DUBOIS v. SWEENEY et al

Filing 34

MEMORANDUM filed. Signed by Judge Peter G. Sheridan on 5/28/2019. (jem)

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
RODNEY THOMAS DUBOIS,
Civ. No. 18-3718 (PGS-LHG)

Plaintiff,
v.

DONNA SWEENEY, et al.,

MEMORANDUM

Defendants.

PETER C. SHERIDAN, U.S.D.J.
This matter comes before the Court on a motion to dismiss Plaintiff Rodney Thomas
Dubois’ amended complaint filed by defendants Donna Sweeney, Jamel El-Chebli, Joseph
Bundy, and Nick Spiewah. (ECF No. 25). Plaintiff opposes the motion. (ECF No. 26).’ For the
following reasons, the motion is granted in part. The claims for damages against defendants in
their official capacities and the Eighth Amendment claim are dismissed. Defendants shall answer
Plaintiff’s free exercise, retaliation, and Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act,
42 U.S.C.

§ 2000cc-i

et seq. (“RLUIPA”) claims.
I.

Plaintiff, a prisoner in New Jersey State Prison (“NJSP”), is a Native American of the
Chippewa-cree tribe. (ECF No. 9

¶

18). He was transferred to NJSP from Montana State Prison

under the Interstate Corrections Compact (“ICC”) on October 25, 2016. (Id.

¶

17-18). He

Plaintiff filed a sur-reply without leave of Court. (ECF No. 28). The Court has disregarded this
filing. Local Civ. R. 7.1(d)(6).

alleges defendants are violating his right to practice his religion by denying his access to a sweat
lodge ceremony and by confiscating his religious articles, including tobacco used in a peace pipe
ceremony. He further alleges defendants retaliated against him by filing a false disciplinary
infraction against him for allegedly refusing a strip search on November 27, 2017 and searching
and seizing his religious items. (Id.

¶ 34).

He asserts the false disciplinary charge constitutes

cruel and unusual punishment.
II.
When considering a motion to dismiss a complaint for failure to state a claim, Fed. R.
Civ. P. 12(b)(6), the Court must accept all well-pleaded allegations in the complaint as true and
view them in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. A motion to dismiss may be
granted only if the plaintiff has failed to set forth fair notice of what the claim is and the grounds
upon which it rests that make such a claim plausible on its face. Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly,
550 U.S. 544 (2007). Although Rule 8 does not require “detailed factual allegations,” it requires
“more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Ashcrofl v. Iqbal,
556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555).
In reviewing the sufficiency of a complaint, the Court must “tak[e] note of the elements
[the] plaintiff must plead to state a claim. Second, it should identify allegations that, because they
are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth. Finally, [w]hen there
are well-pleaded factual allegations, [the] court should assume their veracity and then determine
whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief.” Connelly v. Lane Const. Corp., 809
F.3d 780, 787 (3d Cir. 2016) (alterations in original) (internal citations and quotation marks
omitted). “[A] complaint’s allegations of historical fact continue to enjoy a highly favorable
standard of review at the motion-to-dismiss stage of proceedings.” Id. at 790.

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III.
A. Eleventh Amendment
Defendants argue that they are immune from suit because Plaintiff has only sued them in
their official capacities. Plaintiff argues that he has sued them in their individual and official
capacities. (ECF No. 26 at 3).
The Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: “The Judicial
power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity,
commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.” U.S. CONST. amend. XI. A suit against a public
official “in his or her official capacity is not a suit against the official but rather is a suit against
the official’s office

....“

Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 930—31 (1997) (quoting Will v.

Mich. Dep ‘t ofState Police, 491 U.S. 58, 71(1989)).
The claims for monetary damages against defendants in their official capacities are
dismissed with prejudice as barred by the Eleventh Amendment. Claims against defendants in
their individual capacities are not barred by the Eleventh Amendment, nor are injunctive relief
claims against the individual defendants in their official capacities. See Exparte Young, 209 U.S.
123 (1908).
B. Lack of Jurisdiction
Defendants also argue the Court lacks jurisdiction over the complaint because only the
New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division may review New Jersey agency decisions. (ECF
No. 25-1 at 9). This argument is meritless. The complaint before the Court alleges that individual
state actors violated Plaintiff’s federal constitutional and statutory rights. This Court’s
jurisdiction over these claims is firmly established by 42 U.S.C.

3

§

1983.

C. Failure to State a Claim
Defendants also argue Plaintiff has failed to state claims for violations of the First and
Eighth Amendment.
“Inmates clearly retain protections afforded by the First Amendment, including its
directive that no law shall prohibit the free exercise of religion.” O’Lone v. Shabazz, 482 U.s.
342, 348 (1987) (citations omitted). See U.S. CONST. amend. I (“Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

. . .“).

