In Thornton v. Brown, published July 31, 2013, a divided Ninth Circuit panel reversed a district court order dismissing a parolee's suit under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 against the Governor of California, the secretary of the Department of Corrections, and parole agents challenging two conditions of his parole: a residency requirement and a requirement to submit to GPS monitoring. The appellate court affirmed the dismissal of the damages portion of the suit brought against the parole officer defendants (the only defendants from whom the plaintiff sought damages). It held those defendants absolutely immune from damages for their discretionary decisions about the conditions of parole. But the injunctive portion of his suit was permitted to proceed against all defendants.
The Supreme Court decisions in Preiser v. Rodriguez and Heck v. Humphrey hold that habeas corpus provides the exclusive remedy for persons in custody to challenge the fact of confinement, or any challenge that would indirectly challenge the validity of the conviction or sentence. A person in custody may sue under section 1983 if success would not release the claimant, shorten the duration of confinement, or necessarily imply the invalidity of the conviction or sentence. A state parolee is in custody for purposes of this analysis. The majority determined that the plaintiff's challenge to just two parole conditions, imposed by the Department of Corrections rather than his sentence, would not fall under either of those exceptions. The dissenting judge opined that the majority was blurring the line between the types of section 1983 suits a confined person can and cannot bring.
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