Court Opinion

ID: 9470955
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:21:42.099527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:12.450311
License: Public Domain

SEITZ, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
There is no doubt, as the majority acknowledges, that 37 Pa.Code § 95.131(c) creates a due process, liberty interest on behalf of inmate Leroy Hadden. Section 95.131(c) provides that:
No inmate shall be disciplined for filing a complaint or otherwise pursuing a remedy in the Complaint System, but no immunity is afforded by [this regulation] to any person from civil or criminal liability for his statements.
Hadden’s liberty interest exists by virtue of the explicit use of mandatory language in the regulation limiting the circumstances under which he may be disciplined for invoking the Complaint Review System. See Hewitt v. Helms,-U.S.-, 103 S.Ct. 864, 867, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983) (repeated use of mandatory language limiting circum-
stances under which inmates may be confined to Administrative custody gives rise to liberty interest).
My disagreement with the majority concerns the scope of the liberty interest created by Section 95.131(c). The majority defers to an interpretation of Section 95.131(c) offered by Commissioner Robinson, who in a letter to Hadden said that “[t]here is nothing to prevent you from filing an official inmate complaint at any time you desire. However, this does not preclude your liability for charges made against an officer which are subsequently found to be maliciously untrue.” Preliminarily, I agree that we must accept the Commissioner’s interpretation unless it is plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the purpose of the regulation. Lukens Steel v. Klutznick, 629 F.2d 881, 886 (3d Cir.1980); see Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 547, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 1878, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979) (institutional decisions of prison officials entitled to deference unless shown to be conclusively wrong).
The first clause of Section 95.131(c) provides that “[n]o inmate shall be disciplined for filing a complaint.” As Hadden points out, it would be wholly unreasonable to conclude that the drafters of the regulation intended the words “filing a complaint” to designate only the act of tendering a piece of paper to prison officials. Unless those words also encompass the process of articulating a grievance, the disciplinary immunity afforded by Section 95.131(c) would be meaningless.
I can find no support in the language of Section 95.131(c) for Commissioner Robinson’s suggestion that the disciplinary immunity granted by the regulation does not extend to inmate complaint statements which are found to be maliciously untrue. If the drafters of the regulation had intended to include such a limitation, one would expect to find it in the second clause of the Section, which delineates what potential liabilities are not included within the immunity granted by the Section.1 The conspicu*1010ous absence of disciplinary immunity for statements found to be in bad faith from the list of non-immunized liabilities can lead to only one conclusion: the drafters of Section 95.131(c) intended the regulation to immunize from disciplinary immunity both the act of tendering an inmate complaint, as well as any statement made in a complaint regardless of whether it is subsequently found to be in bad faith.
Implicit in the majority’s defense of the Commissioner’s interpretation of Section 95.131(c) is that it is proper to read into the immunity provisions of that regulation limitations derived from other prison regulations which specify the grounds upon which a prisoner may be disciplined. In particular, the majority relies upon 37 Pa.Code § 95.102(a), which permits disciplinary action for an inmate’s lying to an employee. In my view, Section 95.121(c) was designed to stand by itself as a comprehensive statement of the immunity which is and is not granted for an inmate’s use of the Complaint Review System. Section 95.131(c) contains no language directing a court, or an inmate, to look elsewhere for further elaboration of what disciplinary action may result from an inmate’s use of the Review System.
Thus, I would reject Commissioner Robinson’s interpretation because it reads into Section 95.131(c) a limitation inconsistent with the clear language of the regulation. See e.g., Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder, 425 U.S. 185, 201, 96 S.Ct. 1375, 1385, 47 L.Ed.2d 668 (1976) (language of statute controls its interpretation when sufficiently clear in context); Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 362-63, 84 S.Ct. 1697, 1707-08, 12 L.Ed.2d 894 (1964) (generally speaking, court is not justified in departing from plain meaning of words in search of an interpretation of a statute which the words themselves do not suggest).
Even if it were necessary to look beyond the clear language of Section 95.131(c) to determine its relevant meaning for this case, I would hold that Commissioner Robinson’s interpretation is legally unacceptable. The purpose of Section 95.131(c), as the majority puts it, is “to encourage inmate use of the Complaint Review System by assuring' prisoners that filing a complaint will not result in disciplinary reprisals.” Maj. Op. at 1007.
The Commissioner’s interpretation of Section 95.131(c), however, would tend to discourage inmates having good faith claims from invoking the Complaint Review System. Because the decision whether a statement was maliciously untrue is made by prison officials, these inmates may be expected to fear that any rejected grievance may result in a disciplinary reprisal. This chilling effect is clearly inconsistent with the purpose of Section 95.131(c) as articulated by the majority.
The appellees admit that Hadden was disciplined because of statements he made in an inmate complaint filed under the Complaint Review System. Because Section 95.131(c) creates a liberty interest on behalf of Hadden that he may not be disciplined for such statements, I would hold that appellees arbitrarily deprived Hadden of a liberty interest in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1973); Vitek v. Jones, 445 U.S. 480, 100 S.Ct. 1254, 63 L.Ed.2d 552 (1979).
In addition to addressing Hadden’s due process claim based on an arbitrary deprivation of liberty, the majority goes on to consider whether Hadden lacked fair notice that he could be disciplined for making maliciously untrue statements in an inmate complaint. Aside from the fact that Had-den has not relied upon a fair notice claim on appeal,2 I need not address this argu*1011ment because fair notice presumes that punishment is authorized by the statute or regulation in question. As I have stated, appellees were not authorized to discipline Hadden based on the statement he made in an inmate complaint, because of the immunity provisions of Section 95.131(c).
Because I believe even the benighted are entitled to fundamental fairness, I dissent.

. It is illuminating in this context to compare other prison regulations which govern inmate *1010complaints brought against other prisoners. 37 Pa.Code §§ 95.1-95.12 (1971). Section 95.-10(a) provides that “no inmate shall be disciplined for making a complaint against another inmate----” Section 95.10(b) states that “[a]ny inmate who makes a complaint against any other inmate which upon investigation is determined to be false or unsupported, shall be liable to such disciplinary measures deemed appropriate by the behavior clinic.”

. The majority states that the fair notice argument is “implicit” in Hadden’s Wolff v. McDonnell claim. Maj. Op. at 1008. It seems to me that a party either makes an argument on appeal, or he doesn’t. In this case, Hadden’s appellate brief does not once mention fair no*1011tice, nor does it cite the seminal Third Circuit fair notice case, Meyers v. Alldredge, 492 F.2d 296 (3d Cir.1974), upon which Hadden relied in presenting a fair notice claim before the United States Magistrate.