Blanchard v. Hyatte

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA

SOUTH BEND DIVISION

JEREMY BLANCHARD,

Plaintiff,

v. Case No. 3:21-CV-160-CCB-SJF

WILLIAM HYATTE, et al.,

Defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER

Before the Court is Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings asserting the

affirmative defense of qualified immunity for an alleged violation of Plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment

rights related to the conditions of his confinement at Miami Correctional Facility (“Miami”) between

September 3, 2020, and October 5, 2020. Based on the applicable law, facts, and arguments,

Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings will be denied.

I. RELEVANT BACKGROUND

The facts recounted here come from Plaintiff’s complaint and are accepted as true for

purposes of this motion with all reasonable inferences drawn in Plaintiff’s favor. See Calderon-

Ramirez v. McCament, 877 F.3d 272, 275 (7th Cir. 2017).

On August 18, 2020, Plaintiff was placed in a restrictive housing cell at Miami. The cell, like

many in the restrictive housing unit (“RHU”), had a broken window open to the outside and a

broken light. The call button was also broken. Plaintiff played no role in damaging the cell or its

component parts. Aware of the conditions in the RHU, Defendants responded on September 3,

2020, by placing solid steel plates over the broken windows throughout the unit—including in

Plaintiff’s cell—but did not remedy the inoperable lights. And they continued assigning inmates to

the damaged cells explaining that no other cells were available and that funds were unavailable to

replace the windows.

Once the window in Plaintiff’s cell was covered by the steel plate, his only sources of light

were the small window in his cell door and the light emanating from his prison-issued tablet.

According to Plaintiff, light from both sources was very dim. Light came through the cell door

window from the day room area outside his cell. Most of the day, the lights were dim and even

when they were brightly lit, very little light filtered into Plaintiff’s cell. Plaintiff’s tablet provided

some light, but only enough to view the tablet screen. These limited light sources combined with his

inoperable light left Plaintiff in near-total darkness whenever he was in his cell. Plaintiff only left his

cell every 4-5 days for about 15 minutes to shower. Plaintiff was not provided any recreation time

while in the RHU. Plaintiff remained in that cell until October 5, 2020.

The darkness affected Plaintiff in several ways. Plaintiff could not see the grievance

documents he had to complete to protest his cell conditions. Plaintiff’s only option was to complete

the grievance forms during a visit to the shower, which he did. Severe anxiety set in for Plaintiff

leading him to pace back and forth in his dark cell. He suffered painful bruises and bloody scrapes

on his legs from bumping into the stool affixed to the floor. The constant darkness disrupted his

internal clock making it difficult for him to sleep and eat regularly. This caused Plaintiff to suffer

physical symptoms including headaches, nausea, and lack of energy because of his hypoglycemia.

His mental health was also affected. With no history of hallucinations, Plaintiff began hearing voices

and sensing things crawling on him in the dark cell.

II. ANALYSIS

“After the pleadings are closed—but early enough not to delay trial—a party may move for

judgment on the pleadings.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c). The court decides such a motion “under the

same standard as a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b).” N. Ind. Gun & Outdoor Shows, Inc. v. S. Bend,

163 F.3d 449, 452 (7th Cir. 1998); see also Pisciotta v. Old Nat’l Bancorp, 499 F.3d 629, 633 (7th Cir.

2007). The court should grant a Rule 12(c) motion “only when it appears beyond a doubt that the

plaintiff cannot prove any facts to support a claim for relief and the moving party demonstrates that

there are no material issues of fact to be resolved.” Brunt v. Serv. Emps. Int’l Union, 284 F.3d 715,

718–19 (7th Cir. 2002). Defendants assert they are entitled to judgment on the pleadings because

they are qualifiedly immune to Plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment conditions of confinement claim.

Qualified immunity shields public officials “from undue interference with their duties and

from potentially disabling threats of liability.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 806 (1982). As an

affirmative defense, qualified immunity provides more than a “mere defense to liability,” it provides

“immunity from suit.” Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526 (1985); see also Sinn v. Lemmon, 911 F.3d 412,

418 (7th Cir. 2018). “Qualified immunity gives government officials breathing room to make

reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions. Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 743

(2011). Once a defendant raises the defense of qualified immunity, “it becomes the plaintiff’s

burden to defeat it.” Jewett v. Anders, 521 F.3d 818, 823 (7th Cir. 2008).

To defeat a qualified immunity defense on a motion for judgment on the pleadings, a

plaintiff’s “complaint must adequately allege facts that, if true, would constitute a violation of a

constitutional right; [and] the case law must be ‘clearly established’ at the time of the alleged

violation, so that a reasonable public official would have know[n] that his conduct was unlawful.”

