The inmate-exception to First Amendment retaliation law

At first glance, this prisoner might have a claim against prison officials, as he was disciplined following an administrative hearing after guards found a weapon under his bed as a result of an unlawful search of his private space. He claims this was in violation of the First Amendment, which prohibits retaliation against prisoners for making unrelated complaints about their prison conditions. Plaintiff loses the case, demonstrating how hard it is for them to win such retaliation cases.

The case is Morrow v. Bauersfield, a summary order issued on November 22. Inmates do have the First Amendment right to file grievances, and the law prohibits retaliation for making these complaints. The disciplinary sanction against plaintiff was overturned during an administrative appeal over the illegal cell search. (Plaintiff said the sharpened metal was planted). By then, however, plaintiff had served a significant amount of time in restricted custody over the bad disciplinary sanction. So why can't he claim the charges against him were in retaliation for filing prior grievances?

While plaintiff says the close timing of the hearing officer's ruling against supports a First Amendment claim, that argument cannot work, the Court of Appeals (Jacobs, Wesley and Bianco) says, because the hearing officer had no control over the timing of the hearing, and he also played no role in the unlawful cell search. In this case, the temporal proximity argument doesn't work. In any event, temporal proximity is not enough to win a prisoners' retaliation claim, even if might work for non-prisoner plaintiffs. Let's call this the prisoner exception under the First Amendment. This is to ensure that inmates do not win their cases on the basis of coincidental timing. Or that we don't have trials on the basis of such attenuated inferences. 

What also hurts plaintiff's case is the fact that he never filed the prior grievances against the hearing officer, who is a civilian employee (a lawyer, actually) who had little to no contact with the correction officers who searched his cell. In addition, plaintiff did not win his administrative appeal from the disciplinary sanction on the basis of any credibility assessments by the hearing officer but because of procedural errors associated with the hearing. We know nothing about the hearing officer's conduct at the hearing. In the end, no jury can rule in plaintiff's favor on this record, and the case is over.