Ashcroft in a Defendant's Wonderland: Redefined Pleading Standards in Ashcroft v. Iqbal - Cassidy M. Flake

• Citation: Vol. 61 No. 3
• Publication year: 2010

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Ashcroft in a Defendant's Wonderland: Redefined Pleading Standards in Ashcroft v. Iqbal

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal¹ is the Court's awaited clarification of its earlier decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly.² In the wake of Twombly, courts and commentators debated its application to cases other than antitrust disputes.³ The

Court announced in Iqbal that the Twombly complaint requirement of facial plausibility applies to all civil actions filed in federal court, not just antitrust cases.⁴ Accordingly, Iqbal currently governs the standards by which all plaintiffs in federal court must draft complaints to state a legally sufficient claim for relief and survive a defendant's motion to dismiss.⁵ Survival will be tougher because this case confirms the end of the liberal pleading standards developed in Conley v. Gibson⁶ and its progeny.⁷

I. Factual Background

The dispute in Ashcroft v. Iqbal⁸ stems from the response of American authorities to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 (9-11). After the attack, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began searching for persons connected to the event. Some individuals suspected of having links to the attacks were held on immigration charges, and a subset of those individuals was deemed to be of high interest to the investigation and placed in detention centers.⁹

Javaid Iqbal, a Muslim citizen of Pakistan and the plaintiff in this case, was arrested in November 2001 on criminal charges and detained as a high interest individual in the 9-11 search. While those charges were pending, the plaintiff was held at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in New York and placed in a section of the MDC called the Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit (ADMAX SHU), which operates under maximum security conditions.¹⁰

The plaintiff returned to Pakistan after pleading guilty to the criminal charges against him and serving a term of imprisonment.¹¹ He thereafter filed a Bivens¹² action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York against federal officials and corrections officers connected to his detention in the ADMAX SHU.¹³ The plaintiff's complaint specifically alleged that the defendants in this appeal —Director of the FBI Robert Mueller III and former United States

Attorney General John Ashcroft—violated the First Amendment¹⁴ and Fifth Amendment¹⁵ by designating the plaintiff as a high interest suspect on account of his race, religion, or national origin.¹⁶ The complaint further alleged that the FBI, under Mueller's direction, "'arrested and detained thousands of Arab Muslim men ... as part of its investigation of the events of September 11'"¹⁷ and that "'[t]he policy of holding post-September-11th detainees in highly restrictive conditions of confinement until they were cleared by the FBI was approved by [the defendants] in discussions in the weeks after September 11, 2001.'"¹⁸ According to the complaint, the defendants "'knew of, condoned, and willfully and maliciously agreed to subject' [the plaintiff] to harsh conditions of confinement 'as a matter of policy, solely on account of [his] religion, race, and/or national origin and for no legitimate penological interest.'"¹⁹ In addition, the complaint alleged that Ashcroft was a "'principal architect'" of this policy of arresting Arab Muslims²⁰ and that Mueller was "'instrumental in [its] adoption, promulgation, and implementation.'"²¹

The defendants moved to dismiss the plaintiff's complaint on the ground that the complaint failed to state facts sufficient to support the claim that the defendants had intentionally violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights.²² Relying on Conley v. Gibson,²³ the district court denied the motion, holding that the complaint had alleged at least some facts on which, if true, the plaintiff would be entitled to relief.²⁴ The defendants then filed an interlocutory appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.²⁵ In the meantime, the

Supreme Court decided Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly.²⁶ Accordingly, the Second Circuit attempted to apply Twombly and held that the plaintiff's complaint adequately alleged facts sufficient to raise its claim—that the defendants personally participated in unconstitutional discrimination against the plaintiff—to the level of plausibility.²⁷

The Supreme Court granted certiorari, and in a 5-4 decision, the Court held that the facial plausibility pleading standard enunciated in Twombly applies to all civil actions in federal court.²⁸ Therefore, allegations that assert only legal conclusions, or that are merely consistent with liability, do not meet the plausibility standard.²⁹ Reasoning that the plaintiff's allegations suggested only that the defendants' liability was possible rather than plausible, the Court reversed the ruling of the court of appeals.³⁰

