Jackson v. Nixon

• Citation: 747 F.3d 537
• Decision Date: 28 March 2014
• Docket Number: No. 12–2531.,12–2531.
• Parties: Randall JACKSON, Plaintiff–Appellant v. Jay NIXON, Attorney General; Larry Crawford, Director of MO DOC; Bill Burgess, WRDCC Warden; Collins, Superintendent I; Furgensond, C A A; Linda Reaidon, Functional Unit Manager; Tom Clement, Assistant Director of Adult Institution; Salsbury, Program Director; Miller, Head Counselor; Blane, Institutional Parole Officer; Tyler, Caseworker; Reynolds, Assistant Counselor; Unknown Director, of KCCC, Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit)

747 F.3d 537

Randall JACKSON, Plaintiff–Appellant

v.Jay NIXON, Attorney General; Larry Crawford, Director of MO DOC; Bill Burgess, WRDCC Warden; Collins, Superintendent I; Furgensond, C A A; Linda Reaidon, Functional Unit Manager; Tom Clement, Assistant Director of Adult Institution; Salsbury, Program Director; Miller, Head Counselor; Blane, Institutional Parole Officer; Tyler, Caseworker; Reynolds, Assistant Counselor; Unknown Director, of KCCC, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 12–2531.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: Sept. 26, 2013.

Filed: March 28, 2014.

William P. Nacy, Hanrahan & Nacy, P.C., Jefferson City, MO, argued, for appellant.

J. Andrew Hirth, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, MO, argued (Chris Koster, Atty. Gen., on the brief), for appellees.

Before WOLLMAN, SMITH, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.

KELLY, Circuit Judge.

Randall Jackson appeals the dismissal with prejudice of his lawsuit brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against various state officials involved in administering and supervising the Western Reception, Diagnostic, and Correctional Center (WRDCC) in St. Joseph, Missouri, while he was incarcerated there. As an atheist, Jackson challenged the WRDCC's Offenders Under Treatment Program (OUTP) as violating his rights under the First Amendment. The district court, required under the Prison Litigation Reform Act to screen prisoner complaints prior to service, dismissed the complaint as failing to state a claim under which relief may be granted. 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(b)(1). While Jackson named in his complaint several officials as defendants in their individual capacities, the only claims remaining on appeal concern Larry Crawford (Director of the Missouri Department of Corrections [MDOC] ), Bill Burgess (WRDCC Warden), and Ms. Salsbury (WRDCC OUTP Director). With jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we reverse the dismissal of Jackson's complaint and remand to the district court for further proceedings.

I. Background

As part of a stipulation with the MDOC Board of Probation and Parole, Randall Jackson, an atheist, was required to attend the Offenders Under Treatment Program for substance abuse. Appendix (App.) at 22. Jackson understood he was required to complete this program to be eligible for early release on parole. In his complaint, Jackson said the program “had required meetings [and] invoked religious tenets by using the serenity prayer and religious meditations.” Id. at 7. When Jackson objected to the prayer, Salsbury and other staff advised him to “act as if,” a term used in the program, meaning to “assume a role or attitude even if you don't feel like it” and further defined as “[a] tool used to assist one in ‘trying on’ new patterns of thought and behavior.” Id. at 9 (citing Kansas City Community Center, 180–day Therapeutic Community Substance Abuse Treatment Programs Resident Handbook, rev. January 2006). Salsbury and staff suggested that Jackson “use God as an acronym for ‘good orderly direction.’ ” Id. The complaint further stated: “It is my assertion that I was being coerced by and through an atmosphere designed and intended to change or alter my thinking and behavior. That it would induce conformity by adding pressure and leverage through the hope and desire of achieving a ‘Placement on Parole.’ ” Id. at 9–10.

Jackson pursued a grievance, seeking to be transferred to a secular treatment program. His grievance was denied, and Jackson appealed to the MDOC Division of Adult Institutions. MDOC denied the appeal as well. Although the timing and circumstances are unclear, Jackson ultimately left the program. Jackson believes he was denied an early release on parole for failure to complete OUTP; he included with his complaint a document from the MDOC Board of Probation and Parole, which states: “Because you have not completed a Board stipulated treatment program, the Board is denying your credit release date. Your previously scheduled release date will remain in effect.” Id. at 27. The record at this stage contains no further information regarding the impact of this MDOC decision on Jackson's sentence. Jackson filed suit pro se on January 6, 2012, though he is represented by counsel on appeal. As part of his requested relief, Jackson seeks the removal of “Alcoholics Anonymous [AA] and other religious components” from MDOC treatment programs. Id. at 7–8. In dismissing Jackson's suit with prejudice, the district court found that his claims failed because “personal involvement is a prerequisite to liability under § 1983,” and “withdrawing voluntarily from a program does not create a constitutional right to an early release.”

