Court Opinion

ID: 9427056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:33.656705+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.703725
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
dissenting.
Today’s decision, coupled with O’Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U. S. 563, strongly implies that every defendant in a § 1983 action is entitled to assert a qualified immunity from damage liability. As the immunity doctrine developed, the Court was careful to limit its holdings to specific officials,1 and to insist that a considered inquiry into- the common law was an essential precondition to the recognition of the proper immunity for any official.2 These limits have now been abandoned. In Donaldson, without explanation and without reference to the common law, the Court held that the standard for judging the *569immunity of the superintendent of a mental hospital is the same as the standard for school officials; today the Court purports to apply the same standard to the superintendent of a prison system and to various correction officers.3
I have no quarrel with the extension of a qualified immunity defense to all state agents. A public servant who is conscientiously doing his job to the best of his ability should rarely, if ever, be exposed to the risk of damage liability. But when the Court makes the qualified immunity available to all potential defendants, it is especially important that the contours of this affirmative defense be explained with care and precision. Unfortunately, I believe today’s opinion significantly changes the nature of the defense and overlooks the critical importance of carefully examining the factual basis for the defense in each case in which it is asserted.
The facts of this case have been developed only sketchily. Because the District Court granted a motion for summary judgment, we must accept Navarette’s version of the facts as true.4 The Court of Appeals remanded six of his claims for *570trial. These claims tell us that prison officials prevented Navarette from corresponding with legal assistance groups, law students, the news media, personal friends, and other inmates with legal problems or expertise. Some of this mail was deliberately confiscated because the guards regarded Navarette as a troublesome “writ-writer" and some was mishandled simply because the guards were careless in performing their official duties.
To establish their defense, all the defendants except Pro-cunier have filed an affidavit stating that they made a good-faith effort to comply with prison mail regulations while handling Navarette’s mail.5 But Navarette’s affidavit challenges this assertion. According to Navarette, the prison warden took the position, despite contrary prison regulations, that officials had a right to confiscate any mail, “if we don’t feel it is right or necessary.” Record 78. Navarette also claims that his writ-writing activities led authorities to punish him by taking away his job as a prison librarian and by seizing his mail.
With the record in this state, the defendants have not established good faith. The heart of the good-faith defense is the manner in which the defendant has carried out his job.6 *571A public official is entitled to immunity for acts performed in the regular course of duty if he sincerely and reasonably believed he was acting within the sphere of his official responsibility. See Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U. S. 232, 247-248. The kind of evidence that will adequately support the defense will vary widely from case to case. Some defendants, especially those without policymaking responsibility, may establish their defense by showing that they abided by the institution's regulations or by its long-followed practices. Other officials, whose exercise of discretion is given greater deference by the courts, see Scheuer v. Rhodes, supra, may have a correspondingly greater duty to consider the legal implications of their conduct.
Wood v. Strickland, 420 U. S. 308, pointed out two specific instances in which an official might forfeit his good-faith defense by deviating from a reasonable performance of his job. An official does not carry out his official duties properly if he chooses a course of conduct that he knows, or should know, is unconstitutional. Id., at 322. Similarly, an official steps outside his proper role when he uses his powers to inflict constitutional or other harm on an individual for reasons unrelated to the performance of his duty.7 Selective and malicious enforcement of the law is not good faith.
*572Under this standard, Navarette may well be able to defeat these defendants' affirmative defense of good faith. He has alleged, and therefore we must assume, that the defendants did not in fact act within the sphere of their accepted responsibilities. If they carelessly disregarded the standards which their superiors directed them to follow, they would be unable to make the threshold showing necessary to establish good faith. Whether or not that showing can be made in this case depends on a resolution of the conflict between Navarette’s allegations of negligence and the statements in defendants’ affidavit.
The defendants fare no better if we limit our attention to the two examples of bad faith set out in Wood v. Strickland, supra. The Wood Court stated that actual malice — the intent to cause constitutional or other injury — cannot be good faith; a defendant may not have the benefit of the good-faith defense if he misuses his powers by singling out the plaintiff for special and unfair injuries.8 In this case, malice is alleged in some of the plaintiff’s claims, and we must assume that it can be proved. The evidence might show that the defendants intentionally confiscated some of Navarette’s mail as a punishment and that they negligently mislaid other letters. A jury might then find that the defendants’ animus toward Navarette so tainted their handling of his mail that the good-faith defense should be denied them even with respect to harm caused by their negligence. Only by qualifying its previous teaching about this defense can the Court regard evidence of the defendants’ ill will toward the plaintiff as totally irrelevant to any claim that he may have for harm caused by the negligent performance of their duties.
The Wood Court also noted that a plaintiff may successfully rebut a claim of immunity based on the defendant’s good-*573faith performance of official duties by demonstrating that the defendant knew, or should have known, that he was acting unconstitutionally. I think the Court is correct in concluding that the First Amendment’s applicability to an inmate’s correspondence was not so well established in 1971 that the defendants should have known that interfering with a prisoner’s routine mail was unconstitutional. That does not, however, foreclose the argument that the official neglect alleged in this case implicated a different constitutional right — the prisoner’s right of access to the courts. In 1971, Navarette had a well-established right of access to the courts and to legal assistance.9 Cutting off his communications with law students and legal assistance groups violated this right. While the lower echelon employees may have been under no obligation to read advance sheets, a jury might conclude that *574at least some of these defendants should have known that at least some of Navarette’s mail was entitled to constitutional protection.10 Certainly the question whether correction officers should be charged with knowledge of a constitutional right to communicate with law students and legal assistance groups could be better answered after, rather than before, trial. Cf. O’Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U. S., at 576-577; Donaldson v. O’Connor, 519 F. 2d 59 (CA5 1975).
In sum, I am persuaded that the Court has acted unwisely in reaching out to decide the merits of an affirmative defense before any evidence has been heard and that the record as now developed does not completely foreclose the possibility that the plaintiff might be able to disprove a good-faith defense that has not yet even been pleaded properly.11
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from the decision to decide a question which is not properly presented and from the way the Court decides that question.

