No constitutional claims for 22-hour solitary confinement or limited toilet access

Nine inmates in the Commonwealth of Connecticut sued their jailers, claiming jail conditions were bad enough that the prison system was violating their constitutional rights. We have a mixed victory for the plaintiffs. Some win the appeal, but most lose. In this segment, we talk about the ones who lost, shedding light on how qualified immunity works.

The case is Galtas v. Chapdelaine, issued on September 3. Plaintiffs were confined in Q-Pod, where you spend 22 hours a day, often without a cellmate, so it is true solitary confinement. During the other two hours, they get to play basketball in an outdoor yard, and they have visitation. Inmates in general population get three hours of such freedom each day. The Q-Pod also has toilets that only allow you to flush twice per five minutes. If that happens, you have to wait another give minutes before flushing again, and if you flush too often during a compressed time period, the toilet won't flush for 30 minutes. The prison says this flush policy is part of a municipal water-use policy, but plaintiffs claim the officer shut off the Q-Pod inmates' water for hours at a time. Is this a case?

On the isolation claim, the Court of Appeals (Carney, Park and Nardini) holds the defendant officers are entitled to qualified immunity, which shields them from suit if the law was not clearly-established at the time of the violation. You need a precedent in the Second Circuit that is close enough to yours on the facts to avoid this immunity. Otherwise, the officers are not on notice that they are violating the law. The Court holds that the 22-hour isolation rule is only one hour less than all other inmates, "and the Supreme Court has never held that 22 hours per day of isolation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Nor has the Second Circuit, and cases from around the country have not foreshadowed a particular ruling on this issue. The claim is too esoteric for the court to allow it to proceed.

As for the toilet flushing claim, same result. "Neither the Supreme Court nor this Court has held that shutting off toilet flushes 'for two to three hours at a time' violates the Eighth Amendment." While some cases hold that close exposure to your fecal waste is sufficiently degrading to permit a constitutional claim, those cases are more disgusting than this one. The Court holds, "Our caselaw does not clearly establish that a few hours without a flushing toilet violates the Eighth Amendment,"such that qualified immunity attaches on this claim, as well. 

From this case, you see how qualified immunity works. You can't just claim that the Eighth Amendment permits your lawsuit. And you can't cite cases that bear some relationship to your case. To proceed under Section 1983 for damages, you have to find a case that is sufficiently similar to yours that the defendants can be expected to know they are violating the Constitution in violating your rights. That is not the case on these claims, and they are dismissed for good.