Muhammad v. Wainwright

• Citation: 839 F.2d 1422
• Decision Date: 28 December 1987
• Docket Number: No. 87-3179,87-3179
• Parties: Askari Abdullah MUHAMMAD, # 017434, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Louie L. WAINWRIGHT, Richard Dugger, Clayton C. Strickland, David Watson, Thomas L. Barton, R.R. Music, Defendants-Appellants. Non-Argument Calendar.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

Page 1422

839 F.2d 1422

Askari Abdullah MUHAMMAD, # 017434, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Louie L. WAINWRIGHT, Richard Dugger, Clayton C. Strickland, David Watson, Thomas L. Barton, R.R. Music,

Defendants-Appellants.

No. 87-3179

Non-Argument Calendar.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Dec. 28, 1987.

Charles T. Collette, Bruce A. Minnick, Douglas Mang, Mang, Rett & Collette, P.A., Tallahassee, Fla., for defendants-appellants.

Askari Abdullah Muhammad, pro se.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before HILL, FAY and EDMONDSON, Circuit Judges.

EDMONDSON, Circuit Judge:

This appeal from the United States District Court of the Middle District of Florida arises from a pro se lawsuit brought by a state prisoner under 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 against the Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections and other state officials (the "defendants"). The inmate alleges that his first amendment right to the free exercise of religion was violated when he was disciplined for refusing to respond to the name under which he was committed to prison rather than his subsequently adopted Islamic name. Defendants moved alternatively for a judgment on the pleadings or summary judgment. The district court granted this motion for defendants in their official capacities; but, it denied the motion in respect to their individual capacities. For the reasons set forth below, we believe the appellants-defendants were entitled to qualified immunity and that the district court erred by not granting their motion on this basis. Accordingly, we reverse.

Muhammad is an inmate at the Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida and was originally committed to prison in 1975 under the name Thomas Knight after receiving two death sentences. Subsequently, Knight converted to Islam and, pursuant to Fla.Stat. sec. 68.07, legally changed his name to Askari Abdullah Muhammad. ¹ After changing his name, Muhammad was convicted of the first degree murder of a fellow inmate and again was committed to the Florida State Prison for his third death sentence under his newly adopted Muslim name. ²

Pursuant to formal operating procedures, prison officials conduct a "master count" of all inmates at regular daily intervals. This procedure requires each inmate to stand by his cell door and respond with his assigned inmate classification number when a correctional officer quotes the inmate's name as the officer stands in front of the inmate's cell. This process may be reversed, that is, the officer may call out the inmate's number and the inmate may reply by stating his name. The purpose of the master count is to ensure that all inmates are in their assigned cell and to facilitate the detection of escape attempts so as to ensure the security and safety of inmates and prison employees.

Since changing his name, Muhammad has refused to respond with his committed name (Knight) whenever prison officials quote his inmate classification number or with his classification number whenever prison officials quote his committed name. As a result, disciplinary reports have been issued against him.

After exhausting the prison's internal grievance procedures, Muhammad filed a 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 action alleging defendants had violated his first amendment right to the free exercise of his religion. Defendants moved for a judgment on the pleadings or summary judgment. The district court's order granted this motion for the defendants but only in regard to their official capacity and not in regard to their individual capacity. That part of the order denying defendants' claim of qualified immunity from personal liability to Muhammad forms the basis of this appeal. ³

Determining "whether an official protected by qualified immunity may be held personally liable for an allegedly unlawful official action turns on the 'objective legal reasonableness' of the action," Anderson v. Creighton, --- U.S. ----, ----, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3038, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 819, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2739, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). Under Harlow's objective standard government officials generally are shielded from liability for civil damages "insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2730 (emphasis added).

The purposes served by shielding state actors with qualified immunity is not only to ensure that "the public interest [is] ... better served by action taken with independence and without fear of consequences," id. at 819, 102 S.Ct. at 2738 (quotations omitted), but also to avoid "the general costs of subjecting officials to the risks of trial--distraction of officials from their governmental duties, inhibition of discretionary action, and deference of able people from public service." Id. at 816, 102 S.Ct. at 2737. See also Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 524, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2815, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). Thus, entitlement to qualified immunity means that the defendants are immune from suit rather than merely immune from liability for damages. Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 524, 105 S.Ct. at 2815. As noted, this determination hinges entirely upon whether the defendant's actions violated clearly established law. See Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2730; Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 530, 105 S.Ct. at 2818.

In his brief, Muhammad contends that, at the time of the actions to which he objects, this circuit had clearly established the legal standard of review to be used when evaluating the constitutionality of prison officials' action within the context of the first amendment. Muhammad further argues that because this area of the law was clearly established, defendants should not be permitted to avail themselves of qualified immunity. This conclusion, Muhammad continues, is also compelled by the fact that a district court outside of this circuit had held that an inmate had a federal constitutional right both to change his name for religious purposes and to insist that prison officials recognize the new name. Furthermore, Muhammad points to a November 20, 1981 letter from the General Counsel of the Florida Department of Corrections to the Superintendent of the Florida State Prison as evidence that defendants were aware of judicial precedent and knew that disciplining Muhammad possibly violated his first amendment rights. ⁴

We do not believe that defendants' action contravened clearly established legal principals at the time Muhammad filed his complaint. It is true that previous decisions of this court have addressed the appropriate standard of review to evaluate prison officials' actions in the context of the first amendment. See, e.g., Walker v. Blackwell, 411 F.2d 23 (5th Cir.1969) (validity of challenged prison practice assessed under "compelling state interest" test); ⁵ Bradbury v. Wainwright, 718 F.2d 1538 (11th Cir.1983) (validity of challenged prison practice assessed under "least restrictive means" test). Nevertheless, establishing a standard of review and applying that standard to concrete facts are not the same; the cases in this circuit, although acknowledging that prisoners generally retained limited first amendment rights to the extent those rights were compatible with the institution's needs of discipline and safety, cannot be said to have clearly established that Muhammad had a constitutional right not to be disciplined when he failed to respond to his committed name during the master count.

General propositions have little to do with the concept of qualified immunity. Broadly defining "clearly established law" as Muhammad suggests significantly undermines part of the rationale for the qualified immunity defense. As stated in Harlow, a partial justification for the immunity is that it helps "avoid excessive disruption of the government and permits the resolution of many insubstantial claims on summary judgment." Harlow, 457 U.S. at 819; 102 S.Ct. at 2730. Because Harlow relies upon the objective reasonableness of an official's conduct in relation to clearly established law when determining whether a defendant is entitled to qualified immunity, generalities are just not helpful. This phenomenon was recently noted by the Seventh Circuit in Azeez v. Fairman, 795 F.2d 1296 (7th Cir.1...