Ryan v. Nagy
| Decision Date | 26 January 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20-11528 |
| Parties | SOUT SEAN MICHAEL RYAN, Plaintiff, v. NOAH NAGY, HEIDI WASHINGTON, and GRETCHEN WITMER, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan |
Mag Judge Patricia T. Morris
Sean Ryan is an inmate at the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility (JCF), a Michigan Department of Corrections prison located in Jackson, Michigan. Ryan alleges that many inmates at JCF have one of two sleeping arrangements: either two inmates share a cell designed for one person or many inmates share a pole barn. Apparently, a pole barn is a large building; and within a pole barn, there are multiple cubicles defined by half walls; and within a cubicle, there are beds for eight inmates.
Ryan believes that the shared living quarters at JCF are unconstitutional. He says that because inmates must share sleeping and living space, they are exposed to contagious diseases including, but not limited to, COVID-19. Ryan alleges that despite knowing that inmates are at risk of contracting diseases like COVID-19 Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, MDOC Director Heidi Washington, and JCF Warden Noah Nagy maintain a policy or practice of requiring two people to share a single-person cell or requiring eight people to share a cube in a pole barn. Ryan believes this policy or practice violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the analogous provision of the Michigan Constitution. So, soon after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ryan filed this lawsuit.
Although the parties did not complete discovery, Defendants have filed a motion to dismiss and, in the alternative, for summary judgment. Magistrate Judge Patricia T. Morris, who has been referred all pretrial matters in this case, treated Defendants' motion as one for summary judgment. And she recommends that this Court grant summary judgment. Not only does Ryan object to that recommendation, he also asks this Court to defer ruling on Defendants' summary-judgment motion so he can conduct discovery.
Having considered Defendants' motion, the report and recommendation, and Ryan's motion to defer a summary-judgment ruling, the Court will grant in part and deny in part Defendants' motion. In particular, to the extent that Ryan seeks damages, no precedent gave Defendants clear notice that the housing situation at JCF was unconstitutional because it exposed inmates to contagious diseases. So to the extent that Ryan seeks backward-looking relief, the Court will dismiss Ryan's claims. But to the extent that Ryan seeks a forward-looking injunction, the Court prefers a more complete record before ruling. So the Court will not dismiss Ryan's claims insofar as they seek prospective relief.
As an initial matter, the Court takes a moment to state its understanding of Ryan's claim.
According to Defendants, Ryan claims that they should have taken preemptive measures against COVID-19. Defendants' motion states, “The right at issue in this case is whether the Defendants should have taken preemptive steps to reduce the population at JCF, such as implementing physical and structural changes to the prison with a limited budget, due [to] the possibility of a pandemic.” (ECF No. 24 PageID.178-179; see also Id. at PageID.176.)
But Ryan's complaint is not limited to asserting that Defendants did not take adequate measures in anticipation of something like COVID-19. True, Ryan does maintain that Defendants “should have known for years” that multiple-person housing subjects inmates to an “incredibly high risk of contracting any viral or bacterial infection that is air borne.” (ECF No. 6, PageID.92.) But Ryan's amended complaint, filed months into the COVID-19 pandemic, also clearly seeks a forward-looking injunction against multi-person housing. (ECF No. 6, PageID.98.) So Ryan's complaint also challenges the continued use of multi-person housing after Defendants were aware of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Defendants also direct the Court to affidavits that explain measures taken throughout JCF to mitigate COVID-19. For instance, in one of his affidavits, Nagy explains that inmates at JCF have received reusable masks (ECF No. 24-2, PageID.198), have an adequate supply of hand soap (id. at PageID.199), wear masks during “yards” and meal lines (id. at PageID.200), are served a “Styrofoam food tray and return to their unit to eat” (id. at PageID.195), are isolated if they are infected with COVID-19 (id. at PageID.193-194), and are tested for COVID-19 on a weekly basis (id. at PageID.189).
