Summary
The Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for federal prison officials in Derek Thomas’s Eighth Amendment claims arising from alleged failure to protect him from a violent cellmate and deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The court held that the failure-to-protect claim was not authorized under Bivens because it presented a new context foreclosed by circuit precedent. It also held that Thomas forfeited his opposition to qualified immunity by failing to address the defense in the district court.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether Thomas's Eighth Amendment failure-to-protect claim against federal prison officials was cognizable under Bivens.
- Whether Thomas could oppose defendants' qualified-immunity defense on appeal after failing to address that defense in the district court.
- Whether the district court properly granted summary judgment on the deliberate-indifference claim based on Thomas's failure to defeat qualified immunity.
Holdings
- Thomas's failure-to-protect claim presents a new Bivens context and cannot proceed because binding precedent and special factors, including separation-of-powers concerns, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, and the prison grievance system, counsel against creating a damages remedy.
- Thomas forfeited his opposition to qualified immunity by failing to address the defense in the district court, and the circumstances did not warrant plain-error review.
- Summary judgment for defendants was proper because Thomas failed to meet his burden to defeat qualified immunity after defendants raised it.
Key quotations
“At bottom, both steps “often resolve to a single question: whether there is any reason to think that Congress might be better equipped to create a damages remedy.”” (9)
“Thus, like the plaintiff’s claim in Sargeant, Thomas’s failure-to-protect claim “cannot go forward” under present Supreme Court precedent “because it presents separation-of-powers concerns and special factors not accounted for by any of the Supreme Court’s three Bivens precedents.”” (12)
“Allowing a plaintiff to attempt to meet his burden for the first time on appeal risks inviting factual questions that a defendant may not have had the opportunity to litigate below.” (17)
Factual background
Thomas, a federal prisoner housed at FCC Terre Haute, alleged that his cellmate repeatedly beat him, knocked out two teeth, choked him unconscious, and sexually assaulted him after prison officials allegedly failed to protect him. He also alleged that prison personnel delayed or failed to provide medical and psychological treatment for his injuries and resulting trauma. The defendants moved for summary judgment, and Thomas's response did not address their qualified-immunity defense.
Procedural history
Thomas filed a pro se amended complaint concerning repeated assaults by his cellmate and alleged failures to provide medical and psychological care. The district court permitted failure-to-protect and deliberate-indifference claims to proceed, recruited counsel, and later granted defendants summary judgment, holding that the failure-to-protect claim presented a new Bivens context and that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on the deliberate-indifference claim. Thomas appealed, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed.