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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 11–10362
_________________
KIM MILLBROOK, PETITIONER
v. UNITED
STATES
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the third circuit
[March 27, 2013]
Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the
Court.
Petitioner Kim Millbrook, a prisoner in the
custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), alleges that
correctional officers sexually assaulted and verbally threatened
him while he was in their custody. Millbrook filed suit in Federal
District Court under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28
U. S. C. §§1346(b), 2671–2680 (FTCA or Act), which waives
the Government’s sovereign immunity from tort suits, including
those based on certain intentional torts committed by federal law
enforcement officers, §2680(h). The District Court dismissed
Millbrook’s action, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The Court of
Appeals held that, while the FTCA waives the United States’
sovereign immunity for certain intentional torts by law enforcement
officers, it only does so when the tortious conduct occurs in the
course of executing a search, seizing evidence, or making an
arrest. Petitioner contends that the FTCA’s waiver is not so
limited. We agree and reverse the judgment of the Court of
Appeals.[
1]
I
A
The FTCA “was designed primarily to remove the
sovereign immunity of the United States from suits in tort.”
Levin v.
United States, 568 U. S. ___, ___
(2013) (slip op., at 2) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Act
gives federal district courts exclusive jurisdiction over claims
against the United States for “injury or loss of property, or
personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or
omission” of a federal employee “acting within the scope of his
office or employment.” 28 U. S. C. §1346(b)(1). This
broad waiver of sovereign immunity is subject to a number of
exceptions set forth in §2680. One such exception, relating to
intentional torts, preserves the Government’s immunity from suit
for “[a]ny claim arising out of assault, battery, false
imprisonment, false arrest, malicious prosecution, abuse of
process, libel, slander, misrepresentation, deceit, or interference
with contract rights.” §2680(h). We have referred to §2680(h) as
the “intentional tort exception.”
Levin,
supra, at
___ (slip op., at 2) (internal quotation marks omitted).
In 1974, Congress carved out an exception to
§2680(h)’s preservation of the United States’ sovereign immunity
for intentional torts by adding a proviso covering claims that
arise out of the wrongful conduct of law enforcement officers. See
Act of Mar. 16, 1974, Pub. L. 93–253, §2, 88Stat. 50. Known as the
“law enforcement proviso,” this provision extends the waiver of
sovereign immunity to claims for six intentional torts, including
assault and battery, that are based on the “acts or omissions of
investigative or law enforcement officers.” §2680(h). The proviso
defines “ ‘investigative or law enforcement officer’ ” to
mean “any officer of the United States who is empowered by law to
execute searches, to seize evidence, or to make arrests for
violations of Federal law.”
Ibid.
B
On January 18, 2011, Millbrook filed suit
against the United States under the FTCA, asserting claims of
negligence, assault, and battery. In his complaint, Millbrook
alleged that, on March 5, 2010, he was forced to per- form oral sex
on a BOP correctional officer, while another officer held him in a
choke hold and a third officer stood watch nearby. Millbrook
claimed that the officers threatened to kill him if he did not
comply with their demands. Millbrook alleged that he suffered
physical injuries as a result of the incident and, accordingly,
sought compensatory damages.
The Government argued that the FTCA did not
waive the United States’ sovereign immunity from suit on
Millbrook’s intentional tort claims, because they fell within the
intentional tort exception in §2680(h). The Government contended
that §2680(h)’s law enforcement proviso did not save Millbrook’s
claims because of the Third Circuit’s binding precedent in
Pooler v.
United States, 787 F.2d 868 (1986), which
interpreted the proviso to apply only to tortious conduct that
occurred during the course of “executing a search, seizing
evidence, or making an ar- rest.”
Id., at 872. The District
Court agreed and granted summary judgment for the United States
because the alleged conduct “did not take place during an arrest,
search, or seizure of evidence.” Civ. Action No. 3:11–cv–00131 (MD
Pa., Feb. 16, 2012), App. 96.[
2] The Third Circuit affirmed. 477 Fed. Appx. 4, 5–6
(2012) (
per curiam).
We granted certiorari, 567 U. S. ___
(2012), to resolve a Circuit split concerning the circumstances
under which intentionally tortious conduct by law enforcement
officers can give rise to an actionable claim under the FTCA.
Compare
Pooler,
supra; and
Orsay v.
United
States Dept. of Justice,
289 F.3d 1125, 1136 (CA9 2002) (law enforcement proviso
“reaches only those claims asserting that the tort occurred
in
the course of investigative or law enforcement activities”
(emphasis added)); with
Ignacio v.
United States, 674
F.3d 252, 256 (CA4 2012) (holding that the law enforcement proviso
“waives immunity whenever an investigative or law enforcement
officer commits one of the specified intentional torts,
regardless of whether the officer is engaged in investigative or
law enforcement activity” (emphasis added)).
II
The FTCA waives the United States’ sovereign
immu- nity for certain intentional torts committed by law
enforcement officers. The portion of the Act relevant here
provides:
“The provisions of this chapter and
section 1346(b) of this title shall not apply to—
. . . . .
