Sentenza

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES TRENT MICHAEL TAYLOR v. ROBERT RIOJAS.

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2020) Per Curiam SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES TRENT MICHAEL TAYLOR v. ROBERT RIOJAS, ET AL. ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT No. 19–1261.    Decided November 2, 2020 PER CURIAM. Petitioner Trent Taylor is an inmate in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.  Taylor alleges that, for  six  full  days  in  September  2013,  correctional  officers  confined him in a pair of shockingly unsanitary cells.1  The first  cell  was  covered,  nearly  floor  to  ceiling,  in  "'massiveamounts'  of  feces":  all  over  the  floor,  the  ceiling,  the  win-dow, the walls, and even "'packed inside the water faucet.'"  Taylor v. Stevens, 946 F. 3d 211, 218 (CA5 2019).  Fearing that his food and water would be contaminated, Taylor did not eat or drink for nearly four days.  Correctional officers then moved Taylor to a second, frigidly cold cell, which wasequipped with only a clogged drain in the floor to dispose ofbodily  wastes.   Taylor  held  his  bladder  for  over  24  hours,but  he  eventually  (and  involuntarily)  relieved  himself,causing the drain to overflow and raw sewage to spill acrossthe floor.  Because the cell lacked a bunk, and because Tay-lor was confined without clothing, he was left to sleep nakedin sewage.The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit properly held that  such  conditions  of  confinement  violate  the  Eighth  Amendment's  prohibition  on  cruel  and  unusual  punish-ment.  But, based on its assessment that "[t]he law wasn't clearly  established"  that  "prisoners  couldn't  be  housed  in  —————— 1The Fifth Circuit accepted Taylor's "verified pleadings [as] competent evidence at summary judgment."  Taylor v. Stevens, 946 F. 3d 211, 221 (2019).  As is appropriate at the summary-judgment stage, facts that aresubject to genuine dispute are viewed in the light most favorable to Tay-lor's claim. 
2                                         TAYLOR                                         v. RIOJAS Per Curiam cells  teeming  with  human  waste"  "for  only  six  days,"  thecourt concluded that the prison officials responsible for Tay-lor's confinement did not have "'fair warning' that their spe-cific acts were unconstitutional."   946 F. 3d, at 222 (quoting Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U. S. 730, 741 (2002)). The Fifth Circuit erred in granting the officers qualifiedimmunity on this basis.  "Qualified immunity shields an of-ficer from suit when she makes a decision that, even if con-stitutionally  deficient,  reasonably  misapprehends  the  law  governing the circumstances she confronted." Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U. S. 194, 198 (2004) (per curiam).  But no rea-sonable correctional officer could have concluded that, un-der the extreme circumstances of this case, it was constitu-tionally  permissible  to  house  Taylor  in  such  deplorablyunsanitary conditions for such an extended period of time. See Hope, 536 U. S., at 741 (explaining that "'a general con-stitutional rule already identified in the decisional law may apply  with  obvious  clarity  to  the  specific  conduct  in  ques-tion'" (quoting United States v. Lanier, 520 U. S. 259, 271 (1997))); 536 U. S., at 745 (holding that "[t]he obvious cru-elty inherent" in putting inmates in certain wantonly "de-grading  and  dangerous"  situations  provides  officers  "withsome notice that their alleged conduct violate[s]" the Eighth Amendment).  The Fifth Circuit identified no evidence that the  conditions  of  Taylor's  confinement  were  compelled  bynecessity  or  exigency.    