Pitts v. Thornburgh

• Decision Date: 31 January 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-5058,88-5058
• Parties: Bettye Delores PITTS, Gwendolyn A. Samuels, et al., Appellants, v. Richard THORNBURGH, et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 1450

866 F.2d 1450

275 U.S.App.D.C. 332

Bettye Delores PITTS, Gwendolyn A. Samuels, et al., Appellants, v. Richard THORNBURGH, et al.

No. 88-5058.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Oct. 21, 1988.

Decided Jan. 31, 1989.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (Civil Action No. 79-01559).

Jeffrey P. Ayres, with whom John E. Scheuermann, Washington, D.C., was on the brief, for appellants.

Susan S. McDonald, Asst. Corp. Counsel, with whom Frederick D. Cooke, Jr., Corp. Counsel, Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corp. Counsel, and Lutz Alexander Prager, Asst. Deputy Corp. Counsel, Washington, D.C., were on the brief, for appellee District of Columbia.

Mark E. Nagle, Asst. U.S. Atty., with whom Jay B. Stephens, U.S. Atty., John D. Bates and R. Craig Lawrence, Asst. U.S. Attys., Washington, D.C., were on the brief, for appellees Richard Thornburgh, et al.

Before STARR and BUCKLEY, Circuit Judges, and JACKSON ^*, District Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge STARR.

STARR, Circuit Judge:

This is an appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court rejecting an equal protection challenge to certain prison policies of the District of Columbia, 684 F.Supp. 303. The District has for many years relied upon the facilities of the federal Bureau of Prisons for the incarceration of long-term women offenders convicted in the local courts of the District of Columbia. The result is that appellants, and other long-term women offenders, find themselves incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Alderson, West Virginia, a remote, mountain-bound hamlet situated far from Washington, D.C. Pointing to the District's policy and practice of incarcerating similarly situated males in District-operated prison facilities located near the District of Columbia, appellants complain that the differential treatment of (and accompanying burden on) women offenders runs afoul of the equal protection guarantees of the Constitution.

For the reasons that follow, we are persuaded that the challenge falls short. The District's policy, upon close examination, does not embody invidious discrimination reflecting such forbidden factors as outmoded conceptions of the role of women in contemporary society. To the contrary, the District has demonstrated that it has sought to utilize federal resources in order to respond in some measure to the universally recognized blight of the severe overcrowding that afflicts the District of Columbia prison facilities, while pursuing alternatives to alleviate the obvious hardships imposed on long-term women offenders by removing them so far from the comforts and support of family and the resources that would otherwise be available to them in this community.

I

Plaintiffs are women convicted of violating the District of Columbia Code and sentenced to terms of more than one year. They allege that the correctional policies of the United States government and the District of Columbia government violate the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection. Specifically, they maintain that by incarcerating a class of District of Columbia women offenders (those convicted of non-federal crimes) ¹ in Alderson and other federal prisons, while incarcerating most similarly situated male offenders in nearby prison facilities operated by the District government, the government unconstitutionally discriminates against them and other women based upon their gender.

Congress has assigned to the United States Attorney the duty of prosecuting individuals who commit most serious crimes within the District of Columbia. 23 D.C.Code Ann. Sec. 101 (1981). To the Attorney General has gone the duty of assigning those who are convicted and sentenced to a period of incarceration to suitable prison facilities, operated either by the District or by the federal Bureau of Prisons. 24 D.C.Code Ann. at Sec. 425; see infra pp. 1457-58. The District controls the operation and construction of local prison facilities, which house most males convicted of non-federal offenses within the District and most D.C. women offenders who fall within one of three categories: those sentenced to one year or less in prison; individuals who are within six months of release; and those who are in pre-trial detention. Brief for (District) Appellees at 7; Excerpted Record Submitted by Appellants 292-94 [hereinafter "R."]. Since 1966, the District has maintained no facilities for women who have been sentenced to more than one year in prison. The federal government maintains four prison facilities for women, namely, Federal Correctional Institutions situated in Alderson, West Virginia; Lexington, Kentucky; Fort Worth, Texas; and Pleasanton, California. Both sides agree that the District's policies cause the Attorney General to assign long-term, D.C. women offenders to prisons located no closer than Alderson while assigning most similarly situated males to the D.C.-operated facilities located in nearby Northern Virginia.

