Ralph Harrison Benning v. Tyrone Oliver, Commissioner, Georgia Department of Corrections, et al.

Nearly 50 years ago, this Court held that the Due Process Clause requires that a prisoner be notified and given the opportunity to be heard if the prison intercepts outgoing “correspondence” or “communication.” Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 418-19 (1974). It is undisputed that respondents intercepted three of Mr. Benning’s outgoing emails and did not give him notice or an opportunity to be heard. The Eleventh Circuit correctly held that conduct violated the Due Process Clause, but nonetheless granted qualified immunity to respondents because Procunier was about mail, not email.

1. Where the Supreme Court has required that a prisoner is entitled to procedural safeguards if their “correspondence” is intercepted, are respondents entitled to qualified immunity simply because the correspondence in the Supreme Court case was postal mail, rather than email? The judge-made doctrine of qualified immunity has been assailed as inconsistent with the text of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, untethered from the common law, and divorced from its ostensible policy rationales. In addition, qualified immunity has been applied to all public employees, without regard to whether those officials would have received qualified immunity at common law, and all kinds of claims, without regard to whether this Court’s concern for “split-second decisionmaking” is relevant to the case at hand.

2. Should the doctrine of qualified immunity be abolished, pared back, or clarified? (i)