U.S. Court of Appeals Says CPS Workers Have Qualified Immunity
Decided: February 8, 2024 (McKeague, Larson, and Murphy)
Docket No. 23-1372
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Holding: Moegle and her supervisor, Shaw, both employees of the Children’s Protective Services (CPS) program in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), appealed the district court’s partial denial of qualified immunity for eleven claims filed against various State of Michigan defendants by Bambach and his minor children. The Court found that no clearly established law put the state defendants on notice that they were violating the Bambachs’ Fourteenth and Fourth Amendment rights. Thus, the Court reversed the district court’s denial of summary judgment and remanded the case for an entry of an order dismissing the Bambachs’ claims against the state defendants.
Facts: Father, Plaintiff Bambach, receiving primary custody of his twin daughters in 2013. Mother did not interact much with her daughters until May 2015. Mother scheduled parenting time for December 23 to the morning of December 25, 2015. On the evening of December 24, one of the children made allegations to Mother that Mother found to be concerning. Mother immediately took both daughters to the emergency room for examination where both daughters were diagnosed with acute urinary tract infections, and physicians noted potential diagnoses of alleged sexual assault.
CPS received a third-party report of actual or suspected child abuse and Defendant Moegle was assigned to investigate with Shaw supervising it. Moegle called Father to notify him of allegations that he had sexually abused his daughters, and she asked if his daughters could stay with Mother during the pendency of the investigation. He agreed. Within days of this agreement, Father began repeatedly calling DHHS to ask when he was getting the children back as he claimed he “made it clear” to Moegle that he wanted to see his daughters again and wanted them back. Although Father agreed to meet with Moegle to discuss the investigation, he changed his mind.
Moegle, with Shaw’s review and approval, eventually submitted a removal petition to the county prosecuting attorney, as well as completed an investigative report in which Moegle, again with Shaw’s review and approval, concluded that a preponderance of evidence suggested Father sexually abused his daughters. The district court temporarily approved the removal petition, however, one day before trial was set to begin, the county prosecuting attorney agreed to dismiss the petition, and the children were immediately released to Father.
Father filed this lawsuit in December 2018, alleging that Moegle, Shaw, a state social worker, and the county violated his and his daughters’ Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Moegle, Shaw, and the social worker moved to dismiss, raising qualified and absolute immunity defenses. The district court granted the motion in part but denied the state defendants’ qualified immunity defense against Father’s claims for the time prior to preparing and filing the removal petition. The court granted judgment on Father’s Fifth Amendment claim but denied summary judgment on the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment claims. The court found that a reasonable jury could determine that Father revoked his consent to his children’s placement with Mother by expressing to Moegle that he wanted to see his children and wanted to know when they would be back. If true, the court found that lack of parental consent to the children’s continued removal would violate the Bambachs’ constitutional rights.
However, the district court’s analysis of the state defendants’ qualified immunity defense failed to assess whether those constitutional rights were clearly established at the time of the violations. The unresolved question before the Sixth Circuit was whether clearly established law put Moegle and Shaw on notice that they were violating the Bambachs’ constitutional rights by failing to release the children to their father.
Key Appellate Rulings
State officers are shielded from civil liability for their actions unless they have violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
The Court held the Bambachs could not point to any law that clearly established that Moegle violated the Bambachs’ constitutional rights by failing to return the Bambach children to their father between December 29, 2015, to January 14, 2016. Where state employees remove children from their parents’ care without a valid court order and without parental consent or pre-removal process, the state workers violate either the Fourth or Fourteen Amendment or both. Where state workers receive parental consent to temporarily remove children from custody, the state employees do not violate any constitutional rights, even if a court order is not obtained or they do not follow any other process for the removal.
The Bambachs’ claims are somewhere in the middle of the dilemma as Moegle and Shaw did not obtain a court order until January 14, 2016. On December 25, 2025, Bambach explicitly consented to the children’s removal. Then, several days later, the Court assumed he impliedly revoked his consent, but he failed to explicitly revoke his consent. Although a parent can withdraw consent to temporary removal, it must be explicitly withdrawn as there is little case law on whether implicitly withdrawn consent is permissible. Such requests as Father’s inquiring when the children would return have shown to be insufficient to indicate to the social worker that the parents no longer consented to their children’s temporary removal from custody.
There was no indication, however, that Moegle ever informed Father that he could voluntarily withdraw his consent to the temporary placement with Mother, though the Bambachs seemed to have conceded that the arrangement was best characterized as a “voluntary safety plan.” But this distinction did not change the Court’s analysis.
The Court’s analysis of the Bambachs’ Fourteenth Amendment claims similarly showed why the Bambachs could not show that their Fourth Amendment rights were clearly established in December 2015. The law indicated that it was reasonable for Moegle to believe she never lost Bambach’s explicit consent to his daughters’ temporary placement with Mother.
