Summary
holding that quasi-judicial absolute prosecutorial immunity did not extend to municipalities and affirming judgment to plaintiff in § 1983 action who claimed forced participation in AA meeting as condition of probation for drunk driving charge violated First Amendment
Summary of this case from Mullin v. P R Educational Services, Inc.Opinion
No. 1760, Docket No. 95-7055.
Argued July 20, 1995.
Decided September 9, 1996.
Robert N. Isseks, Goshen, N Y (Alex Smith, Middletown, NY, of counsel), for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Richard B. Golden, Orange County Attorney, Goshen, N Y (M. Kevin Coffey, Antoinette Gluszak, Laurie T. McDermott, of counsel), for Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Goettel, J.), after a bench trial, finding the Orange County Department of Probation liable, under 42 U.S.C. §(s) 1983, for violating the First Amendment's Establishment Clause by recommending plaintiff's participation in Alcoholics Anonymous as a condition of his sentence of probation. Affirmed.
Before: Winter, Leval, and Calabresi, Circuit Judges.
Judge Winter dissents by separate opinion.
Orange County Department of Probation ("OCDP"), the defendant, appeals from a decision of the district court awarding declaratory judgment, nominal damages of one dollar, and attorney's fees to plaintiff Robert Warner in his civil action under 42 U.S.C. §(s) 1983. Warner claimed that a probation condition imposed on him as part of a criminal sentence, which required him to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous ("A.A."), forced him to participate in religious activity in violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, and that OCDP was responsible, in part because it recommended the A.A. therapy to the sentencing court as a condition of probation. OCDP argues on several grounds that it cannot be liable for Warner's exposure to A.A. pursuant to a sentence imposed by the court. We reject OCDP's arguments, and affirm the judgment.
Background
On November 13, 1990, Warner pleaded guilty to driving drunk and without a license in violation of New York law. N.Y. Veh. Traf. Law Section(s) 511(2), 1192(1)(McKinney 1986 Supp. 1996). This was his third alcohol-related driving offense in a period of little more than a year. Judge David L. Levinson, of the Town of Woodbury's Justice Court in Orange County, New York, accepted the plea and ordered the Orange County Department of Probation to prepare a presentence report.
The OCDP's report recommended a term of probation with six special conditions, which the department routinely recommends in cases of defendants with alcohol problems. These included that the probationer "totally abstain from the use of intoxicating beverages," avoid "establishment[s] where the primary business is the sale or consumption of alcohol," and, as the fifth recommended condition, that he "attend Alcoholics Anonymous at the direction of [his] probation officer." These recommended special conditions were set forth on a standard form rider which OCDP routinely provided to sentencing judges in such cases. Judge Levinson sentenced Warner to three years of probation, imposing the special conditions recommended by the OCDP. In imposing these special conditions, Judge Levinson endorsed the Probation Department's standard form.
Warner attended A.A. meetings at the direction of his probation officer, Neal Terwilliger, from November 1990 through September 1992. However, in January of 1991, Warner complained to Terwilliger that, as an atheist, he found the religious nature of the A.A. meetings objectionable. The probation officer instructed Warner to continue his attendance. Some months later, Terwilliger determined that Warner lacked sufficient commitment to the program; he directed Warner to attend "Step meetings" and to seek another more advanced A.A. member as a "sponsor" to give him guidance and encourage his adherence to the program. The Step meetings were devoted to discussion of A.A.'s "Twelve Steps," which represented the heart of the therapy program.
The district court found that the program Warner was required to attend involved a substantial religious component. For example, the "Twelve Steps" included instruction that participants should "believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us"; "[make] a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we [understand] Him"; "[a]dmit to God . . . the exact nature of our wrongs"; be "entirely ready to have God remove all these defects . . . [and] ask Him to remove our shortcomings"; and "[seek] through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we [understand] Him." (Emphasis in original.)
Group prayer was a common occurrence at the meetings Warner attended. They frequently began with a religious invocation, and always ended with a Christian prayer. The district court found that the program "placed a heavy emphasis on spirituality and prayer, in both conception and in practice." In July of 1992, Warner filed a motion in the Town of Woodbury Justice Court challenging the constitutionality of his consignment to A.A. The OCDP — after meeting with representatives from the local district attorney's office — responded by offering Warner therapy in another program. The municipal court judge then dismissed Warner's motion as moot. Warner subsequently brought this action in federal district court, seeking damages, as well as a declaratory judgment that OCDP had violated his First Amendment rights. After a bench trial, the district court found that compelling Warner to attend the program violated the Establishment Clause, and further determined that the OCDP was liable for the constitutional injury, notwithstanding that it was the sentencing judge — not the Probation Department — who had imposed the condition of A.A. participation. The court, however, found that Warner's claims of financially compensable injury were not convincing, and thus awarded nominal damages in the amount of one dollar, plus attorney's fees.
