## Facts

- Teresa Garcia, a nine-year-old third-grade student at a New Mexico public elementary school, sued school officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for two episodes of alleged excessive corporal punishment in 1982.
- In the first incident, Principal Theresa Miera summoned Garcia for discipline after Garcia hit a boy who had kicked her; Garcia resisted being paddled.
- Teacher J.D. Sanchez assisted by holding Garcia upside down by her ankles while Miera struck her five times with a split wooden paddle on the front of her leg between the knee and the waist.
- Afterward, a teacher observed blood through Garcia’s clothing; Garcia had a welt and alleged lasting physical scarring.
- Garcia’s parents told Miera not to spank Garcia again without advance notice.
- In a second incident a few months later, Miera again summoned Garcia to punish her for gossiping about a teacher; Garcia resisted during the attempted paddling.
- During the struggle involving Miera and another teacher, Garcia suffered a back injury; she was then subdued and paddled.
- Medical personnel described the bruising as inconsistent with a routine spanking and potentially reportable as child abuse if inflicted by a parent.

## Issues

1. Whether excessively severe corporal punishment by public school officials can violate a student’s substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether, in 1982, the right to be free from such extreme corporal punishment was clearly established, defeating qualified immunity on summary judgment.

## Decision

- The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment for defendants and remanded.
- The court held that excessively severe, disproportionate, or arbitrary corporal punishment may violate substantive due process when it is sufficiently egregious to shock the conscience.
- The court concluded that, as of 1982, governing substantive due process standards made it sufficiently clear that the type of extreme force alleged was unconstitutional.
- Applying the summary judgment standard, the court required that the facts and reasonable inferences be viewed in Garcia’s favor; on that record, qualified immunity could not be granted as a matter of law.

## Legal Principles

- Substantive due process prohibits state officials from using force so brutal, excessive, or arbitrary that it shocks the conscience and amounts to an abuse of official power.
- A public school’s general authority to use corporal punishment does not immunize conduct that crosses from discipline into severe physical abuse.
- Qualified immunity is unavailable when, at the time of the conduct, existing law would have put a reasonable official on notice that the alleged conduct violated constitutional rights, even without fact-identical precedent.
- Summary judgment is improper where material factual disputes exist, or where the plaintiff’s evidence, if credited, could support a finding that clearly established constitutional limits were violated.

## Conclusion

The court held that a jury could find the alleged paddlings so extreme as to violate substantive due process, and that by 1982 reasonable school officials had fair notice that such abusive corporal punishment was unconstitutional; summary judgment on qualified immunity was therefore reversed and the case remanded.


Garcia v. Miera, 817 F.2d 650 (10th Cir. 1987)