Smith v. Albany County School District No. 1

121 F.4th 1374

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
• Decided: November 26, 2024
• Docket: 23-8072
• Status: Published

Opinion

Appellate Case: 23-8072 Document: 58-1 Date Filed: 11/26/2024 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals PUBLISH Tenth Circuit

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS November 26, 2024 Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________

GRACE SMITH; ANDY SMITH; ERIN SMITH,

Plaintiffs - Appellants,

v. No. 23-8072

ALBANY COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 BOARD OF TRUSTEES; JANICE MARSHALL, in both her individual and official capacities as Chairman for the Board of Trustees for Albany County School District No. 1; NATE MARTIN, in both his individual and official capacities as Trustee for the Board of Trustees for Albany County School District No.1; KIM SORENSON, in both his individual and official capacities as Trustee for the Board of Trustees for Albany County School District No. 1; EMILY SIEGEL-STANTON, in both her individual and official capacities as Trustee for the Board of Trustees for Albany County School District No. 1; BETH BEAR, in both her individual and official capacities as Trustee for the Board of Trustees for Albany County School District No. 1; LAWRENCE PAREA, in both his individual and official capacities (and/or his successor(s) in their official capacity) as Trustee for the Board of Trustees for Albany County School District No. 1; DR. JUBAL YENNIE, Ed.D., in both his individual and official capacities (and/or his successor(s) in their official capacity) as Superintendent of Albany County

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School District No. 1; JEFF LEWIS, in both his individual and official capacities (and/or his successor(s) in their official capacity) as Principal of Laramie High School,

Defendants - Appellees. _________________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming (D.C. No. 2:23-CV-00159-NDF) _________________________________

Randy B. Corporon, Law Office of Randy B. Corporon, P.C., Aurora, Colorado, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Eric D. Hevenor (L. Kathleen Chaney with him on the briefs), Lambdin & Chaney, LLP, Denver, Colorado, for Defendants-Appellees. _________________________________

Before HARTZ, PHILLIPS, and EID, Circuit Judges. _________________________________

HARTZ, Circuit Judge. _________________________________

After the Albany County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees (the Board)

imposed a COVID-19 indoor-mask mandate at Laramie High School (LHS), Grace

Smith, a high-school junior, was repeatedly suspended from school because of her refusal

to comply with the mandate and then was arrested for trespassing on school grounds. Her

parents, Andy and Erin Smith, individually and as parents of a minor, filed suit for

damages in the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming against the

members of the Board, the superintendent of schools, and the LHS principal. The suit

alleged violations of Grace’s rights under the United States Constitution and violations of

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the rights of Grace and her parents (collectively, the Smiths) under Wyoming law. The

district court dismissed the federal-law claims for lack of jurisdiction on the ground that

Grace did not suffer an injury in fact necessary for standing; it then declined to exercise

supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claims. Reviewing the dismissal de novo, see

Baker v. USD 229 Blue Valley, 979 F.3d 866, 871 (10th Cir. 2020), we reverse and

remand for further proceedings. 1

BACKGROUND

The parties do not dispute the following facts on appeal: The Board imposed its

mask mandate in September 2021. Students who did not wish to comply with the

mandate were allowed to attend virtual classes. Grace opposed the mandate. She carried

signs in front of the school, organized a walkout of some 80 students and 30 parents, and

repeatedly refused to wear a mask. As punishment, LHS imposed two-day suspensions

from school on three separate occasions. After the second and third suspensions, LHS

asked local law enforcement to issue Grace a citation for trespassing when she refused to

leave school grounds. On the third occasion, police officers arrested and handcuffed her,

drove her to the police station, booked her for trespassing, and then released her to her

father. On October 13, 2021, Grace withdrew from school.

The Smiths filed suit in Wyoming state court. The complaint asserted that (1) the

1 Grace Smith reached the age of majority after the complaint was filed. She is now a party to this case in her own right. We amend the caption accordingly. See Russell v. Richardson, 905 F.3d 239, 245 n.3 (3d Cir. 2018) (adopting similar approach).

