Holly v. Scott

• Decision Date: 12 January 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05-6287.,05-6287.
• Citation: 434 F.3d 287
• Parties: Ricky Lee HOLLY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Willie SCOTT; Gaddy Lassiter, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 287

434 F.3d 287

Ricky Lee HOLLY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Willie SCOTT; Gaddy Lassiter, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 05-6287.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued September 19, 2005.

Decided January 12, 2006.

Mark Allen Davis, Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellants. James Phillip Griffin, Jr., North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc., Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before WILKINSON and MOTZ, Circuit Judges, and R. BRYAN HARWELL, United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina, sitting by designation.

Reversed by published opinion. Judge WILKINSON wrote the opinion, in which Judge HARWELL joined. Judge MOTZ wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment.

OPINION

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge.

We granted interlocutory review in this case to decide whether individual employees of a privately operated prison face Eighth Amendment liability under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971), and its progeny for allegedly providing inadequate medical care to a federal inmate. We decline to extend the Bivens cause of action to these circumstances, both because the actions of the private prison employees are not fairly attributable to the federal government and because the inmate has adequate remedies under state law for his alleged injuries. We therefore reverse the district court's order denying defendants' motion to dismiss.

I.

Plaintiff Ricky Lee Holly is a federal inmate at Rivers Correctional Institution, a privately run facility in North Carolina operated by the GEO Group, Inc. under contract with the federal Bureau of Prisons. Defendant Willie Scott serves as Rivers' warden, and defendant Gaddy Lassiter works as a physician there. Scott and Lassiter are both employed directly by GEO, and thus the only link between their employment and the federal government is GEO's contract with the BOP.

Holly is a diabetic. He contends that since arriving at Rivers in August 2002, defendants have failed to provide him with adequate medical care for his condition. According to Holly, the medical staff at Rivers has ignored his complaints that his insulin dosage was insufficient, which resulted in frequent blackouts. He suggests that the lack of attention to his medical needs stems, at least in part, from failure to request his medical records from another facility where he had been incarcerated previously. He further claims that in retaliation for a written complaint regarding the medical department, Lassiter ordered that he be locked in the medical unit for twenty-four days and threatened to keep him there for the remainder of his sentence.

After unsuccessfully seeking relief through an administrative scheme provided by Rivers, Holly filed a pro se complaint against Scott and Lassiter in federal district court. The district court read Holly's complaint as alleging a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights and stating a Bivens cause of action for damages.

Defendants filed a motion to dismiss under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), arguing that Bivens and its progeny do not support a cause of action against individual employees of a private correctional facility. The district court denied the motion, finding that Holly's claim satisfied the three preconditions for a Bivens remedy as specified in Hall v. Clinton, 235 F.3d 202, 204 (4th Cir.2000). Congress had neither created an exclusive statutory remedy nor expressly precluded money damages, and the district court found no "special factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress." Hall, 235 F.3d at 204 (internal quotation marks omitted). We subsequently granted defendants' petition for an interlocutory appeal.

We review de novo a district court's denial of a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6).¹ Anita's New Mexico Style Mexican Food, Inc. v. Anita's Mexican Foods Corp., 201 F.3d 314, 319 (4th Cir.2000).

II.

In Bivens, the Supreme Court held that "violation of [the Fourth Amendment] by a federal agent acting under color of his authority gives rise to a cause of action for damages," despite the absence of any federal statute creating liability. 403 U.S. at 389, 91 S.Ct. 1999. Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14, 100 S.Ct. 1468, 64 L.Ed.2d 15 (1980), extended Bivens to recognize an implied damages action against federal prison officials for violation of the Eighth Amendment. The question in this case is whether Carlson should itself be extended to allow a similar remedy against employees of a private corporation operating a prison.

Holly contends that a judicially implied cause of action for damages in his case follows logically from Bivens and Carlson. We disagree. The Bivens cause of action is not amenable to casual extension. Indeed, quite the opposite is true.