Discussion
OCDP asserts that the trial court committed a variety of errors. First, it claims that it cannot be liable because, under New York law, the determination of probation conditions is solely the responsibility of the sentencing judge. Second, the OCDP argues that if it is responsible for Warner's probation terms, it is protected from any damages judgment by a quasi-judicial absolute immunity. Finally, it contests the district court's conclusion that requiring Warner to attend A.A. violated the Establishment Clause. We disagree with these contentions.
I. OCDP's Responsibility for the Sentence
To establish OCDP's liability for his sentence under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Warner must first demonstrate that his injury resulted from a custom or policy of Orange County, as opposed to an isolated instance of conduct. Monell v. Department of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 690-91 (1978); see also Adickes v. S. H. Kress Co., 398 U.S. 144, 162-67 (1970)(describing congressional intent in creating liability for custom or practice). The OCDP's recommendation that Warner be required to participate in A.A. therapy was unquestionably made pursuant to a general policy. This was one of six standard special conditions, set forth on a form captioned "Additional Conditions of Probation Pertaining to Alcohol," which OCDP routinely submitted to sentencing judges in alcohol cases.
OCDP argues that it is nonetheless not legally responsible because it was the judge's sentencing decision, not the Probation Department's recommendation, that caused the harm. The County is certainly correct that in cases brought under Section(s) 1983 a superseding cause, as traditionally understood in common law tort doctrine, will relieve a defendant of liability. Jeffries v. Harleston, 52 F.3d 9, 14 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 173 (1995); Gutierrez-Rodriguez v. Cartagena, 882 F.2d 553, 561 (1st Cir. 1989); Wagenmann v. Adams, 829 F.2d 196, 212 (1st Cir. 1987). "[T]he Supreme Court has made it crystal clear that principles of causation borrowed from tort law are relevant to civil rights actions brought under section 1983." Buenrostro v. Collazo, 973 F.2d 39, 45 (1st Cir. 1992); see Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 344 n.7 (1986); Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 187 (1961).
However, tort defendants, including those sued under Section(s) 1983, are "`responsible for the natural consequences of [their] actions.'" Malley, 475 U.S. at 344 n.7 (quoting Monroe, 365 U.S. at 187). As the First Circuit has explained, an actor may be held liable for "those consequences attributable to reasonably foreseeable intervening forces, including the acts of third parties." Gutierrez-Rodriguez, 882 F.2d at 561 (citations omitted).
The First Circuit went on to state:
A negligent defendant will not be relieved of liability by an intervening cause that was reasonably foreseeable, even if the intervening force may have "directly" caused the harm. An "unforeseen and abnormal" intervention, on the other hand, "breaks the chain of causality," thus shielding the defendant from liability.
See also Stagl v. Delta Airlines, Inc., 52 F.3d 463, 473-74 (2d Cir. 1995)(under New York law liability turns upon whether the intervening act is "a normal and foreseeable consequence of the situation created by the defendant's negligence")(quoting Derdiarian v. Felix Contracting Corp., 51 N.Y.2d 308, 315 (1980)); Bonsignore v. City of New York, 683 F.2d 635, 638 (2d Cir. 1982)(same); White v. Roper, 901 F.2d 1501, 1506 (9th Cir. 1990); Marsh v. Barry, 824 F.2d 1139, 1143 (D.C. Cir. 1987)(question in Section(s) 1983 case where intervening cause is alleged is "whether the resulting harm was reasonably foreseeable"); Springer v. Seaman, 821 F.2d 871, 876-77 (1st Cir. 1987); Restatement (Second) Torts Section(s) 442A, 442B, 443, 447 (1965).
A complex chain of events led to Warner's participation in religious exercises at the A.A. meetings. Two candidates present themselves as possible superseding causes of his injury that might relieve OCDP of liability: First, as the County argues, the judge's sentencing determination; second, the actions of the A.A. chapter that Warner attended.
A. Act of the Sentencing Judge
As the OCDP correctly points out, under New York law the determination of probation terms is a judicial task, which may not be delegated to probation officers. People ex. rel. Perry v. Cassidy, 257 N.Y.S.2d 228, 229 (N.Y. App. Div. 1965); see also People v. Fuller, 455 N.Y.S.2d 253, 256 (N.Y. 1982)(sentencing court must independently decide how much of probation department report to adopt). The probation department therefore argues that its role was purely advisory, and cannot have been the proximate cause of Warner's injury.
