Arciola v. New York State D.O.C.C.S.

Background

Michael Arciola filed the action without a lawyer under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights law that allows claims against people acting under state authority. When he filed the complaint, he was detained in the Dutchess County Jail; the order states that he was later incarcerated at Clinton Correctional Facility. He alleged that New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision officials discriminated against him during parole-revocation proceedings.

Arciola alleged that Administrative Law Judge Virginia James Morrow acted improperly during a hearing while interacting with prosecutor David Graubard. He alleged that Parole Officer Sueann Lashley lied during the hearing because she disliked white people and wanted him to remain incarcerated. He also alleged that Bureau Chief Zaira Serrano handled his grievances differently from those filed by other parolees. He attributed serious medical problems to the corrections department and Judge Morrow and sought parole to Samaritan Village, a drug-treatment program. The complaint also included records from information requests, grievances, and correspondence.

Screening and equal-protection claim

Because Arciola was a prisoner seeking relief against governmental defendants, the court screened the complaint under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The court had to dismiss claims that were frivolous, malicious, inadequately pleaded, sought money from an immune defendant, or fell outside the court’s jurisdiction. It also had to read a self-represented complaint liberally while requiring enough facts to make a claim plausible.

The court understood the complaint to assert an equal-protection claim under the Fourteenth Amendment. To state that type of claim, a plaintiff generally must allege intentional discrimination based on race, national origin, or gender. The court found that Arciola did not identify similarly situated people who were treated differently and supplied no factual support for his conclusion that defendants discriminated against him because of his race. The court also considered a “class-of-one” theory, which involves unequal treatment of one person compared with similarly situated people, but found that the complaint lacked facts supporting that theory as well.

Because Arciola was self-represented and the court could not rule out the possibility that he might state a valid claim, the court granted him leave to amend the equal-protection claim.

Claims against the defendants

The court held that Judge Morrow had absolute judicial immunity for actions taken while presiding over Arciola’s parole-violation hearing. The court found that she had jurisdiction over that matter and that Arciola did not allege a violation of a declaratory judgment or that declaratory relief was unavailable.

The court dismissed Arciola’s Section 1983 claims against the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and against Lashley and Serrano in their official capacities under the Eleventh Amendment. The court explained that state governments and state agencies generally cannot be sued in federal court without a waiver or congressional abrogation, and that New York had not waived this immunity for these claims.

The court could not determine from the complaint whether Lashley was entitled to immunity for her personal-capacity conduct because the complaint did not clearly explain what she personally did or failed to do. Even so, the court found that the allegations did not identify facts showing that Lashley’s conduct violated Arciola’s rights and granted leave to amend those allegations.

Parole-revocation challenge

The court declined to treat the complaint as a petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, the federal procedure for challenging the fact or duration of state custody. The court explained that a challenge to parole revocation must generally be brought through that procedure after the prisoner exhausts available state remedies, including available administrative appeals and state-court proceedings. The order did not decide the merits of whether Arciola’s parole revocation was lawful.

Leave to amend and disposition

Judge Louis L. Stanton granted Arciola 60 days to file an amended complaint. The amended complaint must identify the relevant people and their titles, describe what each defendant did or failed to do, provide approximate dates and locations, describe injuries, and state the requested relief. It will replace the original complaint rather than supplement it, so any facts or claims Arciola wants considered must be repeated.

The court warned that if Arciola did not timely amend and could not show good cause, the complaint would be dismissed for failure to state a claim. No summons would issue at that time. The court also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without prepaying fees for purposes of an appeal.