The Supreme Court has "responded cautiously to suggestions that Bivens remedies be extended into new contexts." Schweiker v. Chilicky, 487 U.S. 412, 421, 108 S.Ct. 2460, 101 L.Ed.2d 370 (1988). "In [over] 30 years of Bivens jurisprudence [the Court has] extended its holding only twice." Correctional Servs. Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U.S. 61, 70, 122 S.Ct. 515, 151 L.Ed.2d 456 (2001). The first time was in Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228, 99 S.Ct. 2264, 60 L.Ed.2d 846 (1979), where the Court recognized that a female deputy administrative assistant could claim damages under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause against a Congressman who had fired her on the basis of her gender. The second was Carlson's extension of Bivens to Eighth Amendment suits against federal prison officials. 446 U.S. 14, 100 S.Ct. 1468, 64 L.Ed.2d 15.

Since the Carlson decision in 1980, the Court has consistently declined to extend Bivens beyond these well-demarcated boundaries. See Bush v. Lucas, 462 U.S. 367, 103 S.Ct. 2404, 76 L.Ed.2d 648 (1983) (no Bivens action for employee who suffered adverse employment action allegedly in violation of First Amendment because Congress had provided remedial scheme); United States v. Stanley, 483 U.S. 669, 107 S.Ct. 3054, 97 L.Ed.2d 550 (1987) (no Bivens action arising out of military service); Schweiker, 487 U.S. 412, 108 S.Ct. 2460, 101 L.Ed.2d 370 (no Bivens action for alleged due process violation in denying Social Security benefits because Congress had set up a remedial scheme); Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp. v. Meyer, 510 U.S. 471, 114 S.Ct. 996, 127 L.Ed.2d 308 (1994) (no Bivens action against federal agency); Malesko, 534 U.S. 61, 122 S.Ct. 515, 151 L.Ed.2d 456 (no Bivens action against private corporation operating federal correctional facility).

The Court's repeated reluctance to extend Bivens is not without good reason. A Bivens cause of action is implied without any express congressional authority whatsoever. This is hardly the preferred course. The Supreme Court has "recently and repeatedly said that a decision to create a private right of action is one better left to legislative judgment in the great majority of cases." Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 124 S.Ct. 2739, 2762-63, 159 L.Ed.2d 718 (2004); see also Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938) (abandoning the idea of a substantive federal common law). The Court has therefore on multiple occasions declined to extend Bivens because "Congress is in a better position to decide whether or not the public interest would be served" by the creation of "new substantive legal liability." Schweiker, 487 U.S. at 426-27, 108 S.Ct. 2460 (internal quotation marks omitted); Bush, 462 U.S. at 390, 103 S.Ct. 2404 (same).

Congress possesses a variety of structural advantages that render it better suited for remedial determinations in cases such as this. Unconstrained by the factual circumstances in a particular case or controversy, Congress has a greater ability to evaluate the broader ramifications of a remedial scheme by holding hearings and soliciting the views of all interested parties. See, e.g., Bush, 462 U.S. at 389, 103 S.Ct. 2404. And by debating policies and passing statutes rather than deciding individual cases, Congress has increased latitude to implement potential safeguards — e.g., procedural protections or limits on liability — that may not be at issue in a particular dispute.

As the last twenty-five years of Bivens jurisprudence demonstrate, so well-suited is Congress to determine the policies pertaining to a remedial scheme that neither the absence nor the incompleteness of such a scheme represents an invitation for a court to step in to correct what it may perceive as an injustice toward an individual litigant. See Malesko, 534 U.S. at 69, 122 S.Ct. 515 (citing Bush and Lucas). Here, for example, there are a variety of statutes authorizing the housing of federal inmates in privately operated facilities. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 4013(b) (2000). Congress passed these statutes in the belief that private management would in some circumstances have comparative advantages in terms of cost, efficiency, and quality of service. To add a federal damages remedy to existing avenues of inmate relief might well frustrate a clearly expressed congressional policy.

In light of the governing precedents, we have stated that a plaintiff seeking a Bivens remedy must satisfy a three-part test. "[A] court must determine that (1) Congress has not already provided an exclusive statutory remedy; (2) there are no special factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress; and (3) there is no explicit congressional declaration that money damages not be awarded." Hall, 235 F.3d at 204 (internal quotation marks omitted). While the first and third prongs are satisfied by Congress's silence regarding remedies for plaintiffs in Holly's position, Holly cannot satisfy the second.

III.

This case presents two "special factors counselling hesitation," each of which independently precludes the...