Delgado v. Jones, 282 F.3d 511, 516 (7th Cir. 2002) (citing Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818–19).

A. Constitutional Right to Adequate Lighting

The Eighth Amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishment. To succeed on an

Eighth Amendment claim, a plaintiff must establish both an objective and a subjective prong.

Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). The deprivation of rights “alleged must be, objectively,

‘sufficiently serious,’ [and] must result in denial of ‘the minimal civilized measure of life’s

necessities.’” Id. Additionally, the defendants must have acted with “deliberate indifference” to the

inmate’s health or safety.” Id. (quotation and citated omitted). Defendants argue that a prisoner

must be deprived of all light—in other words, be plunged into total darkness—to suffer a

constitutional violation. In support, Defendants rely on cases of prisoners facing limited light

deprivation that did not rise to the level of an Eighth Amendment violation.

In Wilson v. Schomig, the prisoner alleged only that his cell lacked operating electrical lights

while he was housed there for almost three months. 863 F. Supp. 789, 795 (N.D. Ill. 1994). The

court found that the prisoner’s inadequate lighting allegations were insufficient to satisfy the Eighth

Amendment’s objective prong. Id. The court stated that further allegations, such as total light

deprivation, were needed to establish a constitutional violation. Id. In another lighting case, the

same court considered whether a prisoner in a cell for 33 days with no lights or electricity, wires

hanging out of the walls, a window, an open vision panel in the cell door, and a working light just

outside the cell suffered a constitutional deprivation. Lloyd v. Briley, No. 05 C 1499, 2007 WL

917385, at *1, *4 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 23, 2007). The court found that the conditions the plaintiff faced

did not rise to the level of cruel and unusual punishment because he was not subjected to total

darkness and admitted he could read in his cell, if minimally. Id. at *6. The court considered the

totality of the plaintiff’s conditions of confinement in reaching its decision. Id.

Other light deprivation cases similarly analyzed the totality of circumstances. In Hicks v.

Lannoye, the plaintiff failed to meet the objective prong where his cell lacked electricity for about one

week; the front of his cell opened to the cell block (except for the bars); the cell block had ceiling

lights on 24 hours a day and a fluorescent bulb for 16 hours per day; natural light from the window

across the tier from the plaintiff’s cell flowed into the cell; the warden arranged repairs to the

electrical outage and offered the plaintiff the chance to move; and the plaintiff left his cell regularly

for school, meals, recreation time, law library access, and religious services. Case No. 20-CV-505,

2021 WL 2454050, at *3–*4 (E.D. Wis. June 16, 2021). The court said that the record did not show

that the plaintiff “spent any significant amount of time in near total darkness.” Id. at *3.

In Martin v. Snyder, the plaintiff was allowed to proceed on a conditions of confinement claim

where he alleged that he stayed in a cell without a working light for five months; spent 12–14 hours

in near total darkness; suffered eye strain and headaches; could not read or pursue other normal

activities; suffered a head injury after falling in his cell because of lack of light; was denied medical

treatment for the injury; and had his grievance requests for adequate lighting denied. Case No. 00-

C-983, 2002 WL 484911, at *6 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 28, 2002). The court acknowledged that whether

inadequate lighting can constitute an Eighth Amendment violation is unsettled in the Seventh

Circuit. Id. That said, the court concluded “that inadequate lighting can give rise to a constitutional

violation under certain circumstances.” Id. In support, the court relied on the Ninth Circuit’s

holding that “adequate lighting is one of the fundamental attributes of adequate shelter required by

the Eighth Amendment.” Id. (citing Keenan v. Hall, 83 F.3d 1083, 1090 (9th Cir. 1996); Hoptowit v.

Spellman, 753 F.2d 779, 783 (9th Cir. 1985) (internal quotations omitted)). The court also referenced

Bono v. Saxbe, 620 F.2d 609, 617 (7th Cir. 1980) where the Seventh Circuit expressed concern—in

dicta—about due process violations when prisoners could not read due to inadequate lighting. Id.

Defendants interpret these cases to mean that only cases involving total darkness rise to the

level of constitutional violations. It is true that the Seventh Circuit has not defined the full contours

of when inadequate lighting, on its own, constitutes an Eighth Amendment violation—when

inadequate lighting amounts to a deprivation of minimal civilized measures of life’s necessities.

Hicks, 2021 WL 2454050, at *3; see also Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834. At the same time, “[t]he Seventh

Circuit has held that where a prison fails to provide adequate ventilation, sanitation, bedding,

hygiene materials, and utilities, including hot and cold water, light, heat, and plumbing, it can amount

to an Eighth Amendment violation.” Hicks, 2021 WL 2454050, at *3 (citing Gillis v. Litscher, 468

F.3d 488, 493 (7th Cir. 2006)). Indeed, “[s]ome conditions of confinement may establish an Eighth

Amendment violation in combination when each alone may not do so.” Gillis, 468 F.3d at 493.

