Opinion ID: 8414547
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Summary Judgment on Merits

Text: Plaintiffs' appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment against their challenge to the white underwear policy. The court found that while the Sheriffs security interest in the underwear policy was “weak,” the dignity intrusion to plaintiffs was “minimal.” The court made this finding based in part on its conclusion that the policy was close to the “correctional mainstream” and because detainees would be forced to go without underwear for at most one day. The court noted that plaintiffs’ declarations discussed only the “actual process of removing their underwear” and did not show that they suffered dignitary harm when forced to go without underwear throughout the rest of their detention. Noting that “Federal courts defer to the judgment of jail administrators,” the court ruled that the Sheriff was entitled to summary judgement. On appeal plaintiffs claim, among other things, that the district court erred by viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the defendants. We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment for the Sheriff. Chaib, 819 F.3d at 340. Because plaintiffs were pretrial detainees, not convicted prisoners, we assess their claim under the Fourteenth Amendment instead of the Eighth Amendment. In Bell v. Wolfish, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause prohibits holding pretrial detainees in conditions that “amount to punishment.” 441 U.S. 520, 535, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979). A pretrial condition can amount to punishment in two ways: first, if it is “imposed for the purpose of punishment,” or second, if the condition “is not reasonably related to a legitimate goal — if it is arbitrary or purposeless — a court permissibly may infer that the purpose of the government action is punishment.” Id. at 538-39, 99 S.Ct. 1861. The Supreme Court recently explained that “a pretrial detainee can prevail by providing only objective evidence that the challenged governmental action is not rationally related to a legitimate governmental objective or that it is excessive in relation to that purpose.” Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. -, -, 135 S.Ct. 2466, 2473-74, 192 L.Ed.2d 416 (2015). Defendants offer meagre justification for the white underwear policy. The only evidence in the record that supports the policy is the Sheriffs deposition testimony that he was “told ... when [he] wrote the policy” that such a security concern about tattoo ink exists. There is no evidence that detainees at the Rock Island County Jail have ever extracted ink from colored underwear to make tattoos. Nor, for that matter, have defendants identified an instance of this occurring anywhere else. The district court asserted that the policy might be close to the “correctional mainstream,” but we find no support for that conclusion in the record. In its summary judgment order, the district court noted: “While the underwear policy may strike the reader as odd, and the Sheriffs explanation as implausible, the Court notes that many other jails have the same or similar policies.” Mulvania v. City of Rock Island, No. 4:10-cv-04080-SLD-JEH, slip op. at 15 n.11 (C.D. Ill. Mar. 31, 2016). The court then cited four cases to demonstrate this point, noting that “the Jail’s interest is perhaps close to the correctional mainstream and therefore makes the Court’s view of the> Sheriffs rationale stronger.” Id., citing Gaston v. McCoy, No. 15cv1054, 2015 WL 3484237 (C.D. Ill. June 1, 2015); Gallup v. Schmaeling, No. 12-cv-1264, 2013 WL 4855181 (E.D. Wis. Sept. 10, 2013); Batchelor v. Fenwick, 710 F.Supp.2d 811, 816 (S.D. Ind. 2010); Marriott v. County of Montgomery, 426 F.Supp.2d 1, 9 (N.D.N.Y. 2006). We agree that the white underwear policy seems odd and that the Sheriffs explanation seems at least questionable. We disagree that the four cases cited by the district court show that “many other jails” have the same policy or that the policy may be within the “correctional mainstream.” Most of these cases are distinguishable from the Rock Island County Jail’s white underwear policy. Even if they were not, four cases are insufficient to establish the norms of correctional institutions. We address the four cases in turn. Gaston involved a pro se complaint that merely alleged that a jail would not provide the plaintiff with underwear. 2015 WL 3484237, at . It did not claim that detainees were forced to remove their nonwhite underwear as a jail policy. Failing to give a new detainee underwear is considerably different from taking away her underwear. The second case, Gallup, was another pro se complaint. It did allege that the jail had a white underwear policy. 2013 WL 4855181, at . In any event, though, these unsupported allegations in unrelated complaints do not prove any fact sufficient for the court to make a finding at summary judgment. In Batchelor, an opinion from 2010, the district court noted that a jail used to have a white underwear policy “whereby inmates wearing colored underwear were asked to exchange it for white underwear.” Batchelor, 710 F.Supp.2d at 816. In addition to the fact that the policy had been revoked, the Batchelor policy is readily distinguishable from the Rock Island policy. The policy may have been voluntary (detainees were “asked” to exchange their underwear), and detainees appeár to have been given underwear to replace their nonwhite underwear (“in exchange for”). Finally, in Marriott, it is unclear that a white underwear policy existed. There the court said that the defendants’ assertion about a white underwear policy “contravenes all of the prior testimony given by defendants and their officials — no CO, Jail administrator, or other official ever testified about arrestees and their white underwear.” 