Nahmod Law

Boler v. Earley, 865 F.3d 391 (6^th Cir. 2017), is a significant Sixth Circuit case involving the Safe Drinking Water Act, 42 U.S.C. secs. 300g-1 et seq (SDWA). It arose out of the disturbing and infamous events involving the contaminated drinking water of residents of Flint, Michigan.

The plaintiffs were residents of Flint, Michigan, who were adversely affected by water contamination. They sued various state and local officials and entities under section 1983 alleging substantive due process and equal protection violations, together with various state law claims. The defendants argued that the SDWA showed that Congress intended to  preclude the plaintiff’s constitutional claims, thus limiting the plaintiffs to whatever SDWA remedies they had.

Rejecting this argument and ruling that the SDWA did not preclude the plaintiff’s section 1983 constitutional claims, the Sixth Circuit relied on the SDWA’s text and legislative history, as well as its remedial scheme, for its conclusion. The court also mentioned the SDWA’s savings clause and examined the divergence of the rights protected by the SWDA and the constitutional provisions raised by plaintiffs. All of these considerations demonstrated that Congress did not intend to preclude section 1983 constitutional claims when it enacted the SDWA. Thus, the plaintiffs were entitled to go ahead with their substantive due process and equal protection claims.

Comments

1. The precise issue presented in Boler was whether the plaintiffs could even proceed with their section 1983 constitutional claims in light of the SDWA. I discuss this preclusion issue generally in sec 2:46 of my treatise, NAHMOD, CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 (2018)(West). See also Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee, 129 S. Ct. 788 (2009), unanimously holding that Title IX did not preclude section 1983 equal protection sex discrimination claims against school districts and officials.

2. This preclusion issue is different from what I have called the “laws issue,” namely, whether the violation of a federal statute by a state or local government official, or by a local government, can be the basis of a section 1983 claim. See sections 2:27-2:47 of my treatise.

3. Allowing the plaintiff’s section 1983 claims to go forward in Boler resulted in a subsequent (and very recent) landmark decision in which the Sixth Circuit held that the plaintiffs pleaded plausible substantive due process claims against various individual defendants, and also that these individual defendants were not protected by qualified immunity because the relevant substantive due process law was clearly settled at the time. See Guertin v. State of Michigan, Nos. 17-1698, 1699, 1745, 1752 & 1759 (6th Cir., January 4, 2019).

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