Court Opinion

ID: 9549206
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:14:51.833765+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:59.947158
License: Public Domain

JOSEPH, , J.,
dissenting.
The majority opinion is admirable — up to where it begins to discuss the basis for deciding disease. From that point on it utterly abandons any effort to apply law to the facts or to explain in what way the personal preferences it expresses are supported by the state or federal constitutions. At the very least the parties ought to be furnished some explanation, any explanation, of the source and scope of the right of privacy the opinion would protect. It is understandable why the majority fails to do that, for aside from the Griswold case (which is wholly beside the point here) and other *763vague dicta described in the opinion, no one has ever been able to furnish a principled constitutional explanation of the supposed right.
The majority follows Long and Forts, but that will not wash. Long is a California state case, which, of course, is not binding here even if it does purport to rest on the federal constitution in the main. Forts, from a federal trial court, is no more binding; and whatever force it might otherwise have once had is considerably diminished, if not destroyed, by the Supreme Court’s reversal of Wolfish v. Levi, 573 F2d 118, (2d Cir 1978) sub nom Bell v. Wolfish, 441 US 520, 99 S Ct 1861, 60 L Ed 2d 447 (1979). The Second Circuit’s view of the extent of prisoners’ privacy rights must be taken to have informed the opinion in Forts by the federal district court for the southern district of New York: But little or nothing is now left of that view after the Supreme Court’s decision.
The process of applying Bell v. Wolfish, supra, to the instant case requires caution. Plaintiffs here are sentenced offenders; in Wolfish (in the Supreme Court) the prisoners were federal pre-trial detainees. Therefore, that case is a Fourth and Fifth (and First) Amendments case, not an Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments case.1 Still, the view of the Eighth Amendment rights taken in Wolfish would avail these plaintiffs nothing. In a footnote the Supreme Court cited without apparent disapproval the Second Circuit’s holding that "[a]n institution’s obligation under the eighth amendment is at an end if it furnishes sentenced prisoners with adequate food, clothing, shelter, sanitation, medical care, and personal safety.” (Slip opinion at 7, n 11.) And later, with apparent approval, it cited the restrictive reading of the amendment’s scope and utility in Ingraham v. Wright, 430 *764US 651, 97 S Ct 1401, 51 L Ed 2d 711 (1977). (Slip opinion 13, n 16.) Moreover, the opinion elides almost any distinctions between the rights of pre-trial detainees and sentenced offenders in listing the "general principles that inform *** evaluation of the restrictions at issue.” (Slip opinion at 23-27.)
If one were merely to apply the dicta in Wolfish, the conclusion would be well nigh inescapable that the Eighth Amendment applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment does not implicate any right of privacy. Moreover, the United States Supreme Court has never held that the penumbral right of privacy discovered in Griswold exists in a prison context. In Wolfish the court avoided the issue by assuming "arguendo” that the district court was correct in finding prisoners’ interest in privacy was part of the Fourth Amendment — and then proceeded to hold "shakedown” room searches out of the occupants’ presence to be reasonable. Similar short shrift was given a privacy claim as to visual inspections of body cavities as a part of strip searches routinely conducted after every contact visit with a person from outside the institution. Finally, the room searches and visual ex-aminations2 were held not to violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
It is not necessary to accept the whole of the majority’s views in Wolfish insofar as particular practices were approved there. The key language for our concerns is this:
"*** [T]he determination whether these restrictions and practices constitute punishment in the constitutional sense depends on whether they are rationally related to a legitimate nonpunitive governmental purpose and whether they appear excessive in relation to that purpose. *** Insuring security and order at the institution is a permissible nonpunitive objective, whether the facility houses pretrial detainees, convicted inmates, or both. *** Respondents *765simply have not met their heavy burden of showing that these officials have exaggerated their response to the genuine security considerations that actuated these restrictions and practices. ***” (Slip opinion at 39-40.)
Plaintiffs here concede that random pat-downs are necessary for the security of the institution. The responsible administrative officials have determined that that function can be efficiently performed by guards irrespective of their gender. On the other hand, those officials have also determined that the security requirements of the institution do not require that gender be ignored as to some other job assignments. That determination may well be viewed as according to the inmates a degree of privacy, but it does not follow that the prison administrators have made a distinction that we must examine in the light of either the state or the federal constitution.
The plaintiffs’ approach, which seems to have been followed in part by the trial court and which must be the basis of the majority opinion, is that the burden was on the Division to sustain the assignment of women guards to the subject work in the face of a constitutional challenge. That is wrong, as the quote from Wolfish makes very clear. Furthermore, it is not for courts to substitute their judgment for that of the administrators unless and until it has been shown that the particular practices are punitive and are without a foundation in security needs. The most that can be said of the plaintiffs’ showing here was that the plaintiffs (to differing degrees)3 and some proportion of the general prison population4 found the touching of *766genitalia and anal areas through their clothing offensive. No attempt was made to show that the use of women guards was done for punitive or any other constitutionally impermissible reason.
The trial judge found that plaintiffs had failed to prove that institutional security, family situations and religious beliefs were adversely affected by employment of women in frisking situations. He then said, "In my opinion, it is just common sense that women correctional officers not be required to or permitted to touch the anal and genital areas of prisoners during routine searches and frisks.” Absent a constitutional foundation, that was simply the substitution of his idea of how to run a prison for that of the responsible officials. That was error. The majority, I suppose, does not claim the support of common sense. Instead, it applies a constitutional principle picked out of the air. That is both sleight-of-hand magic and error.
I dissent.
RICHARDSON, J., joins in this dissent.

 Plaintiffs here asserted state constitutional claims under Article I, sections 3, 13, 15, 16, 20 and 33 of the Oregon Constitution, as well as federal constitution of claims under the Eighth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. The state bases for their claims were not developed and were not relied on in this court at all. Compare Cooper v. Morin, 26 Cr L 1065 (NY Ct of App, December 19, 1979).

 The court emphasized the visual nature of the examinations. (Slip opinion at 36, n 39.) The process described, though, does not suggest that the manner of obtaining the vision was in any sense dignified.

 One of the plaintiffs testified that he was not particularly affected by the fact of a frisk by a female guard; he objected to the manner and thoroughness, which he felt was different than that done by men. That plaintiff also voiced what he termed "moral objections” to being frisked by a female.

 The prison psychologist gave an estimate that approximately one-third of the prisoners were negatively affected by being frisked by a female; approximately one-third were indifferent to the matter; and the remaining third had no objection and appreciated having some degree of human female contact.