Thus, in Wood v. Strickland, 420 U. S. 308, 322, the Court stated:
“Therefore, in the specific context of school discipline, we hold that a school board member is not immune from liability for damages under § 1983 if he knew or reasonably should have known that the action he took within his sphere of official responsibility would violate the constitutional rights of the student affected, or if he took the action with the malicious intention to cause a deprivation of constitutional rights or other injury to the student.” (Emphasis added.)

 In Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409, 421, the Court stated:
“As noted above, our earlier decisions on § 1983 immunities were not products of judicial fiat that officials in different branches of government are differently amenable to suit under § 1983. Rather, each was predicated upon a considered inquiry into the immunity historically accorded the relevant official at common law and the interests behind it.”

 Perhaps with good reason, see Whirl v. Kern, 407 F. 2d 781, 791-792 (CA5 1969), the Court does not consult the common law to gauge the scope of a jailer’s immunity. Cf. Imbler v. Pachtman, supra, at 421; Wood v. Strickland, supra, at 818. Instead, the Court seems to rely on an un-articulated notion that prison administrators deserve as much immunity as Governors, school administrators, hospital administrators, and policemen. Ante, at 561, and n. 7. The Court also elides any distinction between discretionary and ministerial tasks. Cf. Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U. S. 232, 247. One defendant in this case was joined simply because he “was in charge of handling incoming and outgoing prisoner mail.” Although the scope of this defendant’s duties is not clear, he may well have been performing wholly ministerial chores, such as bagging and delivering prison mail. By allowing summary judgment in his favor, the Court strongly suggests that the nature of his job is irrelevant to whether he should have a good-faith immunity.

