Opinion ID: 2807875
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Housing Units

Text: The staffing restriction with the “largest impact,” according to the Union, involves 18 positions at the mediumand high-security housing units at Washington Corrections Center.6 The housing units have two guards on duty on each shift. Unlike other states, the Department did not ban male guards entirely; rather, the staffing policy requires at least one female guard per shift, an approach recommended by one of the state’s consultants. In the housing units, correctional officers “must conduct pat and strip searches of female offenders entering and leaving the facility” as well as frequent random and suspicion-based searches within the housing units. In the segregation and mental illness units, inmates are strip searched every time they enter or leave their cells. Except in emergency circumstances, male guards cannot legally perform any of these searches. Jordan, 986 F.2d at 1523; see also Wash. Rev. Code § 9.94A.631(2). 6 The Union concedes that positions in minimum-security housing units are properly designated female-only. Because Mission Creek is a minimum-security facility, the housing-unit positions at that prison are not at issue here. 26 TEAMSTERS LOCAL UNION NO. 117 V. WASH. DEP’T OF CORR. Beyond searches, officers in the housing units also “may encounter female offenders in varying states of undress while showering, toileting, and dressing.” Guards must collect urine samples from inmates, and a failure to “observ[e] the offenders during the entire process of urinalysis collection significantly impacts the reliability of the test results . . .” According to the state, “[m]ale staff cannot observe female offenders when they are engaged in these activities.” Given these operational needs, there is no reasonable substitute for having female guards inside housings units, according to the Department. Notably, temporarily removing a female guard from another part of the prison to cover in a housing unit “creates a gap for dealing with privacy issues at the post vacated.” At best, that solution fixes one problem but creates another. The evidence Teamsters puts forward to counter the Department’s justifications is entirely inapposite. One of its experts points out that sexual assault is not a severe problem in medium- and high-security housing because “as the level of security increases, the opportunity for sexual assault decreases.” This may be true, but it fails to acknowledge that the staffing decisions were designed to protect inmate privacy, which is “essential to the operation of a corrections facility and has been recognized as justifying facially discriminatory policies in other contexts.” Ambat, 757 F.3d at 1028. The Union’s other expert quarrels with citations to social science regarding female inmates’ privacy needs and matters relating to sexual relationships between inmates and guards. This testimony again fails to raise any genuine dispute of material fact as to the Department’s reasoned determination that the realities of operating Washington’s TEAMSTERS LOCAL UNION NO. 117 V. WASH. DEP’T OF CORR. 27 women’s prisons necessitate designating these specific positions as female-only.