Harrison v. Kernan

Background

David Scott Harrison, a California state prisoner, sued S. Kernan and other defendants under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged that rules proposed in 2007 and finalized in 2008 discriminated against him because he is male by preventing him from purchasing certain products from prison vendors that were available to women prisoners. Harrison sought damages against the defendants in their individual capacities and injunctive relief against them in their official capacities.

The court previously granted summary judgment to the defendants under the deferential standard from Turner v. Safley, which asks whether a prison rule is reasonably related to legitimate prison-management interests. The Court of Appeals later vacated that ruling and held that intermediate scrutiny applies to gender-based equal-protection claims in the prison context. It remanded for this court to decide, among other things, whether Kernan and Beard were protected by qualified immunity.

Motion and Positions

Kernan and Beard moved for partial summary judgment on Harrison’s individual-capacity damages claims. They argued that the applicable legal standard was not clearly established when the regulations were adopted in 2008. They also argued that the challenged regulations were being superseded by new regulations, although the court resolved the motion on qualified-immunity grounds.

Harrison argued that the defendants should have known in 2007 and 2008 that gender-based prison regulations would be evaluated under intermediate scrutiny. He relied on decisions from the Ninth Circuit, other federal appellate courts, and district courts.

Qualified Immunity

Qualified immunity protects government officials from damages liability unless their conduct violated a constitutional right that was clearly established when the conduct occurred. The court may address either part of this two-part inquiry first.

The court addressed only whether the relevant legal standard was clearly established in 2008. It concluded that it was not. The Ninth Circuit’s earlier decisions generally described the Turner standard as applying to constitutional claims arising in the prison context, including equal-protection claims. The decisions cited by Harrison did not clearly establish that intermediate scrutiny applied to all gender-based equal-protection claims involving prison rules. The court also found that decisions from other circuits provided little guidance and, in some instances, were decided after the challenged regulations were enacted.

The court relied in part on the Court of Appeals’ statement in this case that no earlier Ninth Circuit precedent had addressed the proper scrutiny standard for gender-based equal-protection claims in the prison context. Because the intermediate-scrutiny standard was not announced until the Court of Appeals’ 2020 decision, the court found it unfair to hold the defendants liable under that standard for regulations adopted in 2008.

Disposition

The court held that Kernan and Beard were entitled to qualified immunity. Because the clearly established-law requirement was not satisfied, the court did not decide whether the 2008 property regulations violated Harrison’s equal-protection rights under intermediate scrutiny. The court granted Defendants’ Motion for Partial Summary Judgment.