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Page Number: 29.0

24 

ZIGLAR v. ABBASI 

Opinion of the Court 

supra,  at  4.   These  allegations—assumed  here  to  be  true,
subject to proof at a later stage—plausibly show the war-
den’s deliberate indifference to the abuse.  Consistent with 
the opinion of every judge in this case to have considered
the  question,  including  the  dissenters  in  the  Court  of
Appeals,  the  Court  concludes  that  the  prisoner  abuse 
allegations against Warden Hasty state a plausible ground 
to find a constitutional violation if a Bivens remedy is to be
implied.

Warden  Hasty  argues,  however,  that  Bivens  ought  not
to  be  extended  to  this  instance  of  alleged  prisoner  abuse. 
As  noted  above,  the  first  question  a  court  must  ask  in  a
case  like  this  one  is  whether  the  claim  arises  in  a  new 
Bivens  context,  i.e.,  whether  “the  case  is  different  in  a 
meaningful  way  from  previous  Bivens  cases  decided  by 
this Court.”  Supra, at 16. 

It is true that this case has significant parallels to one of 
the  Court’s  previous  Bivens  cases,  Carlson  v.  Green,  446 
U. S.  14.  There,  the  Court  did  allow  a  Bivens  claim  for 
prisoner  mistreatment—specifically,  for  failure  to  provide 
medical  care.    And  the  allegations  of  injury  here  are  just 
as  compelling  as  those  at  issue  in  Carlson.  This  is  espe-
cially  true  given  that  the  complaint  alleges  serious  viola-
tions  of  Bureau  of  Prisons  policy.    See  28  CFR  §552.20
(2016) (providing that prison staff may use force “only as a 
last alternative after all other reasonable efforts to resolve 
a situation have failed” and that staff may “use only that 
amount  of  force  necessary  to  [ensure  prison  safety  and 
security]”);  §552.22(j)  (“All  incidents  involving  the  use  of 
force . . . must be carefully documented”); §542.11 (requir-
ing the warden to investigate certain complaints of inmate
abuse).

Yet  even  a  modest  extension  is  still  an  extension.    And 
this case does seek to extend Carlson to a new context.  As 
noted  above,  a  case  can  present  a  new  context  for  Bivens 
purposes if it implicates a different constitutional right; if