Respondents were state prisoners who had elected to participate
in New York's conditional release program, by which a prisoner
serving an indeterminate sentence may earn up to 10 days per month
good behavior time credits toward reduction of his maximum
sentence. For in-prison disciplinary reasons, the good time credits
of each were canceled. Each respondent brought a civil rights
action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, in conjunction with a habeas corpus
action, claiming that his credits were unconstitutionally canceled
and seeking their restoration. The District Court in each case
viewed the habeas corpus claim merely as an adjunct to the civil
rights action, thus obviating the need for exhaustion of state
remedies, and, on the merits, ruled for the respondent, a ruling
that, in each case, entitled him to immediate release on parole.
The Court of Appeals consolidated the actions and affirmed.
Held: When a state prisoner challenges the fact or
duration of his physical imprisonment and, by way of relief, seeks
a determination that he is entitled to immediate release or a
speedier release, his sole federal remedy is a writ of habeas
corpus. Pp.
411 U. S.
488-499.
(a) Although the broad language of § 1983 seems literally to
apply, Congress' enactment of the specific federal habeas corpus
statute, with its requirement that a state prisoner exhaust state
remedies, was intended to provide the exclusive means of relief in
this type of situation. Pp.
411 U. S.
488-490.
(b) The policy of exhaustion in federal habeas corpus actions,
which is rooted in considerations of federal state comity, has as
much relevance in an attack on the actions of the state prison
administration as it does in an attack on the actions of a state
court; and that policy applies here, where respondents sought no
damages, but only a ruling that they were entitled to immediate
release or a speedier release. Pp.
411 U. S.
490-494.
(c) Recent decisions of the Court relied on by respondents,
upholding state prisoners' civil rights actions, are inapposite to
the situation here, for the prisoners in those cases challenged
only
Page 411 U. S. 476
the conditions of their confinement, not the fact or duration of
that confinement itself. Pp.
411 U. S.
498-499.
456 F.2d 79, reversed.
STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which
BURGER, C.J., and WHITE, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ.,
.joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which DOUGLAS
and MARSHALL, JJ., joined,
post, p.
411 U. S.
500.
MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court.
The respondents in this case were state prisoners who were
deprived of good conduct time credits by the New York State
Department of Correctional Services as a result of disciplinary
proceedings. They then brought actions in a federal district court,
pursuant to the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C.1983. Alleging
that the Department had acted unconstitutionally in depriving them
of the credits, they sought injunctive relief to compel restoration
of the credits, which in each case would result in their immediate
release from confinement in
Page 411 U. S. 477
prison. The question before us is whether state prisoners
seeking such redress may obtain equitable relief under the Civil
Rights Act, even though the federal habeas corpus statute, 28
U.S.C. § 2254, clearly provides a specific federal remedy.
The question is of considerable practical importance. For if a
remedy under the Civil Rights Act is available, a plaintiff need
not first seek redress in a state forum.
Monroe v. Pape,
365 U. S. 167,
365 U. S. 183
(191);
McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U.
S. 668,
373 U. S. 671
(1963);
Damico v. California, 389 U.
S. 416 (1967);
King v. Smith, 392 U.
S. 309,
392 U. S. 312
n. 4 (1968);
Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U.
S. 639 (1968). If, on the other hand, habeas corpus is
the exclusive federal remedy in these circumstances, then a
plaintiff cannot seek the intervention of a federal court until he
has first sought and been denied relief in the state courts, if a
state remedy is available and adequate. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b).
The present consolidated case originated in three separate
actions, brought individually by the three respondents. The
respondent Rodriguez, having been convicted in a New York state
court of perjury and attempted larceny, was sentenced to
imprisonment for an indeterminate term of from one and one-half to
four years. Under New York Correction Law § 803 and Penal Law §
70.30(4)(a), 70.40(1)(b), a prisoner serving an indeterminate
sentence may elect to participate in a conditional release program
by which he may earn up to 10 days per month good behavior time
credit toward reduction of the maximum term of his sentence.
Rodriguez elected to participate in this program. Optimally, such a
prisoner may be released on parole after having served
approximately two-thirds of his maximum sentence (20 days out of
every 30); but accrued good-behavior credits so earned may at any
time be withdrawn, in whole
Page 411 U. S. 478
or in part, for bad behavior or for violation of the
institutional rules. N.Y.Correction Law § 803(1).
Rodriguez was charged in two separate disciplinary action
reports with possession of contraband material in his cell. The
deputy warden determined that, as punishment, 120 days of
Rodriguez' earned good-conduct-time credits should be canceled, and
that Rodriguez should be placed in segregation, where he remained
for more than 40 days. In the "Remarks" section of the deputy
warden's determination was a statement that Rodriguez had refused
to disclose how he had managed to obtain possession of the items in
question.
Rodriguez then filed in the District Court a complaint pursuant
to § 1983, combined with a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He
asserted that he was not really being punished for possession of
the contraband material, but for refusal to disclose how he had
obtained it, and that he had received no notice or hearing on the
charges for which he had ostensibly been punished. Thus, he
contended that he had been deprived of his good conduct time
credits without due process of law.
After a hearing, the District Court held that Rodriguez' suit
had properly been brought under the Civil Rights Act, that the
habeas corpus claim was "merely a proper adjunct to insure full
relief if [Rodriguez] prevails in the dominant civil rights claim,"
307 F.
Supp. 627, 628-629 (1969), and that, therefore, Rodriguez was
not required to exhaust his state remedies, as he would have had to
do if he had simply filed a petition for habeas corpus. On the
merits, the District Court agreed with Rodriguez that the
questioning of him by prison officials related solely to the issue
of how he had obtained the contraband materials, and that he had
been ostensibly punished for something different -- possession of
the materials -- on which he had had no notice or opportunity to
answer. This, the court found, denied him due process
Page 411 U. S. 479
of law, particularly in light of the fact that the prison
regulations prescribed no penalty for failure to inform. The
District Court further found that the Prison Commutation Board had
failed to forward to the Commissioner of Correction written reasons
for the cancellation of Rodriguez' good conduct time, as required
by former N.Y.Correction Law § 236, and that this, too, had
deprived Rodriguez of due process and equal protection of the laws.
Accordingly, the court declared the cancellation of 120 days' good
behavior time credits unconstitutional, and directed the
Commissioner of Correction to restore those credits to Rodriguez.
Since, at that time, Rodriguez' conditional release date had
already passed, the District Court's order entitled him to
immediate release from prison on parole.
The Court of Appeals reversed this decision by a divided vote.
The appellate court not only disagreed with the District Court on
the merits, but also held that Rodriguez' action was really a
petition for habeas corpus, and, as such, should not have been
entertained by the District Court because Rodriguez had not
exhausted his state remedies in accordance with § 2254(b). As the
Court of Appeals put it:
"The present application, since it seeks release from custody,
is, in fact, an application for habeas corpus. '[R]elease from
penal custody is not an available remedy under the Civil Rights
Act.'
Peinado v. Adult Authority of Dept. of Corrections,
405 F.2d 1185, 1186 (9th Cir.),
cert. denied, 395 U.S. 968
(1969). In
Johnson v. Walker, 317 F.2d 418, 419-420 (5th
Cir.1963) the court said:"
"Use of the Civil Rights Statutes to secure release of persons
imprisoned by State Courts would thus have the effect of repealing
28 U.S.C. § 2254; of course, such was not the intent of
Congress."
Rodriguez v. McGinnis, 451 F.2d 730, 731 (1971).
Page 411 U. S. 480
The judgment of the Court of Appeals was subsequently set aside,
and the case was reheard en banc, as explained below.
The respondent Katzoff, who was serving a sentence of one to
three years in prison following his conviction for possession of a
dangerous weapon, also elected to participate in New York's
conditional release program. Disciplinary charges were brought
against him for making derogatory comments about prison officials
in his diary. As punishment, the deputy warden deprived him of 30
days' good conduct time for these diary entries and confined him in
segregation for 57 days. Katzoff ultimately lost 50 days' good
behavior time credits -- 30 days directly and 20 additional days
because he was unable to earn any good conduct time while in
segregation. He brought a civil rights complaint under § 1983,
joined with a petition for habeas corpus, in Federal District
Court, alleging that the prison officials had acted
unconstitutionally.
The District Court held, in an unreported opinion, that
Katzoff's failure to exhaust state remedies was no bar to his suit,
since it was a civil rights action and the petition for a writ of
habeas corpus was only an incidental adjunct to assure enforcement
of the judgment. On the merits, the District Court found that there
was no prison regulation against the keeping of a diary; that
punishment for entries in a private diary violated Katzoff's
constitutional rights to due process, equal protection, and freedom
of thought; and that confining Katzoff in segregation for this
offense constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The court,
therefore, ordered that the 50 days' good behavior time credits be
restored to Katzoff, and, since this restoration entitled him to
immediate release on parole, the court ordered such release.
The Court of Appeals reversed by a divided vote. Without
reaching the merits of Katzoff's complaint, the appellate court
held that his action was, in essence, an
Page 411 U. S. 481
application for habeas corpus, since it sought and obtained his
immediate release from custody, and that, therefore, his complaint
should have been dismissed because Katzoff had sought no relief
whatever in the state courts, and had made no showing that an
adequate state remedy was unavailable.
United States ex rel.
Katzoff v. McGinnis, 441 F.2d 558 (1971). This judgment of the
Court of Appeals was subsequently set aside, and the case was
reheard en banc, as explained below.
The respondent Kritasky's case is similar. While serving a
prison sentence of 15 to 18 years under a state court conviction
for armed robbery, he was charged by prison officials with being a
leader in a prison-wide protest demonstration and with advocating
insurrection during that demonstration. When brought before the
warden and asked how he would plead, Kritasky stated "Not guilty."
The warden then immediately and summarily imposed punishment on him
-- deprivation of 545 days' good conduct time credits, and
confinement in segregation for four and one-half months, where he
lost another 45 days' good time.
