Constitutional Law — due process — sexually violent persons

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Constitutional Law — due process — sexually violent persons

Due process does not require input from health professionals prior to restricting opportunities for in-person association among detainees committed as sexually violent persons.

“Simply put, ‘Youngberg holds that, under the due process clause, detainees are entitled to non-punitive programs designed using the exercise of professional judgment,’ Allison, 332 F.3d at 1080; it does not hold that every aspect of civil commitment must be evaluated as a treatment program. In Allison, for example, SVPs claimed their commitment violated due process because (1) they were confined at a prison and (2) their treatment involved group sessions in which they were forced to confess their crimes. Id. at 1078. The second claim was analyzed according to the Youngberg “professional judgment” rule and was rejected because professional judgment was in fact exercised; the first claim, by contrast, was not about treatment, but only whether confinement in a prison amounted to punishment— no mental health professional had to endorse that decision or decide how much contact the SVPs could have with the general prison population. Id. at 1079. West v. Schwebke, 333 F.3d at 745, illustrates the same idea. In West, SVPs were placed in ‘therapeutic seclusion’ for long stretches—82 days for one detainee—and were allowed out for only an hour a day and not at all on weekends. Id. at 747. The Youngberg question was whether this “treatment” could be defended either on security grounds or as an exercise of professional judgment. In affirming the denial of summary judgment for the defendants, we emphasized that “if at trial defendants can establish that their use of seclusion was justified on security grounds, they will prevail without regard to the question whether extended seclusion is justified as treatment.” Id. at 748. A justified security policy is not, therefore, properly viewed as a treatment program that must be supported by an exercise of professional judgment. And that is so even if the security policy limits opportunities for treatment. In this case, the plaintiffs do not argue that the limit on interaction among units is not a justified security decision, but only that the decision had to be made—in the first instance at least—by a health professional. That, however, is wrong: Security decisions do not violate Youngberg just because they restrict treatment options. As here, where there has been no showing (or even an argument) that a security decision is unjustified on security grounds, we will not leap to the conclusion that its impact on treatment is enough to make it a treatment decision subject to Youngberg’s rule.”

Affirmed.

11-3373 Lane v. Williams

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Baker, J., Tinder, J.