Opinion ID: 4689057
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mammana’s Case Presents a New Bivens Context

Text: A case presents a new Bivens context if it “is different in a meaningful way from previous Bivens cases decided by [the Supreme] Court.” Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1859. So a new-contexts inquiry begins by looking at the existing Bivens contexts against which a new case can be compared. Only decisions by the Supreme Court—and not those by our Court or any other circuit court—are relevant. See Mack, 968 F.3d at 319 (citing Bistrian v. Levi, 912 F.3d 79, 95 (3d Cir. 2018)). The Supreme Court has recognized Bivens claims three times: 1) the Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure in Bivens, 2) a Fifth Amendment sex-discrimination claim in Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228 (1979), and 3) “in Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14 (1980), a federal prisoner’s Eighth Amendment claim for failure to provide adequate medical treatment.” Hernandez II, 140 S. Ct. at 741. Here, all agree that of these three, only Carlson is relevant.5 4 Of course, a successful Bivens claim must also adequately allege the violation of a constitutional right. See, e.g., Hernandez v. Mesa, 137 S. Ct. 2003, 2007 (2017) (per curiam) (Hernandez I). Mammana I already determined that Mammana’s claim adequately alleged an Eighth Amendment violation. 934 F.3d at 374. 5 Mammana urges us to consider a fourth Supreme Court decision, Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994). In Farmer, the Court considered a claim under the Eighth 6 Carlson involved an allegation that prison officials were deliberately indifferent to an inmate’s medical needs during a severe asthma attack. 446 U.S. at 16 & n.1. But little links Carlson to Mammana’s claims beyond federal prison employees and alleged Eighth Amendment violations. Mammana alleges Barben violated the Eighth Amendment through his “deliberate indifference to the substantial risk of harm posed by Mr. Mammana’s mistreatment in the Yellow Room.” (Opening Br. at 15.) Mammana challenged “his confinement in a chilled room with constant lighting, no bedding, and only paper-like clothing.” Mammana I, 934 F.3d at 370. All of which “bear little resemblance to . . . a claim against prison officials for failure to treat an inmate’s asthma.” Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1860. And the Supreme Court has made clear that “even a modest extension [of Bivens] is still an extension,” id. at 1864, and “[a] claim may arise in a new context even if it is based on the same constitutional provision as a claim in a case in which a damages remedy was previously recognized.” Hernandez II, 140 S. Ct. at 743. Amendment brought by a federal inmate who alleged prison officials failed to provide appropriate protection from prisoner violence. Id. at 829. The Court reversed a grant of summary judgment and allowed the claim to proceed without ever discussing Bivens or the availability of an implied cause of action. Id. at 851. We characterized Farmer as “recogniz[ing] a failure-to-protect [Bivens] claim under the Eighth Amendment.” Bistrian v. Levi, 912 F.3d 79, 91 (3d Cir. 2018). Yet the Supreme Court declined to list failure-toprotect, or Farmer, as a Bivens claim in Hernandez II, decided two years post-Bistrian. Hernandez v. Mesa, 140 S. Ct. 735, 741 (2020) (Hernandez II). But we need not consider that tension today. Mammana does not bring a failure-to-protect claim and makes no allegations of prisoner-on-prisoner violence. So while his claim might appear much like the holding in Farmer, “once we look beyond the constitutional provisions invoked . . . , it is glaringly obvious that [Mammana’s] claims involve a new context, i.e., one that is meaningfully different” from Farmer. Hernandez II, 140 S. Ct. at 743. 7 B. Special Factors Counsel Hesitation to Expand Bivens Beginning in Bivens, the Supreme Court has consistently cautioned courts against recognizing an implied cause of action against federal officers if there were any “special factors counseling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress.” Bivens, 403 U.S. at 396. And in recent years, the Court has clarified that standard. “The necessary inference . . . is that the inquiry must concentrate on whether the Judiciary is well suited, absent congressional action or instruction, to consider and weigh the costs and benefits of allowing a damages action to proceed.” Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1857–58. If a court “ha[s] reason to pause before applying Bivens in a new context or to a new class of defendants,” Hernandez II, 140 S. Ct. at 743, then there are special factors counseling hesitation. From that direction, we have recognized two “particularly weighty” special factors: 1) the availability of alternate remedies; and 2) separation-of-powers concerns. Mack, 968 F.3d at 320 (quoting Bistrian, 912 F.3d at 90). And here, significant separation-of-powers concerns abound. As Abbasi explained, “legislative action suggesting that Congress does not want a damages remedy is itself a factor counseling hesitation” and Congress’s omission of a “standalone damages remedy against federal jailers” when it passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act post-Carlson “suggests Congress chose not to extend the Carlson damages remedy to cases involving other types of prisoner mistreatment.” Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1865. While we have rejected the argument that Congress’s inaction in this arena “suggests that Congress did not want a damages remedy against prison officials for constitutional violations,” Mack, 968 F.3d at 324, because the PLRA “cannot rightly be seen as dictating that a Bivens cause of action should not exist at all,” Bistrian, 912 F.3d at 8 93, congressional silence on prison litigation can still counsel hesitation in some contexts, especially when the prisoner mistreatment alleged is different and quite more general than that alleged in Carlson.6 Mammana’s claim warrants hesitation. Candidly, he asks for a new implied cause of action to sue federal prison officials for unconstitutional conditions of confinement, a step never taken by the Supreme Court nor any circuit court.7 “Heeding the reasoning in Abbasi, we must be reluctant to ‘establish whole categories of cases in which federal officers must defend against personal liability claims in the complex sphere of litigation.’” Bistrian, 912 F.3d at 95 (quoting Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1858). Recognizing such a broad new category of claims would step well into the lawmaking privilege delegated only to Congress, and well over the bounds of our limited constitutional power. See Alexander v. 6 This is especially true when recognizing a new Bivens claim would “establish whole categories of cases in which federal officers must defend against personal liability claims in the complex sphere of litigation.” Ziglar v. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843, 1858 (2017); see also Mack v. Yost, 968 F.3d 311, 324 (3d Cir. 2020). As Mack noted, in such circumstances, “Bivens expansion would be an inappropriate exercise of judicial power.” Id. at 325. While we have not foreclosed the possibility that there may be future cases where “judicial intervention is needed to fulfill our obligation to faithfully uphold the Constitution,” id., today, we follow in the footsteps of Mack and again “exercise restraint and allow Congress to decide whether to redress the harm present in these types of cases.” Id. After all, “separation-of-powers principles should be central to [Bivens] analysis” because “[m]ost often it will be Congress,” and not the courts, deciding to authorize a damages suit. Abbasi, 135 S. Ct. at 1848. 7 Our dissenting colleague notes that a recent unpublished opinion in the Ninth Circuit concluded an Eighth Amendment conditions-of-confinement claim did not present a new Bivens context. Reid v. United States, 825 F. App’x 442, 444 (9th Cir. 2020) (per curiam). But another recent unpublished opinion reached the opposite conclusion, holding a similar conditions-of-confinement claim did present a new Bivens context. Schwarz v. Meinberg, 761 F. App’x 732, 734 (9th Cir. 2019) (per curiam). So we decline to rely on either non-precedential panel view as persuasive. 9 Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275, 286–87 (2001) (“Like substantive federal law itself, private rights of action to enforce federal law must be created by Congress.”); Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1856 (“[I]t is a significant step under separation-of-powers principles for a court to determine that it has the authority, under the judicial power, to create and enforce a cause of action for damages against federal officials in order to remedy a constitutional violation.”). That is a special factor counseling hesitation to expand Bivens. Because we pause, we must “reject the request” to recognize this new Bivens context. Hernandez II, 140 S. Ct. at 743.