In Rico v. Ducart, published November 20, 2020, a divided 9th Circuit panel held reversed denial of prison guards' motion to dismiss a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 lawsuit brought by a plaintiff prisoner. A federal court had ordered the California Department of Corrections to conduct welfare checks on inmates in Security Housing Units every half hour. The electronic system for confirming the welfare check makes a loud noise for twelve seconds. The unique physical structure of the SHU units at Pelican Bay prison creates more noise. An inmate (released after he began his lawsuit) sued various administrative defendants and four guards for allegedly violating his EIghth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment by causing excessive noise and depriving him of sleep. He sued the guards for allegedly conducting the welfare checks in a haphazard way that made extra noise. The district court granted the administrative defendants' motion to dismiss based on qualified immunity, but denied the motion as to the guards. The guards filed an interlocutory appeal from the denial of qualified immunity.
The panel majority ruled that the guards were entitled to qualified immunity under the second prong of the qualified immunity affirmative defense: The guards did not violate a clearly-established constitutional right. The court rejected the argument that the qualified immunity standard governing Fourth Amendment cases--requiring factually-specific prior case law establishing the constitutional violation--does not apply to Eighth Amendment cases. The fact-specific, contextualized nature of the inquiry does not depend on the particular constitutional right alleged to have been violated. Existing case law holding that failure to prevent excess noise by other inmates that causes sleep deprivation did not put prison guards on notice that causing noise while carrying out a court-ordered system of welfare checks violated an inmate's Eighth Amendment rights, or that the immutable characteristics of a solitary confinement unit was not conducive to those activities. A court order does not give carte blanche to prison officials to commit obvious violations of rights. But the order here did not fall into that category of obvious unlawfulness. Further, that the guards implemented the welfare check system at a court's behest and under the supervision of a special master plays a large role in determining what reasonable officials in the defendants' shoes would have understood about whether they were violating prisoners' rights. To the extent the guards allegedly caused the excessive noise by conducting the welfare checks haphazardly, the alleged conduct fell under the category of reasonable mistakes that are covered by qualified immunity.
A dissenting judge opined that taking the facts alleged in the complaint as true, the guards' actions were not protected by qualified immunity.
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