Brock v. Carroll

• Decision Date: 19 February 1997
• Docket Number: No. 95-7081,95-7081
• Citation: 107 F.3d 241
• Parties: Robert Lee BROCK, Plaintiff-Appellant, United States of America, Intervenor, v. Lieutenant CARROLL; Mrs. Clark, Counselor, Powhatan Correctional Center; Warden, Powhatan Correctional Center, Defendants-Appellees, and Doctor Dixon, Powhatan Correctional Center; Doctor Barnes, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 241

107 F.3d 241

Robert Lee BROCK, Plaintiff-Appellant United States of America, Intervenor, v. Lieutenant CARROLL; Mrs. Clark, Counselor, Powhatan Correctional Center; Warden, Powhatan Correctional Center, Defendants-Appellees and Doctor Dixon, Powhatan Correctional Center; Doctor Barnes Defendants.

No. 95-7081.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued Oct. 28, 1996.

Decided Feb. 19, 1997.

ARGUED: Mary Lee Clark, Appellate Litigation Clinical Program, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., for Plaintiff-Appellant. Mark Ralph Davis, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General, Richmond, VA, for Defendants-Appellees. Patricia Ann Millett, Appellate Staff, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Intervenor. ON BRIEF: Steven H. Goldblatt, Director, Ellen R. Finn, Supervising Attorney, Eliana D. Dolgoff, Student Counsel, Kendra M. Matthews, Student Counsel, Appellate Litigation Clinical Program, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., for Plaintiff-Appellant. James S. Gilmore, III, Attorney General, Alexander L. Taylor, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Susan C. Alexander, Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General, Richmond, VA, for Defendants-Appellees. Frank W. Hunger, Assistant Attorney General, Robert P. Crouch, Jr., United States Attorney, Michael Jay Singer, Appellate Staff, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Intervenor.

Before WILKINS and LUTTIG, Circuit Judges, and PHILLIPS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by published opinions. Judge LUTTIG wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment. Judge WILKINS wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment. Senior Judge PHILLIPS wrote and opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.

JUDGEMENT

In accordance with the written opinions of this Court filed this day, the Court affirms the judgment of the district court.

LUTTIG, Circuit Judge, concurring in judgment:

Appellant-plaintiff Robert Lee Brock appeals the summary judgment dismissal of his § 1983 claim against appellee-defendant Lt. Joan E. Carroll. For the reasons stated herein, I would affirm the judgment of the district court.

I.

On November 7, 1994, Brock, an inmate at the Indian Creek Correctional Center ("ICCC"), filed a pro se complaint against Carroll, an employee of ICCC. Nowhere in his complaint did Brock set forth the legal basis for his claim. ¹ Brock did, however, allege that he "bought a pipe [at the] canteen," that he "extended it in order to make a prayer pipe," that it was "taken [from him] as contraband," and that "both [Carroll] and the [assistant] warden refuse[d] to let [him] have it." J.A. at 8. Brock then stated in his complaint that he was seeking relief of "$27 million for [the] denial of religious materials." J.A. at 9.

Apparently, Brock had purchased an ordinary pipe from the prison canteen, and then altered it to create a "prayer pipe." Carroll, upon discovering the altered pipe, confiscated it pursuant to prison regulations. Prison regulations prohibit inmates from possessing "contraband," which is defined as "state and/or personal property, regardless of how acquired, which has been modified or altered without written authorization." J.A. at 125 (Division Operating Procedure 861). Since Brock had altered the pipe without written authorization, it fell within this definition of "contraband."

The district court treated Brock's complaint as a claim under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The district court then granted Carroll summary judgment on Brock's Free Exercise claim. Brock appeals, claiming, first, that the district court erred in failing to address his claim under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA"), 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb et seq., and, second, that the district court erred in denying Brock's claim under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

II.

Brock argues that the district court erred in addressing his claim under the Free Exercise Clause, but not under RFRA. I disagree.

Nowhere in his complaint did Brock allege a claim under RFRA, and, under our recent decision in Cochran v. Morris, the district court was under no obligation to construct such a claim sua sponte. 73 F.3d 1310 (4th Cir.1996).

