Jiau v. Tews

Background

Winifred Jiau originally filed this action while incarcerated as a self-represented petition seeking release-related relief under a federal statute governing certain prisoner petitions. She alleged that she was unlawfully denied a requested transfer to a residential re-entry center on December 3, 2012. She was later placed in such a center on December 23, 2013, and was released from federal custody in June 2014.

In an August 15, 2017 order, the court converted the action into a damages lawsuit under Bivens, a doctrine allowing certain claims against federal officials for constitutional violations. Jiau had asserted an Eighth Amendment deliberate-indifference claim based on the denial of her transfer request and a First Amendment retaliation claim. The court dismissed both claims with prejudice, meaning the court barred those claims from being refiled in that form, but gave Jiau an opportunity to amend claims involving due process, equal protection, and the Ex Post Facto Clause.

Jiau’s second amended complaint named Randy L. Tews, identified as the warden at the Federal Corrections Institution in Dublin, California, and sought money damages. In a March 28, 2019 order, the court granted Tews’s dispositive motion, treated as a motion for summary judgment, on the remaining due-process, equal-protection, and Ex Post Facto claims.

Ninth Circuit proceedings

Jiau appealed. On July 20, 2020, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the rulings on the due-process, equal-protection, and Ex Post Facto claims and affirmed the dismissal of the deliberate-indifference and retaliation claims. It reversed and sent the case back for further proceedings regarding the denial of leave to amend the deliberate-indifference claim. The Ninth Circuit held that the district court had abused its discretion because it was not absolutely clear that amendment could not cure the claim’s deficiencies. The mandate issued on September 11, 2020.

Ruling

The court directed the clerk to reopen the action and granted Jiau leave to amend the deliberate-indifference claim that had been dismissed in 2017. The court repeated that an Eighth Amendment conditions-of-confinement claim requires both a sufficiently serious deprivation of basic human needs and a prison official’s deliberate indifference—knowledge of and disregard for an excessive risk to an inmate’s health or safety. The court’s earlier analysis had concluded that denial of a requested residential re-entry-center transfer was not sufficiently extreme to meet the first requirement.

Jiau was ordered to file, within 28 days, a third amended complaint addressing only the deliberate-indifference claim. The complaint must use the required civil-rights form, identify the case number, be labeled “Third Amended Complaint,” and include all allegations because it would replace the earlier complaints. The court stated that failure to file the amended complaint by the deadline, or failure to correct the identified deficiencies, would result in dismissal of the action without prejudice. The order did not decide whether an amended deliberate-indifference claim would succeed.