Roe v. Fauver

• Jurisdiction: United States

Roe v. Fauver

Cir. A. No. 88-1225 (AET),

1988 WL 106316 (D.N.J. Oct. 11)

Facts

In this case, the defendants asked for summary judgment and the plaintiffs asked to file an amended complaint. This matter was previously before the court on a motion by plaintiff's injunction, which was denied on May 13, 1988. William Fauver, Commissioner of New Jersey Corrections, filed a motion for summary judgment with the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in connection with a lawsuit filed by Jane Roe against the New Jersey Department of Corrections. In filing for summary judgment, Fauver maintained that Roe plead no genuine interests of fact and that he is entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law. Roe, a prisoner within the New Jersey prison system was diagnosed with AIDS and argued that her confinement in continued isolation to a hospital room at St. Francis Medical Center, a hospital for female prisoners with AIDS, without an individual hearing to show she was at a risk to herself or others violated her Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. She argued that illegally segregating her from other inmates and depriving her of all recreation, education, and work program privileges she had as a minimum security prisoner constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. In addition, she argued that her confinement deprived her of adequate legal access, and that the medical care she received for AIDS amounted to deliberate indifference to her serious medical needs, also in violation of her Eighth Amendment rights.

Issue

Whether the segregation itself is proper and whether the treatment plaintiffs received once they were segregated was poor.

Holding by the District Court

The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey granted the plaintiff's motion to amend the complaint and denied the defendant's motion for summary judgment.

Reason

Due to the changing nature of AIDS treatment, the District Court distinguished this case from earlier cases when not much was known about AIDS. In earlier cases, the courts often found that segregating AIDS prisoners without a hearing did not violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In this case, the District Court cited Perez v. Neubert (611 F.Supp. 830, D.N.J. 1985), a case involving Marielito Cubans who challenged their segregation in state prisons from the general population of inmates as controlling, because the Perez court heard arguments to determine...