The Supreme Court, however, in Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335 (1986), rejected a similar argument. Malley was a civil rights action under Section(s) 1983 against a state trooper who had procured a warrant for the plaintiff's arrest by submitting an affidavit. Plaintiff claimed the affidavit was legally insufficient. The district court had dismissed the case, believing the police officer to be absolutely immune when swearing out a warrant. The Court of Appeals reversed, resuscitating the action. The officer argued in the Supreme Court not only that he was immune, but also that he was shielded from responsibility by his entitlement to rely on the judgment of the judicial officer in finding probable cause and issuing the warrant. The Supreme Court ruled that such reliance was not justified if "a reasonably well-trained officer in [the same] position would have known that his affidavit failed to establish probable cause and that he should not have applied for the warrant." Id. at 345. If such was the case, the officer's application for a warrant was not objectively reasonable, because it risked an unnecessary danger of unlawful arrest. "It is true," the Court observed, that in an ideal system an unreasonable request for a warrant would be harmless, because no judge would approve it. But ours is not an ideal system, and it is possible that a magistrate, working under docket pressures, will fail to perform as a magistrate should. We find it reasonable to require the officer applying for the warrant to minimize this damage by exercising reasonable professional judgment.
Id. Commenting on the claim that the judge's decision to issue the warrant broke the "causal chain" between the application and the wrongful arrest, the Court noted that such an argument was "inconsistent with our interpretation of Section(s) 1983," which makes defendants "`responsible for the natural consequences of [their] actions.'" Id. at 344 n.7 (quoting Monroe, 365 U.S. at 187); see also Gutierrez-Rodriguez, 882 F.2d at 561 (defendants in Section(s) 1983 cases liable for consequences caused by "reasonably foreseeable intervening forces").
The circumstances in Malley were more favorable than those here to the argument of exoneration by reason of the intervening decision of the judge. That is because a police officer applying for an arrest warrant appears in a partisan role. The magistrate to whom the application is addressed is automatically on notice that the application comes from an interested party and therefore knows that scrutiny is warranted. The probation officer, on the other hand, is not a partisan advocate aligned with either the prosecution or the defendant. He is a neutral adviser to the court. Schiff v. Dorsey, 877 F. Supp. 73, 77 n.1 (D. Conn. 1994) (describing analogous role of federal probation officer; "the sentencing judge's need for complete and accurate information about an offender requires that he enjoy a relationship of the utmost trust and confidentiality with the federal probation officer"); see also Sharon Bunzel, Note, The Probation Officer and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Strange Philosophical Bedfellows, 105 Yale L.J. 933, 945 (1995) (describing historical role of probation officer as "neutral information gatherer with loyalties to no one but the court"). The district court noted a high likelihood of court adoption of such recommendations by the probation department.
New York law prohibits a court from sentencing a defendant to a term of probation not agreed upon by the parties without first considering the probation department's pre-sentence report ("PSR"). N.Y. Crim. Proc. Section(s) 390.20 (McKinney 1994). PSR's include not only material the department thinks appropriate, but also any other information the court may direct the investigation to include. Id. at 390.30(3)(a). Once written, PSR's become confidential court documents. Id. at Section(s) 390.50(1). Although not formally located within the judicial branch, Bowne v. County of Nassau, 371 N.Y.S.2d 449, 452 (N Y 1975), New York statutes intimately tie the probation department to the sentencing process.
Given the neutral advisory role of the probation officer toward the court, it is an entirely "natural consequence," Malley, 475 U.S. at 344 n.7, for a judge to adopt the OCDP's recommendations as to a therapy provider without careful scrutiny. Such action by a judge is neither "abnormal" nor "unforeseen." Gutierrez-Rodriguez, 882 F.2d at 561.
Court adoption of the probation officer's recommendation is particularly likely when the recommendation deals with a provider of therapy. Judges are unlikely to possess particularized information about the relative characteristics and merits of different providers of therapy. For this type of information, courts generally rely heavily on probation department recommendations.
