Milliken v. Studervant

Background

James M. Milliken, a California prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, sued employees of Pelican Bay State Prison under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged that his placement and continued confinement in administrative segregation violated the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The defendants moved for summary judgment, which asks whether the evidence shows there is no genuine dispute over a fact important to the outcome and whether the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

Milliken requested transfer from the general population to a sensitive-needs yard. He was placed in administrative segregation on May 2, 2017. After later reviews, prison officials continued his confinement while investigating suspected gang ties. He remained in administrative segregation at Pelican Bay until his transfer to another prison on February 23, 2018. The court limited the case to damages for his retention at Pelican Bay from August 3, 2017, through that transfer. Because Milliken was later moved out of administrative segregation, the court found any request for transfer to a sensitive-needs yard moot. It also found moot his request to expunge the Pelican Bay gang validation because he was later revalidated at another prison.

The court dismissed Classification Staff Representative D. Garcia without prejudice because Garcia had not been served and Milliken had not provided information needed to identify or serve Garcia.

First Amendment Claim

Milliken claimed that prison officials retaliated against him for refusing to provide information about other inmates during a debriefing interview. The court held that refusal to provide that information was not conduct protected by the First Amendment. It also concluded that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity, which generally protects government officials from damages when the unlawfulness of their conduct was not clearly established.

The court therefore granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the First Amendment claim.

Eighth Amendment Claim

The court distinguished administrative segregation from punitive solitary confinement. It found that the evidence showed Milliken was held for administrative and safety reasons during an investigation and housing review, rather than as punishment for a disciplinary violation. Milliken did not identify evidence showing that his placement or retention was punitive.

Because the confinement was administrative, the court held that Milliken could not pursue an Eighth Amendment claim alleging disproportionate punishment. The court also held that Ninth Circuit precedent foreclosed his claim that his twenty-seven-month administrative-segregation confinement, without more, constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The court declined to consider a separate deliberate-indifference-to-safety claim raised for the first time in his opposition because the complaint had not given the defendants fair notice of that claim.

The court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the Eighth Amendment claim.

Fourteenth Amendment Due-Process Claim

The court assumed that Milliken had a protected liberty interest in avoiding extended confinement in segregation housing without meaningful, periodic review. It held that his initial placement in administrative segregation was proper because he received a hearing, was told why the placement was being considered, and had an opportunity to present his views.

The court held that Milliken had received periodic reviews. Although he identified delays totaling eighty-five days and alleged that prison regulations required earlier reviews, the court explained that the Fourteenth Amendment does not require a prison to follow procedures more generous than the federal Constitution requires. The court found no basis to conclude that these delays made the reviews nonperiodic.

The court reached a different conclusion about whether the reviews were meaningful. Milliken argued that the Pelican Bay classification committee could not have meaningfully reviewed his confinement because the confinement allegedly violated the settlement in an earlier related proceeding concerning administrative segregation and gang validation. The court stated that violating that settlement would not itself establish a constitutional violation, but could be evidence that the reviews were not meaningful. Because the defendants did not plausibly rebut Milliken’s argument, the court found a genuine factual dispute about whether the reviews were meaningful.

The court also denied qualified immunity on this claim. It denied the defendants’ motion for summary judgment as to the Fourteenth Amendment due-process claim.

Disposition and Next Steps

The court stated that the defendants’ motion for summary judgment was granted in part and denied in part: it was granted on Milliken’s First and Eighth Amendment claims as to all defendants and denied on his Fourteenth Amendment claim. The remaining issue was whether Officers C. Sturdevant and D. Bradbury, Sergeants M.K. Anderson and J. Schrag, Counselor A. Bond, Captain D. Wilcox, Chief Deputy Warden R.K. Bell, and Investigators C. Parry, J. Puente, and A. Schaad denied Milliken meaningful review of his Pelican Bay administrative-segregation confinement.

The court referred the case to the Pro Se Prisoner Settlement Program, stayed the case during settlement proceedings, and administratively closed the file. The court explained that administrative closure was an internal procedure that did not affect the parties’ rights.