|
COVID-19
****Editor’s
Case Alert****
Texas prisoners claimed that state correctional authority’s adoption and
implementation of measures based on changing Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
recommendations concerning the COVID-19 pandemic did not go far enough.
Their class action claimed violations of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition
against cruel and unusual punishment, and the Americans with Disabilities
Act, and sought a preliminary injunction. A federal appeals court granted
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s (TDCJ) motion to stay the trial
court’s preliminary injunction, which regulated the cleaning intervals for
common areas, the types of bleach-based disinfectants the prison must use,
the alcohol content of hand sanitizer that inmates must receive, mask
requirements for inmates, and inmates’ access to tissues (among many other
things). The injunction order went well beyond CDC guidelines. The court
held that the defendant was likely to prevail on the merits of its appeal
because after accounting for the protective measures that have been taken,
the plaintiffs had not shown a “substantial risk of serious harm” that
amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment”, and the trial court committed a
legal error in its application of Farmer v.
Brennan, #92-7247, 511 U.S. 825 (1994) (holding that a prison official may be held
liable under the Eighth Amendment for acting with “deliberate indifference”
to inmate health or safety only if he knows that inmates face a substantial
risk of serious harm and disregards that risk by failing to take reasonable
measures to abate it), by treating inadequate measures as
dispositive of the defendants’ mental state.
In this case, even assuming that there was a substantial risk of serious
harm, the plaintiffs lacked evidence of the defendants’ subjective
deliberate indifference to that harm. The appeals court also ruled that the
TDCJ had shown that it will be irreparably injured absent a stay, and that
the balance of the harms and the public interest favor a stay.
Additionally, the appeals court held that the plaintiffs had not exhausted
their administrative remedies as required in the Prison Litigation Reform
Act (PLRA), and that the trial court’s injunction went well beyond the
limits of what the PLRA would allow even if the plaintiffs had properly
exhausted their claims in administrative proceedings. Valentine
v. Collier, #20-20207, 2020 U.S. App. Lexis 12941 (5th Cir.).
Editor’s Note: AELE has published a web page containing links to
resources on responding to the COVID-19 virus. It can be accessed at: http://www.aele.org/law/virus2020/
Twenty federal immigration detainees in two county correctional facilities filed a federal habeas petition under 28 U.S.C.
2241), seeking immediate release. They claimed that due to underlying
health conditions, their continued detention during the COVID-19 pandemic
put them at imminent risk of death or serious injury. The trial court found
that they faced irreparable harm and were likely to succeed on the merits,
that the government would “face very little potential harm” from their
immediate release, and that “the public interest strongly encourages
Petitioners’ release.” Without waiting for a response from the government,
the trial court granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) requiring the
release. The government moved for reconsideration, submitting a declaration
describing conditions at the facilities, with details of the petitioners’
criminal histories. The court denied reconsideration, stating that the
government had failed to demonstrate a change in controlling law, provide
previously unavailable evidence, or show a clear error of law or the need
to prevent manifest injustice. The court extended the release period until
the COVID-19 state of emergency is lifted, but attached conditions to the
petitioners’ release.
The government reported that 19 petitioners were released, and that none
have been re-detained. Typically, an interlocutory order granting or denying
a TRO is not immediately appealable, as it is not a “final order” that ends
the litigation. A federal appeals court granted an immediate appeal, and an
immediate administrative stay of the release order, stating that the order
could not evade prompt review simply by virtue of the label “TRO.” A
purportedly non-appealable TRO that goes beyond preservation of the status
quo and mandates affirmative relief may be immediately appealable under 28
U.S.C. 1292(a)(1). “Having concluded that jurisdiction exists, we will
separately consider the merits after the parties have had the opportunity
to brief the issues presented.” Hope
v. Warden Pike County Correctional Facility, #20-1784, 2020
U.S. App. Lexis 12747 (3rd Cir.).
Disability
Discrimination: Prisoners
A detainee in a
county jail was assigned to a division that houses detainees who need canes, crutches, or walkers. He filed a
lawsuit asserting claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),
42 U.S.C. 12131–34, and the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C.794, alleging that
the division lacks grab bars and other necessary fixtures to accommodate
disabled detainees. He stated that he fell and was injured. He
unsuccessfully sought to represent a class of similarly situated detainees.
The court reasoned that the appropriate accommodation of any detainee’s
situation depends on personal characteristics, so common questions do not
predominate under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 23(b)(3). The
plaintiff proposed an alternative class to avoid person-specific questions,
contending that Division 10, which was constructed in 1992, violates 28
C.F.R. 42.522(b)'s requirement that as of “1988 … construction or
alteration of buildings” must comply with the Uniform Federal Accessibility
Standards. The Standards require accessible toilets to have grab bars
nearby and accessible showers to have mounted seats. The trial court
rejected this proposal, reasoning that to determine whether the Structural
Standards control, thereby mooting the reasonable accommodation inquiry,
would require a ruling on the merits, which would “run afoul of the rule
against one-way intervention.”
