THE HONORABLE HAROLD D. VIETOR, United States District Judge for 1

the Southern District of Iowa.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

Nos. 96-3876 and 97-1529

___________

Henry E. Parrish; Yvonne L. Parrish, *

*

Plaintiffs - Appellants, *

* Appeals from the United States

v. * District Court for the

* Southern District of Iowa

Donald Mallinger; Richard Larkin; *

Crispus Nix, *

*

Defendants - Appellees. *

___________

Submitted: September 12, 1997

Filed: January 7, 1998

___________

Before FAGG, WOLLMAN, and LOKEN, Circuit Judges.

___________

LOKEN, Circuit Judge.

Iowa inmate Henry Parrish and his wife Yvonne brought this damage action

under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against three prison officials for seizing funds that came into

Parrish’s inmate account to satisfy his obligations under the Iowa Victim Restitution

Act, Iowa Code ch. 910. The district court initially granted summary judgment to one 1

defendant, Richard Larkin, but granted Henry Parrish partial summary judgment against
The Victim Restitution Act has been significantly amended since the April 1991 2

events in question. See generally Mahers v. Halford, 76 F.3d 951, 952-54 (8th Cir.

1996), cert. denied, 117 S. Ct. 696 (1997). Unless otherwise noted, references in this

opinion will be to statutes in effect in April 1991.

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the other two, Crispus Nix and Donald Mallinger, concluding they had violated

Parrish’s due process rights and were not entitled to qualified immunity. Nix and

Mallinger appealed the qualified immunity ruling, and we remanded for further

consideration in light of two intervening decisions of the Supreme Court of Iowa,

Walters v. Grossheim, 525 N.W.2d 830 (Iowa 1994), and State v. Van Hoff, 528

N.W.2d 99 (Iowa 1995). On remand, the district court granted Nix and Mallinger

qualified immunity on Henry’s claims, and dismissed Yvonne’s claims when she failed

to respond to defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The Parrishes appeal. After

reviewing the grant of summary judgment de novo, see Get Away Club, Inc. v.

Coleman, 969 F.2d 664, 666 (8th Cir. 1992), we affirm.

Iowa requires nearly all convicted offenders to pay restitution to crime victims

and the State. See Iowa Code § 910.2 (1990). The sentencing court determines the 2

amount of restitution, the persons to whom it must be paid, and any public service that

must be performed as restitution. See § 910.3. An offender committed to prison “shall

make restitution while placed at that facility.” § 910.5(1). The Department of

Corrections must establish a restitution payment plan, taking into account the offender’s

income, family circumstances, and other individualized factors. See §§ 910.4, 910.5(1).

Prison officials may deduct up to fifty percent of an inmate’s prison earnings and

allowances for restitution payments. See Iowa Admin. Code § 201-20.11(7) (1991).

Restitution may also be deducted “from a credit to an inmate’s account from an outside

source by written authorization from the inmate, approval from the

warden/superintendent, or by court order.” Iowa Admin. Code § 201-20.11(10). An

inmate may at any time petition the sentencing court “on any matter related to the plan

of restitution or restitution plan of payment.” § 910.7; see State v. Van Hoff, 415

N.W.2d 647, 649 (Iowa 1988).
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Prior to April 1991, the Iowa State Penitentiary, where Henry Parrish was

incarcerated, published to inmates a Policy & Procedure Statement adopting the abovereferenced restitution payment standards. On April 12, 1991, the Linn County District

Court issued three restitution orders establishing Parrish’s total restitution obligation at

$1106.97. Later that month, Parrish received $650 from his mother. Parrish deposited

the money in his inmate account and requested that $456 be paid to his wife. On April

23, Warden Nix approved Parrish’s restitution payment plan, which provided that

“[p]ayments will consist of 20 percent of my institutional allowance.” Also on April 23,

Warden Nix approved a staff recommendation that the $650 from Parrish’s mother be

applied to his restitution obligation. On April 25, the prison issued a $456 check to

Yvonne Parrish. The next day, Mallinger, the prison Business Manager, learned that

Warden Nix had previously approved applying the entire $650 against Parrish’s

restitution debt. Mallinger directed a subordinate to contact the payor bank and stop

payment on the $456 check. Yvonne had already cashed the check, but she returned

the money when the bank threatened criminal prosecution. Parrish later received two

more checks from his mother totaling $70. 

