Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-08-15969/USCOURTS-ca9-08-15969-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

J. TONY SERRA; JEANINE SANTIAGO; 

VICTOR J. CORDERO, and all others

similarly situated,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

No. 08-15969 v.

D.C. No. HARLEY LAPPIN, Director of the  3:07-CV-01589-MJJ Bureau of Prisons; B. G. COMPTON,

Warden of Lompoc Prison; OPINION

ROBERT F. MCFADDEN, head of the

Western Regional Office of the

Bureau of Prisons,

Defendants-Appellees. 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of California

Martin J. Jenkins, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted January 14, 2010*

San Francisco, California

Filed April 9, 2010

Before: Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, J. Clifford Wallace and

Richard R. Clifton, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Clifton

*The panel unanimously finds this case suitable for decision without

oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). Plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration of our order submitting the case on the briefs is denied. 

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COUNSEL

John Murcko and William M. Simpich, Oakland, California,

and Stephen Perelson, Mill Valley, California, for the

plaintiffs-appellants.

Gregory G. Katsas, Assistant Attorney General, Joseph P.

Russoniello, United States Attorney, Michael S. Raab, and

Alexander K. Haas, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Washington, D.C., for the defendants-appellees.

OPINION

CLIFTON, Circuit Judge:

Current and former federal prisoners allege that the low

wages they were paid for work performed in prison violated

their rights under the Fifth Amendment and various sources

of international law. Plaintiffs sued officials of the Bureau of

Prisons for damages and injunctive and declaratory relief. We

conclude that prisoners have no enforceable right to be paid

for their work under the Constitution or international law, and

we affirm the district court’s dismissal of the action.

I. Background

Plaintiffs Tony Serra, Jeanine Santiago, and Victor Cordero

are current and former inmates of federal prisons in California, who were sentenced to terms of incarceration after being

convicted of federal crimes.1 While serving their sentences,

they worked under the auspices of either Federal Prison

Industries, a wholly owned government corporation known by

the trade name UNICOR, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 4121-29; 31

U.S.C. § 9101(3)(E), or the Inmate Work and Performance

1Plaintiffs sought to represent a class of similarly situated inmateworkers, but their case was dismissed before any class was certified. 

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Pay Program, see 18 U.S.C. § 4125. Federal Prison Industries

is authorized to pay its inmate-workers wages set by its Board

of Directors pursuant to a delegation of authority from the

Attorney General. See 18 U.S.C. § 4126(c)(4); 28 C.F.R.

§ 345.10. Under the Inmate Work and Performance Pay Program, wages are determined according to regulations promulgated by the Bureau of Prisons under the authority of the

Attorney General. See 18 U.S.C. § 4125(d); 28 C.F.R.

§ 545.26.

Plaintiffs earned between $19.00 and $145.00 per month at

rates as low as nineteen cents per hour. Plaintiffs contend that

by paying them such low wages, Defendants Harley Lappin,

Director of the Bureau of Prisons; B.G. Compton, Warden of

Lompoc Prison; and Robert McFadden, Director of the Western Regional Office of the Bureau of Prisons, violated Plaintiffs’ rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States

Constitution; articles 7 through 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”), Dec. 16, 1966,

999 U.N.T.S. 171; a U.N. document entitled “Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners;”

2

 and the law of

nations.3

The district court granted Defendants’ motion to dismiss

the action in its entirety and denied Plaintiffs’ motion for

leave to amend their complaint to name Defendants in their

individual capacities and to state a cause of action under the

Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b).

2This appears to be the document that Plaintiffs persist in calling the

United Nations Covenant on Prisoner Rights, ignoring the district court’s

observation that no such document exists.

3Plaintiffs also sued under the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, et seq., and

alleged a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. We do not examine the

Sherman Act claim because Plaintiffs withdrew that claim before the district court. Plaintiffs also appear not to have appealed the district court’s

decision that the Thirteenth Amendment does not prohibit low wages for

prison work. 

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II. Discussion

We review de novo a dismissal for failure to state a claim

and for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, and we review a

denial of leave to amend for abuse of discretion. Papa v.

