Jordan v. Gardner

Summary

The Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, reviewed a permanent injunction barring Washington prison officials from conducting random, non-emergency, suspicionless clothed body searches of female prisoners by male guards. The court affirmed on Eighth Amendment grounds, holding that the searches inflicted unnecessary and wanton pain because officials were deliberately indifferent to the substantial psychological harm they were likely to cause, particularly to inmates with histories of sexual abuse. The court did not decide the plaintiffs' Fourth or First Amendment claims.

Holdings

1. Routine and random, non-emergency, suspicionless clothed-body searches of female inmates by male guards, involving intimate touching of the breasts and genital areas, constituted the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain and violated the Eighth Amendment under the circumstances presented.
2. The court declined to apply Turner v. Safley as the governing test for the Eighth Amendment claim and instead applied traditional Eighth Amendment principles concerning pain, necessity, wantonness, and deliberate indifference.
3. The district court's injunction was appropriately tailored because it prohibited only routine or random, non-emergency, suspicionless clothed-body searches of female WCCW inmates by male officers involving touching of or around the breasts and genital areas.

Questions Presented

1. Whether routine and random, non-emergency, suspicionless clothed-body searches of female inmates by male guards violated the Eighth Amendment.
2. Whether the prison officials' adoption of the search policy constituted deliberate indifference to the psychological pain likely to be inflicted on inmates.
3. Whether the district court's injunction was appropriately tailored to the constitutional violation.
4. Whether the searches violated the Fourth Amendment or First Amendment; the en banc majority declined to decide those claims.

Disposition

affirmed