Rossow v. Jeppesen

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO
KEEVA ROSSOW and SERAH
THOMPSON,
Plaintiffs,
v.
JULIET CHARRON, Director, Idaho
Department of Health and Welfare, in
her official capacity,
Defendant.
Case No. 1:23-cv-00131-BLW
MEMORANDUM DECISION AND
ORDER
INTRODUCTION
Defendant Juliet Charron, sued in her official capacity as Director of Idaho
Department of Health and Welfare, asks the Court to stay discovery pending its decision
on the Director’s motion to dismiss. See Dkt. 125. For the reasons set forth below, the
motion is denied.
BACKGROUND
Plaintiff Keeva Rossow brought this class action in 2023, challenging the
constitutionality of Idaho’s practice of placing mothers on the Child Protection Central
Registry for prenatal THC use under IDAPA 16.06.01.563.02.a. The Director moved to
dismiss, and the Court denied that motion in part and granted it in part. See Dkt. 24. The
class was certified in March 2025, and Serah Thompson was added as a plaintiff and
class representative. See Dkt. 86. After a scheduling conference, the Court entered an
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Amended Scheduling Order on February 12, 2026, setting discovery and trial deadlines.
Written discovery must be served by May 15, 2026, all factual discovery must be
completed by July 17, 2026, and trial is anticipated for fall 2026.
The Director has asserted Eleventh Amendment and sovereign immunity as an
affirmative defense since filing her first answer in December 2023. See Dkts. 27, 93.
Notwithstanding that defense, the Director propounded her own written discovery and
deposed Plaintiff Rossow. She did not move to stay discovery at any point during the pre-
certification phase. Discovery resumed on February 11, 2026, and on February 16,
Plaintiffs served their first set of class discovery requests.
With the Court’s authorization, the Director filed a second motion to dismiss on
March 11, 2026, arguing that Ex parte Young does not permit this suit because the named
Plaintiffs’ substantiations were discrete past events. See Dkt. 124. That same day, the
Director filed this motion to stay all discovery pending resolution of the motion to
dismiss. See Dkt. 125. Plaintiffs oppose the stay. See Dkt. 130. The motion is ripe for
decision.
ANALYSIS
A district court may stay discovery pending resolution of a dispositive motion
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c)(1) upon a showing of good cause, or under
its inherent authority to manage its docket. Snake River Waterkeeper v. J.R. Simplot Co.,
No. 1:23-cv-00239-DCN, 2023 WL 5748152, at *2–3 (D. Idaho Sept. 6, 2023). The
Director invokes both theories. But “[a] party seeking to stay discovery carries an even
heavier burden and must make a ‘strong showing’ for why discovery should be denied.”
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Gray v. First Winthrop Corp., 133 F.R.D. 39, 40 (N.D. Cal. 1990) (quoting Blankenship
v. Hearst Corp., 519 F.2d 418, 429 (9th Cir.1975)); see also United States v. CDS, P.A.,
No. 4:14-cv-00301-BLW, 2015 WL 5257132, at *1 (D. Idaho Sept. 3, 2015). And “[t]he
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not provide for automatic or blanket stays of
discovery when a potentially dispositive motion is ‘pending.’” T.L. v. Orange Unified
Sch. Dist., No. 8:23-cv-01078-FWS-KES, 2023 WL 9007307, at *2 (C.D. Cal. Nov. 3,
2023).
The Director leans heavily on the principle that Eleventh Amendment immunity
deserves special solicitude—that it shields a state defendant not only from liability but
from the burdens of litigation itself. See Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U.S. 226, 232 (1991). The
Court does not quarrel with that principle in the abstract. An immunity defense is not just
another dispositive motion—it is a claim that the Court lacks the power to haul a
sovereign into court at all, and there is real force to the argument that a defendant
asserting such a defense should not be dragged through discovery before the question is
resolved. See Snake River Waterkeeper, 2023 WL 5748152, at *3 (recognizing that
jurisdictional defenses, including immunity, carry particular weight in the stay analysis).
But it does not necessarily follow that every time a defendant utters the words
“Eleventh Amendment,” discovery grinds to a halt. Even accounting for the heightened
solicitude that sovereign immunity commands, the Court must still assess whether a stay
is warranted under the particular circumstances of the case. Taking a “preliminary peek”
at the merits of the pending motion to dismiss to determine whether “there appears to be
an immediate and clear possibility that it will be granted” remains a useful framework for
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making that assessment. CDA, 2015 WL 5257132, at *2 (quoting GTE Wireless, Inc. v.
Qualcomm, Inc., 192 F.R.D. 284, 286 (S.D. Cal. 2000)).
The Director’s motion to dismiss rests principally on two cases: Filyaw v. Corsi,
150 F.4th 936 (8th Cir. 2025), and Bird v. Dep’t of Human Services, 935 F.3d 738 (9th
Cir. 2019). Neither suffices to warrant a stay. Filyaw is an Eighth Circuit decision. Even
with the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari, it is not binding in this circuit and does not
change Ninth Circuit law. And Bird was not an Eleventh Amendment or Ex parte Young
case at all — it was a statute of limitations decision involving an individual plaintiff’s
untimely claim for money damages. Plaintiffs, meanwhile, point to K.W. v. Armstrong,
789 F.3d 962, 974–75 (9th Cir. 2015), where the Ninth Circuit held that a class-wide
injunction to restore social assistance benefits constitutes prospective relief permitted
under the Eleventh Amendment. K.W. is binding authority in this circuit and arguably
more apposite to the claims at issue here. The Court is not prejudging the motion to
dismiss — it will give the Director’s arguments their due weight — but on a preliminary
peek, the Court does not see an “immediate and clear possibility” that the motion will be
granted. CDA, 2015 WL 5257132, at *2.
The procedural posture of this case reinforces that conclusion. Unlike in Snake
Water Keeper, 2023 WL 5748152, where the defendants moved to stay discovery less
than two months after the action was filed and before the scheduling order was entered,
the Director did not raise her sovereign immunity defense at the first opportunity and
move promptly to resolve it before discovery began. To the contrary, the Director waited
for nearly three years after this lawsuit was filed before seeking to stay discovery. In the
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meantime, this case has been extensively litigated, and the class has been certified. The
Director initiated taking discovery at the outset of this case by propounding written
discovery and deposing Plaintiff Keeva Roosow. Since that time, the Director has
actively engaged in pre-certification discovery, participated in multiple scheduling and
status conferences, and even filed two previous motions to dismiss — including one
raising the Director’s Eleventh Amendment immunity with respect to the state-law
claims, see Dkts. 13, 59 — all without requesting a stay or raising sovereign immunity as
a bar to the federal claims. The Court is not inclined to grant a stay under the auspices
that it will conserve resources when the Director waited three years before raising the
issue.
Finally, the prejudice to the Plaintiff Class weighs against a stay. This is a certified
class action with a tight schedule. Written discovery closed on May 15, 2026,1 and all
factual discovery must be completed by July 17, 2026. Even a brief stay would materially
prejudice the class’s ability to meet those deadlines.
In sum, weighing all these factors, the Court concludes that the Director has not
carried her heavy burden of making a strong showing that discovery should be stayed.
Accordingly, the Court will deny the Director’s motion.
ORDER
IT IS ORDERED that:
1. 	The Director’s Expedited Motion to Stay Discovery (Dkt. 125) is DENIED.
1 On May 15, 2026, Plaintiffs filed a motion for extension of the deadline for serving written discovery.
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DATED: May 18, 2026
_________________________
B. Lynn Winmill
U.S. District Court Judge
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