Suit under Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) by Muslim prisoner alleging guards interfered with his daily prayers; qualified immunity may be asserted as a defense to an RFRA claim, but based on allegations of significant, deliberate, repeated, and unjustified interference with prayer, officers would not be entitled to qualified immunity.
Court may not dismiss case under PLRA and contemporaneously rule that dismissal constitutes a strike under PLRA’s three-strikes rule.
In suit for false arrest, deprivation of due process, and malicious prosecution, by exonerees, it was not error to admit in evidence Governor’s pardons based on innocence and to prohibit defendants from impeaching the pardons, where court made clear pardons were not red judicata and did not prohibit defendants from challenging fact of innocence; error to allow former district attorney, based on his knowledge of routine interrogation practices, that he did not find the defendants’ descriptions of interrogations of plaintiffs as calm and uncoercive, testimony constituted objection
Placing inmate in disciplinary/segregated confinement constitutes “adverse action” for First Amendment retaliation claim; if inmate is found guilty of disciplinary infraction after being afforded due process and there is evidence to support the disciplinary panel’s finding, he cannot assert a retaliation claim.
In context of female student sexually assaulted at school, court reiterates that Fifth Circuit has not adopted state-created danger theory, thus defendants entitled to qualified immunity; court notes “to our knowledge we have not categorically ruled out the doctrine either.
Jail officers could be held liable for failing to give prisoner prescribed medications for a back injury, attention deficit disorder, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and insomnia and would not be entitled to qualified immunity.
Pretrial detainee in sickle cell crisis was not transported to hospital, but strapped in restraint chair with minimal observation and died four hours later; crisis was objectively serious medical need; issue of fact as to whether nurse acted recklessly in failing to send detainee to E.R.