II. Legal Background

One of the first Supreme Court decisions to address the standards for pleading under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was United States v. Employing Plasterers Ass'n of Chicago,³¹ in which the Court considered the sufficiency of the plaintiff's complaint in an antitrust dispute.³² The complaint alleged that the defendants, a Chicago trade association and local labor union of plastering contractors, violated the Sherman Act³³ by conspiring (1) to suppress competition from local plastering contractors, (2) to prevent contractors outside the state from doing business in Chicago, and (3) to stop new local contractors from entering into business by requiring approval of new contractors by the defendants' private examining board.³⁴ Noting that local business restraints can constitute violations of the Sherman Act, the Court held that the plaintiff's complaint sufficiently stated a claim for relief because it related "every element necessary to recover" under the statute.³⁵ In reaching this conclusion, the Court explained that in the pleading stage of a case, courts must take all of the plaintiff's allegations into account, whether factual or conclusory.³⁶ The Court advanced two policy reasons for declining to impose a stricter pleading standard: (1) parties already have the right to request more facts via a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(e)³⁷ motion for a more definite statement; and (2) Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56³⁸ motions for summary judgment already prevent frivolous claims from reaching trial.³⁹

It is the Court's decision in the seminal case of Conley v. Gibson,⁴⁰ however, that is most cited for the law of "notice pleading" that subsequently became the recognized standard for pleading under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2).⁴¹ In Conley the Court addressed whether the plaintiff's complaint stated a sufficient claim for relief that could survive the defendant's motion to dismiss.⁴² The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant had discriminated against them in violation of the Railway Labor Act.⁴³ In their complaint, the plaintiffs further alleged that the defendants, a local railway union with whom the plaintiffs had contracted for certain protection against discharge and loss of seniority, failed to protect them from discriminatory discharges and in some instances from losing seniority when rehired after discharge. The plaintiffs, who were black employees, further alleged that the defendants gave more protection to white employees and had not represented black employees with equal good faith.⁴⁴ Justice Black, writing for the majority, concluded that the plaintiffs had sufficiently stated a claim of discriminatory representation⁴⁵ and in doing so laid the foundation for the standard of notice pleading.⁴⁶ Justice Black explicitly endorsed the decisions of several courts of appeal, holding that "a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief."⁴⁷ Justice Black further elaborated that a plaintiff's complaint need not plead detailed facts; instead, it need only give a defendant notice of and grounds for the claim.⁴⁸

Justice Black provided three reasons for adopting the rule of notice pleading. First, the forms appended to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure plainly illustrate that a plaintiff is not required to plead detailed facts in his complaint.⁴⁹ Second, the Rules established the process of discovery and other pretrial procedures in order to further define the factual basis for a plaintiff's claim beyond the allegations contained in the complaint.⁵⁰ Third, this standard best accords with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(e),⁵¹ which states that "[p]leadings must be construed so as to do justice."⁵² It would not be just, the Court opined, to allow a pleading mistake by counsel to affect the entire outcome of an action.⁵³

In Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence & Coordination Unit,⁵⁴ the Supreme Court affirmed its holding in Conley in the context of a claim for municipal liability.⁵⁵ The Court granted certiora-ri to resolve a conflict among the courts of appeal on the issue of whether courts could apply a heightened standard of pleading to claims for municipal liability under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983.⁵⁶ The United States

Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had held in Elliot v. Perez⁵⁷ that in cases involving claims against government officials who would likely invoke the defense of qualified immunity, the plaintiff's complaint must plead facts with detail and particularity to overcome that defense and state a claim for relief.⁵⁸ The Fifth Circuit later applied this same pleading standard to cases alleging violation of Sec. 1983 by municipal corporations.⁵⁹ The Supreme Court rejected this heightened standard and reiterated the decision in Conley, holding that except in cases of fraud or mistake under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b),⁶⁰ the plaintiff need not plead facts with...