Sixth Circuit: State-Created Danger Does Not Reach Noncustodial Suicide; Suicide Breaks Duty and Causation for Substantive Due Process Claims

I. Introduction

Case: Brian Zimmermann v. Scott Labish, Nos. 25-1734/1756 (6th Cir. Aug. 27, 2026).
Parties: Plaintiff-Appellee Brian Zimmermann (as administrator of his son JPZ’s estate) sued (1) Melissa Arendts (principal) and Romeo Community School District (“RCSD”), and (2) Scott Labish (Macomb County Sheriff’s Deputy acting as an SRO) and Macomb County.
Factual backdrop: After a school-bus altercation, 14-year-old JPZ was suspended. At pickup, JPZ was secluded in a room and questioned by Deputy Labish (in uniform), who allegedly used threatening “scared-straight” tactics and referenced a purported “Three Strike” law implying future criminal prosecution. JPZ fled the school and, hours later at home, died by suicide.
Key issues: (1) Whether the principal and SRO violated substantive due process under the “state-created danger” doctrine when a student later dies by suicide outside custody; (2) whether a conspiracy claim can survive absent an underlying constitutional violation; (3) whether municipal liability under Monell can attach without an underlying unconstitutional act; and (4) whether Michigan governmental immunity bars an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim.

II. Summary of the Opinion

The Sixth Circuit reversed the district court’s denial of defendants’ immunity-based motions and directed dismissal of the remaining claims. The court held that Zimmermann failed to plead a viable substantive due process claim under the state-created danger doctrine because: (a) the alleged conduct did not constitute actionable “affirmative acts” creating or increasing exposure to third-party violence, and (b) in any event, noncustodial suicide is not actionable under the Sixth Circuit’s state-created danger framework, grounded in duty and causation principles—suicide is not third-party violence and breaks the causal chain.

The conspiracy claim failed because it required an underlying constitutional violation, which was not plausibly alleged. The Monell claims against RCSD and Macomb County failed “axiomatically” for lack of an underlying unconstitutional act. On the state-law claim, the court exercised interlocutory jurisdiction under Michigan law and held Arendts and Labish were entitled to governmental immunity because the complaint did not plausibly allege malice (i.e., they acted in “good faith” under Odom v. Wayne County).

III. Analysis

A. Precedents Cited (and How They Shaped the Holding)

1. The constitutional baseline: no general duty to protect

  • DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (489 U.S. 189 (1989)) anchored the analysis. The panel treated DeShaney as establishing a general rule that the Due Process Clause does not impose affirmative duties to protect individuals from private harm, with narrow exceptions (custody; and the circuit-developed state-created danger concept derived from DeShaney’s observation that the State “played no part” in creating the danger). The court used DeShaney to frame both duty (negative-rights orientation) and the narrowness of any exception.
  • Daniels v. Williams (474 U.S. 327 (1986)) reinforced that negligence does not amount to a due process violation, helping the court keep the claim from sliding into general tort law.
  • Cruzan ex rel. Cruzan v. Dir., Mo. Dep't of Health (497 U.S. 261 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring)) was cited for the proposition that the Constitution does not require the state to prevent suicide—supporting the court’s refusal to constitutionalize noncustodial self-harm prevention.

2. Sixth Circuit state-created danger elements and their limits

  • Kallstrom v. City of Columbus (136 F.3d 1055 (6th Cir. 1998)) supplied the doctrine’s Sixth Circuit origin and the paradigm: state action that increases risk of harm from a third party (e.g., releasing sensitive information that makes private violence more likely). The panel relied on this “third-party private tortfeasor / acts of violence” structure to conclude suicide does not fit.
  • Schroder v. City of Fort Thomas (412 F.3d 724 (6th Cir. 2005)) was cited for the three-part test: (1) affirmative act creating/increasing risk from third-party violence; (2) special danger; (3) deliberate indifference.
  • Ewolski v. City of Brunswick (287 F.3d 492 (6th Cir. 2002)) provided the deliberate-indifference definition (subjective awareness and reckless/callous disregard), which the panel used to hold the complaint lacked plausible allegations that defendants knew JPZ faced a substantial suicide risk.
  • County of Sacramento v. Lewis (523 U.S. 833 (1998)) supplied the “shocks the conscience” gloss for substantive due process. The court used Lewis to insist that even troubling school discipline must be “egregious” and conscience-shocking to be constitutional torts.
  • Est. of Romain v. City of Grosse Pointe Farms (935 F.3d 485 (6th Cir. 2019)) was cited for the doctrine’s narrow pathway and also for internal skepticism (Murphy, J., concurring), reinforcing a restrained approach.

