Nine victims of child exploitation sued Stark County Sheriff Steven Sloan and Deputy Gary Bent under Section 1983, alleging the officers violated their Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process rights when they gave Jason Musselman access to explicit images during a 2019 investigation. Musselman, an auxiliary police officer and IT employee for the Toulon Police Department, was supposed to help identify underage girls in the images but instead kept them for personal use.
Musselman was later convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison for creating, possessing, and sharing child pornography. The case originated when the Stark County Sheriff's Office learned about a Dropbox file called "Blue Breeze" containing explicit images of local underage girls.
Writing for a unanimous panel, Circuit Judge Taibleson rejected the victims' constitutional claims. "Although Musselman's crimes were vile, plaintiffs have not alleged a viable substantive due process claim," Taibleson wrote. The court emphasized that identifying such rights requires "a careful analysis of the history of the right at issue" and that plaintiffs made "no effort to conduct that historical inquiry."
The court noted the limits of constitutional protection, writing: "Not every wrong is a constitutional one, and plaintiffs continue to press their statutory and common-law tort claims below."
The Seventh Circuit distinguished plaintiffs' cited precedents, particularly the Ninth Circuit's 1963 York v. Story decision, noting it "involved egregious police conduct quite distinct from Sheriff Sloan's and Deputy Bent's actions." In York, an officer forced a woman to undress and pose while he photographed her "without any lawful or legitimate purpose," then circulated the photos within the department.
The court acknowledged that defendants' handling of the investigation "left much to be desired," as defense counsel conceded at oral argument. However, the panel emphasized that recognizing new substantive due process rights requires "utmost care" and a showing that claimed rights are "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition."