In Riley v. Hamilton County Government, (ED TN, April 7, 2022), a Tennessee federal district court refused to dismiss an Establishment Clause, as well as a 4th Amendment, claim against Deputy Sheriff Jacob Goforth for his role in Deputy Sheriff Daniel Wilkey's baptism of Shandle Riley. Wilkey had pulled Riley over for a traffic stop and discovered that she had marijuana in her car. After searching Riley and her car, Wilkey began to talk with Riley about religion, asking her if she had been baptized. According to the court:
Wilkey told her “God [was] talking to him” and assured her that, if she got baptized, he would only write her a citation and she would be free to go about her business.... According to Riley, Wilkey also indicated that he would speak at court on her behalf if she agreed.... Riley decided to go along with this plan because she“[did not] want to go to jail.” ... She also “thought [Wilkey] was a God-fearing, church-like man who saw something . . . in [her], that God talked to him,” and testified that “it felt good to believe that for a minute.”
Wilkey asked another deputy on duty, Jacob Goforth, to witness his baptism of Riley. According to the court:
any reasonable officer would have recognized that coerced participation in a Christian baptism—an overtly religious act with no secular purpose—was unlawful.... There are genuine disputes of material fact concerning whether Riley was coerced into the baptism, whether she would have faced harsher penalties had she refused to be baptized, and whether Goforth should have known that Riley was being coerced. This is enough to preclude summary judgment on this issue....
Goforth had fair warning that he had a duty to intervene to stop constitutional violations of this nature. And a reasonable jury could conclude that Goforth had both notice of the violation and an opportunity to stop the baptism. Accordingly, Goforth is not entitled to summary judgment on Riley’s First Amendment claim....
The court also held that that Goforth was not entitled to qualified immunity on Riley's claim of an unreasonable seizure.
