K.H. V. Gary T. Morgan (09/24/90‪)‬

The defendants in this civil rights damages suit (brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983) appeal -- as is their right, Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530, 86 L. Ed. 2d 411, 105 S. Ct. 2806 (1985) -- from an order by the district judge rejecting their defense of immunity. The defendants are the Director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the Department's guardianship administrator, and two social workers employed by the Department; together they raised the defense of immunity in a motion to dismiss the complaint. This was a permissible way to proceed. If the defense was sustained, the suit would have to be dismissed, because these were the only defendants and damages the only relief that the plaintiff was seeking, the claim for injunctive relief having been abandoned. But this means that the only facts before the judge when he ruled on the defense of immunity were those alleged in the complaint, and we must take them as true, as did he. The defendants have attempted to fog the factual issues by tendering first to the district judge and now to us the transcript of a juvenile court hearing that casts the facts in a light slightly more favorable to them. But since they did not ask the district judge to make any factual findings we shall ignore the juvenile-court transcript beyond reminding the reader that allegations in a complaint are not proven facts.