Sherri Schruder v. Archie Banbury

MEMORANDUM

The individual defendants in this case appeal the lower court’s denial of qualified immunity on two of Sherri Schruder’s claims. We reverse and remand.

The individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity unless they violated Schruder’s “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Brewster v. Bd. of Educ. of Lynwood Unified Sch. Dist., 149 F.3d 971 , 977 (9th Cir. 1998) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 , 102 S.Ct. 2727 , 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). We may not “define clearly established law at a high level of generality.” Padilla v. Yoo, 678 F.3d 748, 758 (9th Cir. 2012) (quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731 , 742, 131 S.Ct. 2074 , 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011)). “[E]xisting precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Id. (quoting al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741, 131 S.Ct. 2074 ).

The Fourteenth Amendment’s due process requirement protects property, interests. See Brewster, 149 F.3d at 982-87. A person only has a property interest in a benefit if she has a “legitimate claim of entitlement to it,” rather than a “unilateral expectation of it.” Bd. of Regents…