Harden-Bey v. Rutter

• Decision Date: 12 May 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-1473.,06-1473.
• Citation: 524 F.3d 789
• Parties: Cary HARDEN-BEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. L. RUTTER, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

524 F.3d 789

Cary HARDEN-BEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. L. RUTTER, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 06-1473.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Submitted: March 13, 2008.

Decided and Filed: May 12, 2008.

ON BRIEF:

Cary Jerome Harden-Bey, Munising, Michigan, pro se.

Before: MOORE, GILMAN, and SUTTON, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

Cary Harden-Bey, an incarcerated pro se litigant, challenges the dismissal under § 1997e(c) of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c), of his § 1983 claims against several employees of the Michigan Department of Corrections. Because Harden-Bey has stated a cognizable due-process claim, we reverse that part of the district court's order. And because he has failed to state a cognizable cruel-and-unusual-punishment claim under the Eighth (and Fourteenth) Amendment or a cognizable equal-protection claim under the Fourteenth Amendment, we affirm the remaining parts of the district court's order.

I.

Harden-Bey is an inmate at the Alger Maximum Correctional Facility, which is located in Munising, Michigan, and which contains six housing units—three for the general inmate population and three for inmates committed to administrative segregation. On September 18, 2002, prison officials placed Harden-Bey in administrative segregation because "[r]eports have been received from prisoners and staff that . . . Harden-Bey is using his position as a ranking member of the Moori[s]h Science Temple of America to direct and influence his follo[wers] to strong arm other prisoners, col[l]ect debts, approve prisoner assaults and is involved in the approval and planning of a major serious assault on staff and [a] takeover of the housing unit and/or facility here at [Alger]. Based upon these reports, prisoner Harden-Bey is considered to be a threat to the safety and security of this facility." (emphasis omitted). Harden-Bey requested a hearing, an investigation and access to all relevant witnesses and documents, claiming that prison officials premised their decision to segregate him on false and religiously biased information.

After conducting a hearing on the matter, a prison official upheld Harden-Bey's placement in administrative segregation. The Hearings Division denied his request for a rehearing, after which he filed an internal grievance challenging his confinement in administrative segregation. In January 2003, prison officials denied the grievance because Harden-Bey had "clearly demonstrated that [he was] a serious threat to the physical safety of prisoners/staff." He filed additional internal grievances in 2004 and 2005 related to his administrative segregation, alleging that several prison officials used their authority and influence to subject him to continued and "indefinite" confinement in administrative segregation and denied him periodic reviews for release from segregation. Prison officials rejected each grievance.

In December 2005, Harden-Bey filed this § 1983 action against several prison officials, challenging his placement and continued confinement in administrative segregation on several federal constitutional grounds. After granting Harden-Bey leave to proceed in forma pauperis, the district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii); 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c).

II.

A.

In challenging the district court's rejection of his due-process claim at the pleading stage, Harden-Bey focuses on the "long term indefinite" nature of his placement in administrative segregation and the absence of hearings during it. In one sense, he faces a steep climb. The Due Process Clause does not protect every administrative slight that occurs behind prison walls. It requires process only when a "life, liberty, or property" interest is at stake. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. And when it comes to the principal objection to confinement in a prison cell, the deprivation of "liberty," the State already has given Harden-Bey the procedural protections to which he is entitled: a trial in compliance with the due process and other constitutional guarantees applicable to crime and punishment.

But in another sense, Harden-Bey has a point. Even after a proper conviction and sentence, an inmate still retains a "liberty" interest, guarded by due process, with respect to state-imposed prison discipline that rises to the level of an "atypical and significant hardship on the inmate." Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 484, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995). But in relation to what? To implicate a cognizable liberty interest in the prison setting, Sandin tells us, the discipline must be unusual and substantial "in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life." Id.; see also Wilkinson v. Austin, 545 U.S. 209, 223, 125 S.Ct. 2384, 162 L.Ed.2d 174 (2005) (discussing "the difficulty of locating the appropriate baseline" from which to measure "what is atypical and significant in any particular prison system").

