UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 99-30744
ROGER D. YATES; TRAVIS CARTER; GEORGE McGUFFEY,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
VERSUS
RICHARD STALDER, Secretary,
Department of Public Safety and Corrections,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
For the Middle District of Louisiana
June 30, 2000
Before GARWOOD, DeMOSS and PARKER, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Roger D. Yates, Louisiana state prisoner #87050, Travis
Carter, Louisiana state prisoner #97219, and George McGuffey,
Louisiana state prisoner # 87708, appeal the dismissal of their
civil rights complaint filed against Richard Stalder, Secretary,
Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. We affirm
in part and reverse in part and remand for further proceedings.
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FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Plaintiffs, three male prisoners incarcerated in Louisiana
state prison, filed a civil rights complaint pursuant to 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983 (1994) alleging that they were being discriminated against
based upon their gender because living conditions provided by
defendant for male inmates were significantly harsher than those
provided for female inmates. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that,
unlike male inmates confined at the state penitentiary, female
inmates confined at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women
(“LCIW”) do not have to labor in agricultural fields, may earn
assignment to private or semi-private rooms through participation
in a merit program and are confined in air-conditioned units.
Plaintiffs further allege that women inmates at LCIW are provided
with a standard of living above the state poverty level in
violation of Louisiana law, while male inmates are limited to the
state poverty level standard. See LA.REV.STAT. 15:738 (West Supp.
1999). Plaintiffs allege that the disparate living conditions and
work requirements violate their rights under the Fourteenth
Amendment.
Defendant Secretary Stalder1 moved to dismiss the complaint on
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Plaintiffs allege that Stalder, currently the Secretary of the
Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, has held
that position “for approximately eight(8) years.” In that role, he
is responsible for implementing Louisiana policy concerning the
assignment of inmates to various facilities, administering the
department, and supervising the department’s institutions,
facilities and services.
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qualified immunity grounds, claiming that his conduct did not
violate any of Plaintiffs’ clearly established constitutional or
statutory rights. The district court granted the motion. Adopting
the report and recommendation of the magistrate, the district court
held that the Due Process Clause affords Plaintiffs no relief
because Plaintiffs have no justifiable expectation that they will
be incarcerated in any particular prison within the state citing
Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238 (1983). The district court went
on to reject Plaintiffs’ Equal Protection Clause claim because
Plaintiffs are not similarly situated with female prisoners
confined at LCIW, based on the fact that the prisons “are
geographically and structurally dissimilar.” Concluding that the
Plaintiffs failed to assert a violation of a clearly established
right, the district court held that Stalder was entitled to
qualified immunity.2
DISCUSSION
We review de novo a district court’s ruling on a motion to
dismiss, applying the same standard as the district court. See
General Star Indemnity Co. v. Vesta Fire Ins. Corp., 173 F.3d 946,
949 (5th Cir. 1999).
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We note that qualified immunity is not a defense to Plaintiffs’
claims for declaratory and injunctive relief and to the extent that
the district court based its dismissal of those claims on its
qualified immunity analysis, it may have erred. However, because
we hold that the district court prematurely determined Stadler’s
entitlement to qualified immunity on Plaintiffs’ Equal Protection
Clause claims, it is unnecessary for us to address this issue.
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A. Due Process
The Due Process Clause does not, by itself, endow a prisoner
with a protected liberty interest in the location of his
confinement. See Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 225 (1976).
Further, a prisoner has no liberty interest in being housed in any
particular facility. See Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238, 244–45
(1983); Tighe v. Wall, 100 F.3d 41, 42 (5th Cir. 1996). Because
Plaintiffs have failed to allege the deprivation of a
constitutionally cognizable liberty interest, the district court
did not err by granting Stalder qualified immunity on this claim.
