Fourth Circuit Extends Bivens to Eighth Amendment Excessive Force Claim
In a rare case, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit extended Bivens to a federal inmate’s Eighth Amendment excessive force claim against Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials.
Andrew Fields III, an inmate at U.S. Penitentiary Lee in Virginia, filed a civil rights lawsuit in the Western District of Viriginia. In addition to his claims against the BOP, prison warden, and supervisory officers, Fields included one count under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics—an Eighth Amendment claim alleging excessive force, against the individual officers who he claimed violated his constitutional rights. Fields claimed that on November 10, 2021, BOP officers placed him in restraints after a scuffle on his way to the special housing unit (SHU). Fields further alleged that while restrained in the SHU, officers would come and physically abuse him by slamming his head into the wall and hitting him with a shield. Upon his release from the SHU, Fields tried to file an administrative grievance, following BOP procedure. However, Fields alleged that prison staff denied him access to the requisite forms, denying him the ability to pursue an administrative remedy.
Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1915A(b), the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), the district court must review all cases involving suits against BOP and its officials to determine whether a complaint should be dismissed for being frivolous, malicious, or failing to state a claim. The district court concluded that Fields could not obtain relief and dismissed Fields’s case. Fields appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, challenging the dismissal of his Eighth Amendment excessive force claim only.
The Fourth Circuit explained that plaintiffs can only proceed in a suit against federal-officer defendants by finding an implied cause of action under Bivens. The analysis under Bivens is a two-step process: (1) whether the case is in a new Bivens context, different from the three cases where there is an implied cause of action; and if so, (2) whether the Court is the proper forum to extend the damages action to this new context, as opposed to Congress. The Fourth Circuit noted that the Supreme Court has made clear that Bivens should generally not be extended to apply to new contexts outside of the three it had previously decided.
In this case, Fields conceded that his claim arose in a new Bivens context, so the Fourth Circuit only analyzed the second prong of the test. The court of appeals noted that it declined to extend Bivens in many recent cases because Congress left out an individual damages remedy when it created the PLRA, because plaintiffs have access to alternative remedies, and because of the systemic issues that could result in expanding Bivens, such as impairing federal officials’ ability to make administrative decisions. The court of appeals considered, and rejected, all three bases for not extending Bivens here.
The Fourth Circuit found Fields’s case to be a “rare” one where the allegation is that he was subject to horrendous abuse for no reason, and that when he tried to pursue administrative remedies, he was denied the ability to do so by prison officials. The court of appeals also stated there was little to no concern about systemwide consequences because Fields’s allegations only concern the conduct of individual BOP officers and do not implicate any BOP rules or policies. Finally, the Fourth Circuit stated that Congress’s decision to not statutorily overrule Bivens altogether in passing the PLRA allows for the continued analysis and extension of Bivens to new contexts such as the one presented by Fields.
The Fourth Circuit reversed and remanded the case to proceed in the district court for Fields’s Eighth Amendment excessive force claims.
Read the full case: Fields v. Federal Bureau of Prisons
