Opinion ID: 1406027
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Defendants' Claim of Qualified Immunity

Text: Our finding that the regulations were unconstitutionally vague, however, does not by itself mean that Defendants are liable. The District Court, having found a violation of Farid's First Amendment rights, held that Defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. Their conduct, the court concluded, did not violate any clearly established rights about which a reasonable person would have known. Having carefully considered the record, we cannot agree. Qualified immunity protects government officials from liability for civil damages as a result of their performance of discretionary functions, and serves to protect government officials from the burdens of costly, but insubstantial, lawsuits. Lennon v. Miller, 66 F.3d 416, 420 (2d Cir.1995) (citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 817-18, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). Such immunity shields government officials from civil liability insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727. A defendant is entitled to summary judgment on the issue of qualified immunity if [he] adduce[s] sufficient facts [such] that no reasonable jury, looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to, and drawing all inferences most favorable to, the plaintiffs, could conclude that it was objectively unreasonable for the defendant[] to believe that he was acting in a fashion that did not clearly violate an established federally protected right. Robison v. Via, 821 F.2d 913, 921 (2d Cir.1987) (quoting Halperin v. Kissinger, 807 F.2d 180, 189 (D.C.Cir.1986) (Scalia, J., sitting by designation)). We first consider whether Defendants' actions violated a clearly established statutory or constitutional right. For a right to be clearly established, it must have been recognized in a particularized rather than a general sense. Moore v. Andreno, 505 F.3d 203, 214 (2d Cir.2007) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We must therefore define the disputed right at the appropriate level of specificity. Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615, 119 S.Ct. 1692, 143 L.Ed.2d 818 (1999). In the present case, Defendants have suggested two potential justifications for Farid's punishment under the prison regulations: either as a direct result of his violation of the LTC by-laws; or as a consequence of the contraband rule, which Farid allegedly breached indirectly by violating the LTC by-laws. We have explained why we think that neither of these justifications is constitutionally adequate. For qualified immunity purposes, however, we must more precisely define the rights at issue, and only then determine whether they were clearly established. In keeping with Defendants' two possible characterizations of their conduct, we find that there are two characterizations of the relevant right: either as a right not to be punished under Rule A ( e.g., the prison's contraband regulation) for violating Rule B ( e.g., the LTC by-law); or as a right not to be punished under prison regulations that are too vague to constrain official conduct or to give prisoners notice of what conduct is prohibited, unless read in conjunction with the LTC by-lawsand then only arguably. We find that both of these rights are clearly established, albeit for different reasons, and that a jury might well find that a reasonable officer should have known that they were so established. Moreover, fact questions exist as to Defendants' justification for their conduct and therefore as to which of the rights described above has arguably been infringed. Summary judgment on the question of qualified immunity was therefore inappropriate, and must be vacated. First, Defendants seem to suggest that Farid's violation of LTC by-laws was by itself sufficient to justify discipline under prison regulations. See Farid III, 514 F.Supp.2d at 490 (Defendant Miller[,] who presided at the hearing, asserted that had [Farid] complied with the by-laws of the LTC, `The Politics of Parole' would not have been contraband.). We have already explained why this is not constitutionally sufficient. See supra at 242. For qualified immunity purposes, however, there is a separate question, which is whether the right violated by this conduct was clearly established. We have no trouble concluding that the right not to be punished under one set of rules for violations of another is clearly established. The very essence of constitutional prohibitions on vagueness is that rules must give notice of the conduct that they (not another set of rules) prohibit, and must constrain the discretion of officials who apply them. This is impossible where prohibitions and punishments are set out in one set of rules, but officials remain free to impose punishments established in an entirely different set of rules not referenced by the first. There is another way to read Defendants' argument, however-that any vagueness in the application of the prison's contraband regulation is cured by the fact that Farid had notice of the LTC by-laws. This seems to be the main thrust of Defendants' argument on appeal, and it is different from the first argument because it begins with the prison regulations, not the LTC by-laws, and essentially argues that prisoners must read them in conjunction. In this way, it is not so much a direct defense of the prison's contraband regulation as it is an argument that the regulation can be read alongside the internal by-laws of a prisoners' organization to achieve a constitutional result. We have explained above why we do not think that the existence of the LTC by-laws cures the vagueness of the prison's contraband and smuggling regulations as they were applied in this instance. See supra at 242-44. But for qualified immunity purposes, we must also consider Defendants' second characterization of the rights they might have violated. Under this second purported justification, the relevant question is whether prisoners' right not to be punished under DOCS rules, without sufficient notice that their conduct is prohibited by those rules, is clearly establishedeven where that conduct is prohibited by other rules. [7] We conclude that it is. Although