Henry v. Hulett, No. 16-4234

• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)
• Writing for the Court: St. Eve, Circuit Judge.
• Citation: 969 F.3d 769
• Parties: Delores HENRY, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Melody HULETT, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Docket Number: No. 16-4234
• Decision Date: 11 August 2020

969 F.3d 769

Delores HENRY, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
Melody HULETT, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 16-4234

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 14, 2020
Decided August 11, 2020

Ruth Z. Brown, Tara E. Thompson, Michael Kanovitz, Debra Loevy, Attorneys, Loevy & Loevy, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Katelin B. Buell, Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General, Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, Jane E. Notz, Attorney, Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Matthew Callahan, Attorney, Muslim Advocates, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae Muslim Advocates.

Daniel Greenfield, Attorney, Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center, Chicago, IL, for Amicus Curiae American Civil Liberties Union.

Nicole Brianne Godfrey, Laura Lee Rovner, Attorneys, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Denver, CO, for Amicus Curiae Martin F. Horn.

Michael J. Faris, Attorney, Latham & Watkins LLP, Chicago, IL, for Amicus Curiae Legal Scholars.

Jessica Lynn Ellsworth, Attorney, Hogan Lovells US LLP, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project.

Meir Feder, Attorney, Jones Day, New York, NY, for Amicus Curiae Scholars of the Law of Prisons.

Seth P. Waxman, Attorney, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae Mental Health Professionals.

Before Sykes, Chief Judge, and Flaum, Easterbrook, Manion, Kanne, Rovner, Wood, Hamilton, Barrett, Brennan, Scudder, and St. Eve, Circuit Judges.

St. Eve, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs—a class of more than 200 current and former female inmates at Lincoln Correctional Center—brought this action following mass strip searches conducted as part of a cadet training exercise in 2011. They contend that the circumstances of the searches—particularly the intrusive and degrading manner in which they occurred—violated their Fourth and Eighth Amendment rights.

Defendants—various prison officials—moved for summary judgment before the district court, arguing that our circuit's prior decisions foreclosed Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment claim. The district court agreed, concluding that, under

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Johnson v. Phelan , 69 F.3d 144 (7th Cir. 1995), and King v. McCarty , 781 F.3d 889 (7th Cir. 2015) (per curiam), convicted prisoners do not maintain a privacy interest during visual inspections of their bodies. A divided panel of our court affirmed that decision, following the same reasoning. We granted Plaintiffs’ petition for rehearing en banc and vacated the panel's opinion and judgment.

We hold that the Fourth Amendment protects a right to bodily privacy for convicted prisoners, albeit in a significantly limited way, including during visual inspections. We therefore reverse the district court's entry of partial summary judgment for Defendants on Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment claim and remand for further proceedings.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

We consider the facts in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, the nonmoving parties, as we must do when reviewing a district court's grant of a summary judgment motion. Hall v. City of Chicago , 953 F.3d 945, 950 (7th Cir. 2020). On March 31, 2011, administrators at Lincoln Correctional Center—a medium security facility of the Illinois Department of Corrections ("IDOC") in Logan County, Illinois, housing approximately 1,000 female inmates—held a cadet training exercise. This training exercise simulated a "mass shakedown"—a practice where IDOC employees search inmates’ living areas and perform strip searches of the inmates’ persons to find contraband. Lincoln Warden Melody Hulett testified that she could not "think of any reason other than the training of cadets that [she] ordered a shakedown on March 31st, 2011, at the Lincoln facility." No evidence in the record indicates the presence of an ongoing emergency or heightened concern on the day that the training exercise took place.

Orange Crush tactical team members, cadets from the IDOC training academy, and correctional officers at Lincoln carried out the mass shakedown. Orange Crush members donned full riot gear—wearing helmets, armored vests, and military boots and carrying batons, pepper spray, and shields. After attending a briefing, Orange Crush members, correctional officers, and cadets stormed two housing units—ones that Hulett chose at random—banging their batons on the walls, doors, and their hands. As the exercise began in the early morning, correctional officers and cadets yelled at inmates to wake up and form a line.

Correctional officers and cadets lined up 200 of the inmates in rows, forced them to stand facing the wall, called them "bitches," and threatened to put them in segregation if they were not quiet. Cadets practiced handcuffing prisoners. Some elderly prisoners cried in pain as a result of standing for a long period while handcuffed. Prisoners are typically handcuffed at Lincoln only when sent to the segregation unit for committing a serious violation of a prison rule.

The officers directed the women to the gym while screaming obscenities at them and calling them sexually derogatory names. In the gym, correctional staff forced the women to stand facing the wall, shoulder to shoulder. Orange Crush members and other officers ordered cadets to perform strip searches on groups of four to ten women at a time. Prisoners were required to stand until cadets strip searched them—in some cases waiting five to seven hours. The women could not sit, get a drink of water, or use the restroom for the duration of the training exercise.

Female cadets performed the strip searches, which occurred in a bathroom and beauty shop adjacent to the gym. The bathroom was open to the gym, allowing

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many male correctional officers and cadets to see the strip searches taking place. The beauty shop was also visible from the gym and had mirrored walls, allowing those passing by to witness the strip searches. As a result, many people who were not performing the strip searches nevertheless observed the female inmates.

When cadets strip searched the women, they forced them to remove all clothing and stand in a line, nearly shoulder to shoulder. Officers and cadets ordered the women to raise their breasts, lift their hair, turn around and bend over, spread their buttocks and vaginas, and cough several times. Women were forced to stand naked for as long as fifteen minutes, far longer than a typical strip search because of its group nature.

During the searches, correctional officers made demeaning and derogatory insults, calling Plaintiffs "dirty bitches." One commented: "No man wants to be with you because you smell like death." Plaintiffs declared that they received comments like "Your Pussy stinks," "You all are fucking disgusting," and "I can't believe women smell like this."

The officers and cadets ordered menstruating prisoners to remove feminine products and dispose of them on the floor and in overflowing garbage cans, in full view of others. Women stood barefoot on the bathroom floor, which was dirty with menstrual blood and other bodily fluids. While they waited in the gym for the searches to finish, women did not receive replacement feminine hygiene products and were left to bleed on themselves for several hours, soaking through their clothes and getting blood on their legs and feet.

During the strip searches, one inmate pulled three pills out of her vaginal cavity. Prison officials recovered contraband from the cells of approximately 45 of the 200 inmates. Dozens of prisoners submitted grievances after the exercise. Many never received a response. No one ever completed an internal investigation, and no employee received any discipline.

B. Procedural Background

Ieshia Brown, Delores Henry, Patricia Philipps, and Jacqueline Hegwood filed a putative class action alleging that Warden Melody Hulett, Assistant Warden Russell Reynolds, and a group of other supervisors and correctional officers violated their Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Plaintiffs sought damages and injunctive relief prohibiting future public group strip searches during cadet training exercises.

The district court certified several classes seeking both damages and injunctive relief: (1) women subjected to the March 2011 searches who remain in IDOC custody; (2) women subjected to the March 2011 strip searches who had been released from custody; and (3) women who are currently incarcerated at Logan Correctional Center, the facility that now houses all of the inmates formerly at Lincoln, or will be incarcerated there in the future.

Defendants moved for summary judgment. In their motion, Defendants did not dispute that Plaintiffs’ factual assertions, if true, supported an Eighth Amendment claim. Regarding Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment claim, however, Defendants argued that, pursuant to Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 82 L.Ed.2d 393 (1984), and Johnson , "there is no Fourth Amendment protection against searches for prison inmates." Defendants did not raise a qualified immunity defense, nor did they argue that...