Winning the battle, losing the war? Judicial scrutiny of prisoners' statutory claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

• Author: Burke, Christopher J.

INTRODUCTION

When he was convicted in 1994 of drunken driving, escape, and resisting arrest, Ronald Yeskey was sentenced to serve 18 to 36 months in a Pennsylvania prison.(1) In addition, the judge recommended that Yeskey be sent to a motivational boot camp operated by the state.(2) Upon successful completion of the boot camp program, Yeskey's sentence would then be reduced to six months.(3) Although he eagerly wanted to participate, the prison refused him entrance into the boot camp program because of his history of hypertension, and also denied him admission into an alternative program for the disabled.(4) As a result, he was incarcerated for two years and two months longer than he might have been had he successfully completed the boot camp.(5) Yeskey filed suit in federal court, charging that prison authorities had violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)(6) by discriminating against him due to his physical condition.(7)

On June 15, 1998, that suit reached the Supreme Court. In Pennsylvania Department of Corrections v. Yeskey(8) the Court resolved a long-running circuit split in holding that Title II of the ADA applies to inmates in state prisons.(9) The Court concluded that Ronald Yeskey's claim under the Act should not have been barred due to his status as a prisoner.(10)

The Yeskey decision promises to have far-reaching legal consequences. It has prompted many commentators to predict a flood of lawsuits from disabled prisoners.(11) The Court's ruling was lauded by others as a victory for the disabled prison population, as it provide a mechanism for inmates to improve correctional conditions regarding diverse issues, such as the physical protection of disabled inmates(112) or the reform of prison healthcare systems.(13) Yet for all of the fanfare it received, Yeskey failed to address an equally consequential issue that has the potential to blunt the force of the Supreme Court's ruling significantly: the level of judicial scrutiny that prisoners' ADA claims should receive.

Prior to 1987, Procunier v. Martinez(14) was the Supreme Court's most significant decision regarding the scrutiny afforded to alleged violations of prisoners' constitutional rights. In Procunier, the Court held that censorship of prisoner mail would only be justified if the regulation or practice in question furthered "an important or substantial governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of expression," and if "the limitation of First Amendment freedoms [were] no greater than [was] necessary or essential to the protection of the particular governmental interest involved."(15) This type of review is similar to the kind of "heightened scrutiny" that classifications based on gender receive -- those that will not be upheld unless they are "substantially related to a sufficiently important governmental interest.(16)

Yet in a 1987 case, Turner v. Safley,(17) the Court made it more difficult for a prisoner to succeed with a claim that his or her constitutional rights were being infringed upon by a prison regulation. In that case, the Court limited the Procunier holding to the narrow context of correspondence between prisoners and the general public.(18) The Turner majority concluded that subjecting all judgments of prison officials to this type of heightened scrutiny would "seriously hamper their ability to anticipate security problem and to adopt innovative solutions to the intractable problems of prison administration."(19) The Court went on to articulate four factors relevant in determining the "reasonableness" of the prison regulation at issue: (1) whether there is a valid, rational connection between the prison regulation and the legitimate governmental interest put forward to justify it, (2) whether there are alternative means of exercising the right that remain open to prison inmates, (3) the impact that accommodation of the asserted constitutional right will have on guards and other inmates, and on the allocation of prison resources generally, and (4) whether ready alternatives to the regulation exist.(20)

Since the Turner decision, it has generally been clear that a prison regulation that allegedly infringes upon an inmate's constitutional rights is valid if it is reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest.(21) The Turner Court specifically rejected the use of heightened scrutiny in examining the efficacy of the prison regulation, instead requiring that a disputed regulation satisfy only the lowest level of scrutiny that could be imposed by courts.(22)

