I will never understand this sort of cruelty.
Supreme Court sides with Black Lives Matter activist in First Amendment case
By Robert Barnes
November 2, 2020 at 4:48 p.m. EST
The Supreme Court sided in separate cases with a Black Lives Matter activist and a Texas prison inmate Monday, and new justice Amy Coney Barrett became the court’s first member to make her debut via telephone.
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In a second case, the justices said Texas inmate Trent Taylor could proceed with his lawsuit against correctional officers whom he accused of detaining him for six days in 2013 in a pair of “shockingly unsanitary cells.”
The first cell was covered in feces, Taylor alleges. “Fearing his food and water would be contaminated, Taylor did not eat or drink for nearly four days,” the court wrote.
He then was moved to a cell where a clogged drain caused raw sewage to spill across the floor, Taylor said. “Because Taylor was confined without clothing, he was left to sleep naked in sewage,” the court wrote in the unsigned opinion.
A 5th Circuit panel agreed the conditions violated the Constitution. But because there was no clear precedent regarding keeping an inmate in such conditions for “only six days,” the panel awarded the officers qualified immunity for their actions. That means they did not have “fair warning” that their specific acts were unconstitutional.
Supreme Court asked to reconsider immunity awarded to police officers
That was a mistake, the Supreme Court said. “No reasonable correctional officer could have concluded that, under the extreme circumstances of this case, it was constitutionally permissible to house Taylor in such deplorably unsanitary conditions for such an extended period of time,” the court wrote.
Again, Thomas dissented without comment. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the court should not have taken up the fact-specific case.
“Every year, the courts of appeals decide hundreds if not thousands of cases in which it is debatable whether the evidence in a summary judgment record is just enough or not quite enough to carry the case to trial,” Alito wrote. “If we began to review these decisions we would be swamped, and as a rule we do not do so.”
But since the court took up the case, Alito said, “I agree that summary judgment should not have been awarded on the issue of qualified immunity.”
The case is Taylor v. Roijas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-black-lives-matter-deray-mckesson/2020/11/02/26fb4dde-1d34-11eb-b532-05c751cd5dc2_story.html
DO SOMETHING!
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