United States, 281 F.3d 1004, 1008-09 (9th Cir. 2002). We

conclude that neither the Fifth Amendment nor international

law grants Plaintiffs a judicially enforceable right to any level

of compensation for work performed in prison. We also conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in

denying Plaintiffs’ request for leave to amend.

A. Due Process

Plaintiffs allege that Defendants violated their due process

rights under the Fifth Amendment by denying them fair

wages. This claim fails because prisoners do not have a legal

entitlement to payment for their work, and the Due Process

Clause protects only against deprivation of existing interests

in life, liberty, or property. See Stanley v. Gonzales, 476 F.3d

653, 660 (9th Cir. 2007) (“To assert a procedural due process

claim under the Fifth Amendment, [a plaintiff] must first

establish a constitutionally protected interest. [The plaintiff]

must have more than a unilateral expectation of it; instead,

she must have a legitimate claim of entitlement.” (citing

Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564,

569-70, 577 (1972))). 

[1] The Constitution does not provide prisoners any substantive entitlement to compensation for their labor. See Piatt

v. MacDougall, 773 F.2d 1032, 1035 (9th Cir. 1985) (holding

that the state does not deprive a prisoner of a constitutionally

protected liberty interest by forcing him to work without pay).

Although the Constitution includes, in the Thirteenth Amendment, a general prohibition against involuntary servitude, it

expressly excepts from that general prohibition forced labor

“as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been

duly convicted.” U.S. Const. amend. XIII, § 1; see Piatt, 773

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F.2d at 1035 (“The Thirteenth Amendment does not prohibit

involuntary servitude as part of imprisonment for a crime.”).

[2] Plaintiffs do not challenge their underlying convictions

or allege that their sentences were cruel and unusual. A prisoner has no basis for asserting a violation of due process simply because he is made or allowed to work for low pay as

punishment for a crime of which he was lawfully convicted.

See Draper v. Rhay, 315 F.2d 193, 197 (9th Cir. 1963)

(“Where a person is duly tried, convicted, sentenced and

imprisoned for crime in accordance with law, no issue of

peonage or involuntary servitude arises.”).

[3] Nor do Plaintiffs claim that they were paid less than the

applicable regulations require.4If, without due process, they

were deprived of pay to which they were entitled under the

regulations, Plaintiffs might have a colorable claim. See

Vance v. Barrett, 345 F.3d 1083, 1091 (9th Cir. 2003) (concluding that due process was violated when a prisoner’s future

employment was conditioned on his giving up “his statutory

right to accrued net interest”). Here Plaintiffs have no constitutionally protected property interest because they lack a statutory or otherwise established right to the higher wages they

demand.

B. International Law

Plaintiffs also cite sources of international law as a basis for

the right they assert to higher wages for work performed in

prison. The individual documents that Plaintiffs cite, however,

do not confer judicially enforceable rights, and Plaintiffs are

unable to bring a claim under the law of nations.

4

See generally 28 C.F.R. § 345.10 (providing that UNICOR payrates are

set “at the discretion of Federal Prison Industries” while noting that

“[t]here is no statutory requirement that inmates be paid for work”), id.

§ 545.20(b) (providing that the Warden “may . . . grant[ ] performance

pay”), id. § 545.26 (setting the approximate percentage of Performance

Pay Program work assignments allotted to each of four pay grades). 

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[4] Plaintiffs fail to state a viable claim under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. “For any treaty

to be susceptible to judicial enforcement it must both confer

individual rights and be self-executing.” Cornejo v. County of

San Diego, 504 F.3d 853, 856 (9th Cir. 2007). A treaty is selfexecuting when it is automatically enforceable in domestic

courts without implementing legislation. See Medellin v.

Texas, 552 U.S. 491, 504-05 & n.2 (2008); Khan v. Holder,

584 F.3d 773, 783 (9th Cir. 2009). The ICCPR fails to satisfy

either requirement because it was ratified “on the express

understanding that it was not self-executing and so did not

itself create obligations enforceable in the federal courts.”

Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 735 (2004).5

[5] The Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of

Prisoners (“Standard Minimum Rules”)6 similarly fail as a

source of justiciable rights. This document was adopted by the

First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and

the Treatment of Offenders in 1955 “to set out what is generally accepted as being good principle and practice in the treatment of prisoners and the management of institutions.”

Standard Minimum Rules ¶ 1. It is not a treaty, and it is not

binding on the United States. Even if it were a self-executing

treaty, the document does not purport to serve as a source of

private rights. The “Rules” themselves acknowledge that they

are not all “capable of application in all places and at all

times,” id. ¶ 2, and are “not intended to preclude experiment,”

id. ¶ 3. Moreover, the specific rule identified by Plaintiffs as

a source of rights declares only that “[t]here shall be a system

of equitable remuneration of the work of prisoners” without

specifying what wages would qualify. Id. ¶ 76(1).

5The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Plaintiffs mention

in passing, suffers from the same problem as a source of justiciable rights.

See Sosa, 542 U.S. at 734-35. 

6United Nations, Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (1955), available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/

3ae6b36e8.html (last checked Feb. 12, 2010). The document was

approved by the U.N. Economic and Social Council in 1977. 

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[6] Finally, Plaintiffs assert that “the customs and usages”

of the nations of the world, as revealed in these and other

sources, form customary international law entitling them to

higher wages. This claim fails because customary international law is not a source of judicially enforceable private

rights in the absence of a statute conferring jurisdiction over

such claims. See Princz v. Federal Republic of Germany, 26

F.3d 1166, 1174 n.1 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (“While it is true that

‘international law is part of our law,’ it is also our law that a

federal court is not competent to hear a claim arising under

international law absent a statute granting such jurisdiction.”

(citation omitted)); see also Sosa, 542 U.S. at 720

(“ ‘[O]ffences against this law of nations are principally incident to whole states or nations,’ and not individuals seeking

relief in court.” (quoting Blackstone, 4 Commentaries 68)

(alteration omitted)). Plaintiffs can point to no statute that

brings their claim within our purview. 

[7] The Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”), 28 U.S.C. § 1350, is

the only possible vehicle for a claim like Plaintiffs’ because

no other statute recognizes a general cause of action under the

law of nations.7 The ATS grants to the district courts “original

jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only,

committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the

United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 1350. We need not decide

whether Plaintiffs’ proposed minimum wage for prison labor

“rest[s] on a norm of international character accepted by the

civilized world and defined with a specificity comparable to

7

See Sosa, 542 U.S. at 731 n.19 (resisting the implication “that every

grant of jurisdiction to a federal court carries with it an opportunity to

develop common law” and distinguishing the ATS’s unique invitation to

entertain “common law claims derived from the law of nations” from the

strictures of § 1331 federal-question jurisdiction). If any plaintiff could

bring any claim alleging a violation of the law of nations under federalquestion jurisdiction, there would be no need for statutes such as the ATS

and the Torture Victim Protection Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, note, which recognize or create limited causes of action for particular classes of plaintiffs

(aliens) or particular violations (torture). 

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the features of [Blackstone’s] 18th-century paradigms,” Sosa,

542 U.S. at 725, because Plaintiffs have conceded that they

are not aliens. The scope of the ATS is limited to suits “by an

alien.” 28 U.S.C. § 1350; see In re Estate of Marcos Human

Rights Litig., 978 F.2d 493, 499 (9th Cir. 1992) (“[The ATS]

requires a claim by an alien . . . .”). The ATS admits no cause

of action by non-aliens. See Yousuf v. Samantar, 552 F.3d

371, 375 n.1 (4th Cir. 2009) (“To the extent that any of the

claims under the ATS are being asserted by plaintiffs who are

American citizens, federal subject-matter jurisdiction may be

lacking.”).

We have allowed ourselves a few sidelong glances at the

law of nations in non-ATS cases by applying the canon of

statutory construction that “[w]here fairly possible, a United

States statute is to be construed as not to conflict with international law or with an international agreement with the U.S.”

Munoz v. Ashcroft, 339 F.3d 950, 958 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting

Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law § 114 (1987)).

The canon is derived from Chief Justice Marshall’s statement

that 

an act of Congress ought never to be construed to

violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains, and consequently can never be

construed to violate neutral rights, or to affect neutral commerce, further than is warranted by the law

of nations as understood in this country.

Murray v. The Schooner Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch)

64, 118 (1804). The Charming Betsy canon is not an inviolable rule of general application, but a principle of interpretation

that bears on a limited range of cases. Mindful that “Congress

has the power to legislate beyond the limits posed by international law,” Cabrera-Alvarez v. Gonzales, 423 F.3d 1006,

1009 (9th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted), we

do not review federal law for adherence to the law of nations

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utes for adherence to the Constitution.8

 We invoke the Charming Betsy canon only where conformity with the law of

nations is relevant to considerations of international comity,

see Arc Ecology v. United States Dep’t of the Air Force, 411

F.3d 1092, 1102-03 (9th Cir. 2005), and only “where it is possible to do so without distorting the statute.” Cabrera-Alvarez,

423 F.3d at 1010 (quoting Munoz, 339 F.3d at 958). We

decline to determine whether Plaintiffs’ rates of pay were in

violation of the law of nations because this case meets neither

condition for applying the canon.

[8] First, the purpose of the Charming Betsy canon is to

avoid the negative “foreign policy implications” of violating

the law of nations, Weinberger v. Rossi, 456 U.S. 25, 32 (1982),9

and Plaintiffs have offered no reason to believe that their low

wages are likely to “embroil[ ] the nation in a foreign policy

dispute.” Arc Ecology, 411 F.3d at 1102; United States v.

Corey, 232 F.3d 1166, 1169 (9th Cir. 2000). That the courts

should ever invoke the Charming Betsy canon in favor of

United States citizens is doubtful, because a violation of the

law of nations as against a United States citizen is unlikely to

bring about the international discord that the canon guards

against.10 In The Charming Betsy, the status of the ship’s

8Compare Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 178 (1803)

(holding that “the Constitution, and not [an] ordinary act, must govern the

case to which they both apply”), with The Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. at 118

(avoiding an interpretation that conflicts with the laws of nations only “if

any other possible construction remains”). 

9

See also Kim Ho Ma v. Ashcroft, 257 F.3d 1095, 1114 (9th Cir. 2001)

(“[W]e adhere to this principle ‘out of respect for other nations.’ ”) (quoting United States v. Thomas, 893 F.2d 1066, 1069 (9th Cir. 1990)). 

10Cf. Arc Ecology, 411 F.3d at 1102 (“The concerns that underlie the

canon are ‘obviously much less serious where the interpretation arguably

violating international law is urged upon the court by the Executive

Branch of our government.’ When the Executive Branch is the party

advancing a construction of a statute with potential foreign policy implications, we presume that ‘the President has evaluated the foreign policy consequences of such an exercise of U.S. law and determined that it serves

the interests of the United States.’ ” (quoting United States v. Corey, 232

F.3d 1166, 1179 (9th Cir. 2000) (citation and alteration omitted))). 

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owner as a Danish subject, and thus a neutral in the conflict

between the United States and France, was critical to the

Court’s conclusion that the Non-Intercourse Act of 1800

should not be interpreted to permit the seizure and sale of his

ship. 6 U.S. at 120. We have never employed the Charming

Betsy canon in a case involving exclusively domestic parties

and domestic acts,11 nor has the Supreme Court.12 As a general

rule, domestic parties must rely on domestic law when they

sue each other over domestic injuries in federal court. We

need not consider whether the statutory and regulatory regime

of federal inmate compensation conflicts with the law of

nations because Plaintiffs, as United States citizens and residents, have not demonstrated that their low wages have any

possible ramifications for this country’s foreign affairs.

[9] Second, “[t]he Charming Betsy canon comes into play

only where Congress’s intent is ambiguous,” United States v.