B. Equal Protection
The first step in qualified immunity analysis is to determine
whether the plaintiff has alleged a “violation of a clearly
established constitutional right.” Hare v. City of Corinth, Miss.,
135 F.3d 320, 325-26 (5th Cir. 1998). This is a “purely legal
question” to be determined by the Court. Siegert v. Gilley, 500
U.S. 226, 232 (1991). It is clearly established that a state
violates the equal protection clause when it treats one set of
persons differently from others who are similarly situated. See
Wheeler v. Miller, 168 F.3d 241, 252 (5th Cir. 1999).
Plaintiffs allege that male inmates are discriminated against
on the basis of their gender in Louisiana, thereby denying them
equal protection under the law. To state an equal protection
claim, the Plaintiffs must allege, inter alia, that similarly
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situated individuals have been treated differently. See Muhammad
v. Lynaugh, 966 F.2d 901, 903 (5th Cir. 1992). The inquiry focuses
on whether the plaintiffs are similarly situated to another group
for purposes of the challenged government action. See Klinger v.
Dep’t of Corrections, 31 F.3d 727 (8th Cir. 1994).
Defendant Stalder relies on the Eighth Circuit’s finding in
Klinger that male inmates in Nebraska’s maximum security men’s
prison are not similarly situated to female inmates in Nebraska’s
sole women’s prison. See 31 F.3d at 731. We agree that Klinger
affords analysis that is useful and persuasive in resolving the
question presented in this appeal, but conclude that it requires
reversal of the district court’s dismissal and remand for further
development of the facts. In July 1988, four Nebraska inmates
filed a pro se complaint in federal district court alleging that
the Department of Corrections was treating male inmates more
favorably than female inmates in terms of its programs and
services. See id. at 729. The district court appointed counsel to
represent the pro se inmates, who subsequently amended the
complaint three times. See id. The court required plaintiffs to
identify specific prison units on which their comparisons of
programs and services relied. See id. The parties took twenty-
nine depositions involving both lay and expert witnesses and
focused their comparisons on twelve separate programs for inmates.
See id. They also developed per capita spending figures and
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related funding issues. After three years of pretrial proceedings
and discovery, the district court held a four week trial on the
issue of liability. See id. at 730. Based on this extensive
factual development, the Eighth Circuit determined that the two
groups of inmates were not similarly situated. See id. at 731.
The record developed in the present case is, as illuminated by a
comparison to Klinger, wholly inadequate to allow us to determine
whether Plaintiffs are similarly situated to the female inmates in
LCIW. Klinger’s holding is based on a fact intensive examination
of, inter alia, the number of inmates housed in each facility,
their average length of stay, their security levels, and the
statistical incidence of violence and victimhood. The district
court’s opinion in this case mentions only that the male and female
units are geographically and structurally different. There is no
clear connection between that observation and the Plaintiffs’
complaints and nothing in the record that supports the conclusion.
We do not imply that the Constitution requires all prisons to
have similar programs or to allocate resources similarly. Perhaps
male prisoners on Plaintiffs’ unit vandalize the buildings more
often than LCIW inmates, making it economically less feasible to
provide air conditioning because the necessary funds are consumed
in building repairs. Perhaps LCIW does not have farmland and for
that reason LCIW inmates cannot be assigned to do agricultural
field work. Nonetheless, our speculations concerning possible
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disparities among male and female populations cannot be substituted
for adequate evidence and findings of fact in the district court.
We are fully cognizant of the high degree of deference courts
must afford to prison authorities in the inordinately difficult
task of running prisons. See Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 85
(1987). If legitimate penalogical goals can rationally be deemed
to support the decision to treat male and female prisoners
differently, then they are not similarly situated for Equal
Protection purposes. But that is not a conclusion that we can draw
from the present record.
C. No Merit to Remaining Claims
Plaintiffs complain that the district court failed to rule on
certain motions that do not appear in the record, that the district
court was biased because it denied other motions and that the
district court failed to consider their objections to the
magistrate’s report and recommendation. We find no merit in these
contentions.
CONCLUSION
We affirm the dismissal of Plaintiffs’ due process claims,
reverse the dismissal of Plaintiffs’ equal protection claims and
remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART and REMANDED.
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