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Monell Claims: The Complete Guide to Suing a City Under Section 1983

12 min read by Institute for Police Conduct, Inc.
monell municipal-liability pillar guide drafting

The officer did it. But the department trained the officer, wrote the policy the officer followed or ignored, reviewed the report, and decided whether anything would happen afterward. Sometimes the officer is the whole problem. Often the officer is the visible part of it.

A Monell claim is how a Section 1983 plaintiff sues the city or county itself. It is the part of the case with the highest stakes, because it puts the institution’s own practices on trial, and it is the part most often dismissed, because plaintiffs plead it in labels. This guide is the complete version: what the law requires, the six paths, how to gather evidence before discovery, how to write the count, and how to keep it alive at Rule 12.

After reading this guide, you should be able to:

  • explain why a city is liable for its own acts and not for its employees’
  • name the six paths to municipal liability and what each requires
  • complete the six steps every path must satisfy
  • gather the public records that let you plead facts instead of conclusions
  • structure a Monell count that survives a motion to dismiss

The site’s shorter Monell articles go deeper on each piece. This guide links to them where they apply.

The rule, and why it exists

In Monell v. Department of Social Services, the Supreme Court held that cities and counties are “persons” who can be sued under Section 1983. In the same opinion it held that they cannot be sued the way a private employer can. There is no respondeat superior. A city is liable only when its own official policy or custom is the moving force behind the violation.

That one sentence explains everything that follows. To hold a city liable you have to show what the city did, not just what its officer did.

Three related rules shape the claim:

An official-capacity claim against an officer is the same thing as a claim against the city, under Kentucky v. Graham. Do not plead both for the same act. And a state is not a person at all, under Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, so Monell does not reach state agencies.

The underlying violation comes first

A city cannot be liable for causing a constitutional violation that did not happen. Before you spend any effort on Monell, make sure the officer-level claim is solid: the excessive force, the false arrest, the retaliation. If that claim fails, the Monell claim fails with it.

The converse is not true. An officer can win qualified immunity because the law was not clearly established, while the city loses because its policy caused a violation. That is one reason to plead Monell when the facts support it.

The six paths

Courts recognize six ways to attribute a violation to the municipality. Each is a separate theory with separate proof. Do not merge them. The case law and the site’s articles treat them one at a time, and so should your complaint.

1. Formal policy

A written policy, ordinance, or regulation that caused the violation. This is the cleanest path when it exists. You need the policy’s text, the fact that it was in force on your incident date, who adopted it, and how it applied to what happened. A policy that is unconstitutional on its face is rare. A policy that authorizes the conduct in your case, or omits a constitutional limit, is more common.

Version matters. Get the policy in force on your date, not the current one.

2. Custom or practice

Conduct so persistent and widespread that it is the standard operating procedure, even though no one wrote it down. This is the closest thing Section 1983 gives you to institutional accountability, and the Fifth Circuit’s cases on it are demanding. See Piotrowski v. City of Houston and Peterson v. City of Fort Worth for how the court measures a pattern.

You need similar prior incidents, a reason they are similar to yours, how many and over what period, and a route to the policymakers’ actual or constructive knowledge. There is no magic number. Three closely similar incidents in the same unit do more than ten unrelated complaints. Read Monell: Custom or Practice Claims.

3. Final policymaker decision

A single decision by the official with final authority over the subject. One decision can be enough, which is why this path is powerful, and why courts police it. Whether someone is a final policymaker is a question of state and local law, decided by the court, under City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik and Jett v. Dallas Independent School District. Rank is not the test. The chief may have final authority over training and not over discipline.

You need the decision, the decisionmaker, the legal source of final authority over that subject, the timing, and the causal link. Read Monell: Who Is the Final Policymaker? and the term page on final policymaker.

4. Ratification

A final policymaker approved a subordinate’s act and the basis for it. This is the path plaintiffs reach for when the city cleared the officer afterward. Standing alone, a failure to discipline one incident is usually not enough. Ratification works when the policymaker knew the basis for the conduct and expressly approved it, and when the approval can be tied to an injury it could have caused. See ratification.

