Starr v. Baca

Section 1983 does not permit respondeat superior liability: a supervisor cannot be liable merely because subordinates committed a constitutional violation. But Ninth Circuit precedent has long allowed direct liability where the supervisor's own culpable action or inaction in training, supervising, or controlling subordinates, or the supervisor's acquiescence in constitutional violations, causes the injury.

Iqbal required a plaintiff asserting purposeful discrimination to plead that each official personally acted with the discriminatory purpose required by the Constitution. The state of mind required for the underlying violation matters. Because discrimination requires purposeful discrimination, a supervisor's mere knowledge of discriminatory conduct could not substitute for that required purpose.

An Eighth Amendment conditions-of-confinement claim, however, may rest on deliberate indifference. A supervisor who knows of a substantial risk to inmates and deliberately fails to act is liable for that supervisor's own misconduct, rather than vicariously liable for subordinates' misconduct. Nothing in Iqbal displaced this established rule for claims whose constitutional standard is deliberate indifference.

A supervisor may be directly liable under § 1983 through personal involvement or through a sufficient causal connection between the supervisor's wrongful conduct and the constitutional injury. That connection may arise when the supervisor sets in motion a series of acts likely to cause injury, or knowingly refuses to stop such a series of acts.

Starr alleged detailed notice to Baca: a Department of Justice findings letter and monitoring agreement; reports from special counsel and internal bodies; recurring inmate-on-inmate assaults and killings; failures to classify and monitor inmates; deputies abandoning posts; excessive force; and failures to investigate or discipline misconduct. He further alleged that these conditions persisted despite that notice.

These allegations supported the inference that Baca, the official responsible under California law for the jail and prisoners' safekeeping, knew of systemic dangers created by his subordinates and failed to correct them. Such knowledge plus inaction could constitute acquiescence and deliberate indifference, and could be a proximate cause of the attack on Starr.

Under Twombly and Iqbal, a court need not accept bare legal conclusions or formulaic recitations of claim elements. But factual allegations are accepted as true when they give fair notice of the claim and permit the defendant to defend effectively.

Starr did more than assert that Baca 'knew' or was deliberately indifferent. He described numerous specific incidents, dates, reports, official investigations, findings about dangerous jail conditions, and alleged notices to Baca. Those factual allegations were not bald conclusions and therefore were entitled to be taken as true on a motion to dismiss.

The pleaded facts plausibly suggested that Baca acquiesced in ongoing unconstitutional practices. At this stage, Starr did not need to prove that his explanation was true or more probable than every competing account; he needed enough factual matter to create a reasonable expectation that discovery could reveal supporting evidence. Because no alternative explanation was so compelling as to make Starr's theory implausible, dismissal was improper.