 For purposes of decision, the Court also makes an assumption about the law that applies to this case. Like the Court, I shall assume, without deciding, that a guard who negligently misreads regulations and improperly interferes with a prisoner’s mail has violated § 1983.

 Procunier filed neither an answer nor an affidavit. The affidavit filed by the other defendants states:
“Insofar as I handled, approved, returned or otherwise dealt with the mail of Apolinar Navarette, such actions were at all times taken in good faith effort to comply with the applicable regulations then in force of the Director of the Department of Corrections or the superintendent of the institution. At no time did I maliciously interfere with or confiscate plaintiff’s mail, or conspire with others to so act, in violation of applicable regulations.” Record 142.

 This is the principle we have turned to in fashioning more specific rules. In Wood v. Strickland, supra, for example, the Court said that the goal of the good-faith doctrine is to allow officials to do their jobs faithfully without fear:
“[H]owever worded, the immunity must be such that public school officials understand that action taken in the good-faith fulfillment of their *571responsibilities and within the bounds of reason under all the circumstances will not be punished and that they need not exercise their discretion with undue timidity.” 420 U. S., at 321.

 Referring to Wood v. Strickland, the Court in O’Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U. S. 563, 577, stated:
“Under that decision, the relevant question for the jury is whether O’Connor 'knew or reasonably should have known that the action he took within his sphere of official responsibility would violate the constitutional rights of [Donaldson], or if he took the action with the malicious intention to cause a deprivation of constitutional rights or other injury to [Donaldson].’ [420 U. S.,] at 322.”
Thus, both in Wood and in O’Connor, the Court expressly stated that the defendant would forfeit his qualified immunity if he acted with the *572malicious intention to cause a deprivation of constitutional rights or if he deliberately intended to cause “other injury.”

 See n. 7, supra.

 Access to the courts through the mails has been constitutionally protected since 1941, when Ex parte Hull, 312 U. S. 546, held that the State could not constitutionally refuse to mail a prisoner’s inartful pleadings to the courts. In Johnson v. Avery, 393 U. S. 483, this Court recognized that the right of access to the courts included a right of access to legal assistance. Johnson held that, in the absence of alternative sources of assistance, prisoners must be allowed to consult inmate “writ-writers.” Id., at 490. In Younger v. Gilmore, 404 U. S. 15, this Court summarily affirmed a three-judge court decision ordering the California Department of Corrections to heed the Johnson decision and abandon a prison rule making it difficult for inmates to get legal help from writ-writers. See Gilmore v. Lynch, 319 F. Supp. 105, 112 (ND Cal. 1970). By the time of the acts in question here, the right of access to the courts clearly included a right to communicate with legal assistance groups and law students:
“Johnson v. Avery clearly stands for the general proposition that an inmate’s right of access to the court involves a corollary right to obtain some assistance in preparing his communication with the court. Given that corollary right, we fail to see how a state, at least in the absence of some countervailing interest not here appearing, can prevent an inmate from seeking legal assistance from bona fide attorneys working in an organization such as the Civil Liberties Union.” Nolan v. Scafati, 430 F. 2d 548, 551 (CA1 1970) (footnote omitted).

 Although Navarette no longer relies on his access rights to establish the defendants’ liability, ante, at 565 n. 12, he surely may attempt to prove a violation of these rights to rebut a claim of good faith.

 The license the Court has taken with normal pleading requirements is perhaps best illustrated by the grant of immunity to the defendant Pro-cunier, the Director of the State Department of Corrections, who has filed neither an answer nor an affidavit. For all the record shows, Pro-cunier may have been 'expressly advised by counsel that the mail regulations were being unconstitutionally enforced, and despite that advice he may have deliberately instructed his subordinates to punish this uniquely bothersome writ-writer. Even such a remote possibility must be considered before summary judgment is approved. As Judge Aldrich has put it, “even an andabata holds the field until someone comes forward to defeat him.” Mack v. Cape Elizabeth School Bd., 553 F. 2d 720, 722 (CA1 1977).