Therefore, the question of whether light deprivation meets the objective prong of the Eighth

Amendment analysis is a factually specific one that does not necessarily turn on whether the inmate

faced total darkness. Here, that is especially true. Plaintiff admits that he did not experience

complete and total darkness in his RHU cell. But the conditions he faced resemble those in Martin,

in which the court allowed the plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment inadequate lighting claim to proceed

because it could not “say with certainty that [the plaintiff] can prove no set of facts to support the

allegations in his claim.” Martin, 2002 WL 484911, at *7. Similarly, this Court cannot find beyond a

doubt that Plaintiff has not alleged, and cannot prove any facts, to show a constitutional violation

under the Eighth Amendment for inadequate lighting. See Brunt, 284 F.3d at 718–19. Nor have

Defendants shown that there are no material issues of fact remaining, especially as to whether a

combination of the facts and circumstances Plaintiff faced amounts to a deprivation of minimal

civilized measures of life’s necessities. See id.; see also Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834.

B. Clearly Established Constitutional Violation

Government officials are entitled to qualified immunity so long “as their conduct does not

violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have

known.” Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818. A plaintiff defeats qualified immunity most commonly “by

identifying a closely analogous case,” and more rarely “by persuading the court that the conduct is so

egregious and unreasonable that, notwithstanding the lack of an analogous decision, no reasonable

officer could have thought he was acting lawfully.” Abbott v. Sangamon Cnty., Ill., 705 F.3d 706, 723–

24 (7th Cir. 2013). Absent controlling precedent, a court may look more broadly to relevant, but

nonbinding, caselaw “to determine whether there was such a clear trend in the caselaw that [it can be

said] with fair assurance that the recognition of the right by a controlling precedent was merely a

question of time.” Jacobs v. City of Chicago, 215 F.3d 758, 767 (7th Cir. 2000) (internal quotations

omitted). Even so, “the clearly established right must be defined with specificity.” City of Escondido

v. Emmons, 586 U.S. 38, 42 (2019). This means courts “analyze whether precedent squarely governs

the facts at issue, mindful that [courts] cannot define clearly established law at too high a level of

generality.” Strand v. Minchuk, 910 F.3d 909, 917 (7th Cir. 2018).

Defendants argue that there is no clearly established right to adequate lighting because there

is no case analogous to the facts alleged by Plaintiff. Even without any analogous, controlling case,

Plaintiff still contends that there is a clearly established right to adequate lighting. Plaintiff directs

the Court’s attention to Gillis v. Litscher, which cites with approval a Tenth Circuit case identifying

“light” as one of several “utilities” deemed one of “life’s necessities.” 468 F.3d at 493 (citing Ramos

v. Lamm, 639 F.2d 559, 568 (10th Cir. 1980) (“[A] state must provide . . . reasonably adequate

ventilation, sanitation, bedding, hygienic materials, and utilities (i.e., hot and cold water, light, heat,

plumbing).”)). The Eastern District of Wisconsin in Hicks v. Lannoye then cited Gillis favorably for

the same proposition before reaching a fact-specific conclusion about the adequacy of lighting for

the plaintiff in that case. 2021 WL 2454050, at *3.

As alluded to above, other Seventh Circuit cases have also telegraphed that lighting issues

can be cause for constitutional concern. In Bono v. Saxbe, the court directed the trial court on

remand to consider significant matters including justification for poorly lit cells that precluded

prisoners from reading. 620 F.2d at 617. In a footnote that is clearly dicta, the court noted its

disagreement “that nearly total darkness or some other extreme lighting is a sine qua non of

constitutional concern.” Id. n.12. Despite Defendants’ rejection of the Bono dicta, dicta can clearly

establish a right in certain cases. Phillips v. Cmty. Ins. Corp., 678 F.3d 513, 528 (7th Cir. 2012). Then

in Antonelli v. Sheahan, the Seventh Circuit considered a prisoner’s claim that the lighting in his unit

and its day room was so weak that reading hurt his eyes. 81 F.3d 1422, 1433 (7th Cir. 1996). The

court remanded the case for determination of whether the lighting was constitutionally inadequate

holding that “if the lighting conditions were objectively insufficient, they may have violated the

Eighth Amendment.” Id.

Wilson v. Schomig and Lloyd v. Briley, discussed above, do not involve circumstances directly

analogous to those alleged by Plaintiff but do give some contour to the right to adequate lighting.

