Lee Ward v. L. Ryan

• Decision Date: 27 September 2010
• Docket Number: No. 07-17156.,07-17156.
• Citation: 623 F.3d 807
• Parties: Timothy Lee WARD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Charles L. RYAN, Director, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

623 F.3d 807

Timothy Lee WARD, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.Charles L. RYAN, Director, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 07-17156.

United States Court of Appeals,Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Jan. 12, 2010.

Filed Sept. 27, 2010.

Beau Sterling, Las Vegas, NV, for the plaintiff-appellant.

Michele L. Forney, Phoenix, AZ, for the defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, Roslyn O. Silver, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-01-02226-ROS.

Before: ALEX KOZINSKI, Chief Judge, J. CLIFFORD WALLACE and RICHARD R. CLIFTON, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

CLIFTON, Circuit Judge:

Timothy Lee Ward, an inmate held by the Arizona Department of Corrections (“Department”), appeals from the district court's summary judgment in favor of the Director of the Department. ¹ Ward alleges that the Department's withdrawal of $50.00 from his prison wages pursuant to an Arizona statute that requires that amount of money be placed in a dedicated discharge account, to be paid to him upon his release from incarceration, violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. He seeks immediate access to the funds, because his 197-year sentence makes it unlikely that he will ever be released prior to his death. The district court denied Ward's claim. We affirm.

I. Background

Ward was sentenced to 197 years in the custody of the Department as a result of twenty-two felony convictions. As a prisoner who works, Ward is entitled under Arizona law to compensation at a rate to be determined by the Director. Ariz.Rev.Stat. § 31-254(A). For the most part, this compensation is placed in the inmate's spendable account and may be withdrawn for certain enumerated purposes, such as inmate store purchases or long distance telephone calls. Withdrawal of funds requires approval by prison officials.

Pursuant to Section 31-237(A) of the Arizona Revised Statutes, a percentage of the wages earned by a prisoner must be deposited by the Department into a separate account, called a dedicated discharge account, until that account registers a $50.00 balance. The money held in this account is not available for the prisoner to spend while he in prison but will be distributed to him as “gate money” when he is discharged or is transferred to community release or home arrest. See Ariz.Rev.Stat. § 31-237(B). If a prisoner dies in prison, the gate money is applied to cremation costs or other related expenses, and any remaining funds are released to his estate or heir. ² As required by the Arizona statute, $50.00 was withheld from Ward's prison wages and is held by the Department in his dedicated discharge account.

Ward filed pro se a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 civil rights suit against the Director alleging denial of access to the courts in violation of the Sixth Amendment. He amended his complaint to add a claim that the withholding of his wages constituted a violation of the Eighth Amendment and sought both compensatory and punitive damages against the Director, as well as injunctive relief. Ward's complaint was dismissed by the district court for failure to state a claim. Ward appealed the dismissal to this court. We affirmed the dismissal of the access-to-courts claim but reversed the dismissal of the due-process claim, remanding for further proceedings, which will be more fully described below. ³ See Ward v. Stewart, 81 Fed.Appx. 229 (9th Cir.2003) (unpublished).

After the case returned to district court, the Director moved for summary judgment on the due-process claim, asserting that he was entitled to qualified and sovereign immunity. The district court granted partial summary judgment in the Director's favor, holding that the Director was entitled to qualified immunity regarding his personal liability and to sovereign immunity for his official actions. The court also granted summary judgment for the Director on Ward's due-process claim for punitive damages. The court did not at that point grant summary judgment on Ward's claim for injunctive relief, instead ordering supplemental briefing on that issue.

In his supplemental brief Ward for the first time alleged violations of his Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights against the government's taking of property without just compensation. Following consideration of Ward's claims, including the new takings claim, ⁴ the district court denied Ward's request for injunctive relief and dismissed the remainder of his claims.

This appeal followed. ⁵

II. Discussion

We review the district court's summary judgment de novo. See Universal Health Servs., Inc. v. Thompson, 363 F.3d 1013, 1019 (9th Cir.2004). Our review is governed by the same standard used by the trial court under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(c). Adcock v. Chrysler Corp., 166 F.3d 1290, 1292 (9th Cir.1999). “We must determine, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, whether there are any genuine issues of material fact and whether the district court correctly applied the relevant substantive law.” Universal Health Servs., 363 F.3d at 1019 (internal quotation marks omitted). Where, as here, the underlying facts are not in dispute, we are left to determine whether the district court correctly applied the law. Id.

