Civil Rights Recap: October 16, 2020
This post is part of KLLF’s series of semi-regular blog posts rounding up interesting civil rights cases ruled on by the United States Supreme Court or the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Second Circuit Court of Appeals
Dickinson v. York, Docket No. 18-2781 (2d Cir.) [Sumary Order]
The plaintiff in this case, Shannon Dickinson, is paraplegic inmate in Warren County, New York. Dickinson filed claims against the sheriff of Warren County, Nathan York, and various other parties alleging that they denied him use of a wheelchair in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act. The district court dismissed Dickinson’s claims because he had failed to exhaust the jail’s internal remedies, as is required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).
In short, the PLRA throws an absolute truckload of obstacles in the way of inmates before they may properly file claims in federal court, and one of these obstacles requires inmates to file a “grievance” with the jail within five days of the incident and wait until the jail has adjudicated that grievance. In this case, as in almost all cases, the jail denied Dickinson’s grievance, which he was then required to appeal to the Commission’s Citizens’ Policy and Complaint Review Council (CPCRC) within three days of that denial in order to preserve his ability to pursue the claim in federal court. Dickinson filed this appeal, but then the CPCRC failed to issue a written determination within 30 days of that appeal, as it was required to do; Dickinson then filed his claims in federal court.
And so the question arose: Did Dickinson truly exhaust his administrative remedies before filing in federal court? On the one hand, his appeal was technically outstanding, because the CPCRC dallied, but on the other hand it was not Dickinson’s fault that his grievance hadn’t been resolved and he hadn’t truly exhausted the administrative appeal process, because, again the CPCRC dallied! The district court decided this didn’t matter, and held the PLRA barred Dickinson’s claims. The Second Circuit, however, reversed, and reinstated the claims. Why? Well, funny enough, the very same day this order was issued, the same panel that decided this case (Judges Livingston, Nardini and Sullivan) issued another decision Hayes v. Dahkle, which, for the first time, says that an inmate’s claim is not barred by the PLRA if the only reason he can’t file suit is because the jail takes too long to resolve his grievance. Keep reading below!
Hayes v. Dahkle, Docket No. 19-650 (2d Cir.)
The plaintiff in this case is Taheen Hayes, an inmate at Coxsackie Correctional Facility in New York. He alleges that officer T. Dahlke violated his Eight Amendment rights when Dahlke sexually assaulted him during a pat and frisk, and, further, that multiple other employees of the Department of Corrections violated his First Amendment rights when they retaliated against him for filing grievances about Dahlke and that incident. Among other things, Hayes alleges that after he filed a grievance report he suffered various forms of retaliation: a false misbehavior report, solitary confinement, and a vulgar threat from another correction officer, J. Iarusso.
First off, like Shane Dickinson, Hayes is subject to the PLRA. As in Dickinson’s case, the CPCRC did not adjudicate Hayes’ appeal in the time it was required to and Hayes filed suit in federal court, which the district court dismissed on grounds Hayes had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies.
The Second Circuit held that Hayes’ claim is not barred by the PLRA because the only reason he could not properly file suit was because the jail took too long to resolve his grievance. The court noted that “although some grievance programs give the agency some discretion or flexibility as to when it must decide an appeal . . . DOCCS regulations impose a 30-day deadline with no qualifications . . . [and] specifically prohibit prison officials from stalling the resolution of an inmate’s grievance by ignoring the various deadlines.” And, “because the DOCCS Inmate Grievance Procedure imposes a mandatory deadline for the CORC to respond,” the court held, “an inmate exhausts administrative remedies when he follows the procedure in its entirety but the CORC fails to respond within the 30 days it is allocated.”
After finding the PLRA did not bar Hayes’ claims, the Second Circuit then turned its attention to the merits of his claims.
First, the court held the district court erred in dismissing the Eight Amendment claim against Dahlke for his alleged molestation of Hayes. The district court had reasoned that Hayes did not make out a constitutional violation here because Dahlke did not “penetrate” Hayes or “fondle [Hayes’] genitals.” The Second Circuit disagreed, maintaining “the routine nature of these pat frisks does not shield an officer from liability” where the officer acts to “gratify his sexual desire,” and that the question of whether Dahlke’s conduct rose to the level of a constitutional violation is a question for the jury, especially because the frisk lasted far longer than would otherwise be normal (five to eight minutes).
Second, regarding Hayes’ First Amendment retaliation claims, the Second Circuit held, first, that Officer Iarusso’s threat—that “maybe all of this would go away” if Hayes stopped filing grievances—constituted an “implicit threat” that does not rise to the level of a First Amendment violation because there is no indication it was accompanied by additional “concrete” action by Iarusso. Consequently, the court held Hayes could not proceed on this claim. Second, regarding Hayes’ claim that he was placed in solitary in retribution for filing his grievance, the Second Circuit held that, even though Hayes was placed in solitary a month after he filed the grievance, that lapse of time was not too long to potentially constitute retaliation given the other facts of the case, and held that Hayes could proceed with that claim.