 

The Parrishes then commenced this action, alleging that defendants “confiscate[d]

Plaintiff Henry’s monies . . . in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment,” and seeking $570,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. Their

damage claims center on a nervous breakdown, loss of employment, and involuntary

mental health commitment that Yvonne Parrish allegedly suffered as a result of this

episode. Defendants have held the $720 from Parrish’s mother in a special account

pending the outcome of this litigation. 

Defendants concede, as they must, that Parrish has a property interest in the

money his mother sent him that is protected by the Due Process Clause of the

Fourteenth Amendment. See Mahers v. Halford, 76 F.3d at 954. But the Due Process

Clause will support many types of § 1983 claims. See Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S.

113, 125-26 (1990). Although his brief ignores the distinction, it is apparent that Henry
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Parrish presents two very different due process claims. The first is a substantive attack

on defendants’ authority to take money that came into his inmate account from a source

outside the prison and apply that money to satisfy his admittedly valid restitution debt.

The second is a procedural attack, alleging that more process was due before the money

could be taken and applied in this fashion. The two claims are analytically distinct.

Accordingly, we discuss each in turn.

A. In arguing that Warden Nix lacked substantive authority to take his money,

Parrish relies on our decision in Sell v. Parratt, 548 F.2d 753 (8th Cir.), cert. denied,

434 U.S. 873 (1977). In Sell, two inmates possessed cash in violation of prison

regulations. Prison officials confiscated the cash and paid it into an Inmates Welfare

Fund for the benefit of all inmates. Though the confiscation was proper under the prison

policy prohibiting inmates from possessing cash, we held that the inmates’ due process

rights were violated when they were permanently deprived of the cash because “an

administrative agency has no right without underlying statutory authority to prescribe

and enforce forfeitures of property as punitive measures for violations of administrative

rules and regulations.” 548 F.2d at 759 (emphasis added). 

Relying on Sell, the district court initially granted partial summary judgment in

Parrish’s favor on the ground that neither the Iowa Victim Restitution Act nor § 201-

20.11(10) of the Iowa Administrative Code permitted this taking of an inmate’s money

from an outside source. In Walters and Van Hoff, the Iowa Supreme Court

subsequently decided that the statutes do authorize such action. Thus, we remanded

because these decisions confirm there was no due process constraint on Warden Nix’s

substantive authority under § 201-20.11(10) of the Administrative Code to approve

paying money Parrish received from an outside source to satisfy his court-ordered

restitution debt. Legislation authorizing the paying of an inmate’s restitution debt out

of his prison account “is reasonably related to a legitimate governmental purpose” and

therefore satisfies the modern, highly deferential substantive due process standard. 
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Honeywell, Inc. v. Minnesota Life & Health Ins. Guar. Ass’n, 110 F.3d 547, 554 (8th

Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 156 (1997). 

Seeking to revive this issue, Parrish argues on appeal that the sentencing court

ordered him to pay restitution in accordance with his restitution payment plan, that the

plan only authorized deductions of twenty percent of his prison allowance, and that his

property interest includes enforcing this limitation in the plan. In other words, Parrish

contends that Warden Nix’s authority under § 201-20.11(10) could only be exercised

constitutionally through a payment plan. However, this is nothing more than an

assertion that defendants acted contrary to state law, and “something more than a

violation of state law must be claimed to establish a substantive due process violation.”

Weimer v. Amen, 870 F.2d 1400, 1406 (8th Cir. 1989). Moreover, a violation of state

law does not deprive an official of qualified immunity, unless the violation itself gives

rise to a § 1983 cause of action. See Swenson v. Trickey, 995 F.2d 132, 135 (8th Cir.),

cert. denied, 510 U.S. 999 (1993); Bartlett v. Fisher, 972 F.2d 911, 915 (8th Cir. 1992).

