State Employees Can be Sued Under Federal Law When Prisoner Rights are Violated
Part 1: Introduction to 42 U.S.C. §1983
To those of you whom are familiar with the less-than-professional ways that State-prison employees and officers mismanage the custody and care of our loved ones in prison, did you know that there is a federal law which prisoners can use to remedy the violation of any federal right, privilege, or immunity?
42 U.S.C. §1983 provides in pertinent part:
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage, of any state or territory, or of the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress…
Though anyone can use this law if their federal rights are violated, for these articles we'll be focusing on the prisoner’s use to keep their treatment in prison “civil.”
Section 1983 is a law that the U.S. Congress passed over 100-years ago. It was originally known as Section 1 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and was available for use by people of any color, but it was originally enacted to help African-Americans enforce their (then) newly-acquired constitutional rights under the 13th, 14th, and 15th Articles in Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America. Those specific amendments prohibited slavery, established the right to “due process of law” and “equal protection” of the laws, and mandated every male citizen the right to vote.
“Even though those Amendments were enacted and became law, white racist judges in state courts refused to enforce those laws or constitutional amendments, particularly when people had their rights violated by other state or local government officials. The U.S. Congress passed Section 1983 so that all people could sue in federal court when a state or local official violated their federal rights.”
The thing was, even though those Amendments were enacted and became law, white racist judges in state courts refused to enforce those laws or constitutional amendments, particularly when people had their rights violated by other state or local government officials. The U.S. Congress passed Section 1983 so that all people could sue in federal court when a state or local official violated their federal rights.
Not long after Section 1983 was enacted, big businessmen from the North teamed up with plantation owners from the South to take back the limited freedom that African-Americans had won. Federal judges found all types of ways and excuses to surreptitiously undermine Section 1983 right along with the majority of other Civil Rights bills passed by the U.S. Congress. Even though Section 1983 was meant to bypass racist state courts, many of the federal judges back then kept ruling that most of the lawsuits being filed had to go back to the same racist state courts. Those rulings remained on the books as law until African-Americans began regaining their political strength through the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
In the 1960s, a string of foundational U.S. Supreme Court cases turned the trend around and actually turned Section 1983 into a valuable tool for state prisoners. State prisoners began filing federal cases challenging the way that prisons were ran, and a few favorable decisions were published, dealing mainly with religious freedoms, guard brutality, and accessing the courts without interference from prison staff. During this time, the judges hearing these cases took the approach that they should let the prison administration make rules for prison, and this is what is commonly referred to as the ''hands-off doctrine'' because judges tend to keep their ''hands off'' prison administration.
In the 1970s, prisoners across America rose up and shook Folsom, San Quentin, Attica and other prisons through united strikes, rebellions, and riots. These uprisings brought the horrible conditions of prisons into the view of the public's eye and seemed to have some positive effect regarding the way the federal courts handled prisoner lawsuits. Prisoners were able to win important rulings in the federal courts pertaining to living conditions, access to the media, and procedures and methods of discipline.
But, like every seeming aspect of our penal system, the federal courts did not stay prisoner-friendly for long. In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). The PLRA is extremely anti-prisoner and, effectively, limits prisoners’ access to the federal courts. The PLRA made filing a federal complaint much more costly, time-consuming, and risky to prisoners. Various prisoner rights advocacy groups have attempted unsuccessfully over the years to get parts of the PLRA struck down as unconstitutional, to no avail.
Convincing courts to issue new rulings that improve the prisoner’s daily life and change oppressive laws like the PLRA means that people have to make a stand for themselves by not only litigating from inside prison, but also by organizing and keeping prisoner rights movements forefront in the minds of people on both sides of prison fences. Remember: a regular maxim of law posits: “he who fails to assert his rights has none.”
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