A federal appeals court vacated. The "view that a class cannot be
certified unless the plaintiff has already prevailed on the central legal
issue is a formula for one-way intervention rather than a means to avoid
it." The plaintiff proposed a class that will win if the Standards apply
and were violated, to detainees’ detriment and otherwise will lose. “That’s how class actions should
proceed.” Bennett
v. Dart, #20-8005, 953 F.3d 467 (7th Cir. 2020).
Medical Care
A detainee suffered a broken nose during an altercation with another inmate
while at a county jail. The injury left him with pain and shortness of
breath. A doctor determined that he needed surgery to treat these problems.
The surgery was repeatedly rescheduled and postponed. Over a year after the
initial injury, he finally received the surgery following his release from
custody. Claiming that his treatment was unconstitutionally deficient, he sued
administrators and medical professionals and the county. The trial court
granted the defendants summary judgment. A federal appeals court upheld
this result, ruling that the plaintiff presented no evidence that would
allow the trier of fact to conclude that the allegedly unreasonable conduct
of any named defendant caused his surgery to be delayed, since none of them
had the authority to schedule or to perform the relevant surgery. Each time
any of the individual defendants encountered the plaintiff, his surgery or
another appointment was on the surgery schedule. No legal rule imposed a
duty on the medical defendants to continue calling the clinic after they
properly contacted the proper schedulers. Turner
v. Paul, #19-2225, 953 F.3d 1011 (7th Cir.).
Current and former Illinois state inmates diagnosed with hepatitis C sued
the state Department of Corrections, a private entity that provided inmate
health services, and various doctors over a decade ago after allegedly
fruitless efforts to receive treatment for their disease while
incarcerated. Their lawsuit asserted that the diagnostic and treatment
protocols for Illinois inmates with hepatitis C violated the Eighth and
Fourteenth Amendments. A federal appeals court reversed the grant of class
certification and vacated a preliminary injunction. After discussing
numerosity and commonality of facts and issues, the appeals court noted
that the trial court failed to name a class representative or explain its
omission, leaving no way to assess the adequacy of representation. On the
assumption that the court would have accepted the proposed representatives,
the record did not reveal whether they would be adequate. The lack of a
named representative also made it impossible to find typicality--that the
“claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims
or defenses of the class.” The individual plaintiffs had not shown that they
were likely to suffer irreparable harm absent the preliminary injunction,
so it was error to grant injunctive relief. Orr
v. Shicker, #19-1380, 953 F.3d 490 (7th
Cir. 2020).
|
Prisoner
Assault: By Officers
A mother sued law
enforcement officers and their employing city for excessive force after
her son’s death while in custody on charges relating to trespassing and
failure to appear in court. A magistrate judge granted the defendants
summary judgment. Upholding this result, a federal appeals court held that the officers’ actions did not amount
to constitutionally excessive force. The undisputed facts showed that the
officers discovered the son acting erratically, and even though the son
was held in a secure cell, it was objectively reasonable for them to fear
that he would intentionally or inadvertently physically harm himself.
Furthermore, the son actively resisted the officers’ attempts to subdue
him, kicking the officers, and officers held him in the prone position
only until he stopped actively fighting against the restraints and the
officers. At that point, he stopped breathing and died. Therefore, the
court ruled that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity on the
plaintiff’s excessive force claim. Lombardo
v. City of St. Louis,
#19-1469, 2020
U.S. App. Lexis 12503
(8th Cir.).
Prisoner
Suicide
After a male prisoner exposed himself to a female guard, she told him
that she would write him up and started to walk away. He took that opportunity
to start yelling that he had a razor blade and intended to kill himself.
Shortly thereafter, a male correctional officer came to his cell, ordered
him out, and observed that he had “minor scratches” that could adequately
be treated with a bandage. The prisoner sued four officers for money
damages, claiming that they acted with
deliberate indifference to a material risk to his life by not responding
faster to his suicide threat. A federal appeals court upheld summary
judgment for the defendants. “Prison suicide is very real and very
serious, but any fair reading of this record, even in the light most
favorable to [the plaintiff] shows that he leveled an insincere
threat of suicide to get attention and demonstrated no recoverable
injury.” Lord
v. Beahm, #19-1346, 952 F.3d 902 (7th
Cir. 2020).