“(h) Any claim arising out of assault,
battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, malicious prosecution,
abuse of process, libel, slander, misrepresentation, deceit, or
interference with contract rights:
Provided, That, with
regard to acts or omissions of investigative or law enforcement
officers of the United States Government, the provisions of this
chapter and section 1346(b) of this title shall apply to any claim
arising . . . out of assault, battery, false
imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or malicious
prosecution.” 28 U. S. C. §2680(h).
On its face, the law enforcement proviso applies
where a claim both arises out of one of the proviso’s six
intentional torts, and is related to the “acts or omissions” of an
“investigative or law enforcement officer.” The proviso’s
cross-reference to §1346(b) incorporates an additional requirement
that the acts or omissions giving rise to the claim occur while the
officer is “acting within the scope of his office or employment.”
§1346(b)(1). The question in this case is whether the FTCA further
limits the category of “acts or omissions” that trigger the United
States’ liability.[
3]
The plain language of the law enforcement
proviso answers when a law enforcement officer’s “acts or
omissions” may give rise to an actionable tort claim under the
FTCA. The proviso specifies that the conduct must arise from one of
the six enumerated intentional torts and, by expressly
cross-referencing §1346(b), indicates that the law enforcement
officer’s “acts or omissions” must fall “within the scope of his
office or employment.” §§2680(h), 1346(b)(1). Nothing in the text
further qualifies the category of “acts or omissions” that may
trigger FTCA liability.
A number of lower courts have nevertheless read
into the text additional limitations designed to narrow the scope
of the law enforcement proviso. The Ninth Circuit, for instance,
held that the law enforcement proviso does not apply unless the
tort was “committed in the course of investigative or law
enforcement activities.”
Orsay,
supra, at 1135. As
noted, the Third Circuit construed the law enforcement proviso even
more narrowly in holding that it applies only to tortious conduct
by federal officers during the course of “executing a search,
seizing evidence, or making an arrest.”
Pooler, 787
F. 2d, at 872. Court-appointed
amicus curiae
(
Amicus) similarly asks us to construe the proviso to waive
“sovereign immunity only for torts committed by federal officers
acting in their capacity as ‘investigative or law enforcement
officers.’ ” Brief for
Amicus 5. Under this approach,
the conduct of federal officers would be actionable only when it
“aris[es] out of searches, seizures of evidence, arrests, and
closely related exercises of investigative or law-enforcement
authority.”
Ibid.
None of these interpretations finds any support
in the text of the statute. The FTCA’s only reference to
“searches,” “seiz[ures of] evidence,” and “arrests” is found in the
statutory definition of “investigative or law enforcement officer.”
§2680(h) (defining “ ‘investigative or law enforcement
officer’ ” to mean any federal officer who is “empowered by
law to execute searches, to seize evidence, or to make arrests for
violations of Federal law”). By its terms, this provision focuses
on the
status of persons whose conduct may be actionable,
not the types of activities that may give rise to a tort claim
against the United States. The proviso thus distinguishes between
the acts for which immunity is waived (
e.g., assault and
battery), and the class of persons whose acts may give rise to an
actionable FTCA claim. The plain text confirms that Congress
intended immunity determinations to depend on a federal officer’s
legal authority, not on a particular exercise of that authority.
Consequently, there is no basis for concluding that a law
enforcement officer’s intentional tort must oc- cur in the course
of executing a search, seizing evidence, or making an arrest in
order to subject the United States to liability.
Nor does the text of the proviso provide any
indication that the officer must be engaged in “investigative or
law enforcement activity.” Indeed, the text never uses the term.
Amicus contends that we should read the reference to
“investigative or law-enforcement officer” as implicitly limiting
the proviso to claims arising from actions taken in an officer’s
investigative or law enforcement
capacity. But there is no
basis for so limiting the term when Congress has spoken directly to
the circumstances in which a law enforcement officer’s conduct may
expose the United States to tort liability. Under the proviso, an
intentional tort is not actionable unless it occurs while the law
enforcement officer is “acting within the scope of his office or
employment.” §§2680(h), 1346(b)(1). Had Congress intended to
further narrow the scope of the proviso, Congress could have
limited it to claims arising from “acts or omissions of
investigative or law enforcement officers
acting in a law
enforcement or investigative capacity.” See
Ali v.
Federal Bureau of Prisons,
552 U.S.
214, 227 (2008). Congress adopted similar limitations in
neighboring provisions, see §2680(a) (referring to “[a]ny claim
based upon an act or omission of an employee of the Government
. . .
in the execution of a statute or regulation”
(emphasis added)), but did not do so here. We, therefore, decline
to read such a limitation into unambiguous text.
Jimenez v.
Quarterman,
555 U.S.
113, 118 (2009) (“[W]hen the statutory language is plain, we
must enforce it according to its terms”);
Barnhart v.
Sigmon Coal Co.,
534 U.S.
438, 450 (2002) (“The inquiry ceases if the statutory language
is unambiguous and the statutory scheme is coherent and consistent”
(internal quotation marks omitted)).
* * *
We hold that the waiver effected by the law
enforcement proviso extends to acts or omissions of law enforcement
officers that arise within the scope of their employment,
regardless of whether the officers are engaged in investigative or
law enforcement activity, or are executing a search, seizing
evidence, or making an arrest. Accord- ingly, we reverse the
judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