Both sides also agree that the District has undertaken a variety of efforts to provide prison facilities for long-term women offenders. None, however, has yielded success. From 1969 through 1986, the District has at various times (1) investigated conversion of existing facilities for use as a women's correctional facility; (2) negotiated with the State of Maryland to provide local women's prisons; and (3) sought (or planned) to spend funds for the construction of women's facilities. ² See infra pp. 1461-63. During this period, the District's prison system experienced substantial (and continuing) overcrowding. The result has been ongoing litigation, court orders and emergency measures designed to bring the prison system into compliance with constitutionally ordained minimum standards.

Plaintiffs filed suit in federal district court alleging that their gender alone resulted in their being incarcerated far from the District--resulting in the hardship of fewer visitors (especially family members) and less preparation for and support in their eventual return to the District than that afforded males imprisoned at the D.C. facilities. ³ The District Court granted the federal defendants' motion for summary judgment, holding that the differential treatment afforded plaintiffs stemmed entirely from the District's prison policies. Pitts v. Meese, 684 F.Supp. 303, 310 (D.D.C.1987), R. at 588-89. As to plaintiffs' claims against the District, the trial judge concluded that the plaintiffs had made no showing that the vocational and educational programs at Alderson were inferior to those provided to men at Lorton. Id. at 314-15, R. at 599-601. The District Court did recognize that D.C. women offenders were located much farther from the District than men on account of their gender, but held that Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238, 103 S.Ct. 1741, 75 L.Ed.2d 813 (1983), barred plaintiffs' claim:

[Olim ] is controlling here. All that is involved is location of the prison facility. While there is no question but that it is inconvenient to the plaintiffs and the members of their families, this Court cannot find that they had a justifiable expectation that they would be incarcerated in a facility in the District of Columbia or its metropolitan area.

Pitts, 684 F.Supp. at 315, R. at 602. The court held that in the absence of that expectation, no constitutional or statutory claim could rest merely on the difference in location, and it thus granted defendants' motion for summary judgment. Id. at 316, R. at 603.

II

It is clear that the government's policies facially classify on the basis of gender: long-term, D.C. women offenders, because they are women, are imprisoned considerably farther from the District than are similarly situated male offenders and consequently suffer a substantial burden. ⁴ Even so, the District of Columbia argues that because this classification operates in the prison context, we should scrutinize it only to determine whether it is reasonably related to legitimate state interests. Brief for (District) Appellees at 16-17. For the reasons that follow, we decline the District's invitation and conclude that the heightened scrutiny traditionally applied in cases alleging gender discrimination is appropriate.

A

It is increasingly recognized that issues of prison management are, both by reason of separation of powers and highly practical considerations of judicial competence, peculiarly ill-suited to judicial resolution, and that, accordingly, courts should be loath to substitute their judgment for that of prison officials and administrators. In Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987), the Supreme Court emphasized these concerns while articulating the proper standard for review of prison regulations:

[W]hen a prison regulation impinges on inmates' constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. In our view, such a standard is necessary if 'prison administrators ..., and not the courts, [are] to make the difficult judgments concerning institutional operations.'

Id. 107 S.Ct. at 2261 (quoting Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union, 433 U.S. 119, 128, 97 S.Ct. 2532, 2539, 53 L.Ed.2d 629 (1977)); see also O'Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 107 S.Ct. 2400, 2405, 96 L.Ed.2d 282 (1987) ("By placing the burden on prison officials to disprove the availability of alternatives, the approach articulated by the Court of Appeals fails to reflect the respect and deference that the United States Constitution allows for the judgment of prison administrators.").

Any case touching upon prisons necessarily implicates Turner 's concerns and requires the court faithfully to attend to them. But, after careful reflection, we believe that neither those concerns, nor Turner itself, suggests the appropriateness of a reasonableness standard in this particular case. Here are the...