B. That brings us to the more complex question whether Nix and Mallinger are

entitled to qualified immunity on Parrish’s claim that he was denied procedural due

process. A procedural due process claim focuses not on the merits of a deprivation, but

on whether the State circumscribed the deprivation with constitutionally adequate

procedures. This inquiry examines “the procedural safeguards built into the statutory

or administrative procedure of effecting the deprivation, and any remedies for erroneous

deprivations provided by statute or tort law.” Zinermon, 494 U.S. at 126. Relevant

factors include the affected private interest, the risk of an erroneous deprivation, the

probable value of additional procedural safeguards, and the government’s interest,

including burdens that additional safeguards would entail. See Mathews v. Eldridge,

424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976). In most cases, some type of predeprivation notice and

hearing are constitutionally required before a property interest is invaded, but in some

situations meaningful postdeprivation remedies are constitutionally sufficient. Compare

Zinermon, 494 U.S. at 136-39, and Logan v.
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Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 436 (1982), with Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S.

517 (1984), and Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527 (1981), overruled on other grounds,

Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327 (1986). 

In this case, the State clearly provided an adequate postdeprivation remedy

because Parrish could have petitioned the sentencing court to review these deductions

under Iowa Code § 910.7. Indeed, such a petition may be filed predeprivation. Parrish

argues that more process was due -- that defendants were constitutionally required to

provide predeprivation notice and some form of hearing before taking $720 from his

account to satisfy his restitution debt. Limiting the inquiry in this fashion puts the

Mathews v. Eldridge factors in rather nice balance. On the one hand, the private

interest at stake is not particularly strong because, though Parrish was deprived of the

immediate use of the money, he received the benefit of having it applied to satisfy a

restitution debt that would otherwise survive incarceration. See Beeks v. Hundley, 34

F.3d 658, 661 (8th Cir. 1994). Moreover, as we emphasized in Mahers v. Halford, 76

F.3d at 955-56, Parrish received significant predeprivation process -- a hearing in the

sentencing court before the amount of restitution was established, plus notice of his

individual payment plan and the prison’s deduction policies. Finally, the State has

strong interests in compensating victims, teaching inmates responsibility, and

maintaining administrative control over its prisons. For these reasons, in Mahers v.

Halford we rejected a procedural due process challenge to automatic twenty percent

deductions under an Iowa Department of Corrections policy first adopted in 1992.

On the other side of the Mathews v. Eldridge scale, giving inmates a limited,

informal predeprivation opportunity to contest particular deductions can be made

administratively feasible and is consistent with the statutory directive that restitution

must reflect individualized factors bearing on an inmate’s ability to pay. See Iowa Code

§§ 910.4, 910.5(1). These factors led the Iowa Supreme Court to conclude that

predeprivation notice and a brief opportunity to object are required. See Walters, 525
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N.W.2d at 833. That decision was later adopted by the Iowa Legislature and

incorporated into a 1995 statute, Iowa Code § 904.702.

Parrish argues that this case is factually different than Mahers v. Halford and

urges us to conclude that he had a clearly established right to predeprivation notice and

hearing when Nix and Mallinger implemented their decision to apply the funds to

Parrish’s restitution debt. We reject this contention. The issue here is qualified

immunity, a doctrine designed to protect from damage liability “all but the plainly

incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335,

341 (1986). Qualified immunity shields prison officials from damage liability unless

they “violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable

person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). Whether

a broad constitutional right such as due process is “clearly established” for qualified

immunity purposes is a particularized inquiry:

The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable

official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is

not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless

the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but it is to

say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent.

Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987) (citations omitted). Subsequent

developments are relevant in determining what law was “clearly established” at the time

defendants acted. See Offet v. Solem, 936 F.2d 363, 367 (8th Cir. 1991). In our view,

the subsequent actions of the Iowa Supreme Court and the Iowa Legislature to clarify

state law, and our subsequent decision in Mahers v. Halford, make it clear that the

extent to which Parrish was entitled to predeprivation notice and hearing was far from

clearly established in April 1991. Accordingly, we agree with the district court that Nix

and Mallinger are entitled to qualified immunity from Henry Parrish’s damage claims.
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After the court dismissed Henry Parrish’s claims, defendants moved to dismiss

Yvonne Parrish’s claims. She defaulted on that motion, despite the fact that the district

court granted her request for an extension of time to respond. The district court granted

summary judgment dismissing her claims for this reason. That was not an abuse of the

court’s considerable discretion. 

The judgments of the district court are affirmed.

A true copy.

Attest:

CLERK, U. S. COURT OF APPEALS, EIGHTH CIRCUIT.