Case: Foxworth v. Commissioner of Correction

The plaintiffs in this case were incarcerated with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (MDOC), who sued the MDOC over certain policies that applied to inmates in a “special management unit” (SMU) at MCI-Cedar Junction. They filed this suit pro se on February 25, 2003, in Massachusetts Superior Court, seeking injunctive relief and damages under state law, Section 1983, and the U.S. Constitution. The case was assigned to Justice Margot Botsford.

Among other reasons, MDOC officials used SMUs to house inmates awaiting a hearing on a charge of violating the institution’s rules and procedures, and while the MDOC investigated a report of serious disciplinary offenses. An inmate in the SMU was isolated from the general prison population and was generally restricted to a cell for 23 hours a day. Each of the plaintiffs in this case was placed in a segregation unit at MCI-Cedar Junction, and the DOC designated all of its segregation units as SMUs.

The plaintiffs disputed their access to television, telephones, and the MCI-Cedar Junction canteen. They argued that the prison’s regulations, promulgated pursuant to state law, required certain privileges—including those privileges denied to them while they were held in the MCI-Cedar Junction SMU. The defendants disagreed, arguing that the regulations were not binding and merely guided prison officials’ decision making. The defendants moved to dismiss (and in the alternative, for summary judgment) on the grounds that the regulations were not binding. And they argued that even if the regulations were binding, they had in fact complied with those regulations.

The plaintiffs filed a cross motion for summary judgment, which the court granted in part on April 14, 2006. 2006 WL 5429533. Justice Botsford explained that the SMU regulations, under state law, bound the defendants. In so ruling, the court obviated the need to consider the plaintiffs’ other claims that the defendants violated their constitutional rights by denying them access to televisions and the ability to purchase food from the canteen.

Other issues remained in the case, but the court stated that it did not have enough information to rule on those issues. Thus, the court denied the remainder of the parties’ motions for summary judgment and scheduled a status hearing.

The plaintiffs moved the court on several other issues, including to compel the defendants’ compliance with the court’s April 14 order. In an order published on June 29, 2006, Justice Botsford denied the plaintiffs’ remaining claims asserting violations of Massachusetts state law and due process, as well as those seeking monetary damages under § 1983. The court likewise denied the plaintiffs’ motion to compel the defendants’ compliance, and the plaintiffs’ motion for an assessment of damages. She also ordered that a final judgment enter in the case declaring that the defendants were required to “permit an inmate assigned to an SMU on administrative segregation status (1) to have the personal items specified in the regulation, including a television, and (2) to order items from the canteen including food items, except insofar as the institution's director of security specifically determines that a particular canteen item or items would be a threat to the security of the SMU.” The court then entered a final judgment on October 17, 2006.

The plaintiffs alleged that, despite the court’s order, the DOC refused to provide all segregation prisoners with televisions and the right to purchase food from the canteen. Rather, the DOC told the segregated prisoners that an emergency modification to the relevant regulation had been implemented, and that the modification lifted any duty to provide televisions and canteen access. The plaintiffs therefore moved to re-open the court’s order and hold the defendants in contempt. Similarly, several inmates not named as plaintiffs moved to intervene in January 2007, arguing that they were subject to the same deprivations as the plaintiffs. 

On June 6, 2007, the court—now speaking through Justice Janet L. Sanders—rejected both the plaintiffs’ motion to reopen Justice Botsford’s order and the motion to hold the defendants in contempt. The October 17 final judgment did not prevent the DOC from repealing the challenged regulation and promulgating a replacement. And the defendants offered proof that they did in fact file an emergency amendment to the challenged regulation. The court therefore concluded that whether the DOC was complying with the new regulations was best tested in a new lawsuit. The court also rejected the motions to intervene, pointing out that Justice Botsford’s June 29, 2006, order specifically rejected the defendants’ claim that the plaintiffs had tried to represent a class.

One of the plaintiffs appealed the Superior Court’s June 6 order. But in an opinion published on January 9, 2009, a panel of the Appeals Court of Massachusetts affirmed the Superior Court. In responding to the appellant’s claim of a due process violation, the court rejected the plaintiff’s appeal as an attempt to resurrect an issue not timely raised in the trial court. The appeals court also rejected the plaintiff’s argument with regard to a remaining state law claim. It explained that “the loss of the privilege of having a television set or unrestricted access to the prison canteen or [a] telephone within [the] SMU does not reach the level of hardship and deprivation” required under state law G.L. c. 127, § 40. And it explained that the loss of the aforementioned privileges was minor, and thus not tantamount to “isolation.” (Isolation being a sanction which may not exceed 15 days per violation under state law.) Finally, the appeals court found that the plaintiff’s § 1983 claim lacked merit because the loss of privileges at issue in this case did not pose an “atypical and significant hardship…in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life.”