5. Failure to train

The city’s training was deficient in a specific way, the city was on notice of the deficiency, its failure to fix it amounted to deliberate indifference, and the deficiency caused your injury. City of Canton v. Harris set the standard, and Connick v. Thompson made clear that a single incident almost never proves it. You need a pattern of similar violations that put the city on notice, or the rare case where the need for training was so obvious that one incident suffices.

This is the most popular Monell theory and the easiest to lose. Read Monell: Failure-to-Train Claims and failure to train.

6. Failure to supervise or discipline

The same structure as failure to train, aimed at supervision: a specific deficiency, the responsible authority, notice, deliberate indifference, and causation. Hiring decisions fall here too, and Board of County Commissioners v. Brown shows how hard the causal showing is for a single hiring decision. See failure to supervise.

A field-training program, a jail handoff procedure, a complaint-review process, or a rubber-stamp review is usually a mechanism inside one of these six paths, not a seventh path. Plead it as the way the policy or custom was transmitted.

The six steps every path must complete

Whatever path you plead, the count must complete these six steps on its own. If a step is missing, the count is missing a step, and no amount of language about the other steps fills it.

  1. The path. Which of the six it is.
  2. The concrete facts. Source-supported facts bearing on that path: the policy text, the prior incidents with dates, the decision and who made it, the training gap.
  3. The municipal inference. The precise conclusion those facts permit about the city, stated as an inference. “These incidents support the inference that the department’s standard practice was to arrest people who recorded officers.”
  4. Attribution and notice. The final policymaker or delegated structure, and the notice, knowledge, or deliberate-indifference facts that path requires.
  5. The particular injury. The constitutional violation, or the later continuing harm, this path produced.
  6. The moving force. How this municipal act or omission produced that injury. See moving-force causation.

An omnibus paragraph listing possible theories does not complete any of them. Neither does “discovery will reveal which applies.” If you cannot complete the six steps for a theory, it does not belong in the complaint yet. Keep it in your notes as a discovery lead.

Timing: which facts can do which job

Sort every fact by when it happened relative to your incident.

Facts from before the incident can show notice, adoption, knowledge, mechanism, and causation. Facts from after it can show later notice, ratification, recurrence, or a later continuing injury. What a post-incident fact cannot do is supply notice or causation for the incident itself. An investigation that cleared the officer afterward may support ratification. It cannot be the moving force behind something that already happened.

Label each fact’s date in your notes. When the point matters, say which lane the fact is in.

Evidence before discovery

Most Monell claims are decided at the motion to dismiss, before any discovery. The defense knows this and moves early, arguing you have no facts showing policy, pattern, or notice. So the records work has to happen before you file.

What to gather, and where:

  • Prior lawsuits against the same city, department, jail, or unit. PACER and CourtListener.
  • Prior complaints and their outcomes. Open-records requests for civilian-complaint data, internal-affairs summaries where public, and discipline records.
  • The written policies, with effective dates and revision history. Open-records requests.
  • Training materials and lesson plans on the subject of your violation.
  • Oversight reports from an inspector general, auditor, civilian review board, state agency, or the Department of Justice.
  • News coverage of similar incidents, with dates.
  • The charter, ordinances, and civil-service rules that say who has final authority over training, discipline, and use of force.
  • Council minutes and budget documents showing known staffing or training problems.

Three cautions. A model policy from a national association, an accreditation standard, or a training slide is not department policy unless the department adopted it. The version in force on your date is the one that counts. And an empty records response proves nothing; record the request and the gap, then plead what you know with a properly framed information-and-belief allegation for what the city controls.

Read Monell: Finding Evidence Before Discovery and the process step on records requests.

Choosing the theories

Not every case should plead every path. Ask which sentence describes your facts:

  • “The written policy itself is the problem.” Plead formal policy.
  • “The city keeps doing this.” Plead custom, with the pattern.
  • “A specific official made or approved this decision.” Plead final policymaker, with the legal source of authority.
  • “The city knew its officers were unprepared for exactly this and did nothing.” Plead failure to train, with notice.

Plead one strong theory, or two or three related ones, each with its own facts. A complaint that pleads all six in one paragraph tells the judge you do not know which one fits. Read Monell: Pleading Multiple Theories.

