WEIGMAN v. FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS et al
Filing
52
OPINION. Signed by Judge Noel L. Hillman on 5/17/18. n.m.(dd, )
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
______________________________
:
MATTHEW WEIGMAN,
:
:
Plaintiff,
:
Civ. No. 15-8454 (NLH)(KMW)
:
v.
:
OPINION
:
DEREK HAMEL, et al.,
:
:
Defendants.
:
______________________________:
APPEARANCES:
Betsy G. Ramos
Capehart & Scatchard
8000 Midlantic Drive
Mount Laurel, NJ 08054
Counsel for Plaintiff
Daniel J. Gibbons, Esq.
Office of the U.S. Attorney
970 Broad Street
Newark, NJ 07102
Counsel for Defendants
HILLMAN, District Judge
This case concerns alleged retaliation suffered by
Plaintiff Matthew Weigman, an inmate who is presently
incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort
Dix, in Fort Dix, New Jersey.
In the Amended Complaint,
Plaintiff alleges that certain prison employees at FCI Fort Dix
retaliated against him in violation of the First Amendment
because Plaintiff filed inmate grievances regarding stolen
property.
ECF No. 43.
Plaintiff seeks to bring his claim
pursuant to Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau
1
of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971).
At issue is Defendants’
Motion to Dismiss, which is ripe for adjudication.
ECF No. 44.
The Court has subject-matter jurisdiction over this case
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331, as this case concerns a federal
question.
For the reasons that follow, the Court will grant the
Motion.
I.
Factual Background
Plaintiff, at all times relevant to the Amended Complaint,
was an inmate incarcerated at FCI Fort Dix.
Compl., ¶ 3.
ECF No. 43, Am.
While he was there, at some point in December
2014, an MP3 charging station shared by the inmates in
Plaintiff’s housing unit was “removed without authorization,”
i.e. stolen.
Id., ¶ 53.
It was not replaced.
Id., ¶¶ 57-58.
The stolen MP3 charger caused conflict among the inmates in
Plaintiff’s housing unit, and Plaintiff, along with another
inmate, filed inmate grievances over the issue.
65.
Id., ¶¶ 55, 62-
After filing the inmate grievances, Plaintiff was
transferred to another housing unit and reassigned to a new job
within that unit.
Id., ¶¶ 87-93.
Plaintiff commenced this action by filing a Complaint in
December 2015, ECF No. 1, and in August 2016, Plaintiff filed an
Amended Complaint, ECF No. 43.
In the Amended Complaint,
Plaintiff asserts that Defendants retaliated against him in
violation of the First Amendment when they transferred Plaintiff
2
to a new housing unit and reassigned him to a new job after he
filed an inmate grievance.
II.
ECF No. 43 at 1.
Standard of Review
In a motion to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 12(b)(6), the defendant bears the burden of showing
that no claim has been presented.
Rule 8 of the Federal Rules
of Civil Procedure provides that a pleading must set forth a
claim for relief which contains a short and plain statement of
the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief; the
complaint must provide the defendant with fair notice of the
claim.
(2007).
See Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555
When considering a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the
court must accept as true all factual allegations.
v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (per curiam).
See Erickson
The issue in a motion
to dismiss is whether the plaintiff should be entitled to offer
evidence to support the claim, not whether the plaintiff will
ultimately prevail.
See Phillips v. County of Allegheny, 515
F.3d 224, 232 (3d Cir. 2008) (the Rule 8 pleading standard
“‘simply calls for enough facts to raise a reasonable
expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of’ the
necessary element.”); Nami v. Fauver, 82 F.3d 63, 65 (3d Cir.
1996).
The onus is on the plaintiff to provide a well-drafted
complaint that alleges factual support for its claims.
3
“While a
complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not
need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to
provide the ‘grounds' of his ‘entitle[ment] to relief requires
more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of
the elements of a cause of action will not do.”
Twombly, 550
U.S. at 555 (alteration in original and internal citations
omitted).
The court need not accept unsupported inferences,
Cal. Pub. Employees Ret. Sys. v. The Chubb Corp., 394 F.3d 126,
143 (3d Cir. 2004), nor legal conclusions cast as factual
allegations, Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556.
Legal conclusions
without factual support are not entitled to the assumption of
truth. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)
(“Threadbare recitals of elements of a cause of action,
supported by mere conclusory statements, do not” satisfy the
requirements of Rule 8).
Once the court winnows the conclusory allegations from
those allegations supported by fact, which it accepts as true,
the court must engage in a common sense review of the claim to
determine whether it is plausible.
This is a context-specific
task, for which the court should be guided by its judicial
experience.
The court must dismiss the complaint if it fails to
allege enough facts “to state a claim for relief that is
plausible on its face.”
Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (quoting
Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570).
A “claim has facial plausibility
4
when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court
to draw a reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for
the misconduct alleged.”
Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678.
The complaint
that shows that the pleader is entitled to relief--or put
another way, facially plausible--will survive a Rule 12(b)(6)
motion.
See Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2); Mayer v. Belichick, 605
F.3d 223, 229 (3d Cir. 2010).