Kritasky subsequently filed a civil rights action, combined with
a petition for habeas corpus, in Federal District Court, alleging
that his summary punishment had deprived him of his good time
credits without due process of law. The District Court found
Kritasky's complaint to be a proper civil rights action, and went
on to rule that he had been denied due process by the imposition of
summary punishment and by the failure of the Prison Commutation
Board to file with the Commissioner written reasons for
cancellation of Kritasky's good time credits, as required by New
York law.
313 F.
Supp. 1247 (1970). Accordingly, the court ordered restoration
of the 590 days' good conduct time credits, which entitled Kritasky
to immediate release on parole.
Page 411 U. S. 482
An appeal was argued before a panel of the Court of Appeals;
but, before decision, that Court ordered the case to be reheard en
banc, together with the
Rodriguez and
Katzof
cases. After rehearing en banc of the three now-consolidated cases,
the Court of Appeals, with three dissents, affirmed the judgments
of the District Court in all of the cases
"upon consideration of the merits and upon the authority of
Wilwording v. Swenson,
[
404 U.S.
249] decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on
December 14, 1971."
Rodriguez v. McGinnis, 456 F.2d 79, 80 (1972). Although
eight judges wrote separate opinions, it is clear that the majority
of the Court relied primarily on our opinion in the
Wilwording case, holding that complaints of state
prisoners relating to the conditions of their confinement were
cognizable either in federal habeas corpus or under the Civil
Rights Act, and that as civil rights actions they were not subject
to any requirement of exhaustion of state remedies.
We granted certiorari
sub nom. Oswald v. Rodriguez, 407
U.S. 919, in order to consider the bearing of the
Wilwording decision upon the situation before us -- where
state prisoners have challenged the actual duration of their
confinement on the ground that they have been unconstitutionally
deprived of good conduct time credits, and where restoration of
those credits would result in their immediate release from prison
or in shortening the length of their confinement. In that context,
the question whether a state prisoner may bring an action for
equitable relief pursuant to § 1983, or whether he is limited to
the specific remedy of habeas corpus, presents an unresolved and
important problem in the administration of federal justice.
The problem involves the interrelationship of two important
federal laws. The relevant habeas corpus statutes are 28 U.S.C. §§
2241 and 2254. Section 2241(c)
Page 411 U. S. 483
provides that
"[t]he writ of habeas corpus shall not extend to a prisoner
unless . . . (3) [h]e is in custody in violation of the
Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States. . . ."
Section 2254 provides in pertinent part:
"(a) The Supreme Court, a Justice thereof, a circuit judge, or a
district court shall entertain an application for a writ of habeas
corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of
a State court only on the ground that he is in custody in violation
of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States."
"(b) An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a
person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall
not be granted unless it appears that the applicant has exhausted
the remedies available in the courts of the State, or that there is
either an absence of available State corrective process or the
existence of circumstances rendering such process ineffective to
protect the rights of the prisoner."
"(c) An applicant shall not be deemed to have exhausted the
remedies available in the courts of the State, within the meaning
of this section, if he has the right under the law of the State to
raise, by any available procedure, the question presented.
[
Footnote 1]"
The Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, provides:
"Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance,
regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects,
or causes to be subjected, any citizen . . . or other person . . .
to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured
by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the
Page 411 U. S. 484
party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other
proper proceeding for redress."
It is clear, not only from the language of§ 2241(c)(3) and
2254(a) but also from the common law history of the writ, that the
essence of habeas corpus is an attack by a person in custody upon
the legality of that custody, and that the traditional function of
the writ is to secure release from illegal custody. By the end of
the 16th century, there were in England several forms of habeas
corpus, of which the most important, and the only one with which we
are here concerned, was
habeas corpus ad subjiciendum --
the writ used to "inquir[e] into illegal detention with a view to
an order releasing the petitioner."
Fay v. Noia,
372 U. S. 391,
372 U. S. 399
n. 5 (1963). [
Footnote 2]
Whether the petitioner had been placed in physical confinement by
executive direction alone, [
Footnote 3] or by order of a court, [
Footnote 4] or even by private parties, [
Footnote 5] habeas corpus was the
proper means of challenging that confinement and seeking release.
Indeed, in 1670, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas was able to
say, in ordering the immediate
Page 411 U. S. 485
discharge of a juror who had been jailed by a trial judge for
bringing in a verdict of not guilty, that
"[t]he writ of habeas corpus is now the most usual remedy by
which a man is restored again to his liberty, if he have been
against law deprived of it."
Bushell's Case, Vaughan 135, 136, 124 Eng.Rep. 1006,
1007.
By the time the American Colonies achieved independence, the use
of habeas corpus to secure release from unlawful physical
confinement, whether judicially imposed or not, was thus an
integral part of our common law heritage. The writ was given
explicit recognition in the Suspension Clause of the Constitution,
Art. I, § 9, cl. 2; [
Footnote
6] was incorporated in the first congressional grant of
jurisdiction to the federal courts, Act of Sept. 24, 1789, c. 20, §
14, 1 Stat. 81-82; and was early recognized by this Court as a
"great constitutional privilege."
Ex parte
Bollman, 4 Cranch 75,
8 U. S. 95 (1807).
See Fay v. Noia, supra, at
372 U. S.
399-415.
The original view of a habeas corpus attack upon detention under
a judicial order was a limited one. T he relevant inquiry was
confined to determining simply whether or not the committing court
had been possessed of jurisdiction.
E.g., 20 U.
S. 7 Wheat. 38 (1822);
Ex parte
Watkins, 3 Pet.193 (1830). But, over the years, the
writ of habeas corpus evolved as a remedy available to effect
discharge from any confinement contrary to the Constitution or
fundamental law, even though imposed pursuant to conviction by a
court of competent jurisdiction.
See
Ex parte
Lange, 18 Wall. 163 (1874);
Ex parte
Siebold, 100 U. S. 371
(1880);
Ex parte Wilson, 114 U. S. 417
(1885);
Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U. S.
86 (1923);
Johnson. v.
Zerbst, 304 U.S.
Page 411 U. S. 486
458 (1938); and
Waley v. Johnston, 316 U.
S. 101 (1942).
See also Fay v. Noia, supra, at
372 U. S.
405-409, and cases cited at
372 U. S. 409
n. 17. Thus, whether the petitioner's challenge to his custody is
that the statute under which he stands convicted is
unconstitutional, as in
Ex parte Siebold, supra; that he
has been imprisoned prior to trial on account of a defective
indictment against him, as in
Ex parte Royall,
117 U. S. 241
(1886); that he is unlawfully confined in the wrong institution, as
in
In re Bonner, 151 U. S. 242
(1894), and
Humphrey v. Cady, 40 U.
S. 504 (1972); that he was denied his constitutional
rights at trial, as in
Johnson v. Zerbst, supra; that his
guilty plea was invalid, as in
Von Moltke v. Gillies,
332 U. S. 708
(1948); that he is being unlawfully detained by the Executive or
the military, as in
Parisi v. Davidson, 405 U. S.
34 (1972); or that his parole was unlawfully revoked,
causing him to be reincarcerated in prison, as in
Morrissey v.
Brewer, 408 U. S. 471
(1972) -- in each case, his grievance is that he is being
unlawfully subjected to physical restraint, and in each case,
habeas corpus has been accepted as the specific instrument to
obtain release from such confinement. [
Footnote 7]
Page 411 U. S. 487
In the case before us, the respondents' suits in the District
Court fell squarely within this traditional scope of habeas corpus.
They alleged that the deprivation of their good conduct time
credits was causing or would cause them to be in illegal physical
confinement,
i.e., that, once their conditional release
date had passed, any further detention of them in prison was
unlawful; and they sought restoration of those good time credits,
which, by the time the District Court ruled on their petitions,
meant their immediate release from physical custody.
Even if the restoration of the respondents' credits would not
have resulted in their immediate release, but only in shortening
the length of their actual confinement in prison, habeas corpus
would have been their appropriate remedy. For recent cases have
established that habeas corpus relief is not limited to immediate
release from illegal custody, but that the writ is available as
well to attack future confinement and obtain future releases. In
Peyton v. Rowe, 391 U. S. 54
(1968), the Court held that a prisoner may attack on habeas the
second of two consecutive sentences while still serving the first.
The Court pointed out that the federal habeas corpus statute
"does not deny the federal courts power to fashion appropriate
relief other than immediate release. Since 1874, the habeas corpus
statute has directed the courts to determine the facts and dispose
of the case summarily, 'as law and justice require.' Rev.Stat. §
761 (1874), superseded by 28 U.S.C. § 2243."
Id. at
391 U. S. 66-67.
See also Walker v. Wainwright, 390 U.
S. 335 (1968);
Carafas v. LaVallee,
391 U. S. 234,
391 U. S. 239
(1968);
Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky,
410 U. S. 484
(1973). So, even if restoration of respondents' good time credits
had merely shortened the length of their confinement, rather than
required immediate discharge from that confinement, their suits
would still have been within the core of habeas corpus in attacking
the very duration of their physical
Page 411 U. S. 488
confinement itself. It is beyond doubt, then, that the
respondents could have sought and obtained fully effective relief
through federal habeas corpus proceedings. [
Footnote 8]
Although conceding that they could have proceeded by way of
habeas corpus, the respondents argue that the Court of Appeals was
correct in holding that they were nonetheless entitled to bring
their suits under § 1983 so as to avoid the necessity of first
seeking relief in a state forum. Pointing to the broad language of
§ 1983, [
Footnote 9] they argue
that, since their complaints plainly came within the literal terms
of that statute, there is no justifiable reason to exclude them
from the broad remedial protection provided by that law. According
to the respondents, state prisoners seeking relief under the Civil
Rights Act
Page 411 U. S. 489
should be treated no differently from any other civil rights
plaintiffs, when the language of the Act clearly covers their
causes of action.
