NOTICE: This opinion is subject to
formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the
United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the
Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States,
Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal
errors, in order that corrections may be made before the
preliminary print goes to press.
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.
