Judge Lacks Immunity From Lawsuit Over Role in Home Search

A West Virginia family court judge who oversaw a warrantless search and seizure at a man’s house as part of divorce proceedings wasn’t entitled to judicial immunity during the man’s constitutional suit against her, the Fourth Circuit said.

The court said judicial immunity protects judicial acts rather than judges themselves, in an opinion by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III. Since the home search was a nonjudicial act, Judge Louise E. Goldston wasn’t immune to Matthew Gibson’s suit.

Gibson alleged a violation of the Fourth Amendment related to the warrantless search, a First Amendment claim related to Goldston ordering that recordings of the incident be stopped, and a claim that such home visits disadvantaged pro se litigants like himself in violation of the equal protection clause.

After Gibson’s ex-wife came to Goldston with a motion for contempt because the ex-wife said he failed to turn over items promised to her as part of their property-distribution agreement, Goldston recessed the hearing and had everyone meet at Gibson’s home. When Gibson objected to the judge entering his home without a search warrant, she proceeded anyway, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said.

Goldston allowed the ex-wife to search through Gibson’s things and take what she wanted. “The ex-wife sifted through DVDs as Judge Goldston sat in a rocking chair, shoes off, supervising and giving orders,” Wilkinson said. “No written order was ever entered describing or authorizing the search itself.”

“Judicial immunity is strong medicine,” Wilkinson said on Monday. “But the medicine’s potency cautions against its indiscriminate prescription. And so there are limitations.”

Goldston announced her retirement just a week after West Virginia’s House of Delegates introduced a resolution for her impeachment over the search of Gibson’s home. The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals also censured her for misconduct and ordered her to pay a $1,000 fine.

The Fourth Circuit rejected Goldston’s argument that going to Gibson’s house was to resolve the family court matter and that she acted as a judge throughout the time at Gibson’s house.

“It is basic to our system that the one who issues the order is not the one to enforce it,” Wilkinson said. “Issuing an order is a judicial function; carrying that order out is an executive one.”

That paradigm was “violated and compromised” by Goldston’s actions since she controlled the scope of the search and seizure which are “law enforcement functions reserved for the executive branch,” Wilkinson said.

“While a greater merger of judicial and executive functions might be more efficient, that very efficiency would facilitate abuses of power,” Wilkinson said. “The Framers made a tradeoff: they gummed up the gears just a bit in return for protection against tyranny.”

Judges Roger L. Gregory and Diana Gribbon Motz joined the opinion.

Gibson was represented by the Institute for Justice and John Hague Bryan of Union, W. Va.

Goldston was represented by Bailey & Wyant PLLC.

The case is Gibson v. Goldston, 4th Cir., No. 22-01757, 10/30/23.