Nor  does  the  summary-judgment  record  reveal  any  reason  to  suspect  that  the  conditions  of  Taylor's confinement could not have been mitigated, either in  degree  or  duration.    And  although  an  officer-by-officeranalysis will be necessary on remand, the record suggeststhat at least some officers involved in Taylor's ordeal were deliberately indifferent to the conditions of his cells.  See, e.g.,  946  F.  3d,  at  218  (one  officer,  upon  placing  Taylor  inthe first feces-covered cell, remarked to another that Taylorwas "'going to have a long weekend'"); ibid., and n. 9 (an-other  officer,  upon  placing  Taylor  in  the  second  cell,  told  
3 Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2020) Per Curiam Taylor he hoped Taylor would "'f***ing freeze'"). Confronted  with  the  particularly  egregious  facts  of  thiscase, any reasonable officer should have realized that Tay-lor's conditions of confinement offended the Constitution.2 We therefore grant Taylor's petition for a writ of certiorari, vacate  the  judgment  of  the  Court  of  Appeals  for  the  FifthCircuit,  and  remand  the  case  for  further  proceedings  con-sistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. JUSTICE BARRETT took  no  part  in  the  consideration  ordecision of this case. JUSTICE THOMAS dissents. —————— 2In  holding  otherwise,  the  Fifth  Circuit  noted  "ambiguity  in  the  caselaw" regarding whether "a time period so short [as six days] violatedthe Constitution."  946 F. 3d, at 222.  But the case that troubled the Fifth Circuit is too dissimilar, in terms of both conditions and duration of con-finement,  to  create  any  doubt  about  the  obviousness  of  Taylor's  right.  See Davis v. Scott, 157 F. 3d 1003, 1004 (CA5 1998) (no Eighth Amend-ment  violation  where  inmate  was  detained  for  three  days  in  dirty  cell  and provided cleaning supplies). 
1 Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2020) ALITO, J., concurring in judgment SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES TRENT MICHAEL TAYLOR v. ROBERT RIOJAS, ET AL. ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT No. 19–1261.    Decided November 2, 2020 JUSTICE ALITO, concurring in the judgment. Because the Court has granted the petition for a writ ofcertiorari,  I  will  address  the  question  that  the  Court  haschosen to decide.  But I find it hard to understand why the Court has seen fit to grant review and address that ques-tion. I To see why this petition is ill-suited for review, it is im-portant to review the procedural posture of this case.  Peti-tioner,  an  inmate  in  a  Texas  prison,  sued  multiple  prison  officers and asserted a variety of claims, including both the Eighth Amendment claim that the Court addresses (placingand  keeping  him  in  filthy  cells)  and  a  related  EighthAmendment  claim  (refusing  to  take  him  to  a  toilet).    The  District Court granted summary judgment for the defend-ants on all but one of petitioner's claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b), which permitted petitioner to ap-peal the dismissed claims.  On appeal, the Fifth Circuit af-firmed as to all the claims at issue except the toilet-access claim.    On  the  claim  concerning  the  conditions  of  peti-tioner's  cells,  the  court  held  that  the  facts  alleged  in  peti-tioner's  verified  complaint  were  sufficient  to  demonstratean Eighth Amendment violation, but it found that the offic-ers were entitled to qualified immunity based primarily on a  statement  in  Hutto  v.  Finney,  437  U.  S.  678  (1978),  and  the Fifth Circuit's decision in Davis v. Scott, 157 F. 3d 1003 (1998). 
