Grace v. Alvarado

Background

Angelo Grace, proceeding without a lawyer, was incarcerated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. On January 26, 2021, officers searched his cell. Grace told Sergeant Alexander Alvarado that he believed the search was unlawful and said he planned to file a grievance. Grace also told Alvarado that, if officers conducted a similar search while he was asleep, he might respond physically.

Grace filed a grievance the next day. The grievance said, among other things, that he would treat another search while he was asleep as a threat or attack and would defend himself “at all cost.” After the grievance was forwarded to Alvarado, Grace said Alvarado confronted him about it, threatened him, and said, “I got something for you.” Grace was placed in keeplock the next day, and Alvarado issued a misbehavior report charging him with threatening staff. A disciplinary hearing later dismissed the charge, and Grace was released from keeplock shortly afterward.

The remaining claim was Grace’s claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that Alvarado retaliated against him for exercising his First Amendment rights. Earlier in the case, the court dismissed Grace’s claims against other defendants and dismissed his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment claims. The motion addressed in this opinion was Alvarado’s motion for summary judgment, which asks the court to enter judgment without a trial when the evidence shows no genuine dispute over a fact that could affect the outcome.

Parties’ arguments

Alvarado argued that the misbehavior report responded to written threats, not protected speech. He also argued that he would have issued the report even without any improper motive and that he was protected by qualified immunity, a doctrine that can shield officials from damages when the law was not clearly established.

Grace argued that filing the grievance was protected activity and that Alvarado retaliated through threats, keeplock, and the misbehavior report.

Court’s analysis

A prisoner asserting a First Amendment retaliation claim must show protected activity, an adverse action, and a connection between the two. The court held that Grace’s threatening language was not protected by the First Amendment. It rejected Grace’s attempt to characterize the language as a threat to pursue litigation, noting that his deposition testimony showed he intended to warn of a possible physical confrontation. The court stated that the relevant issue was how the words could reasonably be understood and that they could reasonably be interpreted as a threat of violence.

The court assumed, for purposes of the motion, that filing the grievance itself was protected activity. It also assumed that four days of keeplock could be an adverse action—that is, punishment serious enough to deter an ordinary prisoner from filing a grievance. The court found a genuine factual dispute about causation because the timing and Grace’s account of Alvarado’s statements could support an inference that Alvarado acted because of the grievance rather than because of the threatening language. The court ruled, however, that the verbal threats alone were not an adverse action and that the mere filing of the misbehavior report, without additional consequences, ordinarily was not enough.

The court then applied the rule that a defendant may obtain summary judgment by showing that the same action would have occurred even without an improper retaliatory motive. The court concluded that Alvarado met that burden because Grace did not dispute writing the words quoted in the misbehavior report, and a reasonable jury would find that the words were reasonably interpreted as threatening. Thus, even if Alvarado was partly motivated by anger about the grievance, the discipline would have occurred for the valid reason that Grace committed the threatening conduct charged in the report.

Because the retaliation claim failed on that basis, the court did not address qualified immunity.

Disposition

Judge Cathy Seibel granted Alvarado’s motion for summary judgment, directed the Clerk of Court to enter judgment for Alvarado, terminate the pending motion, and close the case.