SCOTUS Clamps Down on Bivens Extension to Prisoner Beaten by BOP Guards at Virginia Lockup
On June 30, 2025, a federal prisoner lost his last chance at recovering damages for injuries suffered when he was repeatedly shackled and beaten by guards at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP)—Lee in Petersburg, Virginia. That’s when the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) overturned an appellate court’s decision allowing Andrew Fields the right to sue over constitutional violations inflicted by his captors working for the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
As PLN reported, Fields got into a scuffle with guards for not having a “movement pass” while outside his housing unit in November 2021. Placed in a special housing unit (SHU) observation cell with his hands and feet cuffed, he said that guards used their regular safety checks to enter his cell and slam his head against the concrete wall or hit him with a fiberglass security shield. They also thwarted his attempts to file grievances by denying the needed forms.
Fields filed suit, seeking to hold them liable for damages under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Narcotics Bur., 403 U.S. 388 (1971). In that case, agents with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics—which later became the DEA—broke into Webster Bivens’ New York home without a warrant and shackled him, threatening his family, too. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that he couldn’t sue, absent any authorizing federal law. But SCOTUS recognized an implied cause of action in the Fourth Amendment, which proscribed the very unauthorized search to which he was subjected.
The high Court later extended the same right to recovery for Fifth Amendment violations in the federal employment context and Eighth Amendment violations by prison medical staff for deliberate indifference to a prisoner’s serious medical needs. But more recently SCOTUS has refused further extension of Bivens, warning lower federal courts that doing so is “a disfavored judicial activity.” See: Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482 (2022) [quoting Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120 (2017)]. Accordingly, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia rejected Fields’ case, too. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned that decision in July 2024, finding “no special factors counsel against providing a judicial remedy” for a “clear-cut constitutional violation” that would be cognizable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, were Fields held in a state prison rather than a federal one. [See: PLN, Dec. 2024, p.40.]
SCOTUS Takes Up the Appeal
BOP turned to SCOTUS, which granted a writ of certiorari to hear the case. Once again, the Court said that extending Bivens is a “disfavored judicial activity” that required a two-part test: (1) a determination that the case presents a new context that doesn’t fall under one of the three Bivens extensions previously granted; and (2) whether “special factors” exist to overcome the presumption that “the Judiciary is at least arguably less equipped than Congress to ‘weigh the costs and benefits of allowing a damages action to proceed.’”
The Fourth Circuit had applied the same test and answered both questions affirmatively. But SCOTUS wasn’t having that. First, pointing again to Ziglar, it said that “Congress has actively legislated in the area of prisoner litigation but has not enacted a statutory cause of action for money damages”— meaning Fields’ remedy involved asking Congress to pass a law retroactively authorizing his suit. But the obvious futility of that exercise makes it the judicial equivalent of “Go ask your mother,” and every bit as weaselly. If the BOP won’t rein in its abusive guards, and Congress won’t rein in the BOP, where is a victim like Fields to turn?
Second, the Court said that “extending Bivens to allow an Eighth Amendment claim for excessive force could have negative systemic consequences for prison officials and the ‘inordinately difficult undertaking’ of running a prison,” quoting Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987). But the Court did not explain how it was “inordinately difficult” for the BOP to run its prisons without letting guards maul prisoners.
Instead, it insisted that Fields may have “alternative remedial procedures” available—perhaps by filing suit in state court against the guards in their individual capacities, resulting at best in a damages award that they lacked personal resources to pay. Or perhaps by amending his complaint to seek injunctive relief, hoping that BOP didn’t need the threat of monetary damages to make its guards obey the injunction. The ineffectiveness of these “alternatives” formed the “special” factors that the Fourth Circuit found sufficient to overcome the presumption of deference to a Congress of popularly elected officials—disinclined as they are to defend the rights of prisoners who can’t vote for them.
But the high Court dug in its heels. Accordingly, the Fourth Circuit’s ruling was reversed and the case remanded. Before the Court, Fields was represented by Richmond attorney Danny Zemel of the Krudys Law Firm PLC; John F. Preis of the University of Richmond School of Law; and Kelsi B. Corkran and Elizabeth R. Cruikshank of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. See: Goldey v. Fields, 2025 U.S. LEXIS 2572.
USP-Lee is a cesspool of guard misconduct, according to a string of lawsuits filed by prisoners claiming that they were subjected to abuses ranging from petty retaliation to beatings while restrained, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Aug. 2025, p.16.] With its decision in this case, SCOTUS has paved the way for more prisoner manhandling to follow, with little or no consequences for the guards who are liable.
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Related legal case
Goldey v. Fields
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 2025 U.S. LEXIS 2572 |
| Level | Supreme Court |
| Conclusion | Bench Verdict |