Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/15-1358_6khn.pdf
Page Number: 55

Cite as:  582 U. S. ____ (2017) 

11 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

the  harms  the  plaintiffs  suffered  in  Bivens  (unreasonable 
search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment), 
Davis  (unlawful  discrimination  in  violation  of  the  Fifth 
Amendment),  and  Carlson  (deliberate  indifference  to
medical  need 
in  violation  of  the  Eighth  Amend-
ment).   Indeed,  we  have  said  that,  “[i]f  a  federal  prisoner 
in  a  [Bureau  of  Prisons]  facility  alleges  a  constitutional 
deprivation,  he  may  bring  a  Bivens  claim  against  the
offending individual officer, subject to the defense of quali-
fied immunity.”  Malesko, 534 U. S., at 72; see also Farmer 
v.  Brennan,  511  U. S.  825,  832  (1994)  (Bivens  case  about 
prisoner abuse).  The claims in this suit would seem to fill 
the  Bivens’  bill.  See  Sell  v.  United  States,  539  U. S.  166, 
193 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (“[A] [Bivens] action . . . 
is  available  to  federal  pretrial  detainees  challenging  the
conditions of their confinement”).

It is true that the plaintiffs bring their “deliberate indif-
ference”  claim  against  Warden  Hasty  under  the  Fifth
Amendment’s  Due  Process  Clause,  not  the  Eighth
Amendment’s  Cruel  and  Unusual  Punishment  Clause,  as 
in Carlson.  But  that is because the latter applies to con-
victed  criminals  while  the  former  applies  to  pretrial  and 
immigration  detainees.    Where  the  harm  is  the  same, 
where this Court has held that both the Fifth and Eighth
Amendments give rise to Bivens’ remedies, and where the 
only difference in constitutional scope consists of a circum-
stance (the  absence of a conviction) that makes the  viola-
tion  here  worse,  it  cannot  be  maintained  that  the  differ-
is 
ence  between  the  use  of  the  two  Amendments 
“fundamental.”  See  City  of  Revere  v.  Massachusetts  Gen. 
Hospital, 463 U. S. 239, 244 (1983) (“due process rights” of 
an unconvicted person “are at least as great as the Eighth
Amendment  protections  available  to  a  convicted  pris-
oner”); Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2015)
(slip  op.,  at  10–11)  (“pretrial  detainees  (unlike  convicted 
prisoners) cannot be punished at all”); Zadvydas v. Davis,