Defendants rely on these cases to argue that there is only a clearly established right to be free from

total, not near-total, darkness. The Wilson plaintiff alleged only lack of operating electric lights and

nothing more. 863 F. Supp. at 792, 795. The Lloyd plaintiff alleged lack of artificial light in his cell,

but still had light from a functioning window and a vision panel on his cell door that allowed him to

read, at least minimally. 2007 WL 917385, at *6. While both the Wilson court and Lloyd court

signified that total darkness would have been a clearly established right, neither reached their

conclusion about the clearly established rights related to lighting by comparing the plaintiff’s

allegations to a “total darkness” standard of any kind. Instead, both courts assessed the totality of

facts presented by the plaintiffs before determining that they had no clearly established right to light

beyond what was available in their cells. In so doing, both courts left open the possibility that a level

of darkness between the facts presented in those cases and total darkness could constitute a clearly

established right to adequate lighting. Distinguishable from and more extreme than the facts

presented in Wilson and Lloyd, the totality of facts and circumstances alleged in Plaintiff’s complaint

fall into the category of near-total darkness for which no analogous case yet exists.

Nevertheless, Plaintiff could still have a clearly established right to be free from the near-

total darkness he experienced in the Miami RHU. Plaintiff can identify caselaw beyond the Seventh

Circuit and Supreme Court to show that a clear trend in the caselaw give “fair assurance that the

recognition of the right by a controlling precedent [is] merely a question of time.” Jacobs, 215 F.3d at

767. Plaintiff again focuses on the Ninth Circuit’s holding in Hoptowit v. Spellman linking adequate

lighting to the fundamental right of adequate shelter protected by the Eighth Amendment. See 753

F.2d at 783; see also Carney v. Craven, 40 F. App’x 48, 51 (6th Cir. 2002) (citing Hoptowit). In a later

case, the Sixth Circuit found an Eighth Amendment violation where “substandard lighting caused

eye strain when reading and hindered the prisoner’s efforts to clean his cell.” Powell v. Washington,

720 F. App’x 222, 228 (6th Cir. 2017). The Powell court even cited the Seventh Circuit’s own

Antonelli finding that deficient lighting making it difficult to read and hurting the prisoner’s eyes may

violate the Eighth Amendment. Id. (citing Antonelli, 81 F.3d at 1433). As Plaintiff points out, other

cases make similar findings. See, e.g., Gates v. Cook, 376 F.3d 323, 342 (7th Cir. 2004); Tillery v. Owens,

719 F. Supp. 1256, 1271 (W.D. Pa. 1989), aff’d 907 F.2d 418 (3d Cir. 1990); James v. Cohen, No. 1:17-

01256, 2017 WL 4371548, at *3 (D. S.C. Oct. 3, 2017); Amaker v. Good, No. 98 Civ. 3634, 1999 WL

511990, at *7 (S.D.N.Y. July 20, 1999). The facts of these case are admittedly distinguishable from

those in Plaintiff’s complaint, especially those that find constitutional violations because the lack of

light prevented the prisoner from cleaning his cell. Plaintiff makes no such allegations. Yet an

inference could be made from his allegations that cleaning his cell would have been difficult, if not

impossible, for Plaintiff.

Lastly, these cases, considered together with Seventh Circuit precedent, put wardens and

other prison officials on notice that reduced or extremely limited lighting in prison cells could violate

the Eighth Amendment. Therefore, this is a situation where a “general constitutional rule already

identified in the decisional law” applies with “obvious clarity” to Defendants’ conduct as alleged in

Plaintiff’s complaint, even though that specific conduct “has [not] previously been held unlawful.”

Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002) (quotation omitted).

Plaintiff has made serious allegations about the lack of lighting in his RHU cell and the

consequences of the near-total darkness he lived in for over a month in 2020. Unlike the plaintiff in

Wilson, Plaintiff alleges much more than just a lack of electric lights. He alleges that he was

subjected to the near total darkness because of the steel-covered window. He alleges that he could

only leave his dark cell every 4 or 5 days for 15 minutes to shower. He alleges very dim light from

the small cell door window; dim light from his tablet; inability to read and prepare grievance

documents; newly developed hallucinations; sleep and diet irregularities that resulted in new physical

symptoms; and physical injuries from pacing the cell due to the anxiety effect of the darkness. The

near-total darkness Plaintiff endured dramatically affected his health, safety, ability to read, and

access to the prison’s grievance process. In other words, the record of extremely limited lighting

combined with the effects of living 24 hours a day, almost every day for over a month in near-total

darkness persuades this Court no reasonable officer or warden could have thought that placing a

prisoner in these egregious circumstances was lawful. See Abbott, ,705 F.3d at 723–24.

III. CONCLUSION

For the reasons discussed above, Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings is

DENIED. [DE 94].

SO ORDERED.

September 4, 2024

/s/Cristal C. Brisco

CRISTAL C. BRISCO, JUDGE

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT