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: Legal Blog Watch

9th Circuit Rules Private Federal Prison Employees Subject to Bivens

By Eric Lipman

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Yesterday, the Law Memo blog posted a link to a 9th Circuit decision, Pollard v. GEO Group, holding -- contrary to what other courts of appeals have ruled -- that federal prison inmates may recover damages under the Bivens doctrine from employees of private corporations running those prisons pursuant to contracts with the Bureau of Prisons. Bivens is the 1971 Supreme Court opinion in which the Court held that there was an implied right of action against federal employees for violations of constitutional rights. In order to reach the conclusion that such private employees are amenable to suit under Bivens, the majority found that the employees in question were acting under color of federal law in the course of transferring the inmate plaintiff to an offsite medical facility. This was so, the court said, because "imprisonment is a fundamentally public function, regardless of the entity managing the prison." Ross Runkel at Law Memo predicts that the clear circuit split will result in this issue coming before the Supreme Court, and Doug Berman at the Sentencing Law and Policy Blog concurs. Judges Procter Hug, Jr. (excellent name) and Richard Paez formed the majority of the 2-1 decision, with Judge Jane A....

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on June 08, 2010 (boomark / email).