Harrison v. Kernan

DAVID SCOTT HARRISON, Plaintiff, v. S. KERNAN, et al., Defendants.

No. 16-cv-07103-RMI

United States District Court, N.D. California, Eureka Division

September 21, 2021

ORDER RE: DEFENDANTS' MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Re: Dkt. No. 70

ROBERT M. ILLMAN UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

Now pending before the court is Defendants' Motion for Partial Summary Judgment (dkt. 70), seeking summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds in favor Defendants Kernan and Beard (as to Plaintiff's claims suing them in their individual capacities for the purposes of Plaintiff's damages claim). Plaintiff has responded (dkt. 71), and Defendants have replied (dkt. 72). For the reasons stated below, Defendants' Motion is granted.^[1]

BACKGROUND

This case is once again before this court on remand from the Court of Appeals. See Op. (dkt. 57). Plaintiff, a California state prisoner, sued two now-former secretaries of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“CDCR”) pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and alleged that Defendants discriminated against him on the basis of his male gender by promulgating rules that prohibited him from purchasing certain products from prison vendors that were only available to women prisoners under a series of rules that were proposed in 2007 and finalized in 2008. See id. at 4-5.^[2] Plaintiff initially filed his case in state court and sued Defendants in their individual capacities for the purposes of his claim seeking damages, and in their official capacity for the purposes of his claim for injunctive relief. See Compl. (dkt. 1-1) at 15-18. Subsequently, Defendants removed the case to this court (see dkt. 1) and moved for summary judgment (dkt 23) arguing, inter alia, that for equal protection purposes: (1) male and female prisoners are not similarly situation; and, (2) differences in access to personal property items are reasonably related to legitimate penological interests, and that the property restrictions were constitutionally sound because they satisfy the four-factor test set forth in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987) (to wit: whether there is a valid, rational connection between the prison regulation and the legitimate government interest advanced as a justification; whether there are any alternative means of exercising the right; the impact that the accommodation of the right will have on guards, other prisoners, and the allocation of prison resources; and, in the absence of ready alternatives, the reasonableness of the prison regulation). See Defs.' First. Mot. (dkt. 23) at 16-20.

In August of 2017, the Honorable Nandor J. Vadas granted Defendants' motion on grounds that “the only proper standard for determining the validity of a prison regulation or practice claimed to infringe on an inmate's constitutional rights [with the exception of race-based discrimination claims and alleged Eighth Amendment violations] is to ask whether the regulation or practice is ‘reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.'” See Order of August 21, 2017 (dkt. 48) at 14 (citing Turner, 482 U.S. at 89). Judge Vadas then added that “[t]his is true even when the constitutional right claimed to have been infringed is fundamental or a suspect class is involved, and the state under other circumstances would be required to satisfy a more rigorous standard of review. Id. (citing Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210, 223-25 (1990) (“We made quite clear that the standard of review we adopted in Turner applies to all circumstances in which the needs of prison administration implicate constitutional rights.”). In short, Judge Vadas concluded that the rules prohibiting male prisoners from possessing these items were reasonably related to legitimate penological purposes and that “under the Turner analysis, the court must conclude that Plaintiff cannot show an equal protection violation.” See id. at 15-16.

Plaintiff appealed (dkt. 50) and in August of 2020, the Court of Appeals issued an opinion vacating Judge Vadas's order granting summary judgment under Turner's “reasonably related” standard, while explaining “we [now] conclude that intermediate scrutiny applies to such claims [and] [b]ecause we had not yet established intermediate scrutiny as the applicable standard at the time the district court reviewed the regulation at issue in this case, we follow our normal practice of remanding to the district court to determine in the first instance whether Defendants have met the standard we outline today.” See Op. (dkt. 57) at 3-4. The appellate court also made certain to note that, “[g]iven that no prior Ninth Circuit precedent addressed the appropriate standard of scrutiny afforded to gender-based equal protection claims in the prison context, we cannot fully fault the district court for applying the deferential Turner standard advanced by the Department below.” Id. at 15 n.10. The court also noted that this issue has been the subject of considerable disagreement amongst jurists “[o]ther circuits have not yet decided this question, or else have not yet taken the opportunity to address it again after the Supreme Court offered additional guidance in Johnson v. California.” Id. at 19 n.12 (noting that in 2001, one panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed without comment a district court's application of intermediate scrutiny to such a claim, but then, “two years later applied Turner's reasonableness standard to another such claim in a published opinion, ” while the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has expressly declined to decide the question of the proper standard with which to address such claims). In any event, given the changing landscape governing the standard by which gender-based equal protection claims in the prison context are evaluated, the Court of Appeals made certain to include the following instruction in its mandate on remand: “[t]he district court also should decide, in the first instance, whether Defendants Kernan and Beard in their individual capacities are entitled to qualified immunity from Harrison's claims.” Id. at 22 n.13.

Following Judge Vadas's retirement while this case was pending in the Court of Appeals, after remand, the case was reassigned to the undersigned (dkt. 63) for further proceedings. Thereafter, Defendants moved for partial summary judgment (dkt. 70) in relation to Plaintiff's individual capacity claims, on qualified immunity grounds. Having been fully briefed, that motion is now ripe for adjudication.

LEGAL STANDARD

Summary judgment on a claim or defense is appropriate “if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a). To prevail, a party moving for summary judgment must show the absence of a genuine issue of material fact with respect to an essential element of the non-moving party's claim, or to a defense on which the non-moving party will bear the burden of persuasion at trial. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986). Once the movant has made this showing, the burden then shifts to the party opposing summary judgment to identify “specific facts showing there is a genuine issue for trial.” Id. The party opposing summary judgment must then present affirmative evidence from which a jury could return a verdict in that party's favor. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. 242, 257 (1986).

On summary judgment, a court will draw all reasonable factual inferences in favor of the non-movant. Id. at 255. In deciding summary judgment motions, “[c]redibility determinations, the weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts are jury functions, not those of a judge.” Id. However, conclusory or speculative testimony or allegations do not raise genuine issues of fact and are insufficient to defeat summary judgment. See e.g., Thornhill Publ'g Co., Inc. v. GTE Corp., 594 F.2d 730, 738 (9th Cir. 1979).

“The doctrine of qualified immunity shields officials from civil liability so long as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 11 (2015) (per curiam). Qualified immunity “gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments by protecting all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” City & County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, 575 U.S. 600, 611 (2015) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). This analysis “must be undertaken in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition.” Mendez v. County of Los Angeles, 815 F.3d 1178, 1186 (9th Cir. 2016) (quoting Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001), overruled on other grounds by County of Los Angeles v. Mendez, 137 S.Ct. 1539, 198 L.Ed.2d 52 (2017)). In order “[t]o determine whether an officer is entitled to qualified immunity, [the Court] ask[s], in the order [it] choose[s], (1) whether the alleged misconduct violated a [constitutional] right and (2) whether the right was clearly established at the time of the alleged misconduct.” Hernandez v. City of San Jose, 897 F.3d 1125, 1132 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting Maxwell v. County of San Diego, 708 F.3d 1075, 1082 (9th Cir. 2013)) (alterations in Hernandez); see also Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009) (same). Lastly, it is important to note that qualified immunity applies unless the answer to both questions is “yes.” See Pearson, 555 U.S. at 232.

DISCUSSION

Defendants move for summary judgment on Plaintiff's damages claims against Defendants in their individual capacities because they contend that they are entitled to qualified immunity under the “clearly established law” prong of the analysis. See ...