II. Discussion

We review de novo the district court's dismissal of a prisoner's claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, “accepting as true all of the factual allegations contained in the complaint and affording the plaintiff all reasonable inferences that can be drawn from those allegations.” Reynolds v. Dormire, 636 F.3d 976, 979 (8th Cir.2011) (reversing pre-service dismissal of a pro se prisoner's claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983). In evaluating whether a pro se plaintiff has asserted sufficient facts to state a claim, we hold “a pro se complaint, however inartfully pleaded, ... to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.” Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94, 127 S.Ct. 2197, 167 L.Ed.2d 1081 (2007) (per curiam) (quotation omitted); see also Whitson v. Stone Cnty. Jail, 602 F.3d 920, 922 n. 1 (8th Cir.2010).

A. First Amendment Claim

The district court's disposition of Jackson's First Amendment claim—“withdrawing voluntarily from a program does not create a constitutional right to an early release”—implicates two issues. We address first the question of Jackson's withdrawal, then any constitutional rights at stake.

The district court concluded, and the state argues on appeal, that Jackson voluntarily withdrew from the substance abuse program, and that voluntary withdrawal is fatal to his case. Jackson claims, however, that “[d]ue to the religious components of the program and lack of any foreseeable remedy, my choices were to withdraw from the program or remain exposed to those religious elements.” App. at 10. Whether Jackson's withdrawal from the program was indeed voluntary (a word Jackson never uses in his complaint) or was the result of state-sponsored coercion is yet to be determined. See Inouye v. Kemna, 504 F.3d 705, 714 (9th Cir.2007) (“The Hobson's choice [parole officer] Nanamori offered Inouye—to be imprisoned or to renounce his own religious beliefs—offends the core of Establishment Clause jurisprudence.”). At this stage of the litigation, dismissal of the complaint on this ground was premature.

We next evaluate Jackson's constitutional claim. He alleges that being required to attend and complete a nonsecular substance abuse treatment program in order to be eligible for early parole violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 112 S.Ct. 2649, 120 L.Ed.2d 467 (1992), the Supreme Court emphasized that, “at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise.” Id. at 587, 588–99, 112 S.Ct. 2649 (recognizing that unconstitutional coercion may be exercised both directly, such as by mandatory attendance at a religious exercise, and indirectly).¹ The Eighth Circuit has indicated that the Lee coercion test should also be applied in the prison context to assess the constitutionality of requiring or conditioning benefits on attendance at potentially religious treatment programs. See Munson v. Norris, 435 F.3d 877, 880–81 (8th Cir.2006) (citing Lee when instructing lower court to evaluate prisoner's First Amendment claim under the Establishment Clause, which “prohibits government from coercing anyone to participate in religion or its exercise”) (also citing as cases applying Lee in the prison context Warner v. Orange Cnty. Dep't of Prob., 115 F.3d 1068 (2d Cir.1996); Kerr v. Farrey, 95 F.3d 472 (7th Cir.1996); Griffin v. Coughlin, 88 N.Y.2d 674, 649 N.Y.S.2d 903, 673 N.E.2d 98 (1996), cert. denied,519 U.S. 1054, 117 S.Ct. 681, 136 L.Ed.2d 607 (1997)).

In evaluating a plaintiff's claim “that the state is coercing him or her to subscribe to religion generally, or to a particular religion,” the Seventh Circuit in Kerr v. Farrey described a three-step inquiry: “first, has the state acted; second, does the action amount to coercion; and third, is the object of the coercion religious or secular?” 95 F.3d at 479. The Ninth Circuit has since adopted the Kerr criteria in evaluating this type of claim. See Inouye, 504 F.3d at 713;see also Warner, 115 F.3d at 1075. We agree that Kerr is “particularly useful” “with regard to determining whether there was governmental coercion of religious activity.” Inouye, 504 F.3d at 713. Accordingly, we will apply the Kerr court's three-part formulation of the Lee coercion test to Jackson's First Amendment claim of governmental coercion.

In Jackson's case, no one disputes that the state acted; thus, Jackson has met the first prong. As for the third prong, the district court did not address whether the program was religious or secular, although the state's appellate brief did not refute Jackson's statement that OUTP contains some religious content. At oral argument, state's counsel was “willing to recognize that there are religious aspects to the traditional AA program,” but counsel did not know whether OUTP included such aspects beyond Jackson's statements in his complaint regarding the Serenity Prayer and religious meditation. We assume the truth of Jackson's allegations for purposes of reviewing a pre-service dismissal, and we accept that OUTP contained some religious content. At the core of the dispute, therefore, is the second prong of the Kerr test: whether the state's action constituted coercion.

The state argues that participation in OUTP was optional and, as a result,...