The dissent suggests that we malign New York's judiciary by finding that the sentencing judge merely "rubber stamped" the probation office recommendation. We neither find nor imply any such thing. First, to say, as we do, that it was reasonably foreseeable that the sentencing judge would accept probation's recommendation on this point does not imply that the judge did not make his own determination. Second, our discussion relates only to the selection of a therapy provider and not at all to the court's determination of appropriateness of probation and of alcohol therapy. The selection of a provider of therapy is not an issue of law, and courts are ill equipped to perform this task without relying heavily on recommendations. For sentences involving alcohol abuse therapy, furthermore, the probation department's role is particularly significant. New York law allows a judge to sentence a defendant to a term of probation conditioned on "participat[ion] in an alcohol . . . abuse program . . . approved by the court after consultation with the local probation department having jurisdiction, or such other public or private agency as the court determines to be appropriate." N.Y. Penal Section(s) 65.10(2)(e)(emphasis added). The statutory requirement that the judge seek advice in approving a particular alcohol abuse program suggests judicial reliance on the department's expertise in selecting a program.
Whether it was reasonably foreseeable that the sentencing judge would adopt the OCDP's recommendation that Warner attend A.A. is a question of fact. See Springer, 821 F.2d at 876; Restatement (Second) of Torts Section(s) 453 cmt. b (1965). The district judge found a high likelihood that a judge would follow such a recommendation of the probation department. We review this determination for clear error, and find none. Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a); Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 572 (1985).
Finally, the dissent argues that, because Warner — following the advice of his attorney — sampled A.A. sessions prior to sentence and made no objection to their religious content at the time of sentence, the probation department's recommendation was not a proximate cause of the injury. The dissent argues also that Warner's conduct constituted consent. We are not persuaded by either argument.
The issue of proximate cause is not resolved by the mere fact that Warner's failure to object was an intervening event, subsequent to the probation recommendation and prior to the sentence. The issue, as noted above, is whether, when probation made its recommendation, it was reasonably foreseeable that the recommendation would result in the harm. Warner's failure to object was entirely foreseeable. Assuming his early visits made him aware of the full extent of the religious content of the A.A. therapy, it was not clear that Warner was aware at the time that the religious content gave him any legal basis to object, or that he had even told his lawyer about the religious content.
Furthermore, even if aware of his rights, he might well have been afraid to annoy the sentencing judge by objecting to the standard recommendation of the probation department. In short, for several reasons, it was entirely foreseeable at the time probation made its recommendation that Warner might not object.
For the same reasons and others, Warner's conduct did not constitute consent. Had Warner either suggested A.A. as a condition of probation, or somehow communicated his agreement to such a condition, we might well agree with Judge Winter. But the mere fact of his presentence attendance, designed to demonstrate his commitment to rehabilitation, did not amount to a consent to the aspect of the sentence that essentially required him to attend religious exercises. A defendant facing sentence may well undertake daily attendance at mass in the hope of convincing the sentencing judge of his penitence. We do not see how such conduct, without more, could be construed as consent to a sentence of probation conditioned on daily attendance at mass. The defendant's voluntary attendance may suggest that the illegal sentence caused him no great harm and may explain, in part, the setting of damages at $1, but it does not show consent.
B. Acts of Alcoholics Anonymous
The immediate cause of Warner's injury was not the sentencing judge's decision to send him to an alcohol rehabilitation program, but rather the actions of those who conducted the A.A. meetings Warner attended. Whether the religion-infused meetings should be regarded as a break in the causal chain between OCDP's action and plaintiff's injury, thus shielding the probation department from liability, depends, again, upon whether those actions were reasonably foreseeable to OCDP at the time it made the recommendation. Gutierrez-Rodriguez, 882 F.2d at 561; see also Malley, 475 U.S. at 344 n.7. On this point, the district court made no findings. The probation department was, of course, obligated to use reasonable care to inform itself of the suitability of therapy programs it recommended to the court, especially where such recommendations were repeatedly made as a matter of policy. Furthermore, the parties stipulated prior to trial that OCDP, when it formulated its policy of recommending A.A., was aware of the program's Twelve Steps and of their deeply religious character. Accordingly, there can be no question as to the reasonable foreseeability of the religious nature of the program OCDP was recommending for Warner; OCDP was well aware of it. The actions of A.A. cannot be considered to have broken the chain of causation. OCDP is responsible for any resulting injury to Warner's First Amendment rights.
II. Orange County's Other Defenses
A. Immunities
OCDP contends that even if its recommendation to the judge was a proximate cause of Warner's sentence, it is immune from liability. It claims that probation department sentence recommendations are so integral a part of the judicial process as to benefit from an absolute quasi-judicial immunity similar to that enjoyed by prosecutors. Cf. Cleavinger v. Saxner, 474 U.S. 193, 200 (1985)(noting "exten[sion of] absolute [judicial] immunity to certain others who perform functions closely associated with the judicial process"); Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 420, 431 (1976)(prosecutor's actions taken pursuant to prosecutorial function benefit from absolute quasi-judicial immunity).