2                                         TAYLOR                                         v. RIOJAS ALITO, J., concurring in judgment The Court now reverses the affirmance of summary judg-ment on the cell-conditions claim.  Viewing the evidence in the summary judgment record in the light most favorable to petitioner, the Court holds that a reasonable corrections officer  would  have  known  that  it  was  unconstitutional  to  confine petitioner under the conditions alleged.  That ques-tion, which turns entirely on an interpretation of the record in  one  particular  case,  is  a  quintessential  example  of  thekind that we almost never review.  As stated in our Rules, "[a] petition for a writ of certiorari is rarely granted whenthe  asserted  error  consists  of  .  .  .  the  misapplication  of  aproperly stated rule of law," this Court's Rule 10.  That is precisely  the  situation  here.    The  Court  does  not  disputethat  the  Fifth  Circuit  applied  all  the  correct  legal  stand-ards, but the Court simply disagrees with the Fifth Circuit's application of those tests to the facts in a particular record.Every  year,  the  courts  of  appeals  decide  hundreds  if  not  thousands of cases in which it is debatable whether the ev-idence in a summary judgment record is just enough or not quite enough to carry the case to trial.  If we began to reviewthese decisions we would be swamped, and as a rule we do not do so. Instead, we have well-known criteria for granting review,and  they  are  not  met  here.    The  question  that  the  Courtdecides is not one that has divided the lower courts, see this Court's Rule 10, and today's decision adds virtually nothing to the law going forward.  The Court of Appeals held thatthe conditions alleged by petitioner, if proved, would violatethe  Eighth  Amendment,  and  this  put  correctional  officers  in the Fifth Circuit on notice that such conditions are intol-erable.  Thus, even without our intervention, qualified im-munity would not be available in any similar future case. We  have  sometimes  granted  review  and  summarily  re-versed in cases where it appeared that the lower court hadconspicuously disregarded governing Supreme Court prec-edent, but that is not the situation here.  On the contrary, 
3 Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2020) ALITO, J., concurring in judgment as  I  explain  below,  it  appears  that  the  Court  of  Appealserred  largely  because  it  read  too  much  into  one  of  our  decisions. It  is  not  even  clear  that  today's  decision  is  necessary  to  protect petitioner's interests.  We are generally hesitant togrant review of non-final decisions, and there are groundsfor  such  wariness  here.    If  we  had  denied  review  at  this  time, petitioner may not have lost the opportunity to con-test  the  grant  of  summary  judgment  on  the  issue  of  re-spondents'  entitlement  to  qualified  immunity  on  his  cell-conditions claim.  His case would have been remanded for trial  on  the  claims  that  remained  after  the  Fifth  Circuit's  decision (one of which sought relief that appears to overlap with  the  relief  sought  on  the  cell-conditions  claim),  and  ifhe  was  dissatisfied  with  the  final  judgment,  he  may  havebeen able to seek review by this Court of the cell-conditions qualified immunity issue at that time.  Major League Base-ball Players Assn. v. Garvey, 532 U. S. 504, 508, n. 1 (2001) (per curiam).  And of course, there is always the possibility that he would have been satisfied with whatever relief he obtained on the claims that went to trial. Today's decision does not even conclusively resolve the is-sue  of  qualified  immunity  on  the  cell-conditions  claim  be-cause  respondents  are  free  to  renew  that  defense  at  trial,and if the facts petitioner alleges are not ultimately estab-lished, the defense could succeed.  Indeed, if petitioner can-not prove the facts he alleges, he may not be able to show that his constitutional rights were violated. In light of all this, it is not apparent why the Court haschosen to grant review in this case. II While I would not grant review on the question the Court addresses, I agree that summary judgment should not have been awarded on the issue of qualified immunity.  We must 
4                                         TAYLOR                                         v. RIOJAS ALITO, J., concurring in judgment view the summary judgment record in the light most favor-able to petitioner, and when petitioner's verified complaintis read in this way, a reasonable fact-finder could infer not just that the conditions in the cells in question were horrific but that respondents chose to place and keep him in those particular  cells,  made  no  effort  to  have  the  cells  cleaned,  and  did  not  explore  the  possibility  of  assignment  to  cells  with  better  conditions.    A  reasonable  corrections  officer  would have known that this course of conduct was uncon-stitutional, and the cases on which respondents rely do not show otherwise. Although this Court stated in Hutto that holding a pris-oner in a "filthy" cell for "a few days" "might be tolerable,"437 U. S., at 686–687, that equivocal and unspecific dictum does not justify what petitioner alleges.  There are degrees of filth, ranging from conditions that are simply unpleasant to conditions that pose a grave health risk, and the concept of "a few days" is also imprecise.  In addition, the statement does not address potentially important factors, such as the necessity of placing and keeping a prisoner in a particular cell  and  the  possibility  of  cleaning  the  cell  before  he  is  housed there or during the course of that placement.  A rea-sonable  officer  could  not  think  that  this  statement  or  the  Court of Appeals' decision in Davis meant that it is consti-tutional to place a prisoner in the filthiest cells imaginable for up to six days despite the availability of other preferablecells or despite the ability to arrange for cleaning of the cells in question.For these reasons, I concur in the judgment.