How to write the count

A structure that works:

  1. State the underlying constitutional violation and cross-reference the individual counts.
  2. Identify the municipality correctly. The city, not the police department, in most places.
  3. Give each path its own subsection or paragraph group, labeled.
  4. Under each, plead the six steps in order: facts, inference, attribution and notice, injury, moving force.
  5. Close with a causation paragraph tying each path to your injury.
  6. Request compensatory, declaratory, and injunctive relief. Not punitive damages.

An example of the register that survives:

Before Plaintiff’s arrest, at least four publicly reported incidents and two federal lawsuits, identified in paragraphs 60 through 67, alleged that Exampleville officers used disorderly-conduct arrests against people recording police in public. The City’s use-of-force and arrest training materials in force on March 3, 2025, produced in response to Plaintiff’s records request, contain no instruction on the right to record police. The City imposed no discipline in any of the four reported incidents. Those facts support the inference that the City had notice of a recurring practice and chose not to correct it, and that the absence of training on the right to record was the moving force behind Officer Martinez’s decision to arrest Plaintiff for recording.

That paragraph names the path, the facts and their source, the inference, the notice, the injury, and the moving force. It is not proof. It is enough to get to discovery.

Why Monell counts get dismissed

The reasons repeat:

  • Labels without facts. “Policy, custom, and practice” with nothing behind it.
  • Officer-level facts only. A detailed account of the arrest and one sentence about the city.
  • No notice. A failure-to-train or custom theory with no facts showing the city knew.
  • No causation. A policy problem never connected to your injury.
  • The wrong policymaker, or none. Rank asserted as authority.
  • A pattern that is too thin or too different. Incidents that do not resemble yours.
  • Post-incident facts used for pre-incident notice. The investigation that cleared the officer offered as proof the city caused the arrest.

Read Monell: Why Claims Get Dismissed at Rule 12 and the dismissed cases to see the pattern in real orders.

Discovery and beyond

If the count survives, discovery is where the Monell claim is built or broken. Serve requests tied to each path: the policy and its history, training records, complaint files, prior use-of-force reports, and the review of your incident. Depose the city under Rule 30(b)(6) on the topics your paths require, so the city must designate someone to answer for its policies. Read How to Build a Deposition Outline and Privilege Logs, because internal-affairs files draw privilege claims.

At summary judgment the question becomes whether a jury could find each of the six steps on the evidence. The Monell cases in the library show what that record has looked like when it was enough, and when it was not.

A checklist before you name the city

  • Can I identify the municipality correctly?
  • Can I name at least one path and complete its six steps with facts I have now?
  • Do I have a source for each fact: a policy, a lawsuit, a complaint record, a report, a news story with a date?
  • Do my notice facts predate my incident?
  • Have I identified the final policymaker by legal authority, if I rely on that path?
  • Have I kept each path separate?
  • If this count were tested under Iqbal tomorrow, what concrete municipal facts would the judge see?

If the honest answer is that you have one officer’s bad act and nothing else, the Monell count is your weakest claim. Keep gathering, and plead it when the facts are there. A city named on nothing is a free dismissal for the defense and a credibility cost for you.

Check Your Understanding

  1. The officer who arrested you has eleven prior complaints, all for similar conduct, and the department never disciplined him. Which path, and what is still missing?

    Show answer Failure to supervise or discipline, and possibly custom if other officers did the same. What is missing is attribution and notice: facts showing that a final policymaker, or the structure the policymaker delegated to, knew of the complaints and chose not to act, and a causal link between that inaction and your arrest. Get the complaint dates and dispositions, and identify who had authority over discipline.

  2. After your arrest, the chief reviewed the incident and found the officer acted within policy. Does that prove the city caused the arrest?

    Show answer No. A post-incident review cannot be the moving force behind an arrest that already happened. It may support a ratification theory if the chief is the final policymaker on that subject and approved both the act and its basis. It may also be evidence of a custom, if combined with pre-incident facts showing the same practice. Sort the fact into its lane.

  3. You plead “the City maintained policies, customs, and practices, and failed to train and supervise its officers, amounting to deliberate indifference.” What will the defense say?

    Show answer That the paragraph is a list of labels with no facts, no path, no notice, and no causation, and that it fails under Iqbal. They will be right. Rewrite it as one or two paths, each with its own facts, inference, notice, injury, and moving-force allegation.

Have corrections or want to suggest a change?