Trial News

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a cert petition and reversed summary judgment on the same day in a case involving 42 U.S.C. §1983 allegations, remanding the case to the Fifth Circuit. Calling the facts of the case “particularly egregious,” the Court ruled that the defendant correctional officers were not entitled to qualified immunity because “any reasonable officer” should have known that the deplorable conditions the plaintiff was subjected to were unconstitutional. (Taylor v. Riojas, 2020 WL 6385693 (U.S. Nov. 2, 2020).)

Trent Taylor was held in a Texas prison for six days in horrible conditions. While suffering from a mental health issue, Taylor was placed in a cell in the prison’s psychiatric unit, which was covered in human waste. He did not eat or drink for almost four days because he was afraid of contamination from his surroundings. He was finally moved to another cell, which had only a drain in the floor to dispose of human waste—and it was clogged. When Taylor could no longer hold his bladder and relieved himself, the drain overflowed and caused sewage to flood onto the floor of the cell. Taylor had to sleep in the sewage because the cell had no bed.

The Fifth Circuit held that the conditions Taylor was forced to endure violated the Eighth Amendment, but it also granted qualified immunity to the correctional officers involved because they did not have “fair warning” of the unconstitutional nature of their actions. The qualified immunity doctrine requires that a constitutional violation be “clearly established” for a public or law enforcement officer to be held liable.

In a per curiam opinion, the Court held that “no reasonable correctional officer could have concluded that, under the extreme circumstances of this case, it was constitutionally permissible to house Taylor in such deplorably unsanitary conditions for such an extended period of time.”

The Court noted that nothing was in the record to justify the officers’ actions—no evidence existed to show that the cells’ conditions could not be mitigated or that Taylor had to be placed there. Instead, there was evidence that at least some of the officers were “deliberately indifferent” to Taylor’s situation. Justice Samuel Alito concurred in the opinion, and Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. Justice Amy Coney Barrett took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

AAJ signed on to a joint amicus brief with a coalition of ideologically diverse groups in support of the cert petition, including Physicians for Human Rights, which was represented by Dallas attorney and AAJ member Gerson Smoger.

Multiple cert petitions challenging the judicially created doctrine of qualified immunity have been before the Court recently, with most being denied, as Trial News previously reported. (For more, see SCOTUS Punts on Qualified Immunity in Trial’s September issue.) AAJ has filed or signed on to six amicus briefs in the last two years alone in support of cert petitions urging the Court to narrow or overturn the doctrine—including in Torres v. Madrid, an excessive force case the Court agreed to hear this term that asks the justices to address the contours of the Fourth Amendment and what constitutes a “seizure.” Oral arguments in the case were heard last month.

Chicago attorney Antonio Romanucci, who handles police misconduct and excessive force cases, said, “The Taylor v. Riojas case gives the civil rights victim and the bar hope that the Supreme Court will pull back on its draconian interpretations of qualified immunity. It shocks the conscience that a colorable claim could be made that prison officials had qualified immunity where the conditions were so vile and disgusting that members of the Court determined—without the question being in front of them—that qualified immunity should not have been granted. . . . The fact that there was unanimity on these deplorable conditions giving notice that this degradation of human and civil rights does not immunize a prison official is a moment we have been waiting for. The fact that the Court denied certiorari on no less than eight cases last term signals that it may be time to revisit the issue and clarify what makes a reasonable police officer and what satisfies notice on established law.”