In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 08-1596

PASCHALL L. SANDERS III,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

KEVIN HAYDEN, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 08-C-146—William C. Griesbach, Judge.

SUBMITTED AUGUST 21, 2008—DECIDED SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

Before POSNER, ROVNER, and WOOD, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. After serving a prison sentence,

the plaintiff was civilly committed to a secure treatment

facility—the Wisconsin Resource Center—as a sexually

violent person. Wis. Stat. § 980.06. He has brought this

suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against various state officials, claiming that they violated his federal rights by

reducing his pay for the work he performs at the Center.

The district judge dismissed the complaint.
2 No. 08-1596

The plaintiff bases his suit on the Americans with

Disability Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the due

process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth

Amendment, and as the district judge explained there is

no possible basis in these provisions for the complaint

about the wage cut. Yet the plaintiff alleges that when

he started work he was paid the minimum wage (whether

the Wisconsin or the federal wage is unclear, and also, as

we are about to see, immaterial) and that this was then

cut to $2 to $2.50 an hour, at a time when the Wisconsin

minimum wage was $6.50 and the federal $5.15. Although

he does not refer to the Fair Labor Standards Act, it is

the obvious basis for a complaint about not being paid

the minimum wage and since he is a prisoner suing

without the aid of a lawyer we construe his complaint

to be making such a claim.

Prison and jail inmates are not covered by the FLSA.

Bennett v. Frank, 395 F.3d 409 (7th Cir. 2005); Vanskike v.

Peters, 974 F.2d 806, 810-12 (7th Cir. 1992); Loving v. Johnson,

455 F.3d 562 (5th Cir. 2006) (per curiam); Tourscher v.

McCullough, 184 F.3d 236, 243-44 (3d Cir. 1999); Villarreal v.

Woodham, 113 F.3d 202, 206-07 (11th Cir. 1997); Gambetta v.

Prison Rehabilitative Industries & Diversified Enterprises,

Inc., 112 F.3d 1119, 1124 (11th Cir. 1997); Danneskjold v.

Hausrath, 82 F.3d 37, 42 (2d Cir. 1996); McMaster v. Minnesota, 30 F.3d 976, 980 (8th Cir. 1994); Henthorn v. Department

of Navy, 29 F.3d 682, 686-87 (D.C. Cir. 1994); Harker v. State

Use Industries, 990 F.2d 131, 132 (4th Cir. 1993). As we

explained in Bennett, “people are not imprisoned for the

purpose of enabling them to earn a living. The prison

pays for their keep. If it puts them to work, it is to offset

some of the cost of keeping them, or to keep them out of
No. 08-1596 3

mischief, or to ease their transition to the world outside, or

to equip them with skills and habits that will make

them less likely to return to crime outside. None of these

goals is compatible with federal regulation of their wages

and hours. The reason the FLSA contains no express

exception for prisoners is probably that the idea was too

outlandish to occur to anyone when the legislation was

under consideration by Congress.” 395 F.3d at 410.

If the words “confined civilly as a sexually violent

person” are substituted for “imprisoned” in the first

sentence and “secure treatment facility” for “prison” in the

second sentence, the quoted passage applies equally to the

present case, as held in Hendrickson v. Nelson, No. 05-C1305, 2006 WL 2334838 (E.D. Wis. Aug. 10, 2006). And years

earlier the First Circuit had held that persons civilly

committed because they were sexually violent were not

covered by the FLSA, noting that “the minimum wage

is not needed to protect the appellants’ well-being and

standard of living . . . . SDPs [sexually dangerous persons],

like the more common run of prisoners, are cared for (and

their standard of living is determined, within constitutional limits) by the state . . . . [And] the payment of subminimum wages to SDPs presents no threat of unfair

competition to other employers, who must pay the minimum wage to their employees, because the Treatment

Center does not operate in the marketplace and has no

business competitors.” Miller v. Dukakis, 961 F.2d 7, 9 (1st

Cir. 1992) (per curiam). We agree and affirm.

9-12-08