Opinion ID: 427079
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: federal oversight of state prisons

Text: 31 Appellants argue that the district court's exercise of pendent jurisdiction in this case contravenes the Supreme Court's admonishment against using the rubric of state-created rights as an avenue for federal oversight of state prisons. That argument also lacks merit. 32 Appellants cite the Supreme Court's recent opinion in Hewitt v. Helms, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 864, 871, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983), in which the Court noted that 33 the creation of procedural guidelines to channel the decision-making of prison officials is, in the view of many experts in the field, a salutary development. It would be ironic to hold that when a State embarks on such desirable experimentation it thereby opens the door to scrutiny by the federal courts. 34 Hewitt v. Helms is, however, inapposite. There, the Court cautioned that states may be more reluctant to provide prisoners with procedural protections if such protections are deemed ipso facto to constitute liberty interests protected by the fourteenth amendment. The Court was concerned with federal courts conferring additional federal procedural protections when states choose to confer protections of their own, but not when they do not. Here, the district court was not conferring additional federal protections. Rather, it was exercising its pendent jurisdiction to enforce the protections that California itself had conferred. 8