While Ryan's complaint could have been drafted more clearly, Ryan does not primarily claim that JCF's COVID-19 measures as a whole have been inadequate. Instead, Ryan homes in on a specific aspect of JCF: he says that the policy or practice of “double bunking inmates in cells made for one person as well as pole barns with 8 man cubes” violates the Eighth Amendment and Michigan's corresponding constitutional provision. (ECF No. 6, PageID.91.) Ryan refers to this multi-person housing as “mass housing, ” and claims that the policy or practice of “‘mass housing' . . . inflict[s] cruel and unusual punishment upon Plaintiff and other similarly situated inmates.” (ECF No. 6, PageID.96.) And to the extent that Ryan did complain about the overall COVID-19 mitigation efforts at JCF, in his response to Defendants' dispositive motion, he made clear that this lawsuit centers on shared housing: “the amended complaint alleges that the defendants have . . . been deliberately indifferent to Plaintiff's serious medical needs by subjecting him to the risk of contracting a contagious disease by . . . requiring double bunking and cube style housing for inmates throughout the MDOC.” (ECF No. 27, PageID.366-367.)
In short, in this Court's opinion, this lawsuit raises two parallel claims under federal and state law: Defendants, despite being aware of the existence of contagious diseases (including, presently, COVID-19), maintain a policy or practice of requiring inmates to share a cell or a pole-barn as sleeping and living quarters in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the federal Constitution and Article I, § 6 of the Michigan Constitution. And if the Court finds that the multi-person housing practice is unconstitutional, Ryan asks for (1) an injunction to end the multi-person housing practice and (2) damages for his mental and emotional distress caused by the practice. (ECF No. 6, PageID.98.)
Of the two types of relief-backward-looking damages and a forward-looking injunction-the Court starts with damages. Defendants have raised qualified immunity (ECF No. 24, PageID.176), a doctrine that, when it applies, bars suits against state officials for money damages. The doctrine seeks to balance competing interests: “hold[ing] public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly” while “shield[ing] officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably.” Schulkers v. Kammer, 955 F.3d 520, 533 (6th Cir. 2020). “Reasonably” does not mean “correctly”-officers are allowed to make reasonable but mistaken judgment calls when operating in gray areas. See Id. That means to overcome qualified immunity, Ryan must show that Defendants violated “clearly established” law. See Id. Although Ryan need not identify precedent that is “directly on point, ” generally speaking, he must “identify a case with a fact pattern similar enough to have given ‘fair and clear warning to officers' about what the law requires.” Guertin v. State, 912 F.3d 907, 932 (6th Cir. 2019) (quoting White v. Pauly, 137 S.Ct. 548, 552 (2017)).
To this end, Ryan directs the Court to two cases: Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978), and Helling v. McKinney, 509 U.S. 25 (1993).
Neither case clearly establishes that requiring two people to share a one-person cell, or requiring many people to share a pole barn, violates the Eighth Amendment because it exposes the inmates to contagious diseases. In Hutto, one of the several conditions that violated the Eighth Amendment was how inmates were housed: “an average of 4, and sometimes as many as 10 or 11, prisoners were crowded into [a] windowless 8′x10′ cell, ” and the prisoners were forced to reuse the same mattresses for sleeping despite “some of them [having] infectious maladies such as hepatitis and venereal disease.” 437 U.S. at 682. Ryan has not alleged even remotely comparable conditions at JCF. The situation in Hutto-four to 11 people in an 8-by-10-foot cell, where the same set of mattresses were reused-is simply not comparable to two people in a one-person cell each with their own bunkbed or many people in a pole barn each with their own bed or bunkbed. So Hutto did not give Defendants clear notice that the multi-person housing at JCF is unlawful. And while Ryan cleverly analogizes the circumstances at JCF to the circumstances in Helling, the lawfulness of constant exposure to secondhand smoke does not give clear guidance about the lawfulness of possible exposure to airborne disease. Cf. 509 U.S. at 28 (“The complaint . . . alleged that respondent was assigned to a cell with another inmate who smoked five packs of cigarettes a day.”).
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