Harris v. Thigpen

Citation941 F.2d 1495
Decision Date18 September 1991
Docket NumberNos. 90-7083,90-7100,s. 90-7083
Parties2 NDLR P 94 Carmen Jean HARRIS and Leslie John Pettway, Plaintiffs-Appellants, James Hollifield, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Morris THIGPEN, Commissioner of the DOC, Jean W. Hare, Warden, J.D. White, (Warden-Limestone), Lynn Harrelson, (Warden-Kilby), Correctional Health Care, Inc., Dr. George Sutton, Ala. Medical Director (CHC), Brice R. Paul, Sheriff of Coffee County, Alabama, Coffee County, Alabama and Fred Payne, Defendants-Appellees, Georgia Rudolph, et al., Defendants, Stewart M. Hughey, etc., et al., Defendants-Intervenors, Alabama Department of Corrections, its agents and employees, Defendant-Intervenor-Appellee. Carmen Jean HARRIS and Leslie John Pettway, Plaintiffs-Appellees, James Hollifield, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Morris THIGPEN, Commissioner of DOC, Jean Hare, Warden, J.D. White, (Warden-Limestone), Lynn Harrelson, (Warden-Kilby), Correctional Health Care, Inc., Dr. George Sutton, Ala. Medical Director (CHC), Brice R. Paul, Sheriff of Coffee County, Alabama, Coffee County, Alabama and Fred Payne, Defendants-Appellants, Georgia Rudolph, et al., Defendants, Stewart M. Hughey, AIS # 131035, Adam Lamar Robinson, Chuck Stoudemire, AIS # 153319, Alabama Department of Corrections, its agents and employees, Defendants-Intervenors-Appellants.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

Alexa P. Freeman, Elizabeth Alexander, ACLU Nat. Prison Project, Washington D.C., Howard Mandell, Mandell & Boyd, Montgomery, Ala., Nancy Ortega, Stephen B. Bright, Southern Prisoners' Defense Committee, Atlanta, Ga., for plaintiffs-appellants in no. 90-7083.

Harry A. Lyles, Horace N. Lynn, Andrew Redd, Alice B. Wilhelm, Alabama Dept. of Corrections, Scott R. Talkington, David B. Byrne, Jr., Robinson & Belser, P.A., Jack M. Curtis, Dept. of Public Safety Legal Unit, Montgomery, Ala., Geary A. Gaston, Reams, Vollmer, Philips, Killion, Brooks & Schell, PC, Mobile, Ala., Daryl L. Masters, Webb, Crumpton, McGregor, Davis & Alley, Montgomery, Ala., Dorothy F. Norwood, Correctional Health Care, Inc., Mt. Meigs, Ala., for defendants-appellees in no. 90-7083.

Neil King, Wilmer, Cutley & Pickering, Washington, D.C., for amicus, Aids Action Counsel.

Harry A. Lyles, Horace N. Lynn, Andrew W. Redd, Alice Ann Boswell, Alabama Dept. of Corrections, David B. Byrne, Jr., Robison & Belser, P.A., Scott R. Talkington, Montgomery, Ala., for defendants-appellants in No. 90-7100.

Alexa P. Freeman, ACLU Nat. Prison Project, Elizabeth Alexander, Alvin J. Bronstein, Washington, D.C., Nancy Ortega, Steve Bright, Southern Prisoners' Defense Committee, Atlanta, Ga., Dorothy F. Norwood, Kilby Correctional Facility, Mt. Meigs, Ala., Geary A. Gaston, Reams, Vollmer, Philips, Killion, Brooks & Schell, PC, Mobile, Ala., Howard A. Mandell, Mandell & Boyd, Montgomery, Ala., for plaintiff-appellees in No. 90-7083.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

Before FAY and BIRCH, Circuit Judges, and HOFFMAN *, Senior District Judge.

FAY, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs-appellants appeal the post-trial dismissal of their class action civil rights challenge to various policies and procedures of defendant-appellee, the Alabama Department of Corrections ("DOC"). The appellants raise four issues involving the DOC's policy of uniformly segregating from the general prison population those prisoners who test positive for exposure to Human Immunodeficiency Virus ("HIV"), the virus commonly believed to be the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome ("AIDS").

For the following reasons, we AFFIRM the district court's conclusions as to appellants' eighth amendment claim of "deliberately indifferent" medical care by the DOC, as well as to the alleged violation by the DOC of appellants' fourteenth amendment privacy rights. We believe, however, that more complete findings of fact and conclusions of law are necessary for a proper resolution of appellants' Rehabilitation Act and access to courts claims. We therefore VACATE and REMAND those issues to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND.

