Second Circuit Makes It Much Harder to Sue Prison Supervisors in Constitutional Cases

In one of its last decisions of 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals made it much more difficult to bring constitutional claims against prison supervisors for injuries caused by their underlings. It overturned a 25-year-old precedent that had allowed a plaintiff to sue supervisors who were “grossly negligent in supervising subordinates who committed the wrongful acts” that violated the plaintiff’s constitutional rights. It will now be much more difficult to hold supervisors accountable for creating or tolerating dangerous conditions that lead to constitutional violations.

The case, Tangreti v. Bachmann, is about a woman who was sexually abused by three different corrections officers during her 15-month incarceration. The officers were prosecuted and convicted. Ms. Tangreti then sued eight prison supervisors, seven of whom were dismissed from the case. The eighth, Christine Bachmann, was a supervisor of prison counselors who worked alongside two of the officers who abused Ms. Tangreti, and even saw two inappropriate conversations between one of the officers and Ms. Tangreti. She also noticed that Ms. Tangreti appeared “anxious” and was “very emotional, crying all the time.”

Ms. Tangreti alleged that Ms. Bachmann violated her Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment by being deliberately indifferent to the substantial risk of sexual abuse by the corrections officers. A 1995 Second Circuit case, Colon v. Coughlin, 58 F.3d 865 (2d Cir. 1995), had set out five ways a plaintiff could hold a supervisor liable for constitutional violations, including participating directly, failing to remedy a wrong s/he was informed of, or creating a policy or custom of unconstitutional practices. The Colon court had also held a supervisor would be liable if s/he was “grossly negligent in supervising subordinates who committed the wrongful acts.” It was on this theory that Ms. Tangreti sued Ms. Bachmann.

The Second Circuit held that a supervisor could no longer be liable for a constitutional violation merely for being “grossly negligent” in supervising those who committed the wrong. Instead, a plaintiff must prove that the supervisor acted directly in causing the constitutional harm. In the context of the Eighth Amendment, a plaintiff must show “that the supervisor had subjective knowledge of a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate and disregarded it.” The court held that Ms. Tangreti could not show Ms. Bachman’s personal involvement, and so dismissed her claims.

This decision will make it much harder for plaintiffs to hold to account supervisors who create the conditions that lead to excessive force in prisons. They will now have to delve into the individual mindset of each supervisor, to prove that that person had subjective knowledge of and disregarded a substantial risk to the plaintiff. This ruling could have grave consequences for holding policy-makers, such as prison superintendents accountable for plainly unconstitutional prison violations, like the freezing temperatures we saw at Metropolitan Detention Center in 2019, or rampant excessive force, like that found at Rikers Island.