Opinion ID: 2451
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Factors Weighing in Favor of a Bivens Action

Text: At least some factors weigh in favor of permitting a Bivens action in this case. We assume, as we are required to, that Arar suffered a grievous infringement of his constitutional rights by one or more of the defendants, from his interception and detention while changing planes at an international airport to the time two weeks later when he was sent off in the expectation  perhaps the intent and expectation  that he would be tortured, all in order to obtain information from him. Breach of a constitutional or legal duty would appear to counsel in favor of some sort of opportunity for the victim to obtain a remedy for it. Justice Harlan's landmark concurrence in Bivens explains: The[government's] arguments for a more stringent test to govern the grant of damages in constitutional cases [than that governing a grant of equitable relief] seem to be adequately answered by the point that the judiciary has a particular responsibility to assure the vindication of constitutional interests.... To be sure, it must be remembered that legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts. But it must also be recognized that the Bill of Rights is particularly intended to vindicate the interests of the individual in the face of the popular will as expressed in legislative majorities; at the very least, it strikes me as no more appropriate to await express congressional authorization of traditional judicial relief with regard to [the plaintiff's constitutional] legal interests than with respect to interests protected by federal statutes. Bivens, 403 U.S. at 407, 91 S.Ct. 1999 (Harlan, J., concurring) (citation and footnote omitted). And more generally, Bivens should be available to vindicate Fifth Amendment substantive due process rights such as those asserted here. As Judge Posner wrote for the Seventh Circuit with respect to a Bivens action: [I]f ever there were a strong case for substantive due process, it would be a case in which a person who had been arrested but not charged or convicted was brutalized while in custody. If the wanton or malicious infliction of severe pain or suffering upon a person being arrested violates the Fourth Amendment  as no one doubts  and if the wanton or malicious infliction of severe pain or suffering upon a prison inmate violates the Eighth Amendment  as no one doubts  it would be surprising if the wanton or malicious infliction of severe pain or suffering upon a person confined following his arrest but not yet charged or convicted were thought consistent with due process. Wilkins v. May, 872 F.2d 190, 194 (7th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1026, 110 S.Ct. 733, 107 L.Ed.2d 752 (1990); [29] accord Magluta v. Samples, 375 F.3d 1269 (11th Cir.2004) (reversing district court's dismissal of pretrial detainee's Bivens action alleging unconstitutional conditions of confinement at federal penitentiary in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment); Cale v. Johnson, 861 F.2d 943, 946-47 (6th Cir.1988) (concluding that federal courts have the jurisdictional authority to entertain a Bivens action brought by a federal prisoner, alleging violations of his right to substantive due process), abrogated on other grounds, Thaddeus-X v. Blatter, 175 F.3d 378, 387-88 (6th Cir.1999); see also Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166, 193, 123 S.Ct. 2174, 156 L.Ed.2d 197 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (observing that a [Bivens] action ... is available to federal pretrial detainees challenging the conditions of their confinement) (citing Lyons v. U.S. Marshals, 840 F.2d 202 (3d Cir.1988)). [30] A federal inmate serving a prison sentence can employ Bivens to seek damages resulting from mistreatment by prison officials. Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14, 100 S.Ct. 1468, 64 L.Ed.2d 15 (1980). It would be odd if a federal detainee not charged with or convicted of any offense could not bring an analogous claim. [31] Finally, a factor counseling recognition of a Bivens action is that Arar has no other remedy for the alleged harms the defendant officers inflicted on him. Cf. Malesko, 534 U.S. at 70, 122 S.Ct. 515 (In 30 years of Bivens jurisprudence we have extended its holding only twice, to provide an otherwise nonexistent cause of action against individual officers alleged to have acted unconstitutionally, or to provide a cause of action for a plaintiff who lacked any alternative remedy for harms caused by an individual officer's unconstitutional conduct.).