Denial of motion to dismiss; In re Flint Water Cases (Waid v. Snyder); Guertin v. Michigan; Brown v. Snyder (In re Flint Water Cases)

[This appeal was from the ED-MI.] In this case arising from the Flint water crisis, the court reiterated its decision in Waid and affirmed the district court’s denial of defendants’ motions to dismiss. It remanded for the district court to determine whether defendant-former State Treasurer Dillon should be dismissed in light of the district court’s decision in Brown. The allegations in this case were essentially the same as those in Waid, which controlled the outcome of the motions to dismiss. In that case, the court held that the same defendants as in this case “plausibly violated plaintiffs’ substantive due-process right to bodily integrity and [were] not entitled to qualified immunity.” The Waid court also rejected the claim that two defendants should have been dismissed based on Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity. In this case, defendant-Johnson, the defendant-City’s former Utilities Director, was again accused of pressuring a Flint employee to switch the City’s water supply to the Flint River, “even though the water treatment plant was not ready[,]” and of “stonewall[ing]” attempts to investigate the issue. He argued that the outcome should not be controlled by Waid, but the court held that there was “no reason to treat Johnson any differently under the facts alleged in this case.” Addressing the concurrence, the court discussed the validity of its decision in Waid, noting that, unlike other high-ranking officials who were previously dismissed in Guertin, defendant-former Governor Snyder “was personally involved in the decision to switch Flint’s water supply, and that Snyder knew that there was no plan to update Flint’s water treatment plant to make Flint River water safe.”