Darian Locure, a sheriff's deputy in Tuskegee, Alabama, was off duty when he became intoxicated at the sheriff's office. While driving his police truck home in the dark without headlights, he sped at roughly 70 miles per hour in a 25-mile-per-hour zone and collided with a vehicle carrying Edwin Moss, who died at the scene. Denise Hughes, the administrator of Moss's estate, sued Locure in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging a violation of Moss's substantive due process right to life. The district court denied Locure's motion to dismiss, ruling that the complaint plausibly alleged a constitutional violation and that Locure was not entitled to qualified immunity. Locure appealed, and after his death, his widow was substituted as the appellant.
The panel, writing for the court, first addressed the scope of its jurisdiction. The court held that it lacks interlocutory jurisdiction to review the district court's determination on whether Locure acted under color of state law. Citing the Seventh and Tenth Circuits, the court reasoned that the color-of-law element is distinct from the qualified immunity defense and that resolving the immunity question does not require deciding the color-of-law issue. Consequently, the court assumed for the purpose of the appeal that Locure acted under color of law. Turning to the merits of the qualified immunity claim, the court applied the standard burden-shifting analysis. The court assumed without deciding that Locure's conduct shocked the conscience and violated a substantive due process right. However, the court focused on whether that right was clearly established at the time of the violation. The court explained that for a right to be clearly established, the unlawfulness of the conduct must be apparent to every reasonable official. The court noted that Eleventh Circuit precedent, including Cannon v. Taylor and Rooney v. Watson, has held that negligent or even grossly negligent operation of a motor vehicle by a police officer does not transform a state tort claim into a constitutional deprivation. Because this existing caselaw cast doubt on whether such conduct violated the Constitution, the court concluded that the law was not clearly established. The court rejected the argument that the conduct was so egregious it fell under an 'obvious clarity' exception, distinguishing the 'shocks the conscience' standard for tort liability from the 'clearly established' standard for qualified immunity. The court emphasized that while the conduct was reprehensible, the state of the law did not provide fair warning that it was unconstitutional.
The decision shields the deputy from federal liability under Section 1983, requiring the estate to seek damages through state wrongful death tort claims. It reinforces the Eleventh Circuit's stance that drunk driving by police officers, absent specific precedent to the contrary, does not clearly establish a substantive due process violation. The case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with the reversal of the qualified immunity denial.