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

Heading: The New Context Test

Text: The questions, then, are whether we are facing a new context, or considering recognizing a new Bivens damages action, questions that are complicated by the fact that the meaning that the Supreme Court has ascribed to those terms is less than clear. Compare Malesko, 534 U.S. at 67, 122 S.Ct. 515 (noting that Bivens was extended to a new right of action in Davis v. Passman, in which the Court recognized an implied damages remedy under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment  (emphasis added)), with id. at 68, 122 S.Ct. 515 (describing Schweiker v. Chilicky, 487 U.S. 412, 108 S.Ct. 2460, 101 L.Ed.2d 370 (1988), as presenting a new context[] in which the plaintiffs sought damages under the Due Process Clause for errors made by federal officials in the[] handling of [their] Social Security applications (emphasis added)). If the alleged facts of Arar's complaint were limited to his claim of extraordinary rendition to, and torture in, Syriathat is, limited to his allegations that he was transported by the United States government to Syria via Jordan pursuant to a conspiracy or other arrangement among the countries or their agents and mistreated in Syria as a resultas the majority would have it, then we might well agree that we are dealing with a new context. But, as we have explained, the complaint is not so limited. Incarceration in the United States without cause, mistreatment while so incarcerated, denial of access to counsel and the courts while so incarcerated, and the facilitation of torture by others, considered as possible violations of a plaintiff's procedural and substantive due process rights, are hardly novel claims, nor do they present us with a new context in any legally significant sense. [20] We have recognized implied Bivens rights of action pursuant to the Due Process Clause, so Arar's claims for relief are not new actions under Bivens in that sense. A deprivation of procedural due process rights can give rise to a Bivens claim under our case law. See, e.g., Tellier v. Fields, 280 F.3d 69, 80-83 (2d Cir.2000). And while we do not appear to have squarely considered whether a Bivens action may lie for alleged violations of substantive due process rights, our cases imply that it can be. In Iqbal v. Hasty, 490 F.3d 143 (2d Cir.2007), rev'd in part on other grounds sub nom Ashcroft v. Iqbal, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009), for example, we considered a Bivens action brought on, inter alia, a Fifth Amendment substantive due process theory. The plaintiff alleged physical mistreatment and humiliation, as a Muslim prisoner, by federal prison officials, while he was detained at the MDC. After concluding, on interlocutory appeal, that the defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity, we returned the matter to the district court for further proceedings. We did not so much as hint either that a Bivens remedy was unavailable or that its availability would constitute an unwarranted extension of the Bivens doctrine. [21] Iqbal, 490 F.3d at 177-78. In other cases we have apparently assumed Bivens remedies were available for substantive due process claims. See Thomas v. Ashcroft, 470 F.3d 491, 497 (2d Cir.2006) (reversing district court's dismissal of Bivens action for violation of plaintiff's Fifth Amendment substantive due process rights while detained at the MDC); Cuoco v. Moritsugu, 222 F.3d 99 (2d Cir.2000) (dismissing, on qualified immunity grounds, plaintiff's Bivens claim for, inter alia, substantive due process violations, without questioning whether a cause of action was available); Li v. Canarozzi, 142 F.3d 83 (2d Cir.1998) (affirming judgment following jury verdict for defendants in Bivens action based on allegations of physical assault by guards at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, although not explicitly on substantive due process grounds); Ayeni v. Mottola, 35 F.3d 680, 691 (2d Cir.1994) (apparently assuming that Bivens remedy was available for substantive due process claim, but deciding that it could not be pursued because the claim in issue was covered by the more particular provisions of the Fourth Amendment, for which a Bivens action was permitted), abrogated on qualified immunity grounds, Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 119 S.Ct. 1692, 143 L.Ed.2d 818 (1999). Indeed, even the most international of Arar's domestic allegationsthat the defendants, acting within the United States, sent Arar to Syria with the intent that he be torturedpresent no new context for Bivens purposes. Principles of substantive due process apply to a narrow band of extreme misbehavior by government agents acting under color of law: mistreatment that is so egregious, so outrageous, that it may fairly be said to shock the contemporary conscience. Lombardi v. Whitman, 485 F.3d 73, 79 (2d Cir.2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). Sending Arar from the United States with the intent or understanding that he will be tortured in Syria easily exceeds the level of outrageousness needed to make out a substantive due process claim. Although the shocks the conscience test is undeniably vague, see Estate of Smith v. Marasco, 430 F.3d 140, 156 (3d Cir.2005); Schaefer v. Goch, 153 F.3d 793, 798 (7th Cir.1998), [n]o one doubts that under Supreme Court precedent, interrogation by torture meets that test, Harbury v. Deutch, 233 F.3d 596, 602 (D.C.Cir. 2000), rev'd on other grounds sub nom Christopher v. Harbury, 536 U.S. 403, 122 S.Ct. 2179, 153 L.Ed.2d 413 (2002); [22] see also Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952) (holding that the forcible pumping of a suspect's stomach to obtain evidence to be used against him was too close to the rack and the screw to permit of constitutional differentiation); Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 326, 58 S.Ct. 149, 82 L.Ed. 288 (1937) (noting that the Due Process Clause must at least give protection against torture, physical or mental), overruled on other grounds, Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969); Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 285-86, 56 S.Ct. 461, 80 L.Ed. 682 (1936) (Because a state may dispense with a jury trial, it does not follow that it may substitute trial by ordeal. The rack and torture chamber may not be substituted for the witness stand.). [23] To be sure, Arar alleges not that the defendants themselves tortured him; he says that they outsourced it. [24] But we do not think that the question whether the defendants violated Arar's substantive due process rights turns on whom they selected to do the torturing, [25] or that such outsourcing somehow changes the essential character of the acts within the United States to which Arar seeks to hold the defendants accountable. We think that Arar states a substantive due process claim under either of two theories of substantive due process liability: special relationship liability or state-created-danger liability, Benzman v. Whitman, 523 F.3d 119, 127 (2d Cir.2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under the latter doctrine, the defendants can be held liable for tak[ing] an affirmative act that creates an opportunity for a third party to harm a victim (or increases the risk of such harm). Lombardi, 485 F.3d at 80. Under the former, Arar was owed an affirmative duty by the defendants to protect him from harm by Syrian agents in light of the fact that the government took him into its custody and h[eld] him there against his will. Matican v. City of New York, 524 F.3d 151, 155-56 (2d Cir.) (citations, internal quotation marks, and footnotes omitted), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 636, 172 L.Ed.2d 611 (2008). In sum, we do not view the current action as presenting a new context in any relevant sense. We therefore do not think we must decide whether to devise a new Bivens damages action. Wilkie, 127 S.Ct. at 2597, here.