Sargeant v. Barfield
| Docket Number | 21-2287 |
| Decision Date | 28 November 2023 |
| Parties | Roy Sargeant, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Aracelie Barfield, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
ARGUED MARCH 27, 2023
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Western Division. No. 19 C 50187 - Iain D. Johnston, Judge.
Before HAMILTON, SCUDDER and PRYOR, Circuit Judges.
The question before us is whether a federal prisoner can bring a Bivens action alleging that a prison official failed to protect him from violent attacks by his cellmates. After the Supreme Court's recent decisions in this area, the answer is no.
We recount the facts as alleged in the complaint. See Schil-linger v. Kiley, 954 F.3d 990, 994 (7th Cir. 2020). Roy Sargeant is a federal prisoner, and this case arises from retaliatory acts taken against him by Aracelie Barfield, who was Sargeant's case manager, responsible for evaluating his progress in prison.
The dispute between Sargeant and Barfield began with grievances. Sargeant filed a grievance against another prison official, Nicole Cruze, after she commented on his sexual preferences and refused to give him some books that he had ordered. When Barfield showed Sargeant the prison's response to one of those grievances, he noticed that it was signed by Cruze and pointed out that, under the prison's rules, Cruze should not have seen a grievance lodged against her. Apparently unhappy with Sargeant's remarks, Barfield "angrily" told others about the grievance. This led Sargeant to file a separate grievance against Barfield.
In retaliation, Barfield "repeatedly" put Sargeant in cells with prisoners that she knew were violent. As a "programming" prisoner with a "non-active protected custody" status, Sargeant alleged that Barfield violated policy by housing him with "active" prisoners on several occasions. At oral argument, Sargeant's attorney explained that programming status means a prisoner has cooperated with the government, while active status means that a prisoner has not cooperated. Predictably, this led to "some fights" between Sargeant and his cellmates, before he was transferred to another prison.
Proceeding without an attorney, Sargeant sued Barfield seeking monetary damages. He alleged that Barfield retaliated against him for filing grievances. He did not, however, identify in his complaint which of his constitutional rights she had allegedly violated.
Because Sargeant is a prisoner, the district judge initially assigned to his case, Judge Durkin, had to screen his complaint pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. In doing so, Judge Durkin decided that Sargeant could proceed only on a First Amendment retaliation claim and dismissed "any other intended claims." Judge Durkin did not discuss whether the allegations in the complaint stated an Eighth Amendment cause of action.
Barfield moved to dismiss the complaint on grounds that, under the Bivens doctrine, a federal prisoner cannot recover damages for a violation of First Amendment rights. Because of the complexity of that issue, Magistrate Judge Jensen appointed counsel for Sargeant. The case was then transferred from Judge Durkin to Judge Johnston who, after briefing, agreed with Barfield and dismissed the complaint with prejudice.
On appeal, Sargeant abandons his First Amendment theory in favor of another argument. He contends that, when screening his complaint, the district court missed a cause of action-an Eighth Amendment claim alleging that Barfield failed to protect him from other prisoners. This claim, Sargeant argues, should have been allowed to proceed under the Bivens doctrine.
We take a fresh look at a screening dismissal, accepting the allegations in the complaint as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff's favor. Schillinger, 954 F.3d at 994.
We first address whether Sargeant preserved this argument. Barfield does not think so. As she sees it, because Sargeant never amended the complaint or contested the screening dismissal, he is raising the Eighth Amendment claim for the first time on appeal.
We disagree. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not require a plaintiff to allege legal theories or even facts corresponding to each element of a claim. Zall v. Standard Ins. Co., 58 F.4th 284, 295 (7th Cir. 2023); Zimmerman v. Bornick, 25 F.4th 491, 493 (7th Cir. 2022). This is especially true for litigants proceeding without an attorney. See Ortiz v. Downey, 561 F.3d 664, 670 (7th Cir. 2009) (); Perez v. Fenoglio, 792 F.3d 768, 776 (7th Cir. 2015) ().
