Amicus Curiae Brief — Gabriel Olivier, Petitioner v. City of Brandon, Mississippi

No. 24-993

IN THE

Supreme Court of the United States

___________

GABRIEL OLIVIER,

v.

CITY OF BRANDON, et al.,

___________

Petitioner,

Respondents.

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari

to the United States Court of Appeals

for the Fifth Circuit

___________

BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE

HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENSE CENTER

IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER

___________

JEFFREY T. GREEN

DANIELLE HAMILTON

THE CARTER G. PHILLIPS/

SIDLEY AUSTIN LLP

SUPREME COURT CLINIC

NORTHWESTERN PRITZKER

SCHOOL OF LAW

375 East Chicago Avenue

Chicago, IL 60611

TOBIAS S. LOSS-EATON

Counsel of Record

SIDLEY AUSTIN LLP

1501 K Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20005

(202) 736-8000

tlosseaton@sidley.com

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

April 17, 2025

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Table of authorities...................................................... ii

Interests of amicus curiae ........................................... 1

Introduction and summary of argument .................... 2

Argument ..................................................................... 4

I. Barring prospective relief unnecessarily

insulates ongoing constitutional violations in

prison settings. ....................................................... 4

A. The Fifth Circuit’s rule prevents current and

former prisoners from seeking relief from

ongoing constitutional violations. .................... 4

B. Purely prospective relief does not interfere

with habeas or retroactively invalidate past

convictions. ........................................................ 7

II. Applying Heck when habeas relief is not

available unnecessarily undermines current

and former prisoners’ civil rights........................... 9

Conclusion .................................................................. 11

(i)

ii

CASES

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Page

City of L.A. v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (1983) .....

4

Clarke v. Stalder, 154 F.3d 186 (5th Cir.

1998) ....................................................... 3, 5, 6

Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 641 (1997) ....

8

Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994) ...... 2, 10

Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475 (1973) ...

3

Skinner v. Switzer, 562 U.S. 521 (2011) ......

8

Smith v. Robinson, 468 U.S. 992 (1984) ......

4

Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1 (1998) ........... 2, 11

Wilkinson v. Dotson, 544 U.S. 74 (2005) .....

8

Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539 (1974) .....

3

Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705 (1977) .....

8

STATUTES

28 U.S.C. § 2254 ...........................................

28 U.S.C. § 2254(a) .......................................

42 U.S.C. § 1983 ...........................................

2

8

2, 4

SCHOLARLY AUTHORITIES

Devi M. Rao, The Heck Bar Gone Too Far:

Heck’s Application to Prisoners’ Excessive

Force Suits, 17 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev. 365

(2023) .........................................................

7

Note, Defining the Reach of Heck v. Humphrey: Should the Favorable Termination

Rule Apply to Individuals Who Lack Access to Habeas Corpus?, 121 Harv. L. Rev.

868 (2008) .................................................. 9, 10

iii

OTHER AUTHORITIES

Jan Ransom, In N.Y.C. Jail System, Guards

Often Lie About Excessive Force, N.Y.

Times

(Apr.

24,

2021),

https://shorturl.at/J4QAI ..........................

7

INTERESTS OF AMICUS CURIAE 1

The Human Rights Defense Center is a 501(c)(3)

non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of the

human rights of people held in U.S. detention facilities. This includes people in state and federal prisons,

local jails, immigration detention centers, civil commitment facilities, Bureau of Indian Affairs jails, juvenile facilities and military prisons. HRDC is one of the

few national opponents to the private prison industry

and is the foremost advocate on behalf of the free

speech rights of publishers to communicate with prisoners and the right of prisoners to receive publications

and communications from outside sources. HRDC also

does significant work around government transparency and accountability issues. HRDC publishes and

distributes self-help reference books for prisoners, and

engages in litigation, media campaigns and outreach,

public speaking and education, and testimony before

legislative and regulatory bodies.

This case directly implicates HRDC’s work because

the Fifth Circuit’s rule restricts the ability of currently

and formerly imprisoned people to seek redress for violations of their rights and secure prospective relief

against future rights violations.

