Jamel Walker v. James H. Gomez Kingston W. Prunty R.R. Rath, Correctional Sergeant

370 F.3d 969 Jamel WALKER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. James H. GOMEZ; Kingston W. Prunty; R.R. Rath, Correctional Sergeant, Defendants-Appellees. No. 99-55265. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted July 8, 2003. Filed June 7, 2004. K. Jamel Walker, plaintiff-appellant in propria persona, Calipatria, CA; and Brett J. Williamson, Amy J. Laurendeau, and Christine E. Cwiertny, pro bono attorneys, O'Melveny & Myers LLP, Newport Beach, CA; for the plaintiff-appellant. Bill Lockyer, Attorney General of the State of California, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, David P. Druliner, Assistant Attorney General, Paul D. Gifford, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Allen Crown, Acting Senior Assistant Attorney General, Darrell Lepkowsky, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, and Robert F. Helfand, Deputy Attorney General, Los Angeles, CA, for the defendants-appellees. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California; Jeffrey T. Miller, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-96-00609-JTM. Before: KOZINSKI, FERNANDEZ and RYMER, Circuit Judges. KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge: 1 Plaintiff, a black California inmate,…

Plaintiff, a black California inmate, brings suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 , claiming he was denied equal protection because, during three prison lockdowns, he was not allowed to resume his prison job until after similarly-situated inmates of other races.

*971 Facts

K. Jamel Walker is serving a life sentence in the custody of the California Department of Corrections, in Calipatria State Prison. The prison is made up of four separate facilities or yards — A, B, C and D; Walker is housed in Facility A. In April 1994, Walker was assigned to be a clerk in the Facility A Law Library. He was initially paid at an hourly rate of nineteen cents; he now earns the maximum rate of thirty-two cents and is Lead Law Library Clerk. Walker asserts that he is not and never has been a gang member.

Calipatria State Prison has a history of significant racial tension and violence. On May 2, 1994, for example, several Hispanic and black inmates were involved in a fight, as a result of which the prison was placed on lockdown. As part of the lockdown, all prisoners were restricted to their cells and not permitted to exercise. However, only Hispanic and black inmates were also excluded from the…

concurring..

I concur in Judge Kozinski’s opinion, with one exception. I do not join in part 2 of the Discussion.

Although I find that part of the Discussion very informative, in my opinion we should not decide qualified immunity issues in the first instance, but should leave them for the district court. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 819-20 , 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2739 , 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982); Price v. Hawaii, 939 F.2d 702, 707 (9th Cir.1991). I realize that we have, on occasion, succumbed to the temptation to swoop down from our coign of vantage and pluck qualified immunity issues from the district court battlefield, but in the long run I think we are better advised to resist that temptation. I, for one, do not think we should attempt to predict the nature or result of further proceedings in the district court, once it actually begins to vet the qualified immunity issues raised here.

Thus, I respectfully concur, but with the exception just noted.

dissenting.

I part company with the majority’s conclusion that Calipatria State Prison’s (CSP) critical worker listings ran afoul of Walker’s rights to equal protection. We measure an equal protection challenge as we would any other constitutional challenge in the prison environment under Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 , 107 S.Ct. 2254 , 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987). 1 Applying the *979 Turner factors leads me to conclude that the critical worker listings comport with constitutional requirements, even though they were race-based, because the listings were a rational, temporary response by an otherwise fully integrated prison to a series of extremely violent, race-based incidents. Accordingly, I would affirm.

There is no question that equal protection does not stop at the prison gate. See Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 556 , 94 S.Ct. 2963 , 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974); Lee v. Washington, 390 U.S. 333 , 88 S.Ct. 994 , 19 L.Ed.2d 1212 (1968). However, unlike normal equal protection analysis, prison policies are not subject to strict scrutiny and no compelling government interest need be shown. “Subjecting the day-today judgments of prison officials to an inflexible strict scrutiny analysis…