What matters is whether the raw materials of Sargeant's complaint-the facts-plausibly suggested that Barfield violated his Eighth Amendment rights. Johnson v. City of Shelby, 574 U.S. 10, 12 (2014). Looking to the facts in Sargeant's complaint, we see that they did so. A prison official is liable under the Eighth Amendment for failing to protect a prisoner if she knows of and disregards an excessive risk to the prisoner's health or safety. Hunter v. Mueske, 73 F.4th 561, 565 (7th Cir. 2023). Sargeant alleged in the complaint that, after Barfield placed him with cellmates she knew were violent and had more stringent classifications, the cellmates attacked him. These are the sorts of facts that commonly underpin Eighth Amendment failure-to-protect claims. See e.g., LaBrec v. Walker, 948 F.3d 836, 839-41 (7th Cir. 2020); Gevas v. McLaughlin, 798 F.3d 475, 478-81 (7th Cir. 2015).
When the district court screened out the Eighth Amendment claim-by dismissing "any other intended claims" aside from the First Amendment claim-Sargeant was free to save his rebuttal for appeal. A screening dismissal dispensing with only part of a complaint is an interlocutory order. See Luevano v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 722 F.3d 1014, 1018-20 (7th Cir. 2013) (). And interlocutory orders may be "stored up" by a litigant and raised on appeal as part of a challenge to the final judgment. Kurowski v. Krajewski, 848 F.2d 767, 772 (7th Cir. 1988). In other words, a litigant need not contest an interlocutory ruling as it comes down to preserve an appellate challenge to it. Walker v. Abbott Labs., 340 F.3d 471, 475 (7th Cir. 2003); see Cesal v. Moats, 851 F.3d 714, 720-21 (7th Cir. 2017) ().
The district court appointed Sargeant's attorney to respond to Barfield's motion to dismiss.1[] In her response, Sargeant's attorney naturally focused on the claim she was appointed to brief. True, she could have amended the complaint or asked the court to reconsider its screening order, but no authority required her to do either to preserve Sargeant's Eighth Amendment argument for appeal.
We turn now to the merits. On appeal, Sargeant argues that he is able to bring an Eighth Amendment failure-to-pro-tect claim against Barfield under the Bivens doctrine. The government responds that a failure-to-protect claim is not one of the limited suits allowed under Bivens.
The Constitution does not explain when a plaintiff can seek damages from a federal officer who has violated its provisions. That's where the Bivens doctrine comes in. Its story plays out in three acts: "creation, expansion, and restriction." Silva v. United States, 45 F.4th 1134, 1138 (10th Cir. 2022).
For simplicity, we begin the story with Bivens itself, although we recognize that the roots of the doctrine stretch far earlier. In Bivens, the Supreme Court concluded that the "very essence" of civil liberties implied a right to sue a person who violates those liberties. Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 397 (1971) (quoting Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 163 (1803)). From that premise, the Court reasoned that an individual could seek damages from Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents who unreasonably searched and seized him in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Id.
Over the next ten or so years, the Supreme Court recognized an implied constitutional right to damages two more times. In Davis v. Passman, the Court extended Bivens to a claim that a Congressman discriminated against a staffer because of her sex in violation of the Fifth Amendment. 442 U.S. 228 (1979). Then in Carlson v. Green-a case lying at the heart of this appeal-the Court recognized a Bivens remedy for a claim alleging that prison officials violated the Eighth Amendment by giving inadequate medical care to an asthmatic prisoner. 446 U.S. 14 (1980).
Soon after, the Supreme Court changed course and started to chisel away at the Bivens doctrine. The modern Court views Bivens, Davis, and Carlson as mistakes of an "ancien[t] regime" and cautions against implying new causes of action because creating remedies is a job for the legislature, not the judiciary. Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120, 131-32, 135 (2017) (emphasis omitted) (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 675 (2009)).
As a result, since those original three Bivens cases, the Supreme Court has consistently declined to imply new damages remedies. See id. at 135 (collecting cases). We can see the modern contours of Bivens most clearly in three recent cases, starting with Ziglar v. Abbasi. That case explained that a two-step...
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