3. “Affirmative act” versus omission

  • Stiles ex rel. D.S. v. Grainger County (819 F.3d 834 (6th Cir. 2016)), Wilson v. Gregory (3 F.4th 844 (6th Cir. 2021)), and M.J. ex rel. S.J. v. Akron City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. (1 F.4th 436 (6th Cir. 2021)) were used to draw a firm line: failures to act (e.g., failing to stop or correct another’s conduct) do not satisfy the affirmative-act requirement—even if circumstances called for more action. This doctrine defeated allegations that Arendts “stood by,” “acquiesced,” or “failed to correct” Labish.
  • Ashcroft v. Iqbal (556 U.S. 662 (2009)) and Lanman v. Hinson (529 F.3d 673 (6th Cir. 2008)) were used to reject transitive pleading—Arendts could not be treated as having “punished/humiliated/manipulated” JPZ merely because she summoned Labish.
  • Koulta v. Merciez (477 F.3d 442 (6th Cir. 2007)) and Cartwright v. City of Marine City (336 F.3d 487 (6th Cir. 2003)) supplied the “was the plaintiff safer before than after” framing for assessing whether affirmative conduct increased danger. The panel accepted that seclusion and “scared-straight” tactics are affirmative in a colloquial sense, but held they still did not fit the third-party-violence model and did not create actionable constitutional danger culminating in noncustodial suicide.

4. Noncustodial suicide and the third-party-violence requirement

  • Wilson v. Gregory (3 F.4th 844 (6th Cir. 2021)) carried the decisive Sixth Circuit proposition: the circuit has “not … extended the state-created-danger exception to … instances of suicide by someone not in official custody.” The panel treated this as controlling circuit law and then bolstered it with duty/causation reasoning.
  • Out-of-circuit cases were cited as persuasive support for limiting liability in school-suicide settings: Sanford v. Stiles (456 F.3d 298 (3d Cir. 2006) (per curiam)), Martin v. Shawano-Gresham Sch. Dist. (295 F.3d 701 (7th Cir. 2002)), Hasenfus v. LaJeunesse (175 F.3d 68 (1st Cir. 1999)), and Wyke v. Polk Cnty. Sch. Bd. (129 F.3d 560 (11th Cir. 1997)). These cases underwrote the court’s view that suicide is typically too attenuated, not “fairly direct,” and not a constitutional duty owed by schools.
  • The plaintiff’s preferred authority, Armijo ex rel. Chavez v. Wagon Mound Public Schools (159 F.3d 1253 (10th Cir. 1998)), was rejected both doctrinally (Sixth Circuit’s framework does not treat suicide as a cognizable “state-created danger” harm) and factually (no known suicidal ideation, no firearm access known to defendants, no dropping the student alone into an immediately perilous environment).
  • The opinion also situated Sixth Circuit restraint within broader federal disagreement: Johnson v. City of Philadelphia (975 F.3d 394 (3d Cir. 2020)) (recognizing the doctrine across circuits), Kennedy v. City of Ridgefield (439 F.3d 1055 (9th Cir. 2006)) (classic formulation), Fisher v. Moore (73 F.4th 367 (5th Cir. 2023)) (declining to adopt), and Murguia v. Langdon (61 F.4th 1096 (9th Cir. 2023)) (Ikuta, J., dissenting in part) (warning against tort expansion). This context supported the panel’s insistence on a narrow, tort-backgrounded conception.

5. Tort “background principles”: duty and causation

  • Heck v. Humphrey (512 U.S. 477 (1994)), Manuel v. City of Joliet (580 U.S. 357 (2017)), Monroe v. Pape (365 U.S. 167 (1961), overruled on other grounds by Monell), and Powers v. Hamilton Cnty. Pub. Def. Comm'n (501 F.3d 592 (6th Cir. 2007)) were used to justify reading § 1983 “against the background” of common-law duty/causation. The panel leveraged this to argue that noncustodial suicide breaks the chain: the state did not owe an affirmative duty to prevent self-harm outside custody, and the decedent’s choice severs proximate causation.
  • Buchholz v. Meyer Njus Tanick, PA (946 F.3d 855 (6th Cir. 2020)), Jahn v. Farnsworth (617 F. App'x 453 (6th Cir. 2015)), and Cutlip v. City of Toledo (488 F. App'x 107 (6th Cir. 2012)) were cited for the proposition that self-inflicted injury is not traceable to others in the requisite way and reflects a free intervening choice.
  • The panel also referenced foreseeability/proximate-harm formulations from other circuits: Hart v. City of Little Rock (432 F.3d 801 (8th Cir. 2005)).

