Villanueva v. City of Scottsbluff, No. 14-1792 (8th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseVillanueva was the contact to the police department for her neighborhood watch group, communicating with Officer Moreno. She told Moreno that her ex-husband (Alvaro) had assaulted her. Moreno did not file a report or take official action, but spoke with Alvaro about the incident. Moreno began spending time alone with Villanueva, touching her, and sending sexually explicit messages. The relationship became sexual. Villanueva ended the relationship and began experiencing what she believed was harassment. She saw unknown cars parked outside her house and received anonymous threatening phone calls referencing private conversations between Villanueva and Moreno. Villanueva believed Moreno orchestrated the harassment. Villanueva reported to the Scottsbluff police. Officers were dispatched after many calls, but they generated only two reports and took no official action. Villanueva, diagnosed with PTSD, filed suit, citing the Equal Protection Clause and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The district court construed Villanueva’s complaint to allege substantive due process violations of her rights to bodily integrity and to be free from state-created danger, granted summary judgment in favor of defendants on the constitutional claims, and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction. The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The evidence did not suggest Moreno coerced Villanueva into sexual relations through an abuse of authority so egregious and outrageous that it shocked the conscience.
Court Description: Civil case - Civil rights. Plaintiff failed to show that the City's police department's alleged failure to respond to domestic violence was motivated by an intent to discriminate against women, and the district court did not err in granting the City's motion for summary judgment on plaintiff's claim that the City violated the Equal Protection Clause by maintaining a policy of not responding to women's complaints of domestic violence; nor did plaintiff establish that the City's failure to respond violated her due process rights under the "state-created-danger theory;" the police chief's actions in pursuing a relationship with plaintiff were not so egregious or outrageous that they rose to the level of a violation of plaintiff's due process right to bodily integrity.
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