# Royster v. McGinnis

> District Court, S.D. New York · August 23, 1971 · 332 F. Supp. 973

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9660587

## Case

- **Full name:** James ROYSTER, Percy Rutherford and All Other Persons Similarly Situated, Plaintiffs, v. Paul D. McGINNIS, Commissioner of Correction, Et Al., Defendants
- **Court:** District Court, S.D. New York
- **Decided:** August 23, 1971
- **Citations:** 332 F. Supp. 973; 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11938
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Hays
- **Judges:** Hays, Metzner, Lasker
- **Cited by:** 10 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Red flag:** Reversed on other grounds by McGinnis v. Royster, 410 U.S. 263 (1973).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9660587

## Opinion text

HAYS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
If a classification made by a state has some reasonable basis it does not violate the equal protection clause. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471 , 90 S.Ct. 1153 , 25 L.Ed.2d 497 (1970).
There seems to me to be a reasonable ground for distinguishing in the award of good time credit between time spent in state prison under the supervision of the state prison authorities and time spent in county jail under the supervision of local authorities. It was surely not wholly arbitrary for the legislature to provide that the Parole Board should have the power to act upon a prisoner’s application only after the prisoner has spent a fixed proportion of his sentence in a place where his conduct has been under the observation of state prison officials rather than in a local jail.
Under the guise of applying constitutional principles federal judges are increasingly taking over from the states the administration of state prison systems. In this case, as in a number of others recently decided, the assumption of these new duties appears to be based rather on the judges’ conviction that they can administer state prisons more wisely than can the state authorities, and not on any compelling constitutional considerations.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9660587. Public record. Not legal advice.