III. Discussion
In their Motion to Dismiss, Defendants seek the dismissal
of the claims against them based on the Supreme Court of the
United States’ decision in Ziglar v. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843
(2017).
See ECF No. 33.
The Ziglar decision changed the
landscape of civil rights remedies against federal employees.
Whereas prior to Ziglar, courts construed the scope of
cognizable suits brought pursuant to Bivens as coextensive with
those brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, now district courts
are directed first to analyze Bivens suits to determine whether
the suit seeks to extend Bivens to “new contexts” and, if so,
whether there are “special factors” that would counsel against
extending Bivens liability to the new context.
In Ziglar, the Supreme Court explained that it has only
recognized a Bivens remedy in three cases: (1) Bivens itself,
which implied a damages action to compensate persons whose
Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and
5
seizures was violated by federal officers; (2) Davis v. Passman,
442 U.S. 228 (1979), which recognized a right under the Due
Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment for an administrative
assistant to sue a member of congress for her firing because she
was a women; and (3) Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14 (1980), in
which the Court held that the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and
Unusual Punishment Clause provides a damages remedy for failure
to provide adequate medical care.
Ziglar, 137 S. Ct. at 1854.
“These three cases--Bivens, Davis, and Carlson--represent the
only instances in which the Court has approved of an implied
damages remedy under the Constitution itself.”
Ct. at 1855.
Ziglar, 137 S.
As such, “expanding the Bivens remedy” beyond
these contexts “is now a ‘disfavored’ judicial activity.”
Id.
Because expansion of Bivens is “disfavored,” courts must
use “caution before extending Bivens into any new context.”
“A Bivens remedy will not be available if there are special
Id.
factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative
action by Congress.”
Id.
A context is “new”--and therefore
requires a special factors analysis--if it is “different in a
meaningful way from previous Bivens cases decided by this
Court.”
Id. at 1859.
Plaintiff’s claim for relief is a new context that would
extend Bivens liability because the Supreme Court has never
recognized a Bivens remedy for a violation of the First
6
Amendment. 1
See Ziglar, 137 S. Ct. at 1855 (articulating the
only three contexts in which Bivens liability has been
recognized); Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 663 n.4 (2012)
(noting that the Supreme Court has “never held that Bivens
extends to First Amendment claims”).
This District as well as
the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has previously
recognized that a First Amendment claim is a “new context” under
Ziglar.
See Vanderklok v. United States, 868 F.3d 189, 199-200
(3d Cir. 2017); Alexander v. Ortiz, No. 15-cv-6981, 2018 WL
1399302, at *4-5 (D.N.J. Mar. 20, 2018) (Simandle, J.).
Because Plaintiff’s claim is a “new context,” the Court
must consider “‘whether any alternative, existing process for
protecting the interest amounts to a convincing reason for the
Judicial Branch to refrain from providing a new and freestanding
remedy in damages.’”
Vanderklok v. United States, 868 F.3d at
200 (quoting Wilkie v. Robbins, 551 U.S. 537, 550 (2007)).
“[I]f there is an alternative remedial structure present in a
1
Plaintiff argues in his opposition brief that the Supreme Court
of the United States has addressed retaliation claims in the
context of Bivens in both Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250 (2006),
and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009). See ECF No. 47 at
15-17. See also Wood v. Moss, 134 S. Ct. 2056, 2067 (2014)
(“[W]e have several times assumed without deciding that Bivens
extends to First Amendment claims. We do so again in this
case.”). In light of the Supreme Court’s explicit directive in
the later-filed Ziglar case that it has only extended Bivens
liability to certain claims arising under the Fourth, Fifth, and
Eighth Amendments, the Court will not read Hartman, Ashcroft,
and Wood as creating a Bivens remedy for retaliation claims.
7
certain case, that alone may limit the power of the Judiciary to
infer a new Bivens cause of action.”
Ziglar, 137 S. Ct. at
1858.
The Court concludes that no alternative process is
available to Plaintiff, at least for his claim for damages in
the Amended Complaint.
Although Plaintiff could request
prospective injunctive relief regarding his housing and job
assignment and also file internal administrative grievances,
such remedies would not provide him with the damages that he
requests in his prayer for relief.
1399302, at *6.
See Alexander, 2018 WL
In addition, other federal statutory actions
commonly utilized to redress workplace grievances would not be
available to Plaintiff because he is not an “employee.”
See id.
Plaintiff could also not seek relief under the Federal Tort
Claims Act, under which constitutional violations are not
redressable, or under the habeas statutes.
See Alexander, 2018
WL 1399302, at *6 (citing F.D.I.C. v. Meyer, 510 U.S. 471, 477–
78 (1994), as to the FTCA, and Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S.
475, 487–88 (1973), as to the habeas statutes).
Thus, no
alternative process exists or is available to Plaintiff for at
least part of his requested relief.
See Alexander, 2018 WL
1399302, at *6 (concluding no alternative process exists for
federal prisoner seeking damages for alleged discrimination in
the prison workplace).
8
The Court’s final step of inquiry is whether “‘any special
factors counsel hesitation before authorizing a new kind of
federal litigation.’”