“Nevertheless, the fact of incarceration and the valid penological objectives of deterrence of
crime, rehabilitation of prisoners, and institutional security justify limitations on the exercise of
constitutional rights by inmates.” DeHart v. Horn, 227 F.3d 47, 50—51 (3d Cir. 2000) (en banc)
(citing Fell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 822-23 (1974)). “Thus, a prison inmate ‘retains only]
those rights that are not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate
penological objectives of the corrections system.” Id. (quoting Fell, 417 U.S. at 822 (alteration
in original)).
“[W]hen a prison regulation impinges on inmates’ constitutional rights, the regulation is
valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78,
89 (1987). The Court considers four factors in assessing the overall reasonableness of a prison
regulation: (1) “there must be a ‘valid, rational connection’ between the prison regulation and the
legitimate governmental interest put forward to justify it”; (2) “whether there are alternative
means of exercising the right that remain open to prison inmates”; (3) “the impact
accommodation of the asserted constitutional right will have on guards and other inmates, and on
the allocation of prison resources generally”; and (4) whether there are alternatives to the

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regulation that “fully accommodate[] the prisoner’s rights at de minimis cost to valid penological
interests.” Id. at 89-91.
Plaintiff argues that access to tobacco and a sweat lodge are crucial components of his
religion. (ECF No. 9

¶ 23, 40). Defendants state that tobacco is banned at all New Jersey

Department of Corrections facilities, but do not address the flat ban within the Turner
framework. (ECF No. 25-1 at 12). The Court cannot complete the Turner analysis on the face of
the complaint under a motion to dismiss standard; such an argument is better reserved for
summary judgment when it can be supported with evidence outside of the pleadings. For
purposes of a motion to dismiss, Plaintiff has sufficiently alleged a violation of his First
Amendment right to freely exercise his religion based on denial of tobacco and access to a sweat
lodge.
The amended complaint does not specifically invoke RLUIPA, but the Court must
construe pro se pleadings liberally, and Plaintiff references the Act in his opposition. (ECF No.
28 at 3). The Court will therefore permit a RLUIPA claim to proceed at this time.2 See Native
Am. Council of Tribes v. Weber, 750 F.3d 742, 748 (8th Cir. 2014) (affirming district court’s
order enjoining department of corrections from banning tobacco in prisons and governing
religious use of tobacco in prison under RLUIPA).
The Court will also permit the retaliation claim to proceed. In order to proceed with his
retaliation claim, Plaintiff had to provide facts indicating that his “conduct provoking the alleged
2

“RLUIPA protects ‘any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a
system of religious belief[.]” Ho/tv. Hobbs, 135 S. Ct. 853, 862 (2015) (quoting 42 U.S.C. §
2000cc—5(7)(A)). RLUIPA provides “greater protection’ for religious liberty than is provided by
the First Amendment.” Payne v. Doe, 636 F. App’x 120, 124 (3d Cir. 2016) (per curiam) (citing
Hobbs, 135 S. Ct. at 863) (internal citation omitted). “[T]he only relief potentially available to
[Plaintiff] for his RLUIPA claims is injunctive or declaratory. RLUIPA does not allow for the
recovery of money damages.” id. at 125 (citing Sharp v. Johnson, 669 F.3d 144, 154 (3d Cir.
2012).
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retaliation was constitutionally protected, that he suffered some ‘adverse action’ at the hands of
the prison officials ‘sufficient to deter a person of ordinary firmness from exercising his
[constitutional] rights,’ and that the constitutionally protected conduct was a substantial or
motivating factor in the defendants’ conduct.” Mutschler v. Trill, No. 18-3086, 2019 WL
1473929, at *2 (3d Cir. Apr. 3, 2019) (unpublished) (quoting Rauser v. Horn, 241 F.3d 330, 333
(3d Cir. 2001)) (alteration in original). Plaintiff argues that his sacred herbs were seized as a
result of practicing his religion. This is sufficient to state a claim. However, Plaintiff’s retaliation
claim is barred to the extent it is based on allegedly false disciplinary charges, as is Plaintiff’s
Eighth Amendment challenge to the alleged false disciplinary charge.
The Supreme Court held in Heck v. Humphrey that before a

§

1983 plaintiff may “recover

damages for allegedly unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment, or for other harm caused by
actions whose unlawfulness would render a conviction or sentence invalid,” he must first “prove
that the conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order,
declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into
question by a federal court’s issuance of a writ of habeas corpus[.]” 512 U.S. 477, 486-87 (1994).
The Supreme Court extended the holding to prison disciplinary proceedings in Edwards v.
Balisok, 520 U.S. 641 (1997).
To succeed at trial, Plaintiff must prove that defendants filed disciplinary charges against
him because of Plaintiffs religion, not because he refused a strip search. Were Plaintiff to
succeed on this claim, the validity of the disciplinary proceedings would necessarily be called
into question. Under Heck and Edwards, Plaintiff may not proceed on this claim unless and until
his disciplinary charges have been overturned. This claim is therefore dismissed without
prejudice.

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V.
For the reasons stated above, the motion to dismiss is granted in part. Plaintiff’s free
exercise, RLUIPA, and retaliation claims shall proceed. An appropriate order follows.

DATED:

*

AM

2019

PETER G. SHERIDAN
United States District Judge

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