The broad language of 1983, however, is not conclusive of the
issue before us. The statute is a general one, and, despite the
literal applicability of its terms, the question remains whether
the specific federal habeas corpus statute, explicitly and
historically designed to provide the means for a state prisoner to
attack the validity of his confinement, must be understood to be
the exclusive remedy available in a situation like this where it so
clearly applies. The respondents' counsel acknowledged at oral
argument that a state prisoner challenging his underlying
conviction and sentence on federal constitutional grounds in a
federal court is limited to habeas corpus. It was conceded that he
cannot bring a § 1983 action, even though the literal terms of §
1983 might seem to cover such a challenge, because Congress has
passed a more specific act to cover that situation, and, in doing
so, has provided that a state prisoner challenging his conviction
must first seek relief in a state forum, if a state remedy is
available. It is clear to us that the result must be the same in
the case of a state prisoner's challenge to the fact or duration of
his confinement, based, as here, upon the alleged
unconstitutionality of state administrative action. Such a
challenge is just as close to the core of habeas corpus as an
attack on the prisoner's conviction, for it goes directly to the
constitutionality of his physical confinement itself, and seeks
either immediate release from that confinement or the shortening of
its duration.
In amending the habeas corpus laws in 1948, Congress clearly
required exhaustion of adequate state remedies as a condition
precedent to the invocation of federal judicial relief under those
laws. It would wholly frustrate explicit congressional intent to
hold that the respondents in the present case could evade this
requirement by the
Page 411 U. S. 490
simple expedient of putting a different label on their
pleadings. In short, Congress has determined that habeas corpus is
the appropriate remedy for state prisoners attacking the validity
of the fact or length of their confinement, and that specific
determination must override the general terms of § 1983.
The policy reasons underlying the habeas corpus statute support
this conclusion. The respondents concede that the reason why only
habeas corpus can be used to challenge a state prisoner's
underlying conviction is the strong policy requiring exhaustion of
state remedies in that situation -- to avoid the unnecessary
friction between the federal and state court systems that would
result if a lower federal court upset a state court conviction
without first giving the state court system an opportunity to
correct its own constitutional errors.
Fay v. Noia, supra,
at
372 U. S.
419-420. But they argue that this concern applies only
to federal interference with state court convictions; and to
support this argument, they quote from
Ex parte Royall,
supra, the case that first mandated exhaustion of state
remedies as a precondition to federal habeas corpus:
"The injunction to hear the case summarily, and thereupon 'to
dispose of the party as law and justice require,' does not deprive
the court of discretion as to the time and mode in which it will
exert the powers conferred upon it. That discretion should be
exercised in the light of the relations existing, under our system
of government,
between the judicial tribunals of the Union and
of the States, and in recognition of the fact that the public
good requires that those relations be not disturbed by
unnecessary conflict between courts equally bound to guard
and protect rights secured by the Constitution."
117 U.S. at
117 U. S. 251
(emphasis added).
In the respondents' view, the whole purpose of the exhaustion
requirement, now codified in § 2254(b), is to
Page 411 U. S. 491
give state
courts the first chance at remedying
their own mistakes, and thereby to avoid "the unseemly
spectacle of federal district courts trying the regularity of
proceedings had in
courts of coordinate jurisdiction."
Parker, Limiting the Abuse of Habeas Corpus, 8 F.R.D. 171, 172-173
(1948) (emphasis added). This policy, the respondents contend, does
not apply when the challenge is not to the action of a state court,
but, as here, to the action of a state administrative body. In that
situation, they say, the concern with avoiding unnecessary
interference by one court with the courts of another sovereignty
with concurrent powers, and the importance of giving state courts
the first opportunity to correct constitutional errors made by
them, do not apply, and hence the purpose of the exhaustion
requirement of the habeas corpus statute is inapplicable.
We cannot agree. The respondents, we think, view the reasons for
the exhaustion requirement of § 2254(b) far too narrowly. The rule
of exhaustion in federal habeas corpus actions is rooted in
considerations of federal state comity. That principle was defined
in
Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37,
401 U. S. 44
(1971), as "a proper respect for state functions," and it has as
much relevance in areas of particular state administrative concern
as it does where state judicial action is being attacked. That
comity considerations are not limited to challenges to the validity
of state court convictions is evidenced by cases such as
Morrissey v. Brewer, supra, where the petitioners' habeas
challenge was to a state administrative decision to revoke their
parole, and
Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit Court of Kentucky,
supra, where the petitioner's habeas attack was on the failure
of state prosecutorial authorities to afford him a speedy
trial.
It is difficult to imagine an activity in which a State has a
stronger interest, or on that is more intricately bound up with
state laws, regulations, and procedures,
Page 411 U. S. 492
than the administration of its prisons. The relationship of
state prisoners and the state officers who supervise their
confinement is far more intimate than that of a State and a private
citizen. For state prisoners, eating, sleeping, dressing, washing,
working, and playing are all done under the watchful eye of the
State, and so the possibilities for litigation under the Fourteenth
Amendment are boundless. What for a private citizen would be a
dispute with his landlord, with his employer, with his tailor, with
his neighbor, or with his banker becomes, for the prisoner, a
dispute with the State. Since these internal problems of state
prisons involve issues so peculiarly within state authority and
expertise, the States have an important interest in not being
bypassed in the correction of those problems. Moreover, because
most potential litigation involving state prisoners arises on a
day-to-day basis, it is most efficiently and properly handled by
the state administrative bodies and state courts, which are, for
the most part, familiar with the grievances of state prisoners and
in a better physical and practical position to deal with those
grievances. In New York, for example, state judges sit on a regular
basis at all but one of the State's correctional facilities, and
thus inmates may present their grievances to a court at the place
of their confinement, where the relevant records are available and
where potential witnesses are located. The strong considerations of
comity that require giving a state court system that has convicted
a defendant the first opportunity to correct its own errors thus
also require giving the States the first opportunity to correct the
errors made in the internal administration of their prisons.
[
Footnote 10]
Page 411 U. S. 493
Requiring exhaustion in situations like that before us means, of
course, that a prisoner's state remedy must be adequate and
available, as indeed § 2254(b) provides. The respondents in this
case concede that New York provided them with an adequate remedy
for the restoration of their good time credits, through § 79-c of
the New York Civil Rights Law, which explicitly provides for
injunctive relief to a state prisoner "for improper treatment where
such treatment constitutes a violation of his constitutional
rights." (Supp. 1972-1973.)
But while conceding the availability in the New York courts of
an opportunity for equitable relief, the respondents contend that
confining state prisoners to federal habeas corpus, after first
exhausting state remedies, could deprive those prisoners of any
damages remedy to which they might be entitled for their
mistreatment, since damages are not available in federal habeas
corpus proceedings, and New York provides no damages remedy at all
for state prisoners. In the respondents' view, if habeas corpus is
the exclusive federal remedy for a state prisoner attacking his
confinement, damages might never be obtained, at least where the
State makes no provision for them. They argue that, even if such a
prisoner were to bring a subsequent federal civil rights action for
damages, that action could be barred by principles of
Page 411 U. S. 494
res judicata where the state courts had previously made
an adverse determination of his underlying claim, even though a
federal habeas court had later granted him relief on habeas
corpus.
The answer to this contention is that the respondents here
sought no damages, but only equitable relief -- restoration of
their good time credits -- and our holding today is limited to that
situation. If a state prisoner is seeking damages, he is attacking
something other than the fact or length of his confinement, and he
is seeking something other than immediate or more speedy release --
the traditional purpose of habeas corpus. In the case of a damages
claim, habeas corpus is not an appropriate or available federal
remedy. Accordingly, as petitioners themselves concede, a damages
action by a state prisoner could be brought under the Civil Rights
Act in federal court without any requirement of prior exhaustion of
state remedies.
Cf. Ray v. Fritz, 468 F.2d 586 (CA2
1972).
The respondents next argue that to require exhaustion of state
remedies in a case such as the one at bar would deprive a state
prisoner of the speedy review of his grievance which is so often
essential to any effective redress. They contend that, if, prior to
bringing an application for federal habeas corpus, a prisoner must
exhaust state administrative remedies and then state judicial
remedies through all available appeals, a very significant period
of time might elapse before the prisoner could ever get into
federal court. By that time, no matter how swift and efficient
federal habeas corpus relief might be, the prisoner might well have
suffered irreparable injury and his grievances might no longer be
remediable.
It is true that exhaustion of state remedies takes time. But
there is no reason to assume that state prison administrators
Page 411 U. S. 495
or state courts will not act expeditiously. Indeed, new
regulations established by the New York Department of Correctional
Services provide for administrative review of a prisoner's record
in the institution shortly before the earliest possible release
date, 7 N.Y.Codes, Rules & Regulations § 261.3(b), [
Footnote 11] and, as previously
noted, state judges in New York actually sit in the institutions to
hear prisoner complaints. Moreover, once a state prisoner arrives
in federal court with his petition for habeas corpus, the federal
habeas statute provides for a swift, flexible, and summary
determination of his claim. 28 U.S.C. § 2243. [
Footnote 12]
See also Harris v. Nelson,
394 U. S. 286
(1969); and
Hensley
Page 411 U. S. 496
v. Municipal Court, ante at
411 U. S.
349-350. By contrast, the filing of a complaint pursuant
to § 1983 in federal court initiates an original plenary civil
action, governed by the full panoply of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure. That such a proceeding, with its discovery rules and
other procedural formalities, can take a significant amount of
time, very frequently longer than a federal habeas corpus
proceeding, is demonstrated by the respondents' actions in the
present case. Although both Rodriguez and Kritasky initiated their
actions before their conditional release dates, the District Court
did not reach its decisions until three and 10 months later,
respectively -- in both cases, well after the conditional release
dates had passed. Only in Katzoff's case was there a speedy
determination, and his action was not initiated until after his
alleged release date.