Wilkie v. Robbins, 551 U.S. 537, 550
(2007) (quoting Bush v. Lucas, 462 U.S. 367, 378 (1983)).
This
inquiry focuses on whether the courts are well suited, absent
congressional action or instruction, to consider and weigh the
costs and benefits of allowing a damages action to proceed.
Ziglar, 137 S. Ct. at 1857-58.
A “special factor counselling
hesitation” is a factor that “cause[s] a court to hesitate
before answering that question in the affirmative.”
1858.
Id. at
“The question is ‘who should decide’ whether to provide
for a damages remedy, Congress or the courts?
often will be Congress.”
The answer most
Id. at 1857 (quoting Bush, 462 U.S. at
380).
The Court finds that prison housing and the prison
workplace are special factors precluding the extension of Bivens
to Plaintiff’s First Amendment claim.
“[C]ourts are ill
equipped to deal with the increasingly urgent problems of prison
administration and reform . . . .
Running a prison is an
inordinately difficult undertaking that requires expertise,
planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are
peculiarly within the province of the legislative and executive
branches of government.”
Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 84–85
(1987) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted).
9
“Prison administration is, moreover, a task that has been
committed to the responsibility of those branches, and
separation of powers concerns counsel a policy of judicial
restraint.”
Id. at 85.
See also Ziglar, 137 S. Ct. at 1857
(“When a party seeks to assert an implied cause of action under
the Constitution itself . . . separation-of-powers principles
are or should be central to the analysis.”).
“[I]n any inquiry respecting the likely or probable intent
of Congress, the silence of Congress is relevant.”
S. Ct. at 1862.
Ziglar, 137
Congress has not provided a legislative remedy
for prisoners alleging constitutional deprivations against
federal employees in the job or housing contexts, 2 despite
providing one for prisoners as against state prison employees.
See Civil Rights Act of 1871, Pub. L. No. 42−22, 17 Stat. 13
(codified in part at 42 U.S.C. § 1983).
Congress’s silence is
especially persuasive because it has enacted legislation
affecting federal prisoners many times, and in each instance,
has declined to include a damages remedy for constitutional
2
As Defendants argue in their opening brief, the Court notes
that Plaintiff lacks a constitutional right to the placements he
claims he was deprived of through retaliation, i.e. a certain
housing and job assignment. See ECF No. 44-1 (citing Meachum v.
Fano, 427 U.S. 215 (1976), and Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238
(1983), for the proposition that prisoners have no
constitutional right to a housing assignment, and James v.
Quinlan, 866 F.2d 627 (3d Cir. 1989), for the proposition that
prisoners have no constitutional right to a job assignment).
10
violations against federal employees.
See, e.g., Antiterrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132,
110 Stat. 1214 (codified in part at 28 U.S.C. § 2255); Prisoner
Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Pub. L. No. 104-140, 110 Stat.
1321 (codified in part at 42 U.S.C. §§ 1997e); Crime Control Act
of 1990, 104 Stat. 4789 (creating requirement that federal
prisoners shall work); Act of May 27, 1930, Pub. L. No. 71-271,
46 Stat. 391 (establishing what is now known as UNICOR, which
administers the federal prison workplace).
Notably, the federal prison workplace is an area in which
Congress has extensively legislated.
Specifically, UNICOR is a
program created by Congress to carry out the work requirement
for federal prisoners, subject to security, disciplinary,
medical, and rehabilitation exceptions.
4129.
See 18 U.S.C. §§ 4121-
In fact, Congress has created a damages remedy for
federal prisoners who are injured in the prison workplace.
18 U.S.C. § 4126(c)(4); 28 C.F.R. § 301.101(a)-(b).
See
A “[w]ork-
related injury” is defined by the regulations as “any injury,
including occupational disease or illness, proximately caused by
the actual performance of the inmate’s work assignment,” and
thus precludes constitutional violations.
301.102(a).
28 C.F.R. §
Had Congress intended to include a monetary remedy
against federal officers or employees for constitutional claims
within the federal prison workplace, i.e. UNICOR, it would have
11
so stated.
See Ziglar, 137 S. Ct. at 1856 (“When Congress
enacts a statute, there are specific procedures and times for
considering its terms and the proper means for its enforcement.
It is logical, then, to assume that Congress will be explicit if
it intends to create a private cause of action.”).
Because the prison workplace and prison housing areas are
already regulated by the legislative and executive branches, the
Court finds that it should be left to those branches to
determine whether an action for damages for claims of
retaliation under the First Amendment exists.
Given the
constraints of Ziglar, the Court will not extend Bivens and will
grant the Motion to Dismiss.
IV.
Conclusion
The Court will grant Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss.
An
appropriate order follows.
Dated: May 17, 2018
At Camden, New Jersey
s/ Noel L. Hillman
NOEL L. HILLMAN, U.S.D.J.
12
Disclaimer: Justia Dockets & Filings provides public litigation records from the federal appellate and district courts. These filings and docket sheets should not be considered findings of fact or liability, nor do they necessarily reflect the view of Justia.
Why Is My Information Online?