1 No counsel for any party authored this brief in whole or in

part, and no entity or person other than amicus or its counsel

made any monetary contribution toward the preparation and submission of this brief. The parties received timely notice of amicus’s intention to file this brief.

2

INTRODUCTION AND

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

The Court should grant the petition to review and

correct the Fifth Circuit’s erroneous expansion of Heck

v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994). The Heck bar

serves an important—but narrow—function. It preserves the separate roles of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the

federal habeas statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2254, by channeling claims that “call into question the lawfulness of” a

state prisoner’s “conviction or confinement” through

habeas, including the exhaustion of state remedies.

See Heck, 512 U.S. at 481–83. “Because allowing a

state prisoner to proceed directly with a federal-court

§ 1983 attack on his conviction or sentence ‘would

wholly frustrate explicit congressional intent’ as declared in the habeas exhaustion requirement, the statutory scheme must be read as precluding such attacks.” Id. at 498 (Souter, J., concurring, joined by

Blackmun, Stevens, and O’Connor, JJ.); Spencer v.

Kemna, 523 U.S. 1, 21 (1998) (Souter, J., concurring,

joined by O’Connor, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ.).

But those concerns do not apply where a plaintiff either (i) seeks wholly prospective relief against the future enforcement of the statute of conviction or

(ii) lacks access to habeas because he is not (or never

was) in custody. While a successful § 1983 claim in

those situations could possibly imply the invalidity of

a conviction or sentence, there is no collision between

§ 1983 and the habeas statute because habeas is not

available. Nevertheless barring a § 1983 claim in that

situation conflicts with the statute’s plain text, which

allows “any citizen” to seek redress for “the deprivation

of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the

Constitution and laws.” 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

3

Even so, the Fifth Circuit bars § 1983 claims in both

situations, preventing people like Mr. Olivier from vindicating or protecting their rights. That approach is

wrong and creates harmful consequences, as the petition explains. And while Mr. Olivier was not imprisoned as a result of his earlier conviction (and thus

never had access to habeas), the Fifth Circuit’s rule

has dire effects for people who are or were incarcerated. If someone is imprisoned for exercising his civil

rights in a way that he intends to repeat upon release,

the Fifth Circuit’s rule requires him to proceed all the

way through state and (potentially) federal habeas before he can secure a prospective injunction against future prosecution. And if his sentence is shorter than

the many years that process can take, he loses his

rights altogether.

What’s more, because Heck blocks a prisoner from

challenging not just his conviction but also his confinement, it bars § 1983 claims attacking prison disciplinary actions that result in longer sentences, including

through the loss of good-time credits. See Wolff v.

McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 554 (1974); Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 500 (1973). Against this backdrop,

the Fifth Circuit’s rule improperly prevents state prisoners from seeking prospective relief against ongoing

rights violations. E.g., Clarke v. Stalder, 154 F.3d 186

(5th Cir. 1998) (en banc) (holding that a prisoner could

not seek prospective relief under the First Amendment

against a prison rule he was disciplined for violating,

since success would necessarily imply the invalidity of

his loss of good-time credits).

The Court should grant review of both questions presented to restore the proper functioning of Congress’s

remedial scheme for all plaintiffs—including people

who were imprisoned under invalid statutes or who

face ongoing constitutional violations in prison.

4

ARGUMENT

I. Barring prospective relief unnecessarily insulates ongoing constitutional violations in

prison settings.

“Since 1871, when it was passed by Congress, § 1983

has stood as an independent safeguard against deprivations of federal constitutional and statutory rights.”

Smith v. Robinson, 468 U.S. 992, 1012 (1984). Thus,

the Court “do[es] not lightly conclude that Congress intended to preclude reliance on § 1983 as a remedy” for

federal rights violations. Id. In nevertheless blocking

purely prospective claims, the Fifth Circuit’s approach

extends Heck’s rule beyond its reasoning, denying remedies to people facing ongoing or future violations of

their constitutional rights, including current and former prisoners.