Yousef, 327 F.3d 56, 92 (2d Cir. 2003), and there is nothing

ambiguous about the complete discretion that Congress vested

in the Attorney General with regard to inmate pay.13 Congress

is not constrained by international law as it is by the Constitution. See United States v. Aguilar, 883 F.2d 662, 679 (9th Cir.

11Cf. United States v. Clark, 435 F.3d 1100, 1106-07 (9th Cir. 2006)

(applying the presumption “that Congress does not intend to violate principles of international law” to support extraterritorial jurisdiction over a

United States citizen convicted of committing a crime in a foreign country). 

12Cf. Weinberger, 456 U.S. at 32 (1982) (applying the Charming Betsy

canon against United States citizen plaintiffs who had been employed on

military bases abroad because their proposed interpretation of the relevant

statute would have effectively repudiated Executive Agreements promising preferential hiring of local nationals). 

13See 18 U.S.C. § 4125(d) (“[T]he Attorney General is authorized to

provide for the payment to the inmates or their dependents such pecuniary

earnings as he may deem proper, under such rules and regulations as he

may prescribe.”); id. § 4126(c) (“[Federal Prison Industries] is authorized

to employ the fund, and any earnings that may accrue to the corporation

. . . in paying, under rules and regulations promulgated by the Attorney

General, compensation to inmates employed in any industry.”). 

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1989) (“In enacting statutes, Congress is not bound by international law; if it chooses to do so, it may legislate contrary

to the limits posed by international law.” (alterations and quotation marks omitted)), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 1046 (1991). As

a result, “we are bound by a properly enacted statute, provided it be constitutional, even if that statute violates international law.” Alvarez-Mendez v. Stock, 941 F.2d 956, 963 (9th

Cir. 1991). Because the statutes giving the Attorney General

discretion over prisoner pay grades are unambiguous, there is

no reason for this court to decide whether they accord with

the law of nations. Thus, the district court did not err in dismissing Plaintiffs’ complaint.

C. Amendment of Complaint

Plaintiffs argue that they have a right to amend their complaint to sue the defendants in their individual capacities and

to assert a claim under the FTCA. The power to grant leave

to amend, however, is entrusted to the discretion of the district

court, which “determines the propriety of a motion to amend

by ascertaining the presence of any of four factors: bad faith,

undue delay, prejudice to the opposing party, and/or futility.”

William O. Gilley Enters. v. Atl. Richfield Co., 588 F.3d 659,

669 n.8 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Griggs v. Pace Am. Group,

Inc., 170 F.3d 877, 880 (9th Cir. 1999)). The district court did

not abuse its discretion by denying Plaintiffs’ motion for

leave to amend, because their proposed amendments would

have been futile.

Plaintiffs could not prevail against the prison officials in

their individual capacities in a Bivens action for money damages based on the alleged inadequacy of the prisoners’ earnings. Cf. Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed.

Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971) (identifying an

implied cause of action against individual federal officers for

violation of plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights). To state a

claim for relief under Bivens, a plaintiff must allege that a federal officer deprived him of his constitutional rights. See

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Shwarz v. United States, 234 F.3d 428, 432 (9th Cir. 2000).

Here, Plaintiffs have failed to identify a constitutional violation because prisoners have no legal right to be paid for their

work.

[10] Nor could Plaintiffs prevail on a false imprisonment

claim under the FTCA, given their failure to prove or even

assert that they were confined without legal authority. See

Blankenhorn v. City of Orange, 485 F.3d 463, 486 n.15 (9th

Cir. 2007) (“False imprisonment is the nonconsensual, intentional confinement of a person, without lawful privilege, for

an appreciable length of time, however short.” (emphasis

added and internal quotation marks omitted)). Amending the

complaint to name Defendants in their individual capacities

and to state a claim under the FTCA would therefore have

been futile, and the district court did not abuse its discretion

in denying leave to amend.

III. Conclusion

[11] Plaintiffs have stated no constitutional claim upon

which relief can be granted and no international law claim

over which federal courts have jurisdiction. Plaintiffs’ proposed amendments could have fared no better. The action was

properly dismissed without leave to amend.

AFFIRMED.

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