]Segregation:
Administrative
A prisoner claimed violation of his due process rights in
connection with discipline imposed on him. A federal appeals court held
that the conditions of confinement that he faced during administrative
segregation and upon his transfer to the Iowa State Penitentiary did not
amount to an atypical and significant deprivation when compared to the
ordinary incidents of prison life. It further ruled that the transfer to
a higher security facility alone was insufficient to establish an
atypical and significant hardship, and thus the court must examine the
conditions of confinement. In this case, the plaintiff failed to set
forth facts describing his conditions of confinement while in
administrative segregation and disciplinary detention. Furthermore, his
reference to his loss of employment, wages, security classification,
security points, and inmate tier status upon his transfer did not amount
to atypical and significant hardship under prior precedent. The federal
appeals court upheld the grant of summary judgment in favor of prison
officials. Smith
v. McKinney, #18-3613, 954 F.3d 1075 (8th
Cir. 2020).
|
|
Transsexual Prisoners
An inmate
diagnosed with gender dysphoria filed a federal civil rights lawsuit
claiming violations of her Eighth Amendment rights, and seeking
declaratory and injunctive relief. A federal appeals court held that the
plaintiff’s challenges to the prior “freeze-frame” policy that strictly
limited transgender inmates to the particular medical treatments they
were receiving when taken into custody, and the Florida Department of
Corrections’ (FDC) initial denial of hormone therapy were moot in light
of the FDC's subsequent repeal and replacement of the policy and its
provision of hormone treatment.
The court rejected the merits of the plaintiff’s claim that the FDC
violated the Eighth Amendment by refusing to accommodate her social-transitioning
requests (to grow out her hair, use makeup, and wear female
undergarments). In light of the disagreement among the testifying
professionals about the medical necessity of social transitioning to the
plaintiff’s treatment and the “wide-ranging deference” that the court
pays to prison administrators’ determinations about institutional safety
and security, the court could not say that the FDC consciously
disregarded a risk of serious harm by conduct that was “more than mere
negligence” and thereby violated the Eighth Amendment. Rather, the court
concluded that the FDC chose a meaningful course of treatment to address
the plaintiff's gender-dysphoria symptoms, which was sufficient to clear
the low bar of deliberate-indifference. Keohane
v. Florida Department of Corrections, #18-14096, 952 F.3d 1257
(11th Cir. 2020).
Visitation
A federal appeals court overturned the dismissal of federal defense
attorneys’ lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the warden
of a particular federal prison over the severe curtailment of
inmate-attorney visits at the prison in early 2019 during a period of
government shutdown. The lawsuit claimed that the curtailment violated
the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and the constitutional right to
counsel under the Sixth Amendment. The claims were not moot because the circumstances that disrupted
the visits were likely to recur and the defenders had U.S. Const. art. III
standing as the courts could grant appropriate relief by ordering the
center to conform its conduct to statutory and constitutional law.
The court pointed to
the current crisis over the COVID-19 virus as showing the need for a
solution to the problems posed by the case. “We … urge in the strongest
possible terms that, as soon as the District Court again has jurisdiction
over this case, it consider convening the parties to obtain their advice
as to the appointment of an individual with the stature, experience, and
knowledge necessary to mediate this weighty dispute and ultimately
facilitate the adoption of procedures for dealing with ongoing and future
emergencies, including the COVID-19 outbreak. Such a person should
diligently and speedily work to ensure that those incarcerated at the MDC
and those who represent them have access to each other, and that the
BOP—while maintaining its ability and authority to manage the facility in
a safe way—takes every reasonable step to preserve the statutory and constitutional
rights of the inmates and their counsel. We are confident that under wise
leadership and guidance, these parties, whose common interest is service
to the public, will rise to the occasion and achieve a satisfactory
resolution to their permanent credit.” Federal
Defenders of New York, Inc. v. Federal Bureau of Prisons,
#19-1778, 954 F.3d 118
(2nd Cir. 2020).
|
Resources
COVID-19: AELE has
published a web page containing links to resources on responding to the
COVID-19 virus. It can be accessed at: http://www.aele.org/law/virus2020/
COVID-19: COVID-19
Model Finds Nearly 100,000 More Deaths Than Current Estimates, Due to
Failures to Reduce Jails, by a Partnership Between ACLU Analytics and
Researchers from Washington State University, University of Pennsylvania,
and University of Tennessee (April, 2020).
Reference:
• Abbreviations of Law
Reports, laws and agencies used in our publications.
• AELE's list of recently-noted jail
and prisoner law resources.
AELE Seminars
Public Safety Discipline and Internal
Investigations
Sept. 28-Oct. 1,
2020– Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
Click here for
further information about all AELE Seminars.
|
Cross References
Access to Courts/Legal Info – See
also, Visitation
COVID-19 – See also, Visitation
Immigration Detainees – See also,
COVID-19 (2nd case)
Medical Care – See Also, COVID-19
(both cases)
Prison Litigation Reform Act:
Exhaustion of Remedies – See also, COVID-19 (1st case)
Prisoner Discipline – See also,
Segregation: Administrative
Prisoner Injury/Death – See also,
Disability Discrimination: Prisoners
Prisoner Injury/Death – See also,
Prisoner Assault: By Officers
•Return to the CONTENTS menu.
Return to the monthly publications menu
Access the multi-year Jail and
Prisoner Law Case Digest
List of links
to court websites
Report non-working links here.
© Copyright 2020 by AELE, Inc.
Contents may be downloaded, stored, printed or copied,
but may not be republished for commercial purposes.
|
|
