Can you sue the city instead of the officer? Monell claims explained

When a police officer wins qualified immunity, the people who lose often ask the obvious next question: why not sue the department that hired, trained, and armed him? The Supreme Court has answered in two directions at once: a city has no immunity at all, but it cannot be made to pay simply because its employee broke the Constitution. The space between those rulings is called Monell liability.

I.Cities get no qualified immunity

Start with the good news for plaintiffs. In Owen v. City of Independence, the Supreme Court held that a city sued under § 1983 cannot hide behind the good faith of its officials. George Owen was chief of police in Independence, Missouri, until the city manager fired him in 1972 after a dispute over the department’s property room. The city council had publicly called for release of investigative reports about the department. Owen got no hearing and no stated reason. He sued, claiming the city had taken his liberty without due process.

The Eighth Circuit found a violation but excused the city because its officials had acted in good faith. The Supreme Court reversed by a 5–4 vote. Justice Brennan’s majority held that the municipality “may not assert the good faith of its officers or agents as a defense to liability under § 1983.” The statute’s text contains no immunities, he reasoned, and no common-law tradition supported one for cities. Justice Powell wrote for the four dissenters.

So the clearly-established-law test that ended cases like Shela Linton’s does not apply to a city. That is the opening. The next section is the catch.

II.What Monell gave, and what it held back

Monell v. Department of Social Services began with women employed by New York City’s Department of Social Services and Board of Education. Official policy forced pregnant employees onto unpaid leave before any medical need required it. Lower courts agreed that the policy was unconstitutional but refused back pay against the city, relying on Monroe v. Pape, which had held that local governments were not “persons” who could be sued under § 1983.

The Supreme Court overruled Monroe on that point. Local governments are “persons,” and they can be sued directly for damages or other relief when the injury comes from carrying out official policy. In the same opinion, the Court kept one limit in place: “a local government may not be sued under § 1983 for an injury inflicted solely by its employees or agents.” There is no respondeat superior, the ordinary rule that makes employers answer for employees’ on-the-job wrongs.

Private employers answer for their employees’ torts every day. A city answers only when the violation is, in a meaningful sense, its own act. Because that limit comes from the Court’s reading of the statute, Congress could change it.

III.The three routes to a city

Monell and the cases after it recognize a few ways to tie a violation to the government itself. Connick v. Thompson summarized them in one sentence: official municipal policy includes “the decisions of a government’s lawmakers, the acts of its policymaking officials, and practices so persistent and widespread as to practically have the force of law.” Put as a checklist:

1. Official policy. A written rule, ordinance, regulation, or formal decision of the governing body. The pregnancy-leave rules in Monell are the model case.
2. Custom. A practice that was never formally adopted but is so settled and widespread that it works like a rule. Monell itself recognized liability for deprivations under a governmental custom “even though such a custom has not received formal approval.”
3. Final policymaker. A single decision can count when the official who made it had final authority over that subject. The Court in Bryan County described Pembaur v. Cincinnati as a case about “a decision by a county prosecutor, acting as the county’s final decisionmaker.” Who holds that authority is usually a question of state and local law.

Failure to train is usually argued as a version of these routes, with its own steeper rules, covered next. Under every route, the plaintiff must also show causation, meaning the policy was the “moving force” behind the injury, in the phrase Bryan County repeats.

IV.Failure to train and “deliberate indifference”

Geraldine Harris was arrested by police in Canton, Ohio, in 1978. At the station she slumped to the floor twice and was left there. No one called for medical help. After about an hour she was released, and her family took her by ambulance to a hospital, where she was hospitalized for a week and treated as an outpatient for a year afterward. A jury found the city liable on the theory that it had failed to train its officers to recognize when a detainee needed care.

In City of Canton v. Harris, the Supreme Court accepted that failure to train can be a basis for city liability, but only where “the failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights of persons with whom the police come into contact.” The Court said this could include cases where the need for more or different training is “so obvious” that ignoring it shows indifference. It vacated the judgment and sent the case back to be judged under that standard. Justice O’Connor, joined by Justices Scalia and Kennedy, concurred in part and dissented in part.

V.How the bar rose: Bryan County and Connick

In 1991 a reserve deputy in Bryan County, Oklahoma, used an arm-bar to pull Jill Brown from a car after a traffic stop. She was badly injured. The sheriff had hired the deputy, the son of his own nephew, after pulling his record but without looking at it closely. The record included misdemeanors such as assault and battery and resisting arrest. A jury held the county liable for the hiring decision.

The Supreme Court vacated that verdict 5–4 in Board of County Commissioners of Bryan County v. Brown. Justice O’Connor wrote that “rigorous standards of culpability and causation must be applied” when a city did not inflict the injury itself. A single bad hiring decision creates liability only if the violation was the “plainly obvious consequence of the decision to hire the applicant.” Justices Souter and Breyer each wrote dissents, joined between them by Justices Stevens and Ginsburg.

Fourteen years later came John Thompson. He spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row in Louisiana, after New Orleans prosecutors failed to turn over a crime-lab report showing that the blood type of the robber in an earlier case was not his. That robbery conviction came first; his murder conviction followed. His investigator found the report a month before his scheduled execution. Both convictions were vacated, a jury later acquitted him of the murder, and a jury in his § 1983 suit awarded him $14 million against the district attorney’s office on a failure-to-train theory.

In Connick v. Thompson the Supreme Court reversed, 5–4. Justice Thomas wrote that a city’s “culpability for a deprivation of rights is at its most tenuous where a claim turns on a failure to train,” that deliberate indifference is “a stringent standard of fault,” and that a pattern of similar violations by untrained employees is “ordinarily necessary.” The single violation in Thompson’s case, the majority held, was not enough. Justice Ginsburg dissented for four Justices, arguing that the evidence of the office’s indifference to its disclosure obligations was enough to support the jury’s verdict.

VI.Why you cannot sue the state this way

Monell covers cities, counties, and other local bodies. It does not reach the states. Ray Will sued the Michigan Department of State Police, claiming he had been denied a promotion because his brother had been a student activist with a “red squad” file. In Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, the Court held 5–4 that “neither a State nor its officials acting in their official capacities are ‘persons’ under § 1983.”

A footnote, drawing on Ex parte Young, preserved one exception: a state official sued in an official capacity for prospective relief, such as an order to stop an ongoing practice, is still a “person.” Damages from a state agency are off the table under § 1983.

VII.Who answers for what: a map

Put together, the cases sort defendants like this:

Many complaints name both the officer and the city. Whether that makes sense in a given case depends on facts and local law that only a lawyer can weigh. Filing deadlines also apply to these claims and vary by state, so anyone who thinks they have one should talk to a licensed civil-rights attorney promptly. For what happens to the money when a case does succeed, see our explainer on who actually pays police misconduct settlements.

The larger point is structural. Qualified immunity protects the officer. Monell protects the employer. Both are judicial readings of a statute Congress wrote in 1871, and both can be changed by legislation.

Editorial note: This analysis is built from the cited opinions, statutes, and reporting listed below. It is journalism and advocacy, not legal advice. If you believe your rights were violated, talk to a licensed civil-rights attorney in your state. Corrections: contact the editor.