In any event, the respondents' time argument would logically
extend to a state prisoner who challenges the constitutionality of
a conviction that carried a relatively
Page 411 U. S. 497
short sentence; and yet, such a prisoner is clearly covered by §
2254(b). Arguably, in either case, if the prisoner could make out a
showing that, because of the time factor, his otherwise adequate
state remedy would be inadequate, a federal court might entertain
his habeas corpus application immediately, under § 2254(b)'s
language relating to "the existence of circumstances rendering such
[state] process ineffective to protect the rights of the prisoner."
But we need not reach that issue here.
Principles of
res judicata are, of course, not wholly
applicable to habeas corpus proceedings. 28 U.S.C. § 225(d).
See Salinger v. Loisel, 265 U. S. 224,
265 U. S. 230
(1924). Hence, a state prisoner in the respondents' situation who
has been denied relief in the state courts is not precluded from
seeking habeas relief on the same claims in federal court. On the
other hand,
res judicata has been held to be fully
applicable to a civil rights action brought under § 1983.
Coogan v. Cincinnati Bar Assn., 431 F.2d 1209, 1211 (CA6
1970);
Jenson v. Olson, 353 F.2d 825 (CA8 1965);
Rhodes v. Meyer, 334 F.2d 709, 716 (CA8 1964);
Goss v.
Illinois, 312 F.2d 257 (CA7 1963). Accordingly, there would be
an inevitable incentive for a state prisoner to proceed at once in
federal court by way of a civil rights action, lest he lose his
right to do so. This would have the unfortunate dual effect of
denying the state prison administration and the state courts the
opportunity to correct the errors committed in the State's own
prisons, and of isolating those bodies from an understanding of and
hospitality to the federal claims of state prisoners in situations
such as those before us. [
Footnote 13] Federal habeas corpus, on the other
Page 411 U. S. 498
hand, serves the important function of allowing the State to
deal with these peculiarly local problems on its own, while
preserving for the state prisoner an expeditious federal forum for
the vindication of his federally protected rights, if the State has
denied redress.
The respondents place a great deal of reliance on our recent
decisions upholding the right of state prisoners to bring federal
civil rights actions to challenge the conditions of their
confinement.
Cooper v. Pate, 378 U.
S. 546 (1964);
Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U.
S. 639 (1968);
Wilwording v. Swenson,
404 U. S. 249
(1971);
Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.
S. 519 (1972). But none of the state prisoners in those
cases was challenging the fact or duration of his physical
confinement itself, and none was seeking immediate release or a
speedier release from that confinement -- the heart of habeas
corpus. In
Cooper, the prisoner alleged that, solely
because of his religious beliefs, he had been denied permission to
purchase certain religious publications and had been denied other
privileges enjoyed by his fellow prisoners. In
Houghton,
the prisoner's contention was that prison authorities had violated
the Constitution by confiscating legal materials which he had
acquired for pursuing his appeal but which, in violation of prison
rules, had been found in the possession of another prisoner. In
Wilwording, the prisoners' complaints related solely to
their living conditions and disciplinary measures while confined in
maximum security. And in
Haines, the prisoner claimed that
prison officials had acted unconstitutionally by placing him in
solitary confinement as a disciplinary measure, and he sought
damages for claimed physical injuries sustained while so
segregated. It is clear, then, that, in
Page 411 U. S. 499
all those cases, the prisoners' claims related solely to the
States' alleged unconstitutional treatment of them while in
confinement. None sought, as did the respondents here, to challenge
the very fact or duration of the confinement itself. Those cases,
therefore, merely establish that a § 1983 action is a proper remedy
for a state prisoner who is making a constitutional challenge to
the conditions of his prison life, but not to the fact or length of
his custody. Upon that understanding, we reaffirm those holdings.
Cf. Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U.S. at
405 U. S.
516-517, n. 18. [
Footnote 14]
This is not to say that habeas corpus may not also be available
to challenge such prison conditions.
See Johnson v. Avery,
393 U. S. 483
(1969);
Wilwording v. Swenson, supra, at
404 U. S. 251.
When a prisoner is put under additional and unconstitutional
restraints during his lawful custody, it is arguable that habeas
corpus will lie to remove the restraints making the custody
illegal.
See Note, Developments in the Law -- Habeas
Corpus, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1038, 1084 (1970). [
Footnote 15]
Page 411 U. S. 500
But we need not, in this case, explore the appropriate limits of
habeas corpus as an alternative remedy to a proper action under §
1983. That question is not before us. What is involved here is the
extent to which § 1983 is a permissible alternative to the
traditional remedy of habeas corpus. Upon that question, we hold
today that, when a state prisoner is challenging the very fact or
duration of his physical imprisonment, and the relief he seeks is a
determination that he is entitled to immediate release or a
speedier release from that imprisonment, his sole federal remedy is
a writ of habeas corpus. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment
before us.
It is so ordered.
[
Footnote 1]
See also 28 U.S.C. § 2243, quoted in
n 12,
infra.
[
Footnote 2]
Other forms of habeas corpus include
habeas corpus ad
respondendum; ad satisfaciendum; ad prosequendum, testificandum,
deliberandum; and
ad faciendum et recipiendum.
See Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391,
372 U. S. 399
n. 5 (1963). But when the words habeas corpus are used alone, they
have been considered a generic term understood to refer to the
common law writ of
habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, which
was the form termed the "great writ."
Ex parte
Bollman, 4 Cranch 75,
8 U. S. 95
(1807).
[
Footnote 3]
See, e.g., Darnel's Case, 3 How.St.Tr. 1-59 (K.B.
1627); Petition of Right, 3 Car. 1, c. 1 (1627); Habeas Corpus Act,
16 Car. 1, c 10, §§ 3, 8 (1640).
See
also Ex parte
Wells, 18 How. 307 (1856);
Ex parte
Milligan, 4 Wall. 2 (1866);
Parisi v.
Davidson, 405 U. S. 34
(1972).
[
Footnote 4]
See, e.g., Bushell's Case, Vaughan 135, 124 Eng.Rep.
1006 (1670);
Fay v. Noia, supra.
[
Footnote 5]
See, e.g., Rex v. Clarkson, 1 Strange 444, 93 Eng.Rep.
625 (K.B. 1721);
Ford v. Ford, 371 U.
S. 187 (1962).
[
Footnote 6]
"The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be
suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public
safety may require it."
[
Footnote 7]
It was not until quite recently that habeas corpus was made
available to challenge less obvious restraints. In 1963, the Court
held that a prisoner released on parole from immediate physical
confinement was nonetheless sufficiently restrained in his freedom
as to be in custody for purposes of federal habeas corpus.
Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U. S. 236. In
Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U. S. 234
(1968), the Court for the first time decided that, once habeas
corpus jurisdiction has attached, it is not defeated by the
subsequent release of the prisoner. And just this Term, in
Hensley v. Municipal Court, ante, p.
411 U. S. 345, we
held that a person who, after conviction, is released on bail or on
his own recognizance, is "in custody" within the meaning of the
federal habeas corpus statute. But those cases marked no more than
a logical extension of the traditional meaning and purpose of
habeas corpus -- to effect release from illegal custody.
[
Footnote 8]
Our Brothers in dissent state that the respondents' claims
"could not, in all likelihood, have been heard on habeas corpus
at the time the present habeas corpus statute was enacted in 1867,
or at the time the exhaustion doctrine was first announced in
Ex parte Royall, 117 U. S. 241 (1886), or at the
time the requirement was codified in 1948. . . ."
Post at
411 U. S.
512-513. (Footnotes omitted.) This statement is
apparently based on the assumption that, in those years, the
respondents' habeas actions would have been barred by the
"prematurity" doctrine, which precluded habeas relief that would
have merely reduced the length of the prisoner's confinement,
rather than resulting in his immediate release, and which was not
rejected until 1968,
Peyton v. Rowe, 391 U. S.
54. We note, however, that the respondent Katzoff
initiated his action more than a month after his alleged release
date, and, thus, his claim, if accepted, entitled him to immediate
release even as of the date on which he brought suit. Although
Rodriguez initiated his action 15 days before his alleged release
date, and Kritasky six months before such date, in both cases,
those dates had long passed at the time of the District Court's
decisions, and these respondents were thus entitled to immediate
release at that time. In any event, the nature of the respondents'
suits was an attack on the legality of their physical confinement
itself, and to deal with such attacks on physical custody, however
imposed and whether or not related to conviction by a court, is the
long-established function of habeas corpus.
See supra at
411 U. S.
484-486.
[
Footnote 9]
See supra at
411 U. S.
483-484.
[
Footnote 10]
The dissent argues that the respondents' attacks on the actions
of the prison administration here are no different, in terms of the
potential for exacerbating federal state relations, from the
attacks made by the petitioners in
McNeese
v. Board of Education, 373 U.
S. 668 (1963),
Damico v. California,
389 U. S. 416
(1967), and
Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.
S. 167 (1961), on the various state administrative
actions there. Thus, it is said, since exhaustion of state remedies
was not required in those cases, it is anomalous to require it
here.
Post at
411 U. S. 522.
The answer, of course, is that, in those cases, brought pursuant to
§ 1983, no other, more specific federal statute was involved that
might have reflected a different Congressional intent. In the
present case, however, the respondents' actions fell squarely
within the traditional purpose of federal habeas corpus, and
Congress has made the specific determination in § 2254(b) that
requiring the exhaustion of adequate state remedies in such cases
will best serve the policies of federalism.
[
Footnote 11]
That section provides that each inmate's file
"shall be considered not more than three nor less than two
months before the earliest possible date he would be entitled to
consideration for parole or conditional or other release if that
date depends upon the amount of good behavior allowance to be
granted (based upon the assumption that he has earned all good
behavior allowances that can be granted)."
[
Footnote 12]
That section provides
"A court, justice or judge entertaining an application for a
writ of habeas corpus shall forthwith award the writ or issue an
order directing the respondent to show cause why the writ should
not be granted, unless it appears from the application that the
applicant or person detained is not entitled thereto."