Turner, however, made no mention of the statutory rights of prisoners, nor did it discuss whether cases implicating those rights would also be subject to the deferential standard of review it outlined for cases involving constitutional rights violations. This question has not been resolved uniformly by the circuit courts. The Ninth Circuit, in a case involving a statutory claim under the Rehabilitation Act, applied the same standard of review defined in Turner for the review of constitutional rights in a prison setting.(23) The Court believed that it was "highly doubtful" that Congress intended a more stringent application of the prisoners' statutory rights created by the Rehabilitation Act than the Court would afford to their constitutional rights.(24) The Fourth Circuit has agreed, noting that due to the leeway that prison officials are accorded where their actions threaten inmates' constitutional rights, "it follows a fortiori that prison officials enjoy similar flexibility with respect to inmates' statutory rights."(25)

In contrast, some circuit courts have shied away from using the Turner standard in all cases implicating inmates' statutory rights.(26) For example, the Eighth Circuit has held that some reviews of prison policies may require more heightened judicial review than Turner allows.(27) The court reasoned that other prisoners' rights cases, even some involving inmates' constitutional rights, did not preclude the use of heightened scrutiny when warranted by the circumstances.(28) The Eleventh Circuit, in a case involving a prisoner's Rehabilitation Act claim, maintained that refusing to superimpose Turner's standard onto the statute made "better sense" than applying it.(29)

The level of scrutiny appropriate for prisoners' statutory rights is particularly complicated with regard to the ADA(30) in light of Yeskey. On the one hand, if inmates are subject to the use of Turner's "legitimate penological interest" test with regard to their constitutional rights, perhaps their statutory rights should be no different. The Supreme Court has often recognized the difficulties inherent in running a prison and has clearly specified that courts are ill suited to become arbiters of what constitutes the best solution to prison problems.(31) Furthermore, in Turner the Court clearly stated that infringements on prisoners' constitutional rights should be subject to loose judicial scrutiny that gives great deference to the decisions of prison administrators.(32)

Yet other factors point toward the conclusion that the rights of prisoners under the ADA should be protected to a greater degree than that provided by the Turner test. First, the Supreme Court has often held that prisoners do not lose protection from violations of their rights simply because they are incarcerated.(33) More specifically, the Yeskey decision made clear that prisoners have the right to bring a claim under the ADA.(34) Furthermore, the ADA's mandate is a powerful one -- to protect the disabled from discrimination based on their physical or mental limitations and provide them with an equal playing field in our society.(35) These contrasting views leave the question: When a principle of deference towards the decisions of prison administration collides with rights provided to inmates by a statute such as the ADA, how should courts strike a balance in adjudicating prisoners' claims?

This Note will argue that when a prison regulation infringes upon an inmate's statutory rights under the ADA, courts should not use the deferential Turner standard of review. Such a standard would effectively render the ADA toothless in the correctional environment. Instead, courts should incorporate the claims of the inmates and prison administration into their "reasonable modification" determinations under Title II of the ADA.(36) Part I of this Note shows that the Turner test has not been applied to all cases involving the alleged infringement of prisoners' constitutional rights. Accordingly, it argues that these cases demonstrate that when compelling reasons exist to deviate from Turner, courts have and should continue to do so. Part II suggests that the characteristics of statutory rights in general, and those granted by the ADA in particular, provide a number of persuasive reasons to deviate from Turner. Part III contends that the use of the Turner test in practice has effectively rendered the statutory protections of ADA inapplicable in the prison context. Lastly, Part IV argues that instead of applying Turner to inmates' claims under the ADA, courts should consider the prison context as a part of their ADA determinations. It also claims that doing so need not cause tremendous financial or administrative burdens for correctional facilities. This Note concludes that administering the ADA in this way would provide disabled prisoners with a more evenhanded adjudication of their discrimination claims, while also respecting the legitimate concerns of prison administration.

1. THE TURNER STANDARD'S APPLICABILITY TO CASES INVOLVING PRISONERS' RIGHTS

   Although the Supreme Court has said that Turner should apply to "all circumstances in which the needs of prison administration implicate constitutional rights,"(37) some courts and commentators have claimed that Turner was never meant to apply in all cases involving the alleged infringement of prisoners' rights, nor to all constitutional...