Jason v. Turner

Opinion

TRENT JASON, Case No. 25-cv-02894-RS Plaintiff, v. ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO KIM TURNER, et al., Defendants.

In a complaint spanning nearly 400 pages, Plaintiff Trent Jason has sued Defendant Kim Turner, Executive Officer of California’s Mendocino County Court, as well as the entire California Judiciary, averring violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Fourteenth Amendment. Defendant Turner now moves to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the Eleventh Amendment and for failure to state a claim. For the reasons explained below, the motion is granted. On November 27, 2023, Plaintiff was named as a defendant in a state court civil harassment restraining order case filed under docket entry Clark v. Jason, Superior Court case number 23-cv-1139. Compl., Dkt. No. 1, at 12–13. After a hearing on December 26, 2023, the petition was dismissed. Id. at 16. According to Plaintiff’s complaint, Defendant Kim Turner, as the Mendocino County clerk, is access to enter into the Mendocino County Court case search index portal.” Id. Plaintiff claims that Turner improperly altered the cover of the Clark v. Jason case information page by inserting the word “judgment” despite no judgment having been entered; he also claims she refused to expunge the case records and blocked the minutes of the hearing from public view. Id.1 If a person attempts to view the minutes of the December 2023 hearing, Plaintiff avers that the following message appears: “An issue occurred when attempting to retrieve the document. If the issue continues to occur, please visit the Notification page for more information and support options.” Id. Plaintiff thus claims that anyone reading the register of actions would believe that there is a judgment against him. Id. at 4. Turner’s alleged conduct is, in Plaintiff’s view, a retaliation—he purportedly provided Turner with a 55-page statement detailing “wrongful conduct” by a different judge while that judge was in private practice. Id. at 16. Turner also allegedly retaliated against him because Plaintiff complained to the California Commission on Judicial Performance about judges that Turner had assigned to preside over his cases. Id. at 17. The complaint further avers that Turner improperly hires and retains unqualified court employees with alleged criminal backgrounds, see, e.g., id. at 18–23. In addition to the allegations against Turner, Plaintiff levies a raft of allegations against “California Judiciary,” which he identifies as a “State of California government entity” located at the address for the Judicial Council’s Governmental Affairs Office. Id. at 2. In his view, the Judiciary has “ratified” unlawful conduct by judges by “fail[ing] to sufficiently sanction these persons.” Id. at 3.