"The writ or order to show cause shall be directed to the person
having custody of the person detained. It shall be returned within
three days unless, for good cause, additional time, not exceeding
twenty days, is allowed."
"The person to whom the writ or order is directed shall make a
return certifying the true cause of the detention."
"When the writ or order is returned, a day shall be set for
hearing, not more than five days after the return unless, for good
cause, additional time is allowed."
"Unless the application for the writ and the return present only
issues of law the person to whom the writ is directed shall be
required to produce at the hearing the body of the person
detained."
"The applicant or the person detained may, under oath, deny any
of the facts set forth in the return or allege any other material
facts."
"The return and all suggestions made against it may be amended,
by leave of court, before or after being filed."
"The court shall summarily hear and determine the facts, and
dispose of the matter as law and justice require."
See also 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e):
"If the applicant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence
adduced in such State court proceeding to support the State court's
determination of a factual issue made therein, the applicant, if
able, shall produce that part of the record pertinent to a
determination of the sufficiency of the evidence to support such
determination. If the applicant, because of indigency or other
reason, is unable to produce such part of the record, then the
State shall produce such part of the record and the Federal court
shall direct the State to do so by order directed to an appropriate
State official. If the State cannot provide such pertinent part of
the record, then the court shall determine under the existing facts
and circumstances what weight shall be given to the State court's
factual determination."
[
Footnote 13]
This isolation, of course, will not occur if the prisoner is
required to proceed by way of federal habeas corpus, with its
exhaustion requirement. For
"exhaustion preserves the role of the state courts in the
application and enforcement of federal law: early federal
intervention in state . . . proceedings would tend to remove
federal questions from the state courts, isolate those courts from
constitutional issues, and thereby remove their understanding of
and hospitality to federally protected interests."
Note, Developments in the Law -- Habeas Corpus, 83 Harv.L.Rev.
1038, 1094 (1970).
[
Footnote 14]
If a prisoner seeks to attack both the conditions of his
confinement and the fact or length of that confinement, his latter
claim, under our decision today, is cognizable only in federal
habeas corpus, with its attendant requirement of exhaustion of
state remedies. But, consistent with our prior decisions, that
holding in no way precludes him from simultaneously litigating in
federal court, under § 1983, his claim relating to the conditions
of his confinement.
[
Footnote 15]
The parties disagree as to the original reason for the emergence
of concurrent federal remedies in prison condition cases. According
to the petitioners, the parallel development reflects the fact
that, prior to the Court's decisions in
Jones v.
Cunningham, 371 U. S. 236
(1963),
Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U.
S. 234 (1968), and
Johnson v. Avery,
393 U. S. 483
(1969), the limits of the concept of custody for purposes of habeas
corpus were uncertain, and so the clearest remedy for prisoners
challenging their conditions was through a civil rights action. The
respondents take the converse position -- that habeas corpus may
originally have been made available for these challenges because
there was no other remedy for in-prison abuses before the
resurrection of § 1983 in
Monroe v. Pape, supra, and the
affirmation of its availability for prisoners in
Cooper v.
Pate, 378 U. S. 546
(1964), and
Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U.
S. 639 (1968).
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR.
JUSTICE MARSHALL join, dissenting.
The question presented by this case is one that I, like the
Court of Appeals, had thought already resolved by our decision last
Term in
Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U.
S. 249 (1971). We held there that the Ku Klux Klan Act
of 1871, [
Footnote 2/1] 42 U.S.C. §
1983, 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3), confers jurisdiction on the United
States District Courts to entertain a state prisoner's application
for injunctive relief against allegedly unconstitutional conditions
of confinement.
See also Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U.
S. 504,
405 U. S.
516-517, n. 18 (1972);
Houghton v. Shafer,
392 U. S. 639
(1968). At the same time, we held that
"[t]he remedy provided by these Acts 'is supplementary to the
state remedy, and the latter need not be first sought and refused
before the federal one is invoked.'
Monroe v. Pape,
365 U. S.
167,
365 U. S. 183 (1961);
McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U. S.
668 (1963);
Damico v. California,
Page 411 U. S. 501
389 U.
S. 416 (1967). State prisoners are not held to any
stricter standard of exhaustion than other civil rights
plaintiffs."
Wilwording v. Swenson, supra, at
404 U. S.
251.
Regrettably, the Court today eviscerates that proposition by
drawing a distinction that is both analytically unsound and, I
fear, unworkable in practice. The net effect of the distinction is
to preclude respondents from maintaining these actions under §
1983, leaving a petition for writ of habeas corpus the only
available federal remedy. As a result, respondents must exhaust
state remedies before their claims can be heard in a federal
district court. I remain committed to the principles set forth in
Wilwording v. Swenson, and I therefore respectfully
dissent.
Respondents are three New York state prisoners who were placed
in segregation and deprived of good conduct time credits as a
result of prison disciplinary proceedings. [
Footnote 2/2] Each of the respondents commenced a
pro se
Page 411 U. S. 502
action in the United States District Court for the Northern
District of New York by filing a combined civil rights complaint
and petition for habeas corpus. In each case, the District Court
concluded that, since the action was properly brought under § 1983,
the prisoner was not bound by the "exhaustion of state remedies"
requirement of the federal habeas corpus statute. [
Footnote 2/3] On the merits of the three cases, the
District Court held that state correctional authorities had
deprived each respondent of rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth
Amendment, and directed petitioner, the Commissioner of Correction,
to restore the good conduct time credits that each of the
respondents had lost.
By divided vote, two separate panels of the United States Court
of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the judgments of the
District Court with respect to respondents Rodriguez and Katzoff.
Prior to decision in the case of respondent Kritasky, the Court of
Appeals vacated the two earlier decisions and set all three cases
for rehearing en banc. By a vote of 9-3, the Court affirmed the
judgments of the District Court "upon consideration of the merits
and upon the authority of
Wilwording v. Swenson," decided
by this Court while rehearing en banc was pending in the Court of
Appeals. 456 F.2d 79, 80 (1972). Although several of the judges who
concurred in the decision candidly stated their misgivings
Page 411 U. S. 503
about our holding in
Wilwording, they felt
"constrained," nonetheless, "to concur in affirming the orders of
the district court." 456 F.2d at 81 (Friendly, C.J., concurring).
[
Footnote 2/4]
The Court's conclusion that
Wilwording is not
controlling is assertedly justified by invocation of a concept,
newly invented by the Court today, variously termed the "core of
habeas corpus," the "heart of habeas corpus," and the "essence of
habeas corpus."
Ante at
411 U. S. 489,
411 U. S. 498,
and
411 U. S. 484.
In the Court's view, an action lying at the "core of habeas corpus"
is one that
"goes directly to the constitutionality of [the prisoner's]
physical confinement itself and seeks either immediate release from
that confinement or the shortening of its duration."
Id. at
411 U. S. 489.
With regard to such actions, habeas corpus is now considered the
prisoner's exclusive remedy. In short, the Court does not graft the
habeas corpus exhaustion requirement onto prisoner actions under
the Ku Klux Klan Act, but it reaches what is functionally the same
result by holding that the District Court's jurisdiction under the
Act is in some instances displaced by the habeas corpus remedy.
Henceforth, in such cases, a prisoner brings an action in the
nature of habeas corpus or he brings no federal court action at
all.
At bottom, the Court's holding today rests on an understandable
apprehension that the no-exhaustion rule of § 1983 might, in the
absence of some limitation, devour the exhaustion rule of the
habeas corpus statute. The problem arises because the two statutes
necessarily
Page 411 U. S. 504
overlap. Indeed, every application by a state prisoner for
federal habeas corpus relief against his jailers could, as a matter
of logic and semantics, be viewed as an action under the Ku Klux
Klan Act to obtain injunctive relief against "the deprivation," by
one acting under color of state law, "of any rights, privileges, or
immunities secured by the Constitution and laws" of the United
States. 42 U.S.C. § 1983. To prevent state prisoners from
nullifying the habeas corpus exhaustion requirement by invariably
styling their petitions as pleas for relief under § 1983, the Court
today devises an ungainly and irrational scheme that permits some
prisoners to sue under § 1983 while others may proceed only by way
of petition for habeas corpus. And the entire scheme operates in
defiance of the purposes underlying both the exhaustion requirement
of habeas corpus and the absence of a comparable requirement under
§ 1983.
I
At the outset, it is important to consider the nature of the
line that the Court has drawn. The Court holds today that,
"when a state prisoner is challenging the very fact or duration
of his physical imprisonment, and the relief he seeks is a
determination that he is entitled to immediate release or a
speedier release from that imprisonment, his sole federal remedy is
a writ of habeas corpus."
Ante at
411 U. S. 500.
But, even under the Court's approach, there are undoubtedly some
instances where a prisoner has the option of proceeding either by
petition for habeas corpus or by suit under § 1983.
In
Johnson v. Avery, 393 U. S. 483
(1969), we held that the writ of habeas corpus could be used to
challenge allegedly unconstitutional conditions of confinement.
Cf. Ex parte Hull, 312 U. S. 546,
312 U. S. 549
(1941). And in
Wilwording v. Swenson, supra, where the
petitioners challenged "only their living conditions and
disciplinary
Page 411 U. S. 505
measures while confined in maximum security at Missouri State
Penitentiary,"
id. at
404 U. S. 249, we
held explicitly that their claims were cognizable in habeas corpus.
These holdings illustrate the general proposition that
"[a]ny unlawful restraint of personal liberty may be inquired
into on habeas corpus. . . . This rule applies although a person is
in lawful custody. His conviction and incarceration deprive him
only of such liberties as the law has ordained he shall suffer for
his transgressions."
