Rivera v. Senkowski
| Decision Date | 23 May 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. 1061,D,1061 |
| Citation | 62 F.3d 80 |
| Parties | Raul RIVERA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Daniel A. SENKOWSKI, Superintendent at Clinton Correctional Facility; P.J. Welch, Senior Counselor CCF; N.D. Smith, Senior Counselor CCF; Migdalia Rodriguez, Counsel CCF, Defendants-Appellants, John Doe, Movement & Classification, Albany, N.Y., Defendant. ocket 94-2436. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Raul Rivera, pro se.
John McConnell, Asst. Atty. Gen., State of N.Y., Albany, NY for defendants-appellants.
Before: VAN GRAAFEILAND, KEARSE, and WALKER, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff Raul Rivera ("Rivera"), an inmate in the custody of the New York State Department of Correctional Services ("DOCS"), brought an action under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 against certain officials at the Clinton Correctional Facility ("Clinton"), where he is currently incarcerated. Read liberally, his verified complaint alleges violations of the Eighth Amendment as well as his equal protection and procedural and substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Upon a motion by defendants, the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Frederick J. Scullin, Jr., District Judge ), adopting the recommendation and report of Magistrate Judge David N. Hurd, granted summary judgment as to the procedural due process claim but denied it in all other respects. Defendants filed this appeal. We affirm the order of the district court as to the substantive due process claim, and reverse and instruct the district court to enter summary judgment for the defendants as to the remaining claims.
Rivera has been incarcerated at Clinton since February, 1990. From that time, he has continually sought transfer to Sullivan Correctional Facility ("Sullivan") in order to attend its college program. According to the allegations in Rivera's complaint, a Clinton corrections counselor, defendant Migdalia Rodriguez, informed Rivera in October, 1990 that she would submit to the proper authorities his request to be transferred to Sullivan. After a period of time, Rivera's family contacted a DOCS official at the Office of Classification and Movement ("OCM"), John Glasheen In a letter dated December 6, 1990, Welch explained that Glasheen had not received the transfer request at the time of Rivera's family's inquiry because of a filing error, and he denied Rivera's request to replace Rodriguez as his counselor. Welch also opined that Rivera was a "marginal candidate" who was "fortunate" to have a transfer request submitted on his behalf, disparaged as "ridiculous" Rivera's claim that his program participation at Clinton was exemplary, and admonished him to concentrate his energies on his program responsibilities rather than "expounding on the 'functions' of a Corrections Counselor." The transfer request, once routed to the appropriate DOCS office, was eventually denied.
who stated that no transfer request had been received. On November 16, Rodriguez then notified Rivera that she had recommended that he be transferred to a maximum-security facility other than Sullivan. Rivera's family again contacted Glasheen, who stated that he had received no transfer request whatsoever. Upon learning this, Rivera wrote a letter of complaint dated November 30, 1990 to a senior corrections counselor named N.D. Smith. In that letter, Rivera requested that a "competent" corrections counselor be assigned to him. Smith replied that defendant P.J. Welch, also a senior corrections counselor, would review his complaint.
On December 10, 1990, Rivera was erroneously transferred without his consent to a voluntary Alcohol and Substance Abuse Training ("ASAT") program at Clinton. Rivera filed a grievance alleging that Welch, who coordinated the ASAT program, vindictively sought to provoke him to refuse program participation at Clinton in order to jeopardize his potential transfer to Sullivan. Defendant Senkowski, the superintendent of Clinton, resolved the grievance by notifying Rivera that the assignment was erroneous, that Rivera at his request had been removed from the program, and that an inmate could not be punished for refusal to participate in the voluntary ASAT program.
According to the complaint, Welch and Rodriguez continued to make life difficult for Rivera after the grievance was filed. They conspired to backdate various transfer requests, a "vindictive act" that in some unspecified fashion served to deny Rivera access to the Sullivan program. In April 1991, however, Welch and Rodriguez did recommend that Rivera receive his requested transfer to Sullivan. OCM again denied the transfer application.