A. The Fifth Circuit’s rule prevents current

and former prisoners from seeking relief

from ongoing constitutional violations.

In at least two ways, the Fifth Circuit’s rule wrongly

prevents people—including those who are or have been

imprisoned—from securing relief against ongoing or

future violations of their rights.

First, as the petition explains, the Fifth Circuit’s rule

improperly prevents “any citizen,” 42 U.S.C. § 1983,

who has previously been convicted of violating a law

from seeking prospective relief against that law’s future enforcement. Pet. 17–23. That is true for people

who were never imprisoned, like Mr. Olivier. And it is

equally true for people who have been imprisoned for

violating unconstitutional laws. Just as a person who

receives a suspended sentence for violating an invalid

law should be able to seek relief against further punishment under that law—provided he can show he intends to violate the law again, see City of L.A. v. Lyons,

5

461 U.S. 95, 105–06 (1983)—a person who has actually

been incarcerated under an unconstitutional law

should be able to obtain the same protection. Indeed,

such a plaintiff is “the ideal person to challenge future

enforcement,” given the obvious “risk of future injury”

from repeat enforcement. App. 46a (Ho, J., dissenting).

Second, the Fifth Circuit’s rule equally blocks prospective relief against unconstitutional policies in prisons. The court’s ruling in Clarke, on which the decision below relied, App. 8a–10a, is a prime example.

The Clarke plaintiff was disciplined for violating a

prison rule that prohibited “threatening a prison employee with legal redress during a confrontation situation.” 154 F.3d at 188 (cleaned up). He was punished

with “the loss of ten days good-time credit” and a transfer “to a higher-security prison.” Id. He then brought

a § 1983 suit seeking damages, the restoration of his

good-time credits, and “prospective injunctive relief”

under the First Amendment against the rule’s future

enforcement against him. See id. The Fifth Circuit

panel rejected the retrospective-relief claims as Heckbarred, but reached the merits of the prospective-relief

claim, holding the prison rule facially unconstitutional.

Id. at 187.

The en banc Fifth Circuit, however, held that Heck

barred all these claims—including the injunctive-relief

claim. In the court’s view, “a facial declaration of the

unconstitutionality of” the prison’s rule “would ‘necessarily imply’ the invalidity of his loss of good-time credits”—meaning it “would ‘necessarily imply’ the invalidity of his punishment.” Id. at 189–90. In the Fifth

Circuit, even such prospective, “broad-based attacks”

on prison policies “must be pursued initially through

habeas corpus.” Id. at 190 (cleaned up) (quoting Serio

v. Members of La. State Bd. of Pardons, 821 F.2d 1112,

1119 (5th Cir. 1987)).

6

As the Clarke dissenters explained, by requiring resort to habeas even for purely prospective challenges

to prison policies, the Fifth Circuit’s rule requires “a

waste of judicial time and resources.” Id. at 194 (Garza,

J., dissenting). “It is not necessary for [a plaintiff] to

have a lower court conduct Habeas Corpus proceedings”

to adjudicate such prospective claims. Id. “At best,” a

successful prospective claim “could ‘possibly imply’ the

invalidity of” the underlying disciplinary action, which

is not enough to trigger Heck. Id. at 191. That follows

both from the distinction between retrospective and

prospective relief and from the fact that (as Heck itself

noted) various doctrines could prevent even a successful prospective-relief claim from implying that the

plaintiff was unlawfully punished. See id. at 195–96

(Dennis, J., dissenting); App. 50a (Oldham, J., dissenting).

And by requiring such wasteful and protracted habeas proceedings, the Fifth Circuit’s rule insulates unconstitutional prison policies from judicial review—either temporarily or permanently. At best, a habeas

challenge can take years to adjudicate, during which

the plaintiff remains subject to the unconstitutional

policy. And at worst, a merits resolution will never

come. If, for example, a habeas court determines that

the application of the challenged policy was irrelevant

to the ultimate discipline imposed—possibly because

there were other grounds for discipline—it need not resolve the issue at all. Cf. Clarke, 154 F.3d at 195–96

(Dennis, J., dissenting).