6. Deliberate indifference and “conscience shocking” in schools

  • McQueen v. Beecher Cmty. Schs. (433 F.3d 460 (6th Cir. 2006)) reinforced that deliberate indifference requires subjective awareness of a substantial risk of serious harm. The panel used McQueen to reject the idea that knowledge of ADHD, without more, plausibly implies a substantial suicide risk.
  • Webb v. McCullough (828 F.2d 1151 (6th Cir. 1987)) and Doe v. Warren Consol. Schs. (93 F. App'x 812 (6th Cir. 2004)) served as comparators for truly conscience-shocking conduct—physical assault by a principal and deliberate indifference to a known pattern of sexual misconduct—highlighting the gap between those cases and the alleged “scared-straight” questioning here.
  • Doe v. Jackson Loc. Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. (954 F.3d 925 (6th Cir. 2020)) was cited for the doctrine’s third-party-violence orientation and deliberate-indifference framework.
  • Ewolski v. City of Brunswick (287 F.3d 492 (6th Cir. 2002)) also supported the admonition that “imprudence and poor execution” do not equal constitutional arbitrariness.

7. Qualified immunity framing

  • Sutton v. Metro. Gov't of Nash. & Davidson Cnty. (700 F.3d 865 (6th Cir. 2012)), Courtright v. City of Battle Creek (839 F.3d 513 (6th Cir. 2016)), MacIntosh v. Clous (69 F.4th 309 (6th Cir. 2023)), and District of Columbia v. Wesby (583 U.S. 48 (2018)) shaped the procedural posture and plaintiff’s pleading burden. The panel ultimately resolved the case largely at step one (no constitutional violation plausibly alleged), which independently entitles the officials to qualified immunity.
  • Hayden v. Green (640 F.3d 150 (6th Cir. 2011)) was cited alongside Wesby in concluding qualified immunity applied.

8. Conspiracy depends on an underlying violation

  • Stricker v. Township of Cambridge (710 F.3d 350 (6th Cir. 2013)) supplied the rule that a § 1983 conspiracy claim is contingent on an underlying constitutional violation, dooming the conspiracy count once the due process claim failed.

9. Municipal liability under Monell requires an underlying unconstitutional act

  • Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs. (436 U.S. 658 (1978)) provided the doctrinal foundation requiring a municipal policy/custom and a constitutional injury.
  • Jurisdictional and “inextricably intertwined” principles came from: Lane v. City of LaFollette (490 F.3d. 410 (6th Cir. 2007)), Courtright v. City of Battle Creek (839 F.3d 513 (6th Cir. 2016)), King v. City of Rockford (97 F.4th 379 (6th Cir. 2024)), and Crockett v. Cumberland Coll. (316 F.3d 571 (6th Cir. 2003)). The panel exercised interlocutory jurisdiction over the municipal claims because its qualified-immunity resolution necessarily resolved Monell.
  • The “axiom” that no Monell liability exists without an underlying unconstitutional act relied on: Mattox v. City of Forest Park (183 F.3d 515 (6th Cir. 1999)) and Andrews v. Wayne County (957 F.3d 714 (6th Cir. 2020)), and was applied through Dibrell v. City of Knoxville (984 F.3d 1156 (6th Cir. 2021)).

10. Michigan governmental immunity (intentional tort) and interlocutory appealability

  • Appellate jurisdiction over state immunity denials was supported by: Livermore ex rel. Rohm v. Lubelan (476 F.3d 397 (6th Cir. 2007)), Conmy v. Dep't of Transp. (724 N.W.2d 297 (Mich. Ct. App. 2006) (per curiam)), Smith v. County of Lenawee (600 F.3d 686 (6th Cir. 2010)), and McGrew v. Duncan (937 F.3d 664 (6th Cir. 2019)), as well as Michigan Court Rule Mich. Ct. R. 7.202(6)(a)(v).
  • Substantively, the immunity test for intentional torts came from Odom v. Wayne County (760 N.W.2d 217 (Mich. 2008)): within scope, good faith (no malice), and discretionary acts. The panel found the only real dispute was good faith and concluded the complaint did not plausibly allege malice.
  • The court relied on Burland v. French (No. 305652, 2012 WL 2362442 (Mich. Ct. App. June 21, 2012)) as an analog: a principal’s suspension decision followed by student suicide did not show malice and therefore triggered immunity against an IIED claim.

B. Legal Reasoning

1. The new/clarified Sixth Circuit rule on noncustodial suicide

The opinion’s central doctrinal move is to treat noncustodial suicide as outside the state-created danger doctrine in this circuit. The panel did not merely cite Wilson v. Gregory; it provided a structural rationale: Sixth Circuit state-created danger assumes (i) an affirmative act that increases risk of (ii) third-party violence, producing (iii) harm inflicted by that third party. Suicide does not satisfy the third-party component and, under tort-background principles, undercuts both duty (no affirmative constitutional duty to prevent self-harm outside custody) and causation (a self-directed act is an intervening break in the chain).

