Opinion ID: 4238903
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Failure to Plead a Protected Property Interest

Text: This court applies the Supreme Court’s analysis in Sandin v. Connor, 515 U.S. 472 (1995), to determine whether a prisoner has a property interest giving rise to a right to due process. See Cosco, 195 F.3d at 1223-24. In Sandin, 515 U.S. at 480-84, the Court rejected its previous practice of discerning liberty interests based on mandatory language in prison regulations. Instead, the Court “recognize[d] that States may under certain circumstances create liberty interests which are protected by the Due Process Clause. But these interests will be generally limited to freedom from restraint which, while not exceeding the sentence in such an unexpected manner as to give rise to protection by the Due Process Clause of its own force, nonetheless imposes atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life.” Id. at 483-84 (citations omitted). The Supreme Court held that the loss of liberty at issue in Sandin—30 days in disciplinary segregation—did not “present the type of atypical, significant deprivation in which a State might conceivably create a liberty interest.” Id. at 486. The Court considered the evidence as to what was atypical and significant in the prisoner’s environment, comparing the conditions in disciplinary segregation to those in administrative segregation and protective custody and concluding there were no significant differences in duration or degree of restriction. Id. The Court noted further that the conditions at the prison in question involved significant amounts of lockdown 6 time even for inmates in the general population. Thus, “[b]ased on a comparison between inmates inside and outside disciplinary segregation, the State’s actions in placing him there for 30 days did not work a major disruption in his environment.” Id. This court has extended the Sandin analysis to due-process claims based on property interests, but we have little case law applying Sandin in this context. In Cosco, we held that a prison regulation regarding the type and quantity of personal property that prisoners could keep in their cells was “typical of the kinds of prison conditions that the Court has declared to be subject to the [Sandin] analysis.” 195 F.3d at 1224. We concluded that new regulations limiting the property permitted in cells did not present an atypical and significant deprivation of the prisoners’ existing privileges in which the state might create a property interest. Id. at 1222, 1224. We have also affirmed grants of qualified immunity in two cases involving prisoners’ property-interest due-process claims. In Steffey v. Orman, 461 F.3d 1218, 1220-21 (10th Cir. 2006), we held that a prisoner had no protected property right in receiving a contraband money order in violation of prison policy. We based our conclusion on case law demonstrating that the seizure and forfeiture of contraband is “a typical incident of prison life, and is not a significant property interest deprivation.” Id. at 1223. We therefore affirmed summary judgment based on qualified immunity because there was no constitutional violation. Id. at 1223. We took a different tack in Clark v. Wilson, 625 F.3d 686, 691 (10th Cir. 2010), which raised the issue “whether freezing a prison account in response to a garnishment summons imposes an atypical and significant hardship on an inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life.” Noting that we 7 had not previously addressed that question, we declined to decide it in Clark; instead, we affirmed summary judgment based on qualified immunity holding there was a lack of clearly established law. Id. at 691-92. Here, the district court held that Mr. Johnson’s due-process claims were frivolous because withholding a percentage of his inmate wages to repay certain debts does not rise to the level of an atypical and significant hardship in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life. We take no issue with that conclusion. Under AR-200-15, this is, in fact, an ordinary incident of prison life for CDOC prisoners. A federal statute similarly requires prisoners to make monthly payments equal to 20% of their income toward the payment of filing fees incurred in civil cases in federal court. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(2). But in reaching its holding, the district court appears to have misconstrued Mr. Johnson’s due-process claims. He did not broadly challenge the application of AR-200-15. He challenged only the withholding of a percentage of his inmate pay— which is equal to a maximum of $7.36 per month—when he has no other source of income and his account balance is less than $10.00. We note that the CDOC regulation and § 1915 both exempt account balances under $10.00 from withholding under certain circumstances. See § 1915(b)(2); AR-200-15(IV)(A)(8). We read Mr. Johnson’s claims to assert that the alleged deprivation is both atypical in his prison environment and significant in the context of the minimal pay he receives each month. We hold that the district court abused its discretion in concluding that there was no arguable basis for Mr. Johnson’s claim of a protected property interest. See Fogle v. Pierson, 435 F.3d 1252, 1259 (10th Cir. 2006) (noting, in reversing a frivolousness determination, the 8 importance of “carefully examining the conditions of the prisoner’s confinement” (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted)). 2. Failure to Plead an Inadequate State Post-Deprivation Remedy The district court held, alternatively, that Mr. Johnson’s due-process claims were frivolous because he failed to plead that his state post-deprivation remedy was inadequate. “[A]n unauthorized intentional deprivation of property by a state employee does not constitute a [due-process] violation . . . if a meaningful postdeprivation remedy for the loss is available,” and “the state’s action is not complete until and unless it provides or refuses to provide a suitable postdeprivation remedy.” Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 533 (1984). Under Hudson, a prisoner’s complaint must allege facts sufficient to show the lack of an adequate state remedy. Durre v. Dempsey, 869 F.2d