In Cochran, the district court dismissed a pro se complaint brought by Dennis Wayne Cochran, an inmate, wherein Cochran alleged that he was denied a kosher diet by the prison. Id. at 1314. The district court addressed Cochran's claim under the Free Exercise Clause, but not under RFRA, id. at 1314-15, even though RFRA had been enacted two weeks before the district court decided the case. ² The district court then rejected a Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b) post-judgment motion filed by Cochran which specifically cited RFRA as a ground for postjudgment relief. Id. at 1315. Notwithstanding, we affirmed the district court, specifically noting that the plaintiff "did not allege a violation of RFRA in his complaint." Id. at 1317 n. 3. Nowhere in Cochran did we even suggest that the district court was obliged to address sua sponte Cochran's claim under RFRA.

Brock's attempt to distinguish Cochran on its facts is unavailing. Brock argues that, unlike the plaintiff in Cochran, he was provided by the district court with a standard complaint form that specifically instructed him not to "cite any cases or statutes" in his complaint. J.A. at 8. However, whatever purposes the complaint form might serve, it does not, as Cochran confirms, create upon the district court an obligation to sua sponte raise and address any and every claim that might arguably be presented by the facts as presented.

Brock's argument that under Gordon v. Leeke, 574 F.2d 1147, 1151 (4th Cir.1978), the district court was required to address his claim under RFRA, also must fail. In Gordon, we stated only that the district court was required to carefully examine a pro se complaint to determine whether it alleged any "constitutional deprivations." Even assuming that Carroll's actions violated Brock's rights under RFRA, such violation would not amount to a deprivation of Brock's constitutional rights. Rather, RFRA provides Brock with a statutory cause of action independent of his rights under the Constitution.

Finally, Brock's contention that, under Roseboro v. Garrison, 528 F.2d 309, 310 (4th Cir.1975), the district court erred in not notifying Brock that his failure to allege a RFRA violation would result in his forfeiting of that claim, is wholly without merit. In Roseboro, we held merely that, before a district court granted summary judgment against a pro se plaintiff, the district court was obliged to notify the plaintiff of the requirements of the summary judgment rule. Id. at 310. We have never held that a district court is obliged to apprise plaintiffs of statutory causes of action of which they are not aware. Obviously, were we to do so, we would come dangerously close to requiring "district courts to assume the role of advocate for the pro se plaintiff," Gordon, 574 F.2d at 1151. This I am unwilling to do.

III.

The district court also did not err in denying Brock's claim under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Although there is some dispute over whether an inmate's Free Exercise rights continue to be governed by O'Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 107 S.Ct. 2400, 96 L.Ed.2d 282 (1987), or are now governed by the Supreme Court's more recent decision in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 110 S.Ct. 1595, 108 L.Ed.2d 876 (1990), we need not resolve this dispute because, under either of the two cases, Brock's Free Exercise claim fails.

Prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Smith, an inmate's Free Exercise claims were governed by the "reasonableness" test set forth in O'Lone. Under O'Lone, if "a prison regulation impinges on inmates' constitutional rights, [then] the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests." 482 U.S. at 349, 107 S.Ct. at 2404. Here, the prison has a legitimate penological interest in security, and the prison's regulation prohibiting "contraband" is reasonably related to that interest. In order to maintain prison security, prisons may prevent inmates from possessing unapproved items, including approved items that have been altered from the form in which they existed at the time of approval. The prison's general regulation prohibiting inmates from possessing any "contraband" reasonably promotes this security interest.

However, the "reasonableness" test set forth in O'Lone has arguably been displaced by the Supreme Court's more recent decision in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 110 S.Ct. 1595, 108 L.Ed.2d 876. Although Smith did not address the prison context, it did purport to state a general rule governing Free Exercise claims. In Smith, the Supreme Court held that if a law is neutral and of general applicability, then it cannot violate an individual's Free Exercise rights regardless of its reasonableness even if it has the incidental effect of burdening the individual's practice of religion. See also Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 531, 113 S.Ct. 2217, 2225-26, 124 L.Ed.2d 472 (1993). The prison's regulation prohibiting all "contraband" is just such a neutral law of general applicability. Therefore, under Smith, the regulation does not violate Brock's Free Exercise rights despite the fact that it might incidentally impair his ability to practice his religion. ³

I would affirm the judgment of the district court.

WILKINS, Circuit Judge, concurring in judgment:

I agree with Judge Luttig's conclusion that the judgment of the district court in favor of the prison officials should be affirmed. I do so, however, on a different ground.

With respect to Brock's claim that the prison officials violated his right to free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment, the...