Were this suit brought against the probation officer, Terwilliger, the claim for absolute immunity would likely have merit. We have held that actions of federal probation officers in preparing and furnishing presentence reports to courts are protected by an absolute immunity from suit for damages. Dorman v. Higgins, 821 F.2d 133, 137 (2d Cir. 1987). In so holding, we noted that this determination was consonant "with the similar conclusions of other circuits with respect to state probation officers operating within similar frameworks." Id. at 138 (citing Demoran v. Witt, 781 F.2d 155, 157-58 (9th Cir. 1985); Hughes v. Chesser, 731 F.2d 1489, 1490 (11th Cir. 1984)). A district court of this circuit, recognizing the close similarities between the roles of New York state and federal probation officers in preparing presentence reports, has held that New York state probation officers benefit from a similar absolute immunity. Shelton v. McCarthy, 699 F. Supp. 412, 414-15 (W.D.N.Y. 1988).
This case, however, does not require us to determine whether New York state probation officers benefit from immunity covering their submission of presentence reports, for Warner did not name any probation officers as defendants. The suit is brought only against the Orange County Department of Probation. The question is thus whether the claimed immunity extends to the governmental entity. We find that it does not.
Although the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the applicability of absolute quasi-judicial immunities to municipal government entities, it has repeatedly suggested that such protections are not available. In Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence Coordination Unit, 113 S. Ct. 1160 (1993), Justice Rehnquist explained on behalf of a unanimous Court that past "decisions make it quite clear that, unlike various government officials, municipalities do not enjoy immunity from suit — either absolute or qualified — under Section(s) 1983." Id. at 1162. Similarly, in Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 166-67 (1985), the Court indicated that the absolute prosecutorial immunity doctrine set forth in Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409 (1976), did not extend to claims brought against government entities under Section(s) 1983. "The only immunities that can be claimed in an official-capacity action are forms of sovereign immunity that the entity, qua entity, may possess, such as the Eleventh Amendment." Id. at 167. These rulings follow directly from the Supreme Court's decision in Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U.S. 622 (1980), which held that municipalities do not benefit from the qualified immunity of their officers.
Justice Rehnquist referred in particular to the Court's decision in Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978), overruling Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1961), and holding that local governments were no longer absolutely immune from suit under Section(s) 1983. Monell expressly reserved the question of whether municipalities might be entitled to some more limited form of immunity. 436 U.S. at 701. In Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U.S. 622, 638 (1980), the Supreme Court rejected the notion that the qualified immunity of municipal officials extends to municipalities themselves.
Following the direction of these cases, we refused in Pinaud v. County of Suffolk, 52 F.3d 1139 (2d Cir. 1995), to extend the absolute prosecutorial immunity of the Suffolk County district attorney to the County itself. Id. at 1153 (citing Leatherman). The Pinaud ruling guides our decision here, for in origin the quasi-judicial immunities of probation officers and prosecutors are closely linked. Indeed, our holding in Dorman v. Higgins that federal probation officers are protected by an absolute immunity in the preparation of presentence reports was grounded in significant part on the similarities between the prosecutorial function and the task of the probation officer, as well as probation officers' close relationship to the judicial process. Dorman, 821 F.2d at 136-37. As we have found in Pinaud that the absolute quasi-judicial immunity of prosecutors does not extend to the municipalities that employ them, the answer to the closely parallel question whether any immunity possessed by municipal probation officers would similarly benefit the municipality follows directly. We conclude on the basis of the authorities cited above that no such protection inures in Orange County by virtue of any immunity that may be possessed by its probation officers.
See also Baez v. Hennessy, 853 F.2d 73, 75-76 (2d Cir. 1988)(noting Supreme Court's agreement in dictum with view that absolute prosecutorial immunity does not extend to County government)(citing Kentucky v. Graham), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 1014 (1989). A few district courts had taken a different course, but these opinions were overruled by Pinaud. See Whelehan v. County of Monroe, 558 F. Supp. 1093, 1108 (W.D.N.Y. 1983); Armstead v. Town of Harrison, 579 F. Supp. 777, 782-83 (S.D.N Y 1984).
We noted, paraphrasing the Supreme Court's language in Imbler setting forth the limits of prosecutorial immunity, that "a federal probation officer acts as an arm of the court and that . . . task is an integral part of one of the most critical phases of the judicial process." Dorman, 821 F.2d at 137. And we made clear that federal probation officers deserve absolute immunity because they fall into a class of persons, such as prosecuting attorneys and witnesses testifying in judicial proceedings, whose activities require them to "perform functions [so] closely associated with the judicial process" that they "have also been accorded [absolute judicial] immunity." Id. (citation omitted).