The question here is whether Harden-Bey's allegedly indefinite confinement in administrative segregation, three years and running as of the time of the complaint, amounts to an "atypical and significant hardship on [him] in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life." Sandin, 515 U.S. at 484, 115 S.Ct. 2293. Relying on Sixth Circuit precedent, the district court held that placement in administrative segregation is never "atypical and significant" and that the "length of the placement" does not affect the inquiry. D. Ct. Op. at 4. We disagree.

Two Supreme Court cases cast considerable light on the answer to this question. Sandin addressed whether an inmate's placement in disciplinary segregation for 30 days presented the type of atypical, significant deprivation that implicated a protected liberty interest. 515 U.S. at 486, 115 S.Ct. 2293. It did not, the Court held, for three reasons: (1) the inmate's "disciplinary segregation, with insignificant exceptions, mirrored those conditions imposed upon inmates in administrative segregation and protective custody"; (2) the inmate's segregated "confinement did not exceed similar, but totally discretionary, confinement in either duration or degree of restriction"; and (3) the inmate's segregation did not "inevitably affect the duration of his sentence." Id. at 486-87 (emphasis added).

Austin addressed whether inmates' assignment to a maximum-security prison with "highly restrictive conditions" implicates a liberty interest. 545 U.S. at 213, 125 S.Ct. 2384. In holding that it did, the Court noted the significant differences between the conditions of confinement at the maximum-security prison and "most solitary confinement facilities," then offered two other explanations for its decision: "First is the duration. Unlike the 30-day placement in Sandin, placement at [the maximum-security prison] is indefinite and, after an initial 30-day review, is reviewed just annually. Second is that placement disqualifies an otherwise eligible inmate for parole consideration." Id. at 224, 125 S.Ct. 2384. "While any of these conditions standing alone might not be sufficient to create a liberty interest," the Court concluded, "taken together they impose an atypical and significant hardship within the correctional context." Id.

In deciding whether changes to an inmate's conditions of confinement implicate a cognizable liberty interest, both Sandin and Austin considered the nature of the more-restrictive confinement and its duration in relation to prison norms and to the terms of the individual's sentence. In Sandin, a 30-day placement in disciplinary segregation did not suffice to implicate a protected liberty interest; in Austin, an "indefinite" placement in a maximum-security prison facility with "highly restrictive conditions" (together with other features of the transfer) sufficed to implicate such an interest, id. at 213, 224, 125 S.Ct. 2384.

Consistent with these decisions, most (if not all) of our sister circuits have considered the nature of the more-restrictive confinement and its duration in determining whether it imposes an "atypical and significant hardship." See, e.g., Iqbal v. Hasty, 490 F.3d 143, 161 (2d Cir.2007) (noting that "[r]elevant factors" in determining whether a liberty interest is implicated "include both the conditions of segregation and its duration" and holding that "[s]egregation of longer than 305 days . . . is sufficiently atypical to require procedural due process protection under Sandin"); Skinner v. Cunningham, 430 F.3d 483, 487 (1st Cir.2005) (holding that a liberty interest was not implicated because, among other reasons, the duration of the plaintiff's segregation "was not excessive"); Stephens v. Cottey, 145 Fed.Appx. 179, 181 (7th Cir. Aug.17, 2005) ("In determining whether prison conditions meet this [Sandin] standard, courts place a premium on the duration of the deprivation. . . ."); Serrano v. Francis, 345 F.3d 1071, 1078 (9th Cir.2003) (noting that a relevant factor is "the duration of the condition"); Shoats v. Horn, 213 F.3d 140, 144 (3d Cir.2000) (noting that a relevant factor is "the amount of time the prisoner was placed into disciplinary segregation" and stating that "we have no difficulty concluding that eight years in administrative custody . . . is `atypical' [and significant] in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life"); Hatch v. District of Columbia, 184 F.3d 846, 858 (D.C.Cir. 1999) (remanding case and noting that, "even if the conditions [the inmate] faced were no more restrictive than ordinary conditions of administrative segregation, the district court should determine whether its duration—twenty-nine weeks . . .— was `atypical' compared to the length of administrative segregation routinely imposed on similarly situated prisoners"); Perkins v. Kansas Dep't of Corr., 165 F.3d 803, 809 (10th Cir.1999) (remanding case for district court to consider "both the duration and degree of pla...