Maurice Hardaway v. Brett Meyerhoff

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 12-2856

MAURICE HARDAWAY,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

BRETT MEYERHOFF, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Southern District of Illinois.

No. 3:10-cv-00556-JPG-PMF — J. Phil Gilbert, Judge.

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 20, 2013 — DECIDED NOVEMBER 4, 2013

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and BAUER and FLAUM, Circuit

Judges.

BAUER, Circuit Judge. In 2009, Menard Correctional Center

inmate Maurice Hardaway (“Hardaway”) was charged with

altering official electronics contract forms and selling or

trading the counterfeit contracts in exchange for money and/or

commissary. Although the charge was later expunged,

Hardaway spent six months in segregation as part of the

recommended punishment. Hardaway brought suit against

2 No. 12-2856

prison officials in the U.S. District Court for the Southern

District of Illinois alleging the 182–day term spent in segrega-

tion was a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 based on the denial of

his liberty interests protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The district court granted Defendants’ motion for summary

judgment on the grounds of qualified immunity. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

On September 16, 2009, Maurice Hardaway received a

disciplinary report completed by prison official Brett

Meyerhoff (“Meyerhoff”) charging the inmate with damage or

misuse of property, forgery, and trading or trafficking of

official electronics contract forms. Two days later, the Correc-

tional Center disciplinary committee held a hearing to consider

the charges against Hardaway and found him guilty.

Hardaway claims that committee member Charles Parnell

(“Parnell”) denied him the opportunity to argue any defense

at the hearing or even view the forged contracts that were

used as evidence against him. The disciplinary committee’s

sentence included six months of disciplinary segregation,

demotion to C-grade status, and revocation of commissary

rights. Hardaway was then removed from his holding cell and

relocated to a “six gallery cell” secured by a solid metal door.

Due to a childhood incident when he was raped and abused by

his grandparents, an experience Hardaway associates with

closed solid metal doors, Hardaway requested to be moved to

a cell with metal bars. Prison officials denied this request and

kept Hardaway in the six gallery cell.

On September 20, 2009, Hardaway initiated a grievance

process contending (1) that he knew nothing about the sale of

No. 12-2856 3

the electronics contracts, (2) the charge was based solely on

information provided by a confidential informant, and (3) that

the disciplinary report failed to state a specific time, place, or

date of the alleged offenses. Additionally, Hardaway argued

that Parnell denied him the opportunity to view the forged

contracts or argue any defense during the disciplinary hearing.

The grievance officer issued a summary report shortly thereaf-

ter finding Hardaway guilty of the charges and imposing the

recommended disciplinary actions.

The next month, Hardaway filed a second grievance

concerning the disciplinary report and proceedings that was

considered by the Illinois Administrative Review Board

(“ARB”). In December, the ARB recommended that

Hardaway’s disciplinary report be remanded so that

Meyerhoff, the reporting officer, could add more specific

information to substantiate the charges cited. Meyerhoff,

however, failed to make any revisions to the report, so the ARB

affirmed Hardaway’s grievance on March 18, 2010. The ARB

further concluded that the charge should be expunged from

Hardaway’s record on the grounds that the disciplinary report

did not comply with the Department of Corrections Rule

504.30, which outlines proper procedures for disciplinary

reports and hearings. Hardaway had already served his

sentence of 182 days in segregation by the time the ARB

affirmed his grievance. Nevertheless, he complains that during

the entirety of his six-month segregation, he experienced

mental anguish as a result of the solid metal door; was physi-

cally attacked by his cell mate; and was only released from his

cell once per week to shower and use the prison yard.

4 No. 12-2856

Several months after his release from disciplinary segrega-

tion, Hardaway filed suit against Defendants Meyerhoff and

Parnell claiming their acts and omissions led to his placement

in disciplinary segregation for 182 days constituting a violation

of due process. Hardaway argued that these acts and omis-

sions caused him to endure “significant and atypical hardship”

and that he suffered a “mental health issue” because he spent

an “unwarranted” six months in segregation behind a large

metal door. In an amended complaint, Hardaway further

contended that Meyerhoff failed to observe the safeguards of

due process by violating administrative regulations and failing

to comply with the ARB’s order to amend the disciplinary

report. Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment

contending that Hardaway did not have any protected liberty

interest under the Fourteenth Amendment and that they were

entitled to qualified immunity.

In February 2012, the Magistrate Judge issued a report

denying Defendants’ motion for summary judgment and

recommended that the parties provide additional facts to

determine whether Hardaway was deprived of a protected

liberty interest. The district court ultimately granted Defen-

dants’ motion for summary judgment on the grounds that

Meyerhoff and Parnell were entitled to qualified immunity

because, at the time of Hardaway’s confinement, there was no

clearly established law that could have put Defendants on

notice that such acts violate an inmate’s due process rights.

Hardaway timely appealed the district court’s judgment.

No. 12-2856 5

II. DISCUSSION

The Seventh Circuit reviews a district court’s grant of

summary judgment based on qualified immunity de novo,

accepting all facts and inferences in a light most favorable to

Hardaway, the non-moving party. Elder v. Holloway, 510 U.S.

510, 516 (1994); Oats v. Discovery Zone, 116 F.3d 1161, 1165 (7th

Cir. 1997). The affirmative defense of qualified immunity

protects government officers from liability for actions taken in

the course of their official duties if their conduct does not

violate “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of

which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v.

Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). To determine if qualified

immunity applies, the courts employ a two-prong test: (1)

whether the facts, viewed in a light most favorable to the

injured party, demonstrate that the conduct of the officers

violated a constitutional right, and (2) whether that right was

clearly established at the time the conduct occurred. Pearson v.

Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009). Hardaway argues that the

first prong should be addressed first, but the court has discre-

tion to address either issue first, depending on the case at

hand. Pearson, 555 U.S. at 236. The district court began its

analysis with the second prong, deciding that the right for a

prisoner not to be confined for six months in segregation was

not clearly established at the time of the Defendants’ conduct.

We concur with the district court’s decision.

This Court has noted that an inmate’s liberty interest in

avoiding segregation is limited. Marion v. Columbia Corr. Inst.,

559 F.3d 693, 697 (7th Cir. 2009). Whether a prisoner has a

liberty interest implicated by special confinement relies on

whether the confinement imposed an “atypical and significant

6 No. 12-2856

hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of

prison life.” Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 484 (1995). In

assessing whether disciplinary segregation amounts to a

constitutional violation, this court looks to “the combined

import of the duration of the segregative confinement and the

conditions endured.” Marion, 559 F.3d at 697 (emphasis in

original). Although relatively short terms of segregation rarely

give rise to a prisoner’s liberty interest, at least in the absence

of exceptionally harsh conditions, such an interest may arise

from a long term of confinement combined with atypical and

significant hardships. See Marion, 559 F.3d at 697–98 (citing

Wilkinson v. Austin, 545 U.S. 209, 224 (2005); Sandin, 515 U.S. at

486). In Marion, this court noted that “six months of segrega-

tion is not such an extreme term and, standing alone, would

not trigger due process rights.” 559 F.3d at 698 (quoting

Whitford v. Boglino, 63 F.3d 527, 533 (7th Cir. 1995)) (internal

quotations omitted). Since Hardaway’s confinement was six

months and one day in total, the duration of segregation alone

is insufficient to rise to the level of a Fourteenth Amendment

violation. Therefore, the court must address the conditions of

Hardaway’s confinement to determine if they were so extreme

as to implicate due process considerations.

Hardaway argues that the conditions contained in the

record that amount to “atypical and significant hardship” are

his placement with a confrontational cell mate, the psychologi-

cal issues he experienced in connection to his aversion to

closed solid metal doors, and his weekly access to the shower

and prison yard. As the district court correctly explained,

“[t]he most that can be said for the jurisprudence existing in

September 2009 regarding what presents an ‘atypical and

No. 12-2856 7

significant hardship’ is that it is not at all clear except at the

fringes.” For example, in Wilkinson, the Supreme Court found

that prisoners’ liberty interests will be implicated when they

are placed in segregation that deprives them of virtually all

sensory stimuli or human contact for an indefinite period of

time. 545 U.S. 209, 214–15 (2005). Moreover, the court in

Wilkinson concluded that it was all of the conditions combined

that implicated due process rights and any of the conditions

“standing alone might not be sufficient to create a liberty

interest.” Id. At 224. We realize that the Court was not imply-

ing that total deprivation of sensory stimuli and human contact

is a requirement for “atypical and significant hardship.”

Nevertheless, that does not help Hardaway. None of the

circumstances of Hardaway’s confinement come close to the

harsh conditions described in Wilkinson. Hardaway was not

deprived of all human contact and was permitted to use the

shower and prison yard once every week. While these condi-

tions are more severe than those found in the general prison

population, they are hardly analogous to a confinement that

deprives a prisoner of all human contact or sensory stimuli.

Even reviewing all facts in a light most favorable to him,

Hardaway failed to demonstrate a deprivation of rights that

could be considered “atypical and significant hardship.”

In order to defeat the protection provided by qualified

immunity, Hardaway bears the burden of identifying “case

law that has both articulated the right at issue and applied it to

the factual circumstance similar to the one at hand.” Boyd v.

Owen, 481 F.3d 520, 526 (7th Cir. 2007). Hardaway has not

presented case law stating that a six-month period of confine-

ment under conditions similar to Hardaway’s implicates a

8 No. 12-2856

liberty interest. The most analogous case to Hardaway’s is

Thomas v. Ramos involving a prisoner who was placed in

disciplinary segregation with another cell mate for seventy

days without any access to the showers or prison yard. 130

F.3d 754, 757–8 (7th Cir. 1997). This Court found that the

strongest argument in favor of the prisoner’s claim for a

deprivation of rights was that he was denied all opportunity to

exit his cell for exercise, leading to a concern for his physical

health. Nonetheless, this Court held that the inmate’s segrega-

tion “did not result in an atypical and significant deprivation

because the conditions he experienced did not greatly exceed

what one would expect from prison life generally.” Thomas, 130

F.3d at 762 (quoting Williams v. Ramos, 71 F.3d 1246, 1249 (7th

Cir. 1995)) (internal quotations omitted). Although Hardaway’s

confinement was longer than the segregation in Thomas, he was

allowed weekly access to the showers and prison yard,

effectively eliminating any concern for his physical well-being

in that respect. In short, Hardaway’s conditions were not as

harsh as those found in Thomas and are insufficient to implicate

a liberty interest.

As Hardaway admits in his appeal, “there is ambiguity

among various Seventh Circuit cases regarding the proper

baseline against which to measure conditions of disciplinary

confinement.”Although the district court would benefit from

a bright-line rule on the types of conditions and duration of

segregation give rise to a prisoner’s liberty interest, no such

guidance has yet to be specifically addressed by this Court.

Hence, even if Hardaway’s segregation amounted to the

violation of a liberty interest, the Defendants should not be

held responsible for incorrectly guessing otherwise due to the

No. 12-2856 9

ambiguity of the parameters of the law. In sum, the right to

avoid disciplinary segregation in a cell with a solid metal door

and a confrontational cell mate for 182 days with weekly access

to the shower and recreational yard was not a clearly estab-

lished right in September 2009 when the conduct occurred.

Therefore, the Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity.

III. CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, the order of the district court is

AFFIRMED.