By Bijah LaFollette
In Taylor v. Rojas, 592 U.S. __ (2020), the U.S. Supreme Court, overruling the Fifth Circuit, decided that prison officers did not qualify for ‘qualified immunity’ and thus could be sued for civil damages. The circumstances of Trent Taylor’s imprisonment and the violation of his basic civil rights were so egregious that an overwhelming majority of justices felt compelled to overrule a lower court’s decision. More, importantly, however, Taylor may be the first step in dismantling the doctrine of “qualified immunity,” which has allowed some law enforcement officials to abuse the privileges of their positions without civil penalty.
Qualified immunity is a judge-created principle that grants government officials performing discretionary functions immunity from civil suits. The doctrine was first established in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982). In that case, a whistleblower sued government officials, alleging that he had been fired in retaliation for disclosing cost overruns and technical problems on a government contract. In an 8-1 decision, the Court held that the government officials were entitled to “qualified immunity,” reasoning that “officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”[i]
Although Harlow involved contracting officials, the Court adopted its reasoning in Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635 (1987) to apply qualified immunity to law enforcement officials. In Anderson, a police officer was investigating a bank robbery. The officer searched the home of a suspect without reasonable cause and without a warrant, thus violating the property owner’s Fourth Amendment rights. The property owner sued the police officer, but the court determined that the officer had qualified immunity because he was “acting in good faith.”[ii] The court effectively held that intent (or a subjective judgment of ‘good faith’) overrode the Constitution. Anderson was the “bridge” that allowed the doctrine of qualified immunity to leapfrog from government contracts to law enforcement.
Taylor is a critical departure from these precedents. The background of Taylor is appalling. The opening paragraph of the Court’s opinion evocatively summarizes the case:
Petitioner Trent Taylor is an inmate in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Taylor alleges that for six full days in September 2013, correctional officers confined him in a pair of shockingly unsanitary cells. The first cell was covered, nearly floor to ceiling, in “‘massive amounts’ of feces”: all over the floor, the ceiling, the window, the walls, and even “‘packed inside the water faucet’” (Taylor vs Stevens, 946 F. 3d 211, 218 (CA5 2019)) Fearing that his food and water would be contaminated, Taylor did not eat or drink for nearly four days. Correctional officers then moved Taylor to a second, cold cell, equipped with only a clogged drain in the floor to dispose of bodily wastes.
Taylor’s constitutional rights were brazenly violated. Taylor was forced to spend six days naked in a cell that contained feces from previous occupants and overflowing sewage, which clearly violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. What’s more, he was being held indefinitely with no trial scheduled in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. Deprived of due process and forced to live in unsanitary conditions, the treatment of Taylor was clearly unconstitutional.
But the Fifth Circuit, which has a history of applying qualified immunity broadly,[iii] held that the law enforcement officials could not be civilly liable because it was not “clearly established” that their conduct violated Taylor’s constitutional rights. Essentially, the Fifth Circuit opined that spending six days naked in a frigid cell is not long enough to qualify as cruel and unusual punishment. The lower court emphasized that, “Taylor stayed in his extremely dirty cells for only six days. Though the law was clear that prisoners couldn’t be housed in cells teeming with human waste for months on end, we hadn’t previously held that a time period so short violated the Constitution.”[iv] This is outrageous. Even an hour in the conditions in which Taylor was imprisoned constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The cell was unhealthy and hazardous. Due to the wretched, unsanitary conditions, Taylor could not eat for over three days. In fact, the conditions in his cell likely bordered on torture and violated several international treaties to which the United States is a chief signatory.[v]
As the Supreme Court noted in its near unanimous opinion, no reasonable law enforcement officer could have concluded that Taylor’s treatment was constitutional:
Qualified immunity shields an officer from suit when she makes a decision that, even if constitutionally deficient, reasonably misapprehends the law governing the circumstances she confronted. 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 of Appeals did not identify any emergency or other need for the prison officials to hold Taylor in these conditions, and the record in the case suggests that at least some of the officials were well aware of – but ignored – them.[vi]
Even if the prison officers identified an emergency reason to house Taylor in those conditions, it would have still violated his Eighth Amendment rights. Anyone cognizant of the subhuman conditions of Taylor’s imprisonment could recognize his undue suffering and should be held responsible. The Supreme Court has long-held that “deliberate indifference” of a prisoner’s conditions violates the Eighth Amendment.[vii] In Taylor’s case, not only were prison guards “deliberately indifferent,” but they were arguably “intentionally malicious.” They forced Taylor to remove all of his clothing in deplorable conditions with no bed and in the freezing cold. The “unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.”[viii] Instructing Taylor to remove his clothes under the conditions in his cell arguably constituted wanton infliction of pain.
A completely unaccountable law enforcement agency that can imprison an un-convicted American citizen indefinitely under egregious circumstances is unconstitutional and offensive to the principles of American law. The law enforcement officials responsible for the conditions of Taylor’s imprisonment should not be free from civil liability for behavior that disregarded the Constitution and human decency.
While the Taylor decision is a positive development, it does not solve the problem other Supreme Court decisions have created with qualified immunity. There is no statute that explicitly establishes the doctrine of qualified immunity, or even implies it. Rather, qualified immunity is a judicial doctrine established by nine unelected justices. The doctrine has been misapplied to protect law enforcement officials from bearing the consequences of their actions. The Supreme Court should further clarify the concept of qualified immunity, particularly in cases where law enforcement is concerned.
Ultimately, Taylor has important societal implications. It is very difficult to criminally prosecute law enforcement officials who violate the law while performing their duties. The application of civil penalties—and the threat of personal bankruptcy—may mitigate the free rein and impunity that certain law enforcement officials have exhibited. And it may serve as a deterrent to behavior that we have too frequently witnessed in recent years.
[i] Id. At 818.
[ii] In Creighton, the Supreme Court held that, “[a] Petitioner is entitled to summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds if he can establish as a matter of law that a reasonable officer could have believed that the search comported with the Fourth Amendment, even though it actually did not. Whether an official protected by qualified immunity may be held personally liable for an allegedly unlawful official action generally turns on the “objective legal reasonableness” of the action, assessed in light of the legal rules that were “clearly established” at the time the action was taken.”
[iii] See e.g., Collie v. Barron, No. 17-10935 (5th Cir. 2018) (holding that a police officer who shot an unarmed man in the back was entitled to qualified immunity). According to the ABA Journal, the Fifth Circuit had granted qualified immunity to law enforcement officials in 64% of cases.
[iv] 946 F.3d at 222
[v] Section 31A Geneva Convention (1948) Practice Relating to Rule 90. Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
[vi] Taylor at *2.
[vii] See Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976).
[viii] See Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651 (1977).
