Boudin v. Thomas

• Decision Date: 26 June 1984
• Parties: Kathie BOUDIN, Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Apellant, v. Dale THOMAS, Warden of Metropolitan Correctional Facility, Norman Carlson, Director of Federal Bureau of Prisons, John S. Martin, Jr., United States Attorney, Thomas Coughlin, the Commissioner of Correction of the State, Kenneth Gribetz, District Attorney of Rockland County and Elijah Coleman, Superintendent of the Rockland County Jail, Defendants, Dale Thomas, Warden of Metropolitan Correctional Facility, Norman Carlson, Director of Federal Bureau of Prisons, and John S. Martin, Jr., United States Attorney, Defendants-Appellants-Cross-Appellees. Dockets 83-2170, 83-2174.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 261

737 F.2d 261

Kathie BOUDIN, Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Apellant, v. Dale THOMAS, Warden of Metropolitan Correctional Facility, Norman Carlson, Director of Federal Bureau of Prisons, John

S. Martin, Jr., United States Attorney, Thomas Coughlin, the

Commissioner of Correction of the State, Kenneth Gribetz,

District Attorney of Rockland County and Elijah Coleman,

Superintendent of the Rockland County Jail, Defendants,

Dale Thomas, Warden of Metropolitan Correctional Facility,

Norman Carlson, Director of Federal Bureau of Prisons, and

John S. Martin, Jr., United States Attorney,

Defendants-Appellants-Cross-Appellees.

Dockets 83-2170, 83-2174.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

June 26, 1984.

JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge (concurring in rejection of rehearing in banc), with whom OAKES, Circuit Judge, concurs:

One of the issues raised by Boudin in suggesting that the appeal be reheard in banc is whether her successful claim for release from administrative segregation into the general population of the Metropolitan Correctional Center must be treated as a habeas corpus petition for purposes of her claim for attorney's fees. The panel decision ruled that this portion of her claim was a habeas petition and, as such, was not a "civil action" within the meaning of the attorney's fee provision of the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2412(d)(1)(A) (1982).

Whether a prisoner's claim for relief is a habeas petition or a traditional civil suit has engendered considerable controversy and difficulty. Compare Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973) (state prisoner's suit under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 (Supp. V 1981) treated as habeas petition), with Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 526-27 n. 6, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 1867-68 n. 6, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979) (federal prisoner's habeas petition treated as civil suit grounded on 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1331 (1982)). The panel opinion treats Boudin's challenge to her detention in administrative segregation as a habeas petition because she "seeks to be moved in order to remedy past constitutional violations." 732 F.2d at 1111. Though habeas has been held to be an available remedy for a challenge to the lawfulness of restrictive or otherwise more arduous confinement within prison custody brought by either federal prisoners, McCollum v. Miller, 695 F.2d 1044, 1046 (7th Cir.1982), or state prisoners, Krist v. Ricketts, 504 F.2d 887 (5th Cir.1974), it is less certain that habeas is the exclusive remedy. The Supreme Court in Preiser v. Rodriguez, supra, explicitly reaffirmed that "a Sec. 1983 action is a proper remedy for a state prisoner who is making a constitutional challenge to the conditions of his prison life .... This is not to say that habeas corpus may not also be available to challenge such prison conditions." 411 U.S. at 499, 93 S.Ct. at 1841 (emphasis added). State prisoners challenging imposition of arduous forms of confinement have been allowed to proceed under section 1983 provided that, in accordance with Preiser v. Rodriguez, supra, they were not challenging the fact or duration of their lack of freedom. See Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238, 103 S.Ct. 1741, 75 L.Ed.2d 813 (1983) (challenge to confinement in out-of-state prison); Wright v. Enomoto, 434 U.S. 1052, 98 S.Ct. 1223, 55 L.Ed.2d 756 (1978), summarily aff'g 462 F.Supp. 397 (N.D.Cal.1976) (challenge to confinement in administrative segregation); Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 96 S.Ct. 2532, 49 L.Ed.2d 451 (1976) (challenge to confinement in maximum security prison). Though the prisoners in Wakinekona, Wright, and Fano all challenged the sufficiency of the procedures whereby they were placed in more arduous confinement, they all wished to be moved back to their original conditions of confinement until such time as a proper determination was made to increase the severity of their custody. They were thus seeking "to be moved in order to remedy past constitutional violations."

Perhaps these cases are distinguishable from Boudin's claim on the ground that in each the prisoner primarily sought an order requiring use of pre-transfer procedures and sought return only to undo the action taken without such procedures, whereas Boudin frontally attacks placement in more restrictive confinement and seeks only removal from such confinement because of its alleged substantive invalidity. Yet any prisoner challenging the conditions of confinement, as Preiser v. Rodriguez, says may be done by state prisoners under section 1983, is asserting the substantive invalidity of that form of confinement and wants the illegality ended either by an...