Somers

I. OVERVIEW

Female prison guards (collectively, “Officials”) appeal a district court order denying them qualified immunity in a male prisoner’s civil rights action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 . California state prisoner *616 Keith Somers sued the Officials and their supervisors for $1,000,000 in damages, alleging that visual body cavity searches performed by the female Officials, as well as being watched by them while showering naked, violated his constitutional rights under both the Fourth and the Eighth Amendments. In addition, Somers alleged that the Officials “pointed at him” and “joked among themselves” during the searches and during his showers, behavior he characterizes as “gawking.” We must determine whether the Officials’ conduct violated Somers’s clearly established Fourth or Eighth Amendment rights of which the Officials should have been aware at the time of these occurrences. The district court ruled that it did. We reverse.

II.BACKGROUND

From October 15, 1993 to September, 1994, Somers was incarcerated in California State Prison-Los Angeles, serving a fifteen-year-to-life sentence for second-degree murder. 1 During his imprisonment, female prison guards…