Plaintiffs are not required to explicitly mention the statute that allows them to plead their case, according to a per curiam opinion issued by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week. This decision effectively clarifies the legal burden plaintiffs must meet to avoid dismissal is lower than the factual burden. It also ensures that the process of commencing a lawsuit is simpler for nonlawyers by requiring less knowledge of specific statutes to effectively file a pleading.
In Johnson v. City of Shelby, plaintiffs worked as police officers in Shelby, Miss. until they were fired — allegedly because they disclosed activities of one of the city’s aldermen. Charging violations of their Fourteenth Amendment due process rights, they sought compensatory relief from the city. But summary judgment was entered against them in lower courts for failure to invoke §1983 of the U.S. Code, a statute allowing litigants to file civil actions for deprivations of their rights, in their complaint.
The Court held that federal pleading rules call for “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief,” and do not require dismissal of a complaint for imperfect statement of the legal theory supporting the claim asserted. The Court also indicated no heightened pleading rules apply to plaintiffs seeking damages for violations of constitutional rights under §1983, so no express invocation of the statute is necessary. The decision also distinguished Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, two recent landmark cases that altered pleading requirements, in that those cases concerned the factual allegations a complaint must contain to survive a motion to dismiss, while Johnson focuses on the legal theory a pleading must contain.
This opinion will impact claims being filed against public agencies by members of the general public — especially those doing so without counsel — in that the legal threshold for their lawsuit to survive is lowered. While plaintiffs must plead facts sufficient to show that their claim has substantive plausibility under Twombly and Iqbal, there is no requirement that the legal theory be as clearly stated, and the Court held that the lower courts should have given plaintiffs an opportunity to amend their complaint to mention §1983. The Court affirmed the position that it is unnecessary to set out a legal theory for the plaintiff’s claim to survive a motion to dismiss.