We are fortified in this view by our own opinions and those of other circuits, which have in a variety of contexts refused to extend immunities — either absolute or qualified — to municipalities. As Judge Posner has explained:
[T]he municipality's liability for [its officials'] acts extends to acts for which the policy-making officials themselves might enjoy absolute immunity because the acts were legislative or judicial in character. Owen . . . so held with regard to the qualified immunity of municipal officers for their executive acts, and we cannot see why there should be a different result here just because these officers' immunity is absolute rather than qualified.
Reed v. Village of Shorewood, 704 F.2d 943, 953 (7th Cir. 1983). Also, in Goldberg v. Town of Rocky Hill, 973 F.2d 70 (2d Cir. 1992), we held that a municipality is liable for the unconstitutional acts of its legislature even though the legislators themselves are protected by absolute immunity. Id. at 74. We stated in that case that "there is no immunity defense, either qualified or absolute, available to a municipality sought to be held liable under 42 U.S.C. §(s) 1983." Id.; see also Ferran v. Town of Nassau, 11 F.3d 21, 23 (2d Cir. 1993)("[T]he town and county have no Section(s) 1983 immunity."), cert. denied, 115 S. Ct. 572 (1994); Reed, 704 F.2d at 953 (municipality has no absolute legislative or judicial immunity). Indeed, the circuit courts that have addressed the question are unanimous that the absolute immunity of local legislators does not extend to the municipalities they serve. See Berkley v. Common Council of Charleston, 63 F.3d 295, 296 (4th Cir. 1995)(en banc), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 775 (1996).
We are similarly not alone in the view that quasi-judicial absolute prosecutorial immunity does not extend to municipalities. The Ninth Circuit made a similar ruling in Ybarra v. Reno Thunderbird Mobile Home Village, 723 F.2d 675, 681 (9th Cir. 1984)("[Local governments] enjoy no immunity under Section(s) 1983 for damages."). At least one circuit has even gone so far as to hold that the absolute judicial immunity of courts themselves does not extend to local governments where a municipal official acts in a judicial capacity. Reed, 704 F.2d at 953; Soderbeck v. Burnett County, 752 F.2d 285, 293 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1117 (1985); see also Haynesworth v. Miller, 820 F.2d 1245, 1272 n. 227 (D.C. Cir. 1987)(noting that "municipality may . . . face Section(s) 1983 liability for the conduct of officials who enjoy absolute personal immunity" including liability for "conduct of a judge"). In any event, we hold that even if OCDP's probation officers are absolutely immune from liability, that protection does not extend to the County itself.
We do not imply that we would rule similarly where the asserted liability of the municipality derives from the conduct of a judge. A number of questions arise that may distinguish such a case. It is difficult to say that a municipal judge has "final authority to establish municipal policy" under state law at all, Walker v. City of New York, 974 F.2d 293, 296 (2d Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 961 (1993); City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 485 U.S. 112, 123 (1988) (plurality opinion), as such rulings are almost always — as here — appealable to higher courts within the state system. See Eggar v. City of Livingston, 40 F.3d 312, 314-15 n.3 (9th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 115 S. Ct. 2566 (1995); N.Y. Uniform Justice Court Act Section(s) 1701, 1702 (McKinney 1989). "Local" judicial decisions are therefore neither final, nor exclusively local. Eggar, 40 F.3d at 314-15 n.3.
Moreover, when a municipal judge enforces state law he does not act as a municipal official or lawmaker, but rather serves only to effectuate state policies. See Eggar, 40 F.3d at 314-15; Johnson v. Moore, 958 F.2d 92, 94 (5th Cir. 1992); Bigford v. Taylor, 834 F.2d 1213, 1222 (5th Cir.)(judge's "`deliberate or mistaken departure from the controlling [state] law' cannot be said to represent county policy")(quoting Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469, 486 (1986)), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 851 (1988); Carbalan v. Vaughn, 760 F.2d 662, 665 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1007 (1985); Familias Unidas v. Briscoe, 619 F.2d 391, 404 (5th Cir. 1980).