Coffin v. Reichard, 143 F.2d 443, 445 (CA6 1944);
cf. In re Bonner, 151 U. S. 242
(1894). [
Footnote 2/5]
Yet even though a prisoner may challenge the conditions of his
confinement by petition for writ of habeas corpus, he is not
precluded by today's opinion from raising the same or similar
claim, without exhaustion of state remedies, by suit under the Ku
Klux Klan Act, provided he attacks only the conditions of his
confinement, and not its fact or duration. To that extent, at
least, the Court leaves unimpaired our holdings in
Wilwording
v. Swenson, supra, and the other cases in which we have upheld
the right of prisoners to sue their jailers under § 1983 without
exhaustion of state remedies. [
Footnote
2/6]
Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U.S. at
405 U. S.
516-517, n. 18;
Houghton v. Shafer,
392 U. S. 639
(1968). [
Footnote 2/7] Nor do I
read today's
Page 411 U. S. 506
opinion as rejecting, or even questioning, the rationale of
numerous lower court decisions authorizing challenges to prison
conditions by suit under § 1983. [
Footnote 2/8] Accordingly, one can only conclude that
some instances remain where habeas corpus provides a supplementary,
but not an exclusive, remedy -- or, to put it another way, where an
action may properly be brought in habeas corpus even though it is
somehow sufficiently distant from the "core of habeas corpus" to
avoid displacing concurrent jurisdiction under the Ku Klux Klan
Act. In such a case, a state prisoner retains the option of
forgoing the habeas corpus remedy in favor of suit under §
1983.
II
Putting momentarily to one side the grave analytic shortcomings
of the Court's approach, it seems clear that the scheme's
unmanageability is sufficient reason to condemn it. For the
unfortunate but inevitable legacy of today's opinion is a
perplexing set of uncertainties and anomalies. And the nub of the
problem is the definition of the Court's new-found and essentially
ethereal concept, the "core of habeas corpus." [
Footnote 2/9]
Page 411 U. S. 507
A prisoner is unlucky enough to have his action fall within the
core of habeas corpus whenever he challenges the fact or duration
of his confinement. For example, an attack on the validity of
conviction or sentence is plainly directed at the fact or duration
of confinement, and the prisoner can therefore proceed only by
petition for habeas corpus. Similarly, where prisoners allege, as
here, that
"the deprivation of their good conduct time credits [is] causing
or [will] cause them to be in illegal physical confinement,
i.e., that, once their conditional release date [has]
passed, any further detention of them in prison [will be]
unlawful,"
their claim falls within the core. And
"[e]ven if the restoration of the respondents' credits would not
have resulted in their immediate release, but only in shortening
the length of their actual confinement in prison,"
jurisdiction under § 1983 is displaced by the habeas corpus
remedy.
Ante at
411 U. S.
487.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from an attack on the
conviction itself or on the deprivation of good time credits is a
prisoner's action for monetary damages against his jailers. "If a
state prisoner is seeking damages," the Court makes clear, he is
seeking
"something other than immediate or more speedy release -- the
traditional purpose of habeas corpus. In the case of a damages
claim, habeas corpus is
not an appropriate or available
federal remedy. Accordingly, as petitioners themselves concede, a
damages action by a state prisoner could be brought under [§ 1983]
in federal court without any requirement of prior exhaustion of
state remedies."
Ante at
411 U. S. 494
(emphasis in original).
Between a suit for damages and an attack on the conviction
itself or on the deprivation of good time credits
Page 411 U. S. 508
are cases where habeas corpus is an appropriate and available
remedy, but where the action falls outside the "core of habeas
corpus" because the attack is directed at the conditions of
confinement, not at its fact or duration. Notwithstanding today's
decision, a prisoner may challenge, by suit under § 1983, prison
living conditions and disciplinary measures, [
Footnote 2/10] or confiscation of legal materials,
[
Footnote 2/11] or impairment of
the right to free exercise of religion, [
Footnote 2/12] even though federal habeas corpus is
available as an alternative remedy. It should be plain enough that
serious difficulties will arise whenever a prisoner seeks to attack
in a single proceeding both the conditions of his confinement and
the deprivation of good time credits. And the addition of a plea
for monetary damages exacerbates the problem.
If a prisoner's sole claim is that he was placed in solitary
confinement pursuant to an unconstitutional disciplinary procedure,
[
Footnote 2/13] he can obtain
federal injunctive relief and monetary damages in an action under §
1983. The unanswered question is whether he loses the right to
proceed under § 1983 if, as punishment for his alleged misconduct,
his jailers have not only subjected him to unlawful segregation.
and thereby inflicted an injury that is compensable in damages, but
have compounded the wrong by improperly depriving him of good time
credits. Three different approaches are possible.
First, we might conclude that jurisdiction under § 1983 is lost
whenever good time credits are involved, even where the action is
based primarily on the need for monetary relief or an injunction
against continued segregation. If that is the logic of the Court's
opinion, then the scheme creates an undeniable, and in all
likelihood
Page 411 U. S. 509
irresistible, incentive for state prison officials to defeat the
jurisdiction of the federal courts by adding the deprivation of
good time credits to whatever other punishment is imposed. And if
all of the federal claims must be held in abeyance pending
exhaustion of state remedies, a prisoner's subsequent effort to
assert a damages claim under § 1983 might arguably be barred by
principles of
res judicata. [
Footnote 2/14] To avoid the loss of his damages claim,
a prisoner might conclude that he should make no mention of the
good time issue, and instead seek only damages in a § 1983 action.
That approach (assuming it would not be disallowed as a subterfuge
to circumvent the exhaustion requirement) creates its own
distressing possibilities. For, having obtained decision in federal
court on the issue of damages, the prisoner would presumably be
required to repair to state court in search of his lost good time
credits, returning once again to federal court if his state court
efforts should prove unavailing.
Moreover, a determination that no federal claim can be raised
where good time credits are at stake would give rise to a further
anomaly. If the prisoner is confined in an institution that does
not offer good time credits, and therefore cannot withdraw them,
[
Footnote 2/15] his prison
Page 411 U. S. 510
conditions claims could always be raised in a suit under § 1983.
On the other hand, an inmate in an institution that uses good time
credits as reward and punishment, who seeks a federal hearing on
the identical legal and factual claims, would normally be required
to exhaust state remedies and then proceed by way of federal habeas
corpus. The rationality of that difference in treatment is
certainly obscure. Yet that is the price of permitting the
availability of a federal forum to be controlled by the
happenstance (or stratagem) that good time credits are at
stake.
As an alternative, we might reject outright the premises of the
first approach and conclude that a plea for money damages or for an
injunction against continued segregation is sufficient to bring all
related claims, including the question of good time credits, under
the umbrella of § 1983. That approach would, of course, simplify
matters considerably. And it would make unnecessary the
fractionation of the prisoner's claims into a number of different
issues to be resolved in duplicative proceedings in state and
federal courts. Nevertheless, the approach would seem to afford a
convenient means of sidestepping the basic thrust of the Court's
opinion, and we could surely expect state prisoners routinely to
add to their other claims a plea for monetary relief. So long as
the prisoner could formulate at least a colorable damages claim, he
would be entitled to litigate all issues in federal court without
first exhausting state remedies.
In any event, the Court today rejects, perhaps for the reasons
suggested above, both of the foregoing positions. Instead, it holds
that, insofar as a prisoner's claim relates to good time credits,
he is required to exhaust state remedies, but he is not precluded
from simultaneously litigating in federal court, under § 1983, his
claim for monetary damages or an injunction against continued
segregation.
Ante at
411 U. S. 499
n. 14. Under that approach,
Page 411 U. S. 511
state correctional authorities have no added incentive to
withdraw good time credits, since that action cannot, standing
alone, keep the prisoner out of federal court. And, at the same
time, it does not encourage a prisoner to assert an unnecessary
claim for damages or injunctive relief as a means of bringing his
good time claim under the purview of § 1983. Nevertheless, this
approach entails substantial difficulties -- perhaps the greatest
difficulties of the three. In the first place, its extreme
inefficiency is readily apparent. For, in many instances, a
prisoner's claims will be under simultaneous consideration in two
distinct forums, even though the identical legal and factual
questions are involved in both proceedings. Thus, if a prisoner's
punishment for some alleged misconduct is both a term in solitary
and the deprivation of good time credits, and if he believes that
the punishment was imposed pursuant to unconstitutional
disciplinary procedures, he can now litigate the legality of those
procedures simultaneously in state court (where he seeks
restoration of good time credits) and in federal court (where he
seeks damages or an injunction against continued segregation).
Moreover, if the federal court is the first to reach decision, and
if that court concludes that the procedures are, in fact, unlawful,
then the entire state proceeding must be immediately aborted, even
though the state court may have devoted substantial time and effort
to its consideration of the case. By the same token, if traditional
principles of
res judicata are applicable to suits under §
1983,
see supra at
411 U. S. 509
n. 14, the prior conclusion of the state court suit would
effectively set at naught the entire federal court proceeding. This
is plainly a curious prescription for improving relations between
state and federal courts.
Since some of the ramifications of this new approach are still
unclear, the unfortunate outcome of today's decision -- an outcome
that might not be immediately
Page 411 U. S. 512
surmised from the seeming simplicity of the basic concept, the
"core of habeas corpus" -- is almost certain to be the further
complication of prison conditions litigation. In itself, that is
disquieting enough. But it is especially distressing that the
remaining questions will have to be resolved on the basis of
pleadings, whether, in habeas corpus or suit under § 1983,
submitted by state prisoners, who will often have to cope with
these questions without even minimal assistance of counsel.
III
The Court's conclusion that respondents must proceed by petition
for habeas corpus is unfortunate not only because of the
uncertainties and practical difficulties to which the conclusion
necessarily gives rise, but also because it derives from a faulty
analytic foundation. The text of § 1983 carries no explanation for
today's decision; prisoners are still, I assume, "persons" within
the meaning of the statute. Moreover, prior to our recent decisions
expanding the definition of "custody," [
Footnote 2/16] and abandoning the "prematurity"
doctrine, [
Footnote 2/17] it is
doubtful that habeas corpus would even have provided them a remedy.