2. Application to the pleaded facts: affirmative act and omissions

The court separated allegations into (a) omissions (Arendts “stood by,” “acquiesced,” and “failed to correct” Labish), which cannot satisfy the affirmative-act requirement, and (b) arguably affirmative conduct (secluding JPZ; “scared-straight” questioning). Even as to the latter, the panel held the complaint did not plausibly show defendants placed JPZ into a danger of third-party violence or meaningfully increased such exposure.

3. Deliberate indifference as a pleading failure

Independently, the panel held Zimmermann did not plead “deliberate indifference” because the complaint affirmatively conceded JPZ had never expressed suicidal intent, making it implausible that Arendts or Labish subjectively inferred a “substantial risk” of suicide. Knowledge of ADHD, without pleaded linkage to suicidality risk in this context, was insufficient to plausibly allege the required mental state.

4. Derivative failures: conspiracy and Monell

Because no underlying constitutional violation was plausibly alleged, the conspiracy claim failed under Stricker v. Township of Cambridge. And because the qualified-immunity resolution necessarily entailed no unconstitutional act by the individual officials, municipal liability failed under Monell and Sixth Circuit “no underlying violation” doctrine.

5. Michigan IIED claim barred by governmental immunity

Applying Odom v. Wayne County, the court held the alleged conduct—though potentially unwise or harsh—did not plausibly indicate malice. With “good faith” intact, Michigan governmental immunity barred the intentional tort claim, with Burland v. French serving as a close factual analog.

C. Impact

  • School-suicide litigation in the Sixth Circuit: The decision powerfully narrows federal constitutional exposure by treating noncustodial suicide as categorically outside the state-created danger doctrine, absent custody and absent third-party violence. Plaintiffs will face steep barriers framing such tragedies as Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process violations.
  • Pleading strategy and early dismissal: The opinion underscores that omission-based allegations (failure to correct, failure to intervene) will not satisfy the affirmative-act element, and that deliberate indifference requires plausible facts supporting subjective awareness—especially difficult where no prior suicidal ideation is alleged.
  • SRO and discipline practices: While the court did not endorse “scared-straight” tactics as wise policy, it signaled that harsh discipline alone—without custody, third-party violence, and subjective knowledge of a substantial risk—will not typically “shock the conscience” for due process purposes.
  • Municipal liability: By treating the individual-violation predicate as indispensable, the decision reaffirms a practical sequencing: defeat the underlying constitutional tort, and Monell claims collapse.
  • State-law channeling: The ruling may push similar disputes toward state-law negligence or statutory claims (where available), while simultaneously highlighting Michigan’s robust governmental immunity for intentional torts absent plausible malice.

IV. Complex Concepts Simplified

Substantive due process
A constitutional doctrine that limits certain government conduct regardless of procedure, but in this context is tightly confined: it does not generally impose a duty on government to protect people from harm by private actors.
State-created danger
A narrow exception some circuits recognize: the state may be liable if it affirmatively creates or increases a specific risk that a person will be harmed by a private third party, and does so with deliberate indifference. The Sixth Circuit emphasized this is typically about enabling or escalating third-party violence—not self-harm outside custody.
Affirmative act vs. omission
Doing something that creates/increases danger (affirmative act) is different from failing to prevent or correct danger (omission). In the Sixth Circuit’s doctrine, omissions generally do not satisfy the first element of state-created danger.
Deliberate indifference / shocks the conscience
More than bad judgment: the official must subjectively recognize a substantial risk of serious harm and disregard it in a reckless/callous way.
Qualified immunity
A defense shielding officials from damages unless the plaintiff plausibly alleges a constitutional violation of clearly established law. Here, the court resolved the case at the “no constitutional violation plausibly alleged” step.
Monell liability
A municipality (school district/county) can be liable only if a policy/custom causes a constitutional violation. Without an underlying unconstitutional act by an official, there is no Monell liability.
Michigan governmental immunity (intentional torts)
Under Odom v. Wayne County, an individual government employee is immune from intentional tort claims if acting within scope, in good faith (no malice), and performing discretionary acts.

V. Conclusion

Zimmermann v. Labish entrenches a clear Sixth Circuit boundary: the state-created danger doctrine does not extend to noncustodial suicide, both because the doctrine is structured around increased exposure to third-party violence and because duty and causation principles cut against constitutional liability where a person takes his own life outside custody. The decision also reiterates the dependency of § 1983 conspiracy and Monell municipal claims on an underlying constitutional violation, and it applies Michigan’s “good faith” governmental immunity to bar an IIED claim absent plausible allegations of malice.