions. And, as we have already pointed out, we are confident that the administrators can find less-intrusive methods to protect the patients’ safety. While we recognize the important interests in upholding the rules of the CCUSO, including its prohibition on sexual activity,
We must also consider how an injunction would affect the public interest. There is certainly a “significant” public interest in keeping these types of institutions “safe and orderly.” See Serna, 567 F.3d at 954 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). But we discern no error in the district court‘s determination that in the circumstances of this case there is a greater public interest in protecting the Fourth Amendment rights of the patients and their “personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusion by the State,” see Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 767, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966).
For the reasons indicated, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting a preliminary injunction, and we affirm.