Ward's primary argument on appeal is that the withholding of the $50 for gate money constituted a taking of his private property in violation of his constitutional rights. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from taking private property for public use without just compensation. This right is applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Webb's Fabulous Pharmacies, Inc. v. Beckwith, 449 U.S. 155, 160, 101 S.Ct. 446, 66 L.Ed.2d 358 (1980).

To establish a violation of the Takings Clause, Ward must first demonstrate he has a property interest that is constitutionally protected. Schneider v. Cal. Dep't of Corr. ( Schneider II ), 151 F.3d 1194, 1198 (9th Cir.1998). “Only if [the plaintiff] does indeed possess such an interest will a reviewing court proceed to determine whether the expropriation of that interest constitutes a ‘taking’ within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment.” Id. Property interests are not constitutionally created; rather, protected property rights are “created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law.” Bd. of Regents of State Coll. v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972).

Inmates forfeit many of their traditional rights to property. See Givens v. Ala. Dep't of Corr., 381 F.3d 1064, 1068 (11th Cir.2004). And inmates did not have a protected property interest in their wages at common law. See Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U.S. 663, 682, 94 S.Ct. 2080, 40 L.Ed.2d 452 (1974). The Supreme Court of Arizona has recognized, however, that Arizona created a protected property interest in inmate wages by statute. See Zuther v. State, 199 Ariz. 104, 14 P.3d 295, 302 (2000); Ariz.Rev.Stat. § 31-254(A) (“Each prisoner who is engaged in productive work ... shall receive for the prisoner's work the compensation that the director determines.”). It is thus undisputed that Ward has a protected property interest in his prison wages.

Nonetheless, courts have consistently held that such statutes granting inmates a protected property interest in their wages may also limit and define the contours of such interest. See, e.g., Washlefske v. Winston, 234 F.3d 179, 185 (4th Cir.2000) (“[A]n inmate has no property interest in any ‘wages' from his work in prison except insofar as the State might elect, through statute, to give him rights.”); Rochon v. La. State Penitentiary Inmate Account, 880 F.2d 845, 846 (5th Cir.1989) (“[Petitioner] receives incentive wages solely because of the state statutory scheme. Thus, the nature of his property interest in those funds may be defined by the reasonable provisions of that legislation.”); see also Givens, 381 F.3d at 1069-70 (holding that the statutory provisions creating a property interest in inmate wages do not create an interest in the interest accrued on their accounts); Allen v. Cuomo, 100 F.3d 253, 261-62 (2d Cir.1996) (holding that the statute providing for payment of inmate wages did not create an entitlement in access to wages prior to release); Hrbek v. Farrier, 787 F.2d 414, 416 (8th Cir.1986) (holding that the statutory scheme allowed for deductions from prison wages and stating that the “statutory provisions clearly establish that [petitioner] can assert no legitimate claim of entitlement to the full amount of his wages based upon state law”).

In Tellis v. Godinez, 5 F.3d 1314 (9th Cir.1993), we considered a Nevada inmate's right to interest earned on money deposited in his personal property fund. In holding that the inmate did have a constitutionally protected property interest, we determined that we needed to look not only at the plain language of the section of the statute providing for the inmate's property interest, but also its context within the surrounding statutory framework. Id. at 1316-17 (“[T]he statute is to be read as a whole, since the meaning of statutory language, plain or not, depends on context.”) (internal quotation marks omitted).

In turning to the Arizona statutory framework, we begin by observing that in Zuther, the Supreme Court of Arizona rejected a challenge by a different Department inmate to the same gate-money requirement that is at issue in this case. While recognizing that the inmate had a statutorily-created property interest in his wages, the Arizona court held that the inmate had “no constitutional right to possess that property while in prison, and [that] the delay in access to the amount withheld [was] at most a de minimus deprivation.” Zuther, 14 P.3d at 302.

We pointed out in our previous decision in this case, however, that Zuther might not be dispositive here because Zuther had actually been released and...