Since their claims could not, in all likelihood, have been heard on
habeas corpus at the time the present habeas corpus statute was
enacted in 1867, [
Footnote 2/18]
or at the
Page 411 U. S. 513
time the exhaustion doctrine was first announced in
Ex parte
Royall, 117 U. S. 241
(1886), or at the time the requirement was codified in 1948,
[
Footnote 2/19] it is surely hard
to view these acts as a determination to preclude suit under § 1983
and leave habeas corpus the prisoner's only remedy. Nevertheless,
to prevent state prisoners from invoking the jurisdictional grant
of 1983 as a means of circumventing the exhaustion requirement of
the habeas corpus statute, the Court finds it necessary to hold
today that, in this one instance, jurisdiction under § 1983 is
displaced by the habeas corpus remedy.
The concern that § 1983 not be used to nullify the habeas corpus
exhaustion doctrine is, of course, legitimate. But our effort to
preserve the integrity of the doctrine must rest on an
understanding of the purposes that underlie it. In my view, the
Court misapprehends these fundamental purposes and compounds the
problem by paying insufficient attention to the reasons why
exhaustion of state remedies is not required in suits under 1983.
As a result, the Court mistakenly concludes that allowing suit
under 1983 would jeopardize the purposes of the exhaustion
rule.
By enactment of the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871, and again by the
grant in 1875 of original federal question jurisdiction to the
federal courts, [
Footnote 2/20]
Congress recognized important interests in permitting a plaintiff
to choose a federal forum in cases arising under
Page 411 U. S. 514
federal law.
"In thus expanding federal judicial power, Congress imposed the
duty upon all levels of the federal judiciary to give due respect
to a suitor's choice of a federal forum for the hearing and
decision of his federal constitutional claims. Plainly, escape from
that duty is not permissible merely because state courts also have
the solemn responsibility, equally with the federal courts, ' . . .
to guard, enforce, and protect every right granted or secured by
the Constitution of the United States . . . ,'
Robb v.
Connolly, 111 U. S. 624,
111 U. S.
637."
Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S. 241,
389 U. S. 248
(1967).
This grant of jurisdiction was designed to preserve and enhance
the expertise of federal courts in applying federal law; to achieve
greater uniformity of results,
cf. 14 U.
S. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304,
14 U. S.
347-348 (1816), and, since federal courts are "more
likely to apply federal law sympathetically and understandingly
than are state courts," ALI, Study of the Division of Jurisdiction
Between State and Federal Courts 166 (1969), to minimize
misapplications of federal law.
See generally id. at
165-167.
In the service of the same interests, we have taken care to
emphasize that there are
"fundamental objections to any conclusion that a litigant who
has properly invoked the jurisdiction of a Federal District Court
to consider federal constitutional claims can be compelled, without
his consent and through no fault of his own, to accept instead a
state court's determination of those claims. Such a result would be
at war with the unqualified terms in which Congress, pursuant to
constitutional authorization, has conferred specific categories of
jurisdiction upon the federal courts, and with the principle
that,"
"When a Federal court is properly appealed to in a case over
which it has
Page 411 U. S. 515
by law jurisdiction, it is its duty to take such jurisdiction. .
. . The right of a party plaintiff to choose a Federal court where
there is a choice cannot be properly denied."
"
Willcox v. Consolidated Gas Co., 212 U. S.
19,
212 U. S. 40."
England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners,
375 U. S. 411,
375 U. S. 415
(1964).
We have also recognized that review by this Court of state
decisions,
"even when available by appeal, rather than only by
discretionary writ of certiorari, is an inadequate substitute for
the initial District Court determination . . . to which the
litigant is entitled in the federal courts."
Id. at
375 U. S. 416.
The federal courts are, in short, the "primary and powerful
reliances for vindicating every right given by the Constitution,
the laws, and treaties of the United States." F. Frankfurter &
J. Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court: A Study in the
Federal Judicial System 65 (1928).
See England v. Louisiana
State Board of Medical Examiners, supra, at
375 U. S.
415.
These considerations, applicable generally in cases arising
under federal law, have special force in the context of the Ku Klux
Klan Act of 1871. In a suit to enforce fundamental constitutional
rights, the plaintiff's choice of a federal forum has singular
urgency. [
Footnote 2/21] The
statutory predecessor to § 1983 was, after all, designed
"to afford a federal right in federal courts because, by reason
of prejudice passion, neglect, intolerance or otherwise, state laws
might not be enforced and the claims of citizens to the rights,
privileges, and immunities guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment
might be denied by the state agencies."
Monroe v.
Pape, 365
Page 411 U. S. 516
U.S. 167,
365 U. S. 180
(1961). And the statute's legislative history
"makes evident that Congress clearly conceived that it was
altering the relationship between the States and the Nation with
respect to the protection of federally created rights; it was
concerned that state instrumentalities could not protect those
rights; it realized that state officers might, in fact, be
antipathetic to the vindication of those rights; and it believed
that these failings extended to the state courts. . . . The very
purpose of § 1983 was to interpose the federal courts between the
States and the people, as guardians of the people's federal rights
-- to protect the people from unconstitutional action under color
of state law, 'whether that action be executive, legislative or
judicial.'
Ex parte Virginia,
[
100 U.S.
339,
100 U. S. 346 (1880)]."
Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225,
407 U. S. 242
(1972).
See also District of Columbia v. Carter,
409 U. S. 418,
409 U. S.
426-428 (1973). [
Footnote
2/22]
Page 411 U. S. 517
It is against this background that we have refused to require
exhaustion of state remedies by civil rights plaintiffs. [
Footnote 2/23] Plainly,
"[w]e would defeat, [the purposes of § 1983] if we held that
assertion of a federal claim in a federal court must await an
attempt to vindicate the same claim in a state court."
McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U.
S. 668,
373 U. S. 672
(1963).
"We yet like to believe that, wherever the Federal courts sit,
human rights under the Federal Constitution are always a proper
subject for adjudication, and that we have not the right to decline
the exercise of that jurisdiction simply because the rights
asserted may be adjudicated in some other forum."
Stapleton v. Mitchell, 60 F.
Supp. 51, 55 (Kan.1945); quoted with approval in
Zwickler
v. Koota, 389 U.S. at
389 U. S. 248; and
McNeese v. Board of Education,
supra, at
373 U. S. 674
n. 6.
See also Monroe v. Pape, supra, at
365 U. S. 183;
Moreno v. Henckel, 431 F.2d 1299, 1303-1307 (CA5 1970); H.
Friendly, Federal Jurisdiction: A General View 102-103 (1973).
Our determination that principles of federalism do not require
the exhaustion of state remedies in cases brought under the Ku Klux
Klan Act holds true even where the state agency or process under
constitutional attack is intimately tied to the state judicial
machinery.
Cf. Lynch v. Household Finance Corp.,
405 U. S. 538
(1972). Indeed, only last Term, we held in
Mitchum v. Foster,
supra, that § 1983 operates as an exception to the federal
anti-injunction statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2283, which prohibits federal
court injunctions against ongoing state judicial proceedings and
which is designed to prevent
Page 411 U. S. 518
"needless friction between state and federal courts."
Oklahoma Packing Co. v. Gas Co., 309 U. S.
4,
309 U. S. 9
(1940). Although the anti-injunction statute rests in part on
considerations as fundamental as the "constitutional independence
of the States and their courts,"
Atlantic C. L. R. Co. v.
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 398 U.
S. 281,
398 U. S. 287
(1970), and although exceptions will "not be enlarged by loose
statutory construction,"
ibid., we nevertheless
unanimously concluded that § 1983 is excepted from the statute's
prohibition -- that the anti-injunction statute does not, in other
words, displace federal jurisdiction under the Ku Klux Klan
Act.
In sum, the absence of an exhaustion requirement in § 1983 is
not an accident of history or the result of careless oversight by
Congress or this Court. On the contrary, the no-exhaustion rule is
an integral feature of the statutory scheme. Exhaustion of state
remedies is not required precisely because such a requirement would
jeopardize the purposes of the Act. For that reason, the imposition
of such a requirement, even if done indirectly by means of a
determination that jurisdiction under § 1983 is displaced by an
alternative remedial device, must be justified by a clear statement
of congressional intent or, at the very least, by the presence of
the most persuasive considerations of policy. In my view, no such
justification can be found.
Crucial to the Court's analysis of the case before us is its
understanding of the purposes that underlie the habeas corpus
exhaustion requirement. But just as the Court pays too little
attention to the reasons for a no-exhaustion rule in actions under
§ 1983, it also misconceives the purposes of the exhaustion
requirement in habeas corpus. As a result, the Court reaches what
seems to me the erroneous conclusion that the purposes of the
exhaustion requirement are fully implicated in
Page 411 U. S. 519
respondents' actions, even though respondents sought to bring
these actions under § 1983.
"The rule of exhaustion in federal habeas corpus actions is,"
according to today's opinion,
"rooted in considerations of federal-state comity. That
principle was defined in
Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S.
37,
401 U. S. 44 (1971), as 'a
proper respect for state functions,' and it has as much relevance
in areas of particular state administrative concern as it does
where state judicial action is being attacked."
Ante at
411 U. S. 491.
Moreover, the Court reasons that, since the relationship between
state prisoners and state officers is especially intimate, and
since prison issues are peculiarly within state authority and
expertise, "the States have an important interest in not being
bypassed in the correction of those problems."
Ante at
411 U. S. 492.
With all respect, I cannot accept either the premises or the
reasoning that lead to the Court's conclusion.
Although codified in the habeas corpus statute in 1948, 28
U.S.C. § 2254(b), the exhaustion requirement is a
"judicially crafted instrument which reflects a careful balance
between important interests of federalism and the need to preserve
the writ of habeas corpus as a 'swift and imperative remedy in all
cases of illegal restraint or confinement.'