Courts have also denied municipal liability where — as is frequently the case — state law makes judges who are casually referred to as "county" officials in fact officers of state government, and a part of the state judicial system. See Eggar, 40 F.3d at 314 n.3 (power of city judges under Montana law derives from state statutes, and the judges are in the hierarchy of the state judicial system); Woods v. Michigan City, 940 F.2d 275, 279 (7th Cir. 1991)(under Indiana law county courts are a branch of the "state's constitutional system"); Thompson v. County of Rock, 648 F. Supp. 861, 866-67 (W.D. Wis. 1986)(denying municipal liability for acts of Wisconsin county court commissioners on grounds that they are in fact state officials). Since New York municipal courts are "part of the unified court system for the state," N.Y. Uniform Justice Court Act Section(s) 102 (McKinney 1989), this logic might well apply in New York as well. Finally, we note that even in the event that the law were to allow a municipality to be liable for judicial actions, judges themselves may be protected against providing testimony as to their thought processes in issuing an opinion. A number of courts have so held in the context of federal habeas corpus review of state court decisions. See Weidner v. Thieret, 866 F.2d 958, 963 (7th Cir. 1989)(recommending that state trial judges offer testimony in federal habeas cases, if at all, by voluntary affidavit since "it would be unseemly for a federal district judge to summon the state trial judge as a witness . . . to give testimony and be cross-examined"); Washington v. Strickland, 693 F.2d 1243, 1263 (5th Cir. Unit B 1982)(prohibiting testimony of state trial judges in federal habeas cases on rationale underlying their initial decision, inter alia, for reasons of federalism and comity), rev'd on other grounds, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). A similar logic would apply in collateral review of municipal court decisionmaking under Section(s) 1983.
B. Establishment Clause
The County also argues that forcing Warner to attend Alcoholics Anonymous did not violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. We disagree. The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that "at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which `establishes a [state] religion or religious faith, or tends to do so.'" Lee v. Weisman, 112 S. Ct. 2649, 2655 (1992) (quoting Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 678 (1984)); see County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, 492 U.S. 573, 591 (1989); Everson v. Board of Educ., 330 U.S. 1, 15-16 (1947); see also Katcoff v. Marsh, 755 F.2d 223, 231-32 (2d Cir. 1985) (observing that army chaplaincy program "meets the requirement of voluntariness by leaving the practice of religion solely to the individual soldier, who is free to worship or not as he chooses without fear of any discipline or stigma").
The A.A. program to which Warner was exposed had a substantial religious component. Participants were told to pray to God for help in overcoming their affliction. Meetings opened and closed with group prayer. The trial judge reasonably found that it "placed a heavy emphasis on spirituality and prayer, in both conception and in practice." We have no doubt that the meetings Warner attended were intensely religious events.
As noted above, the district court made no finding on OCDP's awareness of the religious nature of the A.A. program. We nonetheless found OCDP's responsibility by reason of the stipulation of the parties that OCDP knew the religious nature of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. The district judge's finding of a violation of the Establishment Clause was based in part on several factors, recited above, that were not included in the Stipulation covering OCDP's knowledge — particularly the prayers. Although there was no finding that OCDP knew (or should have known) of the prayers, the finding of Establishment Clause violation and of OCDP's responsibility are adequately supported by the stipulated facts.
There can be no doubt, furthermore, that Warner was coerced into participating in these religious exercises by virtue of his probation sentence. Neither the probation recommendation, nor the court's sentence, offered Warner any choice among therapy programs. The probation department's policy, its recommendation, and its printed form all directly recommended A.A. therapy to the sentencing judge, without suggesting that the probationer might have any option to select another therapy program, free of religious content. Once sentenced, Warner had little choice but to attend the A.A. sessions. If Warner had failed to attend A.A., he would have been subject to imprisonment for violation of probation. See N.Y. Penal Law Section(s) 60.01(4), 65.00(2) (McKinney 1987); N.Y. Veh. Traf. Law Section(s) 511(2), 1192(1) (McKinney 1986 Supp. 1996).
Had Warner been offered a reasonable choice of therapy providers, so that he was not compelled by the state's judicial power to enter a religious program, the considerations would be altogether different. Our ruling depends, as in Lee, on the "fundamental limitation imposed by the Establishment Clause" that bars government from "coerc[ing] anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise." 112 S. Ct. at 2655. In circumstances similar to our case, the New York Court of Appeals recently reached the same conclusion. Griffin v. Coughlin, No. 73, 1996 WL 317180 (N.Y. June 11, 1996). In Griffin, the New York court held that a prisoner's family visiting privileges may not be conditioned on participation in a treatment program that adopts the "religious-oriented practices and precepts of Alcoholics Anonymous." Id. at *1. The court emphasized that it was not proscribing A.A. programs offered to prisoners on a voluntary basis. Id. at *11. It was the coercive circumstances, conditioning a desirable privilege on the prisoner's participation in a religious program, without alternative, that drove the New York court to find a violation of the Establishment Clause.
See also O'Connor v. California, 855 F. Supp. 303 (C.D. Cal. 1994)(no Establishment Clause violation where probationers were offered a choice between A.A. and a secular program).
