In Benevidez v. County of San Diego, published April 12, 2021, the 9th Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part a district court's dismissal of an action against social workers and their county employer. The complaint alleged that the defendant social workers obtained a protective custody warrant and removed the minors from their home. A juvenile court held a detention hearing to remove the minors and issued an order allowing medical examination of the minors. The parents were present at the detention hearing, but neither the defendant social workers nor any county employees discussed the medical examinations with the parents before or after the hearings. There were no discussions of medical examinations at the hearings. No county employee sought the parents' consent to the examinations, or advised them of their right to be present at the examinations. These alleged actions contravened a 2015 county policy requiring employees to obtain parental consent and advise parents of their right to be present. The minors were then examined under the court orders. The parents were not informed until after the examinations took place. The parents appealed the juvenile court's removal decisions but not the medical examinations or related orders. The parents then filed suit in federal court. The federal court dismissed the second amended complaint.
The 9th Circuit affirmed the district court's decision that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine did not deprive the federal court of jurisdiction. The doctrine prevents federal lawsuits that challenge a state court's judicial actions, and thus act as de facto appeals from the state court action. The doctrine does not apply where a plaintiff alleges that court orders were obtained through extrinsic fraud. Here, the plaintiffs adequately pleaded that the examination orders were obtained without their knowledge, and that the requests falsely represented that reasonable efforts had been made to notify the parents about the medical examinations. The parents' lack of appeal of the juvenile court decision on the medical examinations did not affect the doctrine, since an appeal would not have remedied the damage done by the examinations having taken place. The district court erred by granting the social workers qualified immunity, because regardless of whether liability for performing the examination was settled or not, the law barring judicial deception in regard to child custody proceedings was sufficiently established to give the defendants fair notice that what they were allegedly doing violated the parents' Fourteenth Amendment right to familial association. The district court properly dismissed the Monell allegations of county liability. Because the social workers' conduct allegedly violated the county's policy, the policy itself could not have caused the injury. And a single incident in a non-life-threatening situation was insufficient to support liability for failure to train.
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