The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a Virginia inmate cannot sue prison officials for damages over claims they used excessive force in breach of his 8th Amendment rights.
It’s the justices’ latest rejection of so-called Bivens claims, which let people sue federal officials in their individual capacity for monetary damages over constitutional rights violations.
“For the past 45 years, this Court has consistently declined to extend Bivens to new contexts,” the justices wrote in an unsigned opinion. “We do the same here.”
The justices sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit for further proceedings, turning down a chance to confront the court’s 1971 decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. The case established an implied right to seek a remedy for constitutional violations against individual federal officers despite no law authorizing such a suit, and the high court has repeatedly signaled interest in overturning it.
The appeal to the justices came from prison officials facing personal liability in a series of violent assaults alleged by a Virginia inmate.
The inmate, Andrew Fields, claimed several officers repeatedly “kicked and punched” him, including with steel-toed boots, and “rammed” his head with a police shield and into a wall. He said he was then denied access to the prison’s administrative remedy program.
Fields sued the individual officers in 2022 but a district court dismissed his claims, finding no Bivens remedy for excessive force. However, a split U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed that decision, finding the “rare” situation — the severe abuse and intentional denial of administrative relief — warranted Bivens relief.
The officers asked the court to consider whether Bivens action extends to excessive force claims under the Eighth Amendment but also asked them to “reconsider the premise” of Bivens altogether.
The case could have acted as a vehicle to overturn the precedent.
“The importance of this ruling is indisputable,” the officers wrote in their petition to the court.
The court’s 1971 decision let a Brooklyn man seek damages against individual federal narcotics agents for violating his Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Over the next decade, the court extended Bivens actions to employment-discrimination claims under the Fifth Amendment and cruel and unusual punishment claims alleging inadequate medical care in prison under the Eighth Amendment.
However, since 1983, the court has jettisoned Bivens claims, declining to extend the remedy to other alleged constitutional violations and instead suggesting Congress should make such decisions. Most recently, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a majority opinion that the claims aren’t valid “in all but the most unusual circumstances.”
“The Court’s unwillingness to infer new Bivens claims accords with its broader repudiation of the whole project of judicially inferring causes of action that Congress did not create,” the officers’ petition reads.
The solicitor general’s office asked the court to summarily reverse the lower court.
In recent months, several prominent Bivens claims have been filed against federal officials.
Five Proud Boys leaders convicted over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack sued the Justice Department and individual FBI agents for $100 million over their prosecution earlier this month. Three of their claims are Bivens actions.
Before that, Newark, N.J., Mayor Ras Baraka (D) sued interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba personally over his arrest last month outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.