1 Later in the complaint, at page 30, Plaintiff avers that Turner told him in a June 2024 letter that the case file in question “will remain in the court’s public index unless you take further action to seal the record. Absent such sealing order, the case will remain available to the public.” Plaintiff avers that attempting to seal the record is fruitless, however, because “each and all of the Mendocino County Superior Judges that have presided in matters where Plaintiff was a party to a civil action, had knowingly and intentionally violated the statutory scheme and ignored the published opinions of the California Court[.]” Id. at 31. As relief, Plaintiff seeks the following: a court-ordered injunction that would make this court the supervisor of the Mendocino and Shasta County Superior Courts; $300,000 in compensatory damages from Turner and $4.7 million in compensatory damages from the California Judiciary; and punitive damages of at least $10 million. Defendant Turner now moves to dismiss the complaint, which has not been served on Defendant California Judiciary. See Dkt. No. 9 (showing only service on Turner). She argues that subject matter jurisdiction is lacking in this case and that the complaint fails to state a claim. Federal courts have limited jurisdiction. A cause presumably lies outside this limited jurisdiction, and the party asserting jurisdiction (i.e., Plaintiff) bears the burden to establish the contrary. Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of America, 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994) (citations omitted). Further, in a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under Rule 12(b)(1), “no presumptive truthfulness attaches to plaintiff’s allegations, and the existence of disputed material facts will not preclude the trial court from evaluating for itself the merits of jurisdictional claims.” Thornhill Pub. Co., Inc. v. General Tel. & Electrics, Corp., 594 F.2d 730, 733 (9th Cir.1979) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). IV. DISCUSSION Plaintiff’s complaint fails to survive Defendant’s motion to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds. In suing the “California Judiciary”, he appears to seek damages and injunctive relief against a state’s instrumentalities and/or agencies—precisely what the Eleventh Amendment and the doctrine of sovereign immunity prohibit. See Franceschi v. Schwartz, 57 F.3d 828, 831 (9th Cir. 1995) (citing Durning v. Citibank, N.A., 950 F.2d 1419, 1422–23 (9th Cir. 1991)). “It is well established that agencies of the state are immune under the Eleventh Amendment from private damages or suits for injunctive relief brought in federal court.” Sato v. Orange Cnty. Dep’t of Educ., 861 F.3d 923, 928 (9th Cir. 2017) (citation omitted). “[T]he California Superior Court and its judges are State actors.” Alexis v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 698 F. App’x 345, 346 (9th Cir. 2017) (citing Greater L.A. Council on Deafness, Inc. v. Zolin, 812 F.2d 1103, 1110 (9th Cir. 1987), superseded by statute on other grounds). Because the Eleventh Amendment immunizes the Superior Court and other state agencies (such as the California Judicial Council’s Governmental Affairs Office, which appears to be the agency Plaintiff means to identify), this court lacks the subject matter jurisdiction necessary to hear Plaintiff’s claims against the “California Judiciary”. To be sure, a sovereign state may waive its immunity, but litigants asserting jurisdiction bear the burden to demonstrate a clear waiver, Baker v. United States, 817 F.2d 560, 562 (9th Cir.1987), and Plaintiff does not do so here. Nor can he. “The State of California has not waived its Eleventh Amendment immunity with respect to claims brought under § 1983 in federal court, and the Supreme Court has held that § 1983 was not intended to abrogate a State’s Eleventh Amendment immunity.” Brown v. California Dep’t of Corr., 554 F.3d 747, 752 (9th Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also A. K. L. v. Moreno Valley Unified Sch. Dist., No. 18-cv-430-JGB, 2021 WL 4352368, at *7 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 1, 2021) (noting that Section 1983 claims against a California school district are foreclosed by the Eleventh Amendment). To the extent Plaintiff sues Defendant Turner in her official capacity as a state court clerk, the same immunity that protects the judiciary also protects her. Claims against state officers in their official capacity are “no different from a suit against the State itself.” Will v. Mich. Dep’t of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 71 (1989). “[A]s when the State itself is named as the defendant, a suit against state officials that in fact is a suit against the State is barred regardless of whether it seeks damages or injunctive relief.” Pennhurst State School & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 101– 02 (1984) (citation omitted). The Ex parte Young doctrine is no help either, as it does not extend to state court clerks such as Turner. That doctrine “allows certain private parties to seek judicial orders in federal court preventing state executive officials from enforcing state laws that are contrary to federal law.” Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, 595 U.S. 30, 39 (2021) (discussing Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 159–60 (1908)). As the Supreme Court explained in Whole Woman’s Health: [T]his traditional exception does not normally permit federal courts to issue injunctions against state-court judges or clerks. Usually, those individuals do not enforce state laws as executive officials might; instead, they work to resolve disputes between parties. If a state court errs in its rulings, too, the traditional remedy has been some form of appeal, including to this Court, not the entry of an ex ante injunction preventing the state court from hearing cases. As Ex parte Young put it, “an injunction against a state court” or its “machinery” “would be a violation of the whole scheme of our Government.” Id. (citing Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. at 163). Moreover, Turner enjoys quasi-judicial immunity as a government official performing judicial acts. Just as judges are immune from civil suits arising out of the exercise of their judicial functions, so too are court clerks “when they perform tasks that are an integral part of the judicial process.” Mullis v. U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Dist. of Nevada, 828 F.2d 1385, 1390 (1987). The acts alleged here—labelling a docket, hiring court staff, assigning judges—are integral parts of the judicial process. “A court’s inherent power to control its docket is part of its function of resolving disputes between parties. This is a function for which judges and their supporting staff are afforded absolute immunity.” Darulis v. City of San Diego, No. 07-cv-2170-LAB-LSP, 2008 WL1345984, at *2 (S.D. Cal., Apr. 9, 2008) (quoting Rodriguez v. Weprin, 116 F.3d 62, 66 (2d Cir.1997)). “Immunity is afforded for activities, such as giving notice, that are ‘inexorably connected with . . . and are analogous to judicial action invoke absolute immunity. . . Thus, not only the actual decision . . . but also activities that are part and parcel of the decision process justify absolute immunity.” Id. (citing Wilson v. Kelkhoff, 86 F.3d 1438, 1444 (7th Cir.1996) (citations omitted)). That an activity is routine or requires no adjudicatory skill does not render it any less of a judicial function. Id. Turner therefore enjoys immunity, and the complaint must be dismissed. Pursuant to the Eleventh Amendment and the related doctrine of sovereign immunity, subject matter jurisdiction is not present in this case. The “California Judiciary” is not a legal entity, and the entity at the address that Plaintiff identifies is an agency of the state immune from suit. Immunity also applies to Turner as explained supra. The complaint is therefore dismissed, without leave to amend.2

2 In addition to the jurisdictional problems, Plaintiff’s meandering and overlong complaint flunks Rule 8(a)’s requirement that a complaint set forth a “short and plain” statement of a claim. Moreover, even if the court had jurisdiction, the factual averments in the complaint appear to be insufficient to state a claim. Given the lack of jurisdiction, however, the court does not address Defendant’s arguments under Rule 12(b)(6). 1 3 4 Dated: June 5, 2025 5 RICHARD SEEBORG 6 Chief United States District Judge 4 8 9 10 11 a 12

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Z 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO DISMISS CASE No. 25-cv-02894-RS