we are aware of no cases involving the vagueness of the precise regulations challenged here, our conclusion is strongly supported by caselaw in this Circuit. Qualified immunity can be denied where a rule is clearly foreshadow[ed] by past precedent, Tellier v. Fields, 280 F.3d 69, 84 (2d Cir.2000) (internal quotation marks omitted), and similar cases, applying similar regulations, have come to similar conclusions. Most notably for present purposes, in Chatin we found that a prison regulation banning unauthorized religious services was unconstitutionally vague as applied to a prisoner's silent, individual prayer, where the prisoner had no actual or imputed knowledge that he would be subjected to discipline for such prayer. The District Court distinguished Chatin  the same case on which it had relied in finding the rules unconstitutionally vagueon the grounds that different prison rules are at issue and the nature of the conduct included the implied representation in the written materials that an officially approved organization of inmates had been given institutional permission to transmit the materials. Farid III, 514 F.Supp.2d at 494. But for a right to be clearly established for purposes of a qualified immunity defense, the precise conduct at issue need not previously have been ruled unlawful. Zahrey v. Coffey, 221 F.3d 342, 357 (2d Cir.2000). And Chatin comes mighty close to holding the conduct here at issue to be unlawful. As noted above, in that case we rejected DOCS's argument that a rule's potential vagueness could be cured where it was read in conjunction with an internal DOCS Directive and memorandum specifying the rule's reach. See Chatin, 186 F.3d at 87-89, 91. We held that prisoners are not required to synthesize prison regulations with other potentially relevant restrictions on their conduct. Here, too, we reject Defendants' argument that Farid should have read the contraband and smuggling rules alongside the LTC's internal by-laws and interpreted them in conjunction as saying that conduct barred under the latter is punishable under the former. And, as a result of Chatin, we also reject the argument that it was not clearly established that prisoners could not be expected to synthesize disparate regulations. Multiple questions of material fact exist regarding these two potential theories of qualified immunity. First and most prominently, questions of material fact exist as to which of the two theories is properly the focus of Defendants' claim. That is, it is unclear whether Defendants actually intended to punish Farid under the prison contraband rule, or whether they were instead punishing him simply for violating the LTC by-laws. The thrust of their argument on appeal tends to suggest the former, but as the District Court noted, many of their statements below suggest the latter. See, e.g., Farid III, 514 F.Supp.2d at 490. This is a distinction with an important difference, because it is impossibleespecially on summary judgmentto evaluate Defendants' claims of qualified immunity without knowing the basis for those claims. These questions of material fact would constitute sufficient reasons in and of themselves to vacate and remand the grant of summary judgment with regard to qualified immunity. Moreover, and for substantially the same reasons that we find the rights at issue here to be clearly established, we conclude that a jury could have found that reasonable prison officials should have known that these rights were established, and that their conduct here violated them. This is true whichever of the two possible theories of qualified immunity we consider. We have little trouble concluding that the first constructionthe right not to be punished directly under Rule A (the prison's contraband rule) for violating Rule B (the LTC's internal by-law)should have been clear to any reasonable officer. Accordingly, insofar as Defendants argue that they are entitled to qualified immunity because Farid's violation of LTC rules automatically subjected him to punishment under prison regulations, we find that the grant of qualified immunity was inappropriate. The same conclusion follows if we instead focus on the second issue noted above: whether otherwise-vague prison regulations can be saved so long as the disciplinary authorities also invoke the internal by-laws of a prisoner organization. This seems to be the issue that the District Court found dispositive. That court found that even if this Court assumed that the right was clearly established, the defendants would be entitled nevertheless to summary judgment on qualified immunity. Farid III, 514 F.Supp.2d at 494. Specifically, it concluded that a reasonable prison official could have considered the LTC by-law requiring staff approval of correspondence from the LTC to have been sufficient notice of prohibited conduct. Id. at 494-95. We disagree. Especially in light of Chatin, a jury could very well decide that it is unreasonable for a prison official to act on the belief that violation of a prisoner organization's internal by-laws can properly subject a prisoner to discipline under the prison's rules. Accordingly, we conclude (a) that Farid's rights are clearly established under either possible constructioneither as a right not to be punished under Rule A for violating Rule B, or as a right not to be punished under a prison rule which does not give adequate notice (unless read in conjunction with unrelated prisoner organization by-laws) that the conduct is prohibited, and (b) that a reasonable officer should know that these rights were so established. We emphasize however, that because this case comes to us following a grant of summary judgment for the Defendants, the question at this stage is not whether Defendants might ultimately be entitled to qualified immunity under either of these theories, but only whether Farid has adduced sufficient facts such that a reasonable jury, looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to Farid, could conclude that it was objectively unreasonable for Defendants to believe that they were acting in a fashion that did not clearly violate an established federally protected right. Robison, judgment and remand for further proceedings, as to the ultimate merits of which we express no opinion.