Orange County argues that even if Warner was forced to attend the meetings, he was not required to participate in the religious exercises that took place. The County argues that, as a mature adult, Warner was less susceptible to such pressure than the children who were required to stand in respectful silence during a school prayer in Lee v. Weisman, 112 S. Ct. at 2658-59; it points out that the Supreme Court expressly questioned whether the obligation imposed by the school in Lee might have been constitutionally tolerable "if the affected citizens [had been] mature adults." Id. at 2658.
We do not find Orange County's argument convincing. Although it is true Warner was more mature, his exposure was more coercive than the school prayer in Lee. The plaintiff in Lee was subjected only to a brief two minutes of prayer on a single occasion. Warner, in contrast, was required to participate in a long-term program of group therapy that repeatedly turned to religion as the basis of motivation. And when he appeared to be pursuing the Twelve Steps of the A.A. program with insufficient zeal — "Thirteen Stepping" in A.A. parlance — the probation officer required that he attend "Step meetings" to intensify his motivation. Warner was also paired with another member of A.A. as a method of enhancing his indoctrination into the group's approach to recovery from alcoholism. Most importantly, failure to cooperate could lead to incarceration. Although the trial judge found that Warner's success in remaining aloof diminished his damages to a token of one dollar, the fact that Warner managed to avoid indoctrination despite the pressure he faced does not make the County's program any less coercive, nor nullify the County's liability.
The County argues further that the non-sectarian nature of the A.A. experience immunizes its use of religious symbolism and practices from Establishment Clause scrutiny. The argument is at the very least factually misleading, for the evidence showed that every meeting included at least one explicitly Christian prayer. Furthermore, the claim that non-sectarian religious exercise falls outside the First Amendment's scrutiny has been repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court. As the Court made clear in Board of Education of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet, 114 S. Ct. 2481 (1993), "a principle at the heart of the Establishment Clause [is] that government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion." Id. at 2491; see also Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 591; School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 216-17 (1963).
Orange County relies upon Stafford v. Harrison, 766 F. Supp. 1014 (D. Kan. 1991), for the proposition that A.A. participation is not a religious exercise. Stafford involved a mandatory prison-based substance abuse program, structured around the principles of A.A. The court upheld the program, arguing that A.A.'s notions of a "higher power" and "God" were sufficiently flexible and non-denominational that the program could not be said to constitute a "religion." This is a misapplication of First Amendment doctrine, which prohibits coerced participation in religious exercise of any variety for its favoritism of religion over non-religion. We decline to follow that case, which has been criticized for misreading relevant Supreme Court precedent. See Scarpino v. Grossheim, 852 F. Supp. 798, 804 n.5 (S.D. Iowa 1994); Warner v. Orange County Dep't of Probation, 827 F. Supp. 261, 267 (S.D.N.Y. 1993).
Similarly, the County's reliance on Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983), is unavailing. In Marsh, the Supreme Court held that the Nebraska state legislature did not violate the Establishment Clause by commencing its sessions with a sectarian prayer. That opinion relied heavily on the long tradition of public prayer in this context. Id. at 786-90, 795 (noting "unbroken practice for two centuries in the National Congress"). The Court in Lee noted the significant differences between the opening ceremony of a state legislative session where adults are free to "enter and leave with little comment and for any number of reasons" and the powerful emotional compulsion for a child to be present at her high school graduation. Lee, 112 S. Ct. at 2660. The differences between the invocation at a session of the state legislature and Warner's compulsory adherence to the A.A. program are even more obvious.
The parties also offer analyses of this case within the much-maligned but still viable framework of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). Compare Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free Sch. Dist., 113 S. Ct. 2141, 2148 n.7 (1993)(noting ongoing viability of Lemon) with Lee, 112 S. Ct. at 2685 (Scalia, J., dissenting)(noting criticism of Lemon) and Lamb's Chapel, 113 S. Ct. at 2149-50 (Scalia, J., concurring)(same). Whatever other tests may be applicable in the Establishment Clause context, the Supreme Court has made clear that "at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise." Lee, 112 S. Ct. at 2655. Because sending Warner to A.A. as a condition of his probation, without offering a choice of other providers, plainly constituted coerced participation in a religious exercise, we find a violation of the Establishment Clause.
Resolving questions as to the reach of the Establishment Clause "of necessity [requires] line-drawing, . . . determining at what point a dissenter's rights of religious freedom are infringed by the State." Id. at 2661. We have little difficulty concluding that the constitutional line was crossed here.
Conclusion
We have considered Orange County's other claims, and find them to be without merit. The judgment of the district court is affirmed.