The Fifth Circuit’s approach also exacerbates a related issue. Because prison disciplinary proceedings

are treated as “convictions” under Heck to the extent

they result in the loss of good-time credits, courts often

apply Heck to reject § 1983 claims alleging excessive

7

force by prison guards if the prisoner’s allegations contradict the version of events accepted in the disciplinary proceedings. See Devi M. Rao, The Heck Bar

Gone Too Far: Heck’s Application to Prisoners’ Excessive Force Suits, 17 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev. 365, 373–76

(2023) (discussing Santos v. White, 18 F.4th 472 (5th

Cir. 2021)). By itself, that approach creates perverse

incentives by providing “a unique opportunity for

prison officials to forever insulate themselves from liability—and federal-court review—by simply falsifying a disciplinary report.” Id. at 377; see also Jan Ransom, In N.Y.C. Jail System, Guards Often Lie About

Excessive Force, N.Y. Times (Apr. 24, 2021),

https://shorturl.at/J4QAI (describing recurring instances of prison guards lying to investigators or filing

incomplete or inaccurate reports). Extending Heck to

bar purely prospective claims just worsens the problem: A prisoner who faces an ongoing pattern of excessive force and physical abuse cannot point to past incidents of abuse to secure injunctive relief under § 1983

if prison officials have punished him with lost goodtime credits based on guards’ falsified accounts of their

actions. And to make matters worse, the Fifth Circuit’s application of these rules in the prison-discipline

context is “byzantine and inadministrable.” Rao, supra, at 378–79.

For all these reasons, the Fifth Circuit’s approach

“subverts the federal courts’ role as arbiters of federal

rights.” Id. at 377.

B. Purely prospective relief does not interfere with habeas or retroactively invalidate past convictions.

The perverse results just described are not required

by Heck’s reasoning. In particular, barring prospective

relief is not necessary to avoid either (i) interfering

with habeas or (ii) invalidating prior convictions.

8

To start with the obvious, habeas is about seeking

relief from existing convictions—it allows “a person in

custody” to seek earlier or immediate release from confinement. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). Purely prospective relief, by contrast, is about “the future enforcement of a

law,” and “does not result in immediate or speedier release into the community or necessarily imply the invalidity of a prior conviction or sentence.” App. 47a

(Ho, J., dissenting) (cleaned up); id. at 50a (Oldham, J.,

dissenting); see Wilkinson v. Dotson, 544 U.S. 74, 82

(2005) (“[T]he prisoners’ claims for future relief (which,

if successful, will not necessarily imply the invalidity

of confinement or shorten its duration) are yet more

distant from [the] core [of habeas corpus].”). That is, a

suit seeking “wholly prospective [relief], to preclude

further prosecution under a statute alleged to violate

[the plaintiff’s] constitutional rights,” “is in no way ‘designed to annul the results of a state trial’” that produced a prior conviction under the challenged law.

Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705, 711–12 & n.9 (1977).

Nor does a forward-looking injunction to “prevent future official enforcement actions” necessarily invalidate a past conviction entered before the injunction

took effect. App. 50a (Oldham, J., dissenting). “Injunctions do not work backwards to invalidate official

actions taken in the past.” Id. “Ordinarily,” then, “a

prayer for such prospective relief will not ‘necessarily

imply’ the invalidity of a previous [conviction or] loss

of good-time credits, and so may properly be brought

under § 1983.” Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 641, 648

(1997); see, e.g., Wilkinson v. Dotson, 544 U.S. 74, 78

(2005) (the Heck bar did not apply because success in

the plaintiff’s claim would at most expedite the consideration of a new parole application, without guaranteeing immediate release or a reduced sentence); Skinner

9

v. Switzer, 562 U.S. 521, 525 (2011) (while the petitioner’s aim was to establish his innocence and achieve

release from custody, success in his § 1983 suit would

not necessarily result in release).

II. Applying Heck when habeas relief is not

available unnecessarily undermines current

and former prisoners’ civil rights.

The Court should also grant review of the second

question presented. By applying Heck even where habeas is not available, the Fifth Circuit further extends

the doctrine beyond its reasoning and prevents people

from vindicating their rights altogether.

“[T]he issue of whether Heck operates when habeas

is unavailable has become increasingly important.”

See Note, Defining the Reach of Heck v. Humphrey:

Should the Favorable Termination Rule Apply to Individuals Who Lack Access to Habeas Corpus?, 121 Harv.

L. Rev. 868, 875 (2008). Since the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996,

“[t]he combination of AEDPA’s habeas restrictions and

Heck’s bar on certain § 1983 claims may leave many

prisoners with valid but unremedied constitutional

claims.” Id. at 869. And this important issue has split

the lower courts; some circuits have “permitted a prisoner without access to habeas to pursue relief within

§ 1983’s broad scope,” while others—like the Fifth Circuit—hold that Heck “applies whenever a claim attacks the validity of an underlying conviction.” See id.

at 875–76; Pet. 28–30 (cataloging the current split).

The Fifth Circuit’s approach is wrong. Applying

Heck where habeas relief is not available is unnecessary to harmonize § 1983 with the habeas statute and

effectively denies any remedy for many constitutional

violations. Heck’s rule reflects Congress’s determination “that habeas corpus is the appropriate remedy for

10

state prisoners attacking the validity of the fact or

length of their confinement.” 512 U.S. at 482 (quoting

Preiser, 411 U.S. at 490). That rationale has no force

where a prisoner has been released, or where a person

(like Mr. Olivier) was never imprisoned to begin with.

Nor can a § 1983 suit have preclusive effect in habeas

proceedings where habeas is unavailable. Cf. id. at

488 & n.9.

Thus, “the interests that the Court felt were at stake

in Heck and Preiser”—“preventing an end-run around

the [habeas] exhaustion requirement and ensuring

that § 1983 does not serve as even an indirect basis for

undoing state criminal convictions”—“are not compromised in cases in which habeas relief is unavailable.”

Defining the Reach, supra, at 882. And “the state interests in denying remedies under § 1983 are simply

not so substantial as to deny access to the federal forum for inmates who are ineligible for habeas and who

seek relief for constitutional deprivations.” Id. at 888.

Unlike habeas claims, § 1983 claims “do not reduce the

certitude that the convicted criminal will serve the

sentence that the state has imposed upon him.” Id. at

886. Likewise, even a successful § 1983 claim “does

not result in the undoing of a criminal conviction.” Id.

at 887 (emphasis added). On the other hand, “when

Heck is invoked to bar claims by individuals who no

longer have access to habeas corpus, a curious remedial oddity results: less serious constitutional claims

remain cognizable in § 1983, while more serious constitutional claims—those that would necessarily imply

the invalidity of petitioner’s conviction—go unremedied entirely.” Id. at 889.

“The better view” of Heck, then, “is that a former

prisoner, no longer ‘in custody,’ may bring a § 1983 action establishing the unconstitutionality of a conviction or confinement without being bound to satisfy a

11

favorable-termination requirement that it would be

impossible as a matter of law for him to satisfy.” Spencer, 523 U.S. at 20–21 (Souter, J., concurring).

CONCLUSION

For the reasons above and in the petition, the Court

should grant the petition.

Respectfully submitted,

JEFFREY T. GREEN

DANIELLE HAMILTON

THE CARTER G. PHILLIPS/

SIDLEY AUSTIN LLP

SUPREME COURT CLINIC

NORTHWESTERN PRITZKER

SCHOOL OF LAW

375 East Chicago Avenue

Chicago, IL 60611

TOBIAS S. LOSS-EATON

Counsel of Record

SIDLEY AUSTIN LLP

1501 K Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20005

(202) 736-8000

tlosseaton@sidley.com

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

April 17, 2025