On May 8, 1991, OCM erroneously sent Rivera to appear in Livingston County Court to answer for an assault charge against another inmate with the same name. After the incident, Rivera contacted various members of the DOCS bureaucracy to make sure that the error did not interfere with his pending transfer request. When a corrections counselor asked Welch what to do in response to Rivera's inquiries, Welch told him not to take any action. While Rivera faults defendant (but not appellant) "John Doe" in OCM for this miscue, he does not allege that any of the defendants-appellants--Senkowski, Smith, Welch, or Rodriguez--played any role in causing the episode to occur.
On May 21, 1991, fifteen months following his arrival at Clinton, Rivera was designated a "Central Monitoring Case" (CMC) according to DOCS Directive 0701 based upon his 1975 escape from a prison facility. CMC status indicates that an inmate requires close supervision; it does not preclude an inmate's transfer to any facility or assignment to any program, but it does require that any transfer be reviewed and approved by the DOCS Inspector General.
Rivera, upset at his sudden reclassification, notified the Clinton Superintendent's office that he would no longer participate in programs at the facility. As a result, Rivera was placed on DOCS Limited Privilege Status as of August, 1991, which sharply circumscribes access to various services and amenities available at the prison. Under Clinton policy, full privileges are restored once the inmate recommences participation in prison programs. While on Limited Privilege Status, Rivera was limited to "keeplock recreation" in the company of inmates under disciplinary sanctions. On two occasions, Rivera was attacked by other inmates during recreational periods.
Rivera commenced this action pro se in November, 1992. After filing the complaint, Rivera moved for a preliminary injunction. Defendants cross-moved for summary judgment. Adopting a report and recommendation prepared by the magistrate judge, the district court determined that Rivera had failed to state a procedural due process claim.
The district court ruled, however, that judgment for defendants as a matter of law was inappropriate on Rivera's equal protection claim, in which he asserted that inmates in Limited Privilege Status at Clinton were subjected to a more restrictive, even punitive, environment than similarly situated inmates at other facilities. It also read Rivera's complaint to state a claim under Sec. 1983 for infringement of his substantive due process right to be free from retaliation for filing grievances with a government agency. See Jones v. Coughlin, 45 F.3d 677, 679-80 (2d Cir.1995). The district court held that Rivera's "sudden classification as a Central Monitoring Case" after the filing of a grievance against Welch created a genuine issue of material fact as to retaliation. Finally, the district court rejected defendants' defense of qualified immunity as to the retaliation claim since (1) the constitutional right against retaliation had been clearly established by 1990 and (2) defendants' acts could not be said to be objectively reasonable as a matter of law given the disputed issues of fact. It also denied as "premature" the qualified immunity defense as to the equal protection claim since the defendants had not yet addressed Rivera's equal protection claim. Although Rivera alleged that Clinton's limited-privileges policies violated the Eighth Amendment, the district court did not address that claim, perhaps treating it as subsumed within Rivera's equal protection claim.
Defendants Senkowski, Welch, Smith, and Rodriguez appeal from the district court's order insofar as it denied their motion for summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity.
The affirmative defense of qualified immunity "shields public officials from liability for their discretionary acts that do 'not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.' " Hathaway v. Coughlin, 37 F.3d 63, 67 (2d Cir.1994) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 1108, 130 L.Ed.2d 1074 (1995). Even if a plaintiff's federal rights are well established, "qualified immunity is still available to an official if it was 'objectively reasonable for the public official to believe that his acts did not violate those rights.' " Id. (quoting Kaminsky v. Rosenblum, 929 F.2d 922, 925 (2d Cir.1991)).
While the denial of summary judgment is not ordinarily appealable under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291, there is an exception when the district court rejects the qualified immunity defense on a motion for summary judgment. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 527-30, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2816-18, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). The collateral order rule of Mitchell is not a blanket grant of jurisdiction to hear all bases upon which summary judgment may be decided, such as whether the evidence is sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact as to liability. Johnson v. Jones, --- U.S. ----, ----, 115...
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