This case involves a range of difficult AIDS-related issues that confront all correctional officials, administrators, policymakers and inmates as they attempt to grapple with the problems engendered by the presence of HIV infection in our nation's prisons and jails. 1

The genesis of the litigation underlying this appeal was the Alabama Legislature's passage in 1987 of a statute that provides, among other things, that all persons sentenced to confinement in an Alabama state correctional facility must be tested for various sexually transmitted diseases designated by the state board of health. 2 Shortly thereafter, defendant-appellee DOC instituted a procedure for implementing this statute. Consequently, all inmates entering an Alabama state correctional facility are tested for sexually transmitted diseases at the time of their admission to the facility in question, and are tested again within thirty days of their release from the prison system.

One of the sexually transmitted diseases for which the DOC is required to test is HIV, virtually certain to be the causative agent of AIDS. The DOC initially administers to each prisoner an enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay ("ELISA"), a standard screening test designed to detect the presence of HIV antibodies. If an inmate exhibits a negative ELISA, and if other tests for sexually transmitted diseases prove negative as well, then the inmate is immediately released into the general prison population.

If, however, an inmate exhibits a positive ELISA, he or she is then administered a second ELISA to again test for the presence of the HIV antibody. If the second ELISA is also positive, the inmate is administered a third, confirmatory test known as the "Western Blot"; like the ELISA, this test is also aimed at detecting the presence of the HIV antibody. 3

If a particular inmate tests positive for the separate ELISA tests and the confirmatory Western Blot test, the inmate is assigned to one of two segregated HIV wards established by the DOC. Male seropositive 4 inmates are assigned to Dormitory 7 at the Limestone Correctional Facility ("Limestone") in Capshaw, Alabama. 5 Female seropositive inmates are housed in a separate HIV unit at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women ("Tutwiler") in Wetumpka, Alabama.

On November 17, 1987, Carmen Harris, an inmate at Tutwiler, filed a complaint challenging the DOC's actions in testing her for HIV antibodies, and in segregating her in a separate unit when her test results were reported as positive. On March 4, 1988, Ms. Harris and other prisoners filed a motion for class certification. Thereafter, inmates Stewart Hughey and Adam Robinson, two non-HIV general population inmates incarcerated at Limestone, filed a motion to intervene as defendants under Fed.R.Civ.P. 24. The trial court subsequently consolidated the case with a number of similar actions pending in various federal courts in Alabama requesting similar injunctive relief, and certified two classes: the plaintiff class, consisting of all inmates or future inmates of the DOC, except those inmates who had indicated an intention to intervene on behalf of the defendants; another class consisting of intervenor-inmates opposing the relief sought by the plaintiffs.

As the trial court observed, plaintiffs' suit essentially challenged the mandatory testing of all present or future Alabama state prisoners for HIV antibodies, as well as the policy of forced segregation and other practices associated with the Alabama system's care for and treatment of seropositive inmates. 6 Plaintiffs claimed that such practices violated their rights guaranteed under the first, fourth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (codified as amended at 29 U.S.C. § 701 (1988)).

The first phase of the case was tried from March 27 to March 30, 1989, in Decatur Alabama. 7 The second phase of the trial took place from June 12 to June 26, 1989, in Montgomery, Alabama. On January 8, 1990, the district court issued an opinion rejecting the claims of the plaintiff class. In denying injunctive relief, the court concluded:

CONCLUSION. This Court is of the opinion that the testing program does not amount to an unreasonable search and seizure or an invasion of a constitutionally protected privacy; that Plaintiffs have shown no credible evidence of failure to provide adequate care for serious medical, dental and mental health needs amounting to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment; that the totality of other conditions to which seropositive prisoners are subjected does not inflict cruel and unusual punishment; that the submission of Defendant inmates to close contact with known AIDS carriers could well be considered as invasive of constitutional rights of the Defendant prisoners; that the differential treatment of seropositive prisoners does not violate equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; that the segregation of such prisoners classified as shown by the evidence does not offend constitutional rights even when done without a hearing; that the public disclosure of positive tests is not a violation of [the] right of privacy of the positive inmates; that the recent policy with respect to library hours does not constitute a denial of meaningful access to prison legal materials nor does it deny them their right of access to courts in violation of the First or Fourteenth Amendment; and that conditions and practices to which seropositive prisoners are subjected does not constitute a discrimination against them as handicapped individuals in violation of § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. §§ 701, et seq., because the preponderance of the evidence does not show them to...

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