426 F.Supp.2d at 9. Even if we assume the Rock Island County Jail is not the only jail ever to have had a white underwear policy, this record does not show the policy is within any correctional mainstream. Even if all four of these cases involved similar white underwear policies, that would still seem to imply that the Rock Island County Jail’s policy is an outlier. See Holt v. Hobbs, 574 U.S. -, -, 135 S.Ct. 853, 866, 190 L.Ed.2d 747 (2015) (“While not necessarily controlling, the policies followed at other well-run institutions would be relevant to a determination of the need for a particular type of restriction.”), citing Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 414 n.14, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974). We make no judgment now about whether the policy is within a correctional mainstream, but this record does not show that it is. Any security justification for the underwear policy is further undermined by defendants’ own claim that they often did not enforce the policy. Defendants state that the prohibition “was not consistently applied” and that “detainees often were permitted to wear colored underwear.” This admission supports an inference that the asserted security concern about tattoo ink from underwear is not genuine. See King v. McCarty, 781 F.3d 889, 898 (7th Cir. 2015) (prisoner challenged jail’s use of a transparent jumpsuit to transport prisoner: “Detainees arriving at the intake facility from other jails were not wearing similar garments, which at least tends to suggest that such clothing is not necessary for safe and secure penal transfers”). The irregular enforcement of the underwear policy also creates the potential for abuse, for instance by providing a way to harass bothersome detainees. Giving plaintiffs the benefit of favorable inferences from this record, a reasonable trier of fact could find that the white underwear policy is not rationally related to a legitimate governmental objective, or is at least excessive in relation to such a purpose. This conclusion, without more, supports an inference that the policy punishes pretrial detainees in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Kingsley, 576 U.S. at -, 135 S.Ct. at 2473-74; Bell, 441 U.S. at 539, 99 S.Ct. 1861. We therefore reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment against the plaintiffs on their challenge to the white underwear policy. Even if the jail’s policy might ultimately be found to be rationally related to a legitimate governmental objective, the deprivation it imposes must not be excessive in relation to that purpose. Kingsley, 576 U.S. at -, 135 S.Ct. at 2473-74. This assessment calls for considering not just the government’s interest but also the dignity interests of the plaintiffs. See Brown v. Plata, 563 U.S. 493, 510, 131 S.Ct. 1910, 179 L.Ed.2d 969 (2011) (although prisoners are deprived of many rights while in custody, “the law and the Constitution demand recognition of certain other rights. Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons.”). Dignity serves an important balancing function alongside the legitimate safety and management concerns of jails and prisons. See King, 781 F.3d at 897 (“Claims such as [plaintiffs] require that we consider the larger tension between the privacy and dignity of prisoners and the pressing institutional needs for security and safety. Courts give wardens substantial deference in pursuing the latter ends, but that deference is not complete.”); see also Canedy v. Boardman, 16 F.3d 183, 186 (7th Cir. 1994) (“The judicial inquiry, then is to ‘balanc[e] the significant and legitimate security interests of the institution against the privacy interests of the inmates.’ ”), quoting Bell, 441 U.S. at 560, 99 S.Ct. 1861. Without the counterweight of dignity, a jail could presumably set forth security reasons to require detainees to remain naked throughout their detention or other such unseemly measures. The Constitution forbids such tactics. It requires consideration of individual dignity interests when assessing the permissibility of restrictive custodial policies. Here, the plaintiff-detainees allege a credible dignitary' harm. They describe their experiences being deprived of their underwear as “very uncomfortable,” “embarrassing,” “humiliating,” and “upsetting.” In addition, the policy resulted in detainees attending their own court hearings without underwear. At least one plaintiff was deprived of her underwear during her menstrual cycle. This indignity lasted for indeterminate periods of time. The district court found that detainees would be deprived of underwear for at most one day, but we have not found support for that finding. Defendants appear to concede this point in their brief. Thus, even if the white underwear policy turns out to be rationally related to a legitimate interest, the dignitary harm imposed by the policy might still be excessive in relation to that interest.