Taylor v. Riojas
Rights Behind Bars filed a petition for rehearing en banc to the Fifth Circuit on behalf of Trent Taylor. The court granted Texas state prison officials qualified immunity notwithstanding Mr. Taylor's claim that forcing him to live naked in prison cells covered in human sewage for nearly a week was an unconstitutional condition of confinement. The panel opinion recognized the inhuman conditions as unconstitutional but held that the law was not “clearly established,” and therefore the prison officials who subjected him to such treatment in the psychiatric unit could not be held liable. Rights Behind Bars argued that housing an incarcerated person on a psychiatric unit naked in a pool of sewage was an obvious constitutional violation and therefore that qualified immunity was not appropriate. The Cato Institute filed an amicus brief in support of RBB’s petition for rehearing en banc.
Partnering with the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, Rights Behind Bars has filed a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Mr. Taylor arguing that the Court should either clarify that qualified immunity should not apply to such obvious constitutional violations whether or not a precisely analogous precedent exists or should abolish the doctrine entirely. A group of cross-ideological organizations ranging from the ACLU to the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief on behalf of our petition, as did the Constitutional Accountability Center. Our reply brief to the United States Supreme Court is available here. On November 2, 2020, the Supreme Court summarily reversed the Fifth Circuit decision granting qualified immunity to prison officials.