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mask mandate violated Grace’s First Amendment right to free speech by compelling her

“to utter what was not in her mind,” Aplt. App. at 30 (cleaned up); (2) the defendants

violated the First Amendment by retaliating against her for her speech and expressive

conduct; and (3) the defendants violated her Fourteenth Amendment right to due process

in enacting the mask mandate and enforcing it against her. The complaint also raised

three state-law claims. As relief, the Smiths requested damages and a declaratory

judgment.

The defendants removed the case to federal court and moved to dismiss under Fed.

R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) for

failure to state a claim. The Smiths did not respond to the motions. The district court

dismissed the federal claims for lack of standing; and it declined to exercise jurisdiction

over the state-law claims, see 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3). The court then issued an order

denying the Smiths’ motion to file an untimely response to the motions to dismiss.

Although the order also stated that the claims had no merit, the defendants do not ask us

to resolve the merits on appeal as an alternative ground for affirmance if we decide that

Grace had standing.

DISCUSSION

The jurisdiction of the federal courts is limited to cases and controversies. See U.S.

Const. art. III., § 2. That limitation requires plaintiffs to have standing. See Rocky

Mountain Wild v. Dallas, 98 F.4th 1263, 1286 (10th Cir. 2024). “To establish standing, a

plaintiff must show (1) [she] has suffered an injury in fact that is (a) concrete and

particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is

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fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed

to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.” Id.

(internal quotation marks omitted).

The district court held that Grace lacked standing because she had not suffered an

injury in fact. It reasoned that Grace’s alleged injuries were (1) conjectural and

hypothetical because the Board’s mask mandate had expired and Grace was no longer a

student at LHS and (2) “self-inflicted” because Grace voluntarily chose to trespass on

school property, withdraw from LHS, and forego virtual education. Aplt. App. at 51.

We are not persuaded. When a government regulation “require[s] or forbid[s]

some action by the plaintiff,” she “almost invariably” states an injury in fact. Food &

Drug Admin. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. 367, 382 (2024). This

proposition allows students to challenge school policies enforced against them. In

Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, the Supreme Court held that a student had standing to bring a

First Amendment claim after he was threatened with discipline by a school official for

speaking in a designated free-speech zone on the campus. See 141 S. Ct. 792, 797 (2021).

In Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v.

Earls, the Supreme Court held that a student had standing to challenge a school policy

requiring all students in extracurricular activities to submit to drug testing because the

student was a member of several student groups. See 536 U.S. 822, 826 & n.1 (2002). In

School District of Abington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp, the Supreme Court held

that students had standing to challenge a requirement that schools start each day with

Bible readings because the students attended the schools and were “directly affected” by

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the requirement. 374 U.S. 203, 205, 224 n.9 (1963). And in Taylor v. Roswell

Independent School District, we held that a student “clearly” had standing to challenge

school-district policies restricting the distribution of non-school-related materials on

campus after the school stopped the student from distributing fetus dolls to other students

and threatened disciplinary action. 713 F.3d 25, 29 n.1, 31 (10th Cir. 2013).

Given this precedent, Grace has easily met the requirements for standing. She

alleges that the defendants repeatedly punished her for opposing the mask mandate. They

suspended her three times and requested that local law enforcement issue her two

trespassing citations, arrest her, and take her to jail. These allegations state an injury in fact.

The defendants’ counterarguments are unpersuasive. First, they argue that

Grace lacks standing because her claims lack merit. They contend that (1) wearing, or

not wearing, a mask “is not protected speech,” Aplee. Br. at 23 (cleaned up); (2) even

if wearing a mask is expressive conduct, it “would still be subject to regulation under

First Amendment precedent,” id. at 26; and (3) there was no due-process violation.

These arguments put the “merits cart before the standing horse.” Initiative &

Referendum Inst. v. Walker, 450 F.3d 1082, 1093 (10th Cir. 2006) (en banc).

“Standing in no way depends on the merits of the plaintiff’s contention that particular

conduct is illegal.” Id. at 1093 (internal quotation marks omitted); cf. Steel Co. v.

Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 89 (1998) (“[J]urisdiction is not defeated by

the possibility that the averments might fail to state a cause of action on which

petitioners could actually recover.” (cleaned up)). If it did, “every losing claim

would be dismissed for want of standing.” Walker, 450 F.3d at 1092. We therefore

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assume a plaintiff’s claims have “legal validity” when assessing standing and do not

“open the door to merits considerations at the jurisdictional stage.” Id. at 1093; see

also Day v. Bond, 500 F.3d 1127, 1137 (10th Cir. 2007) (“[W]e assume, during the

evaluation of the plaintiff’s standing, that the plaintiff will prevail on his merits

argument—that is, that the defendant has violated the law.”).

Second, the defendants cite three district-court cases dismissing challenges to

mask mandates for lack of standing. Each is distinguishable. A.R. by & through

Roberts v. Kansas School Board Association dismissed a plaintiff’s claims because

she did not allege the mask mandate applied to her. See No. 21-2492-JWB, 2022 WL

103292, at *4 (D. Kan. Jan. 11, 2022). Celauro v. Federal Express Ground dismissed

a plaintiff’s claims because he failed to sue those responsible for the mask mandate.

See 548 F. Supp. 3d 1034, 1041–42 (D. Colo. 2021). And McKinley v. Grisham

dismissed a putative intervenor’s request to join a lawsuit because he failed to show

causation—how his alleged injuries could be traced to the defendant. See

No. 20-01331-JHR/JFR 2021 WL 4290178, at *3–5 (D.N.M. Sept. 21, 2021). None

of these deficiencies in standing appears here.

Finally, the defendants appear to adopt the district court’s rationale that any

injury to Grace was self-inflicted. They say that Grace chose to disobey the mask

mandate, to remain on school grounds after being suspended, and to forego virtual

education—all in favor of “public grandstanding.” Aplee. Br. at 32. To the extent that

the defendants are assuming that the mandate was lawful and should have been

obeyed, they are addressing the merits of Grace’s claims, which, as explained above,

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is not relevant to her standing to bring the claims. And to the extent that the

defendants are saying that the mandate, even if unconstitutional, did not cause her

injuries because she could have avoided the injuries by obeying the mandate, they

miss the mark. “[A]n injury resulting from the application or threatened application

of an unlawful enactment remains fairly traceable to such application, even if the

injury could be described in some sense as willingly incurred.” Fed. Election

Comm’n v. Cruz, 596 U.S. 289, 297 (2022). Grace’s injuries were “directly inflicted”

by the defendants’ enforcement of the mask mandate. Id. That Grace chose to subject

herself to the mask mandate by attending school does not change the fact that she was

subject to the mandate and faced genuine penalties for her failure to comply with it.

See id.; see also Fish v. Kobach, 840 F.3d 710, 716 n.5, 754 (10th Cir. 2016)

(rejecting as “border[ing] on the absurd” the argument that a plaintiff does not have

standing to challenge an allegedly unlawful statute simply because the plaintiff

“could have complied with the statute but elected not to”). In particular, we reject the

defendants’ contention that the mandate did not injure Grace because state law treats

virtual instruction the same as in-person instruction. We beg to differ. It is one thing

for state law to say that virtual instruction is adequate for compulsory-education

purposes. But that is a far cry from saying it is equivalent to in-person instruction. Cf.

A.C. v. Metro Sch. Dist. of Martinsville, 75 F.4th 760, 772 (7th Cir. 2023) (observing

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that “remote schooling” is “not a true alternative” to the “opportunity to socialize

with and learn alongside” classmates in person). 2

CONCLUSION

We REVERSE the district court’s Order Granting Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss

and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

2 Grace raises two additional issues. She argues that the district court abused its discretion in failing to allow her to file a response to Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss and that the district court erred in issuing a later order with additional grounds for dismissal after it had already dismissed the suit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Because we reverse on the denial of standing, we need not address these issues. On remand, the district court will have the opportunity to consider the issues remaining in the case.

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