Secretary of State
for Home Affairs v. O'Brien, [1923] A.C. 603, 609 (H.L.)."
Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit, 410 U.
S. 484,
410 U. S. 490
(1973). The indisputable concern of all our decisions concerning
the doctrine has been the relationship
"between the
judicial tribunals of the Union and of the
States. . . . [T]he public good requires that those relations be
not disturbed by unnecessary conflict between
courts
equally bound to guard and protect rights secured by the
Constitution."
Ex parte Royall, 117 U.S. at
117 U. S. 251
(emphasis added).
Ex parte Royall is, of course, the
germinal case, and its concern with the relations between state
Page 411 U. S. 520
and federal
courts is mirrored in our subsequent
decisions.
See, e.g., Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit,
supra, at
410 U. S.
489-490;
Baker v. Grice, 169 U.
S. 284,
169 U. S. 291
(1898);
Ex parte Hawk, 321 U. S. 114,
321 U. S.
116-117 (1944);
cf. Sostre v. McGinnis, 442
F.2d 178, 182 (CA2 1971);
Edwards v.
Schmidt, 321 F.
Supp. 68, 74-75 (WD Wis.1971). We have grounded the doctrine
squarely on the view that
"it would be unseemly in our dual system of government for a
federal district court to upset a
state court conviction
without an opportunity to the state courts to correct a
constitutional violation."
Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391,
372 U. S.
419-420 (1963) (emphasis added), quoting from
Darr
v. Burford, 339 U. S. 200,
339 U. S. 204
(1950).
See Parker, Limiting the Abuse of Habeas Corpus, 8
F.R.D. 171, 172-173 (1948).
That is not to say, however, that the purposes of the doctrine
are implicated only where an attack is directed at a state court
conviction or
sentence. Ex parte Royall
itself did not involve a challenge to a state conviction, but
rather an effort to secure a prisoner's release on habeas corpus
"in advance of his trial in the [state] court in which he [was]
indicted."
Id. at
117 U. S. 253. But there, too, the focus was on
relations between the state and federal
judiciaries. It is
a fundamental purpose of the exhaustion doctrine to preserve
the
"orderly administration of state judicial business, preventing
the interruption of state adjudication by federal habeas
proceedings. It is important that petitioners reach state appellate
courts, which can develop and correct errors of state and federal
law and most effectively supervise and impose uniformity on trial
courts."
Note, Developments in the Law -- Federal Habeas Corpus, 83
Harv.L.Rev. 1038, 1094 (1970). Significantly, the identical
interest in preserving the integrity and orderliness of judicial
proceedings gives rise to the application of the exhaustion
doctrine even where a federal prisoner attacks the action of
Page 411 U. S. 521
a federal court.
Id. at 1094-1095.
See, e.g., Bowen
v. Johnston, 306 U. S. 19,
306 U. S. 26-27
(1939). In such a case, considerations of federalism obviously do
not come into play. Yet the exhaustion requirement is nevertheless
applied in order to prevent the disruption of the orderly conduct
of judicial administration.
With these considerations in mind, it becomes clear that the
Court's decision does not serve the fundamental purposes behind the
exhaustion doctrine. For although respondents were confined
pursuant to the judgment of a state judicial tribunal, their claims
do not relate to their convictions or sentences, but only to the
administrative action of prison officials who subjected them to
allegedly unconstitutional treatment, including the deprivation of
good time credits. This is not a case, in other words, where
federal intervention would interrupt a state proceeding or
jeopardize the orderly administration of state judicial business.
Nor is it a case where an action in federal court might imperil the
relationship between state and federal courts. The "regularity of
proceedings had in courts of coordinate jurisdiction," Parker,
supra, at 172-173, is not in any sense at issue.
To be sure, respondents do call into question the constitutional
validity of action by state officials, and friction between those
officials and the federal court is by no means an inconceivable
result. But, standing alone, that possibility is simply not enough
to warrant application of an exhaustion requirement. First, while
we spoke in
Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S.
37,
401 U. S. 44
(1971), of the need for federal courts to maintain a "proper
respect for state functions," neither that statement nor our
holding there supports the instant application of the exhaustion
doctrine. Our concern in
Younger v. Harris was the
"longstanding public policy against federal court interference with
state court proceedings,"
id. at
401 U. S. 43
(emphasis added), by means of a federal injunction
Page 411 U. S. 522
against the continuation of those proceedings.
Younger
is thus an instructive illustration of the very proposition that
the Court regrettably misconstrues. It does not in any sense
demand, or even counsel, today's decision.
Second, the situation that exists in the case before us -- an
attack on state administrative, rather than judicial, action -- is
the stereotypical situation in which relief under § 1983 is
authorized.
See, e.g., McNeese v. Board of Education,
373 U. S. 668
(1963) (attack on school districting scheme);
Damico v.
California, 389 U. S. 416
(1967) (attack on welfare requirements);
Monroe v. Pape,
365 U.S. at
365 U. S. 183
(attack on police conduct). In each of these cases, the exercise of
federal jurisdiction was potentially offensive to the State and its
officials. In each of these cases, the attack was directed at an
important state function in an area in which the State has wide
powers of regulation. Yet, in each of these cases, we explicitly
held that exhaustion of state remedies was not required. And, in
comparable cases, we have taken pains to insure that the abstention
doctrine is not used to defeat the plaintiff's initial choice of a
federal forum,
see, e.g., Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S. at
389 U. S. 249,
even though the plaintiff could reserve the right to litigate the
federal claim in federal court at the conclusion of the state
proceeding.
England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical
Examiners, 375 U. S. 411
(1964). Like Judge Kaufman, who concurred in the affirmance of the
cases now before us,
"I cannot believe that federal jurisdiction in cases involving
prisoner rights is any more offensive to the state than federal
jurisdiction in the areas"
where the exhaustion requirement has been explicitly ruled
inapplicable. 456 F.2d at 82.
Third, if the Court is correct in assuming that the exhaustion
requirement must be applied whenever federal jurisdiction might be
a source of substantial friction with the State, then I simply do
not understand why the
Page 411 U. S. 523
Court stops where it does in rolling back the district courts'
jurisdiction under § 1983. Application of the exhaustion doctrine
now turns on whether or not the action is directed at the fact or
duration of the prisoner's confinement. It seems highly doubtful to
me that a constitutional attack on prison conditions is any less
disruptive of federal state relations than an attack on prison
conditions joined with a plea for restoration of good time credits.
Chief Judge Friendly expressed the view, as did the judges in
dissent below, that
"petitions of state prisoners complaining of the time or
conditions of their confinement have the same potentialities for
exacerbating federal state relations as petitions attacking the
validity of their confinement -- perhaps even more."
456 F.2d at 80. Yet the Court holds today that exhaustion is
required where a prisoner attacks the deprivation of good time
credits, but not where he challenges only the conditions of his
confinement. It seems obvious to me that both of those propositions
cannot be correct.
Finally, the Court's decision may have the ironic effect of
turning a situation where state and federal courts are not
initially in conflict into a situation where precisely such
conflict does result. Since respondents' actions would neither
interrupt a state judicial proceeding nor, even if successful,
require the invalidation of a state judicial decision, "[t]he
question is simply whether one court or another is going to decide
the case." Note, Exhaustion of State Remedies Under the Civil
Rights Act, 68 Col.L.Rev. 1201, 1205-1206 (1968). If we had held,
consistently with our prior cases, that the plaintiff has the right
to choose a federal forum, the exercise of that right would not
offend or embarrass a state court with concurrent jurisdiction.
Now, however, a prisoner who seeks restoration of good time credits
must proceed first in state court, although he has the option of
petitioning the federal court for relief if his state suit is
unsuccessful.
Page 411 U. S. 524
If the prisoner does resort to a federal habeas corpus action,
the potential for friction with the State is certain to increase.
The State is likely, after all, to derive little pleasure from the
federal court's effort to determine whether there was
"either an absence of available State corrective process or the
existence of circumstances rendering such process ineffective to
protect the rights of the prisoner."
28 U.S.C. § 2254(b). And since it is the validity of the state
court's decision that is placed in issue, the State will have to
endure a federal court inquiry into whether the State's factfinding
process was adequate to afford a full and fair hearing, 28 U.S.C. §
2254(d)(2), whether the petitioner was denied due process of law in
the state court proceeding,
id. § 2254(d)(7), and whether
the state court's factual determinations were fairly supported by
the record,
id. § 2254(d)(8).
Cf. Townsend v.
Sain, 372 U. S. 293
(1963). Since none of these questions would even arise if the Court
had held these actions properly brought under § 1983, it seems a
good deal premature to proclaim today's decision a major victory in
our continuing effort to achieve a harmonious and healthy federal
state system.
IV
In short, I see no basis for concluding that jurisdiction under
§ 1983 is, in this instance, preempted by the habeas corpus remedy.
Respondents' effort to bring these suits under the provisions of
the Ku Klux Klan Act should not be viewed as an attempted
circumvention of the exhaustion requirement of the habeas corpus
statute, for the effort does not in any sense conflict with the
policies underlying that requirement. [
Footnote 2/24] By means of
Page 411 U. S. 525
these suits, they demand an immediate end to action under color
of state law that has the alleged effect of violating fundamental
rights guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. The Ku Klux Klan Act
was designed to afford an expeditious federal hearing for the
resolution of precisely such claims as these. Since I share the
Court's view that exhaustion of state judicial remedies is not
required in any suit properly brought in federal court under §
1983,
ante at
411 U. S. 477,
and since I am convinced that respondents have properly invoked the
jurisdictional grant of § 1983, I would affirm the judgment of the
Court of Appeals.
[
Footnote 2/1]
Act of April 20, 1871, c. 22, § 1, 17 Stat. 13, Rev.Stat. §
1979.
[
Footnote 2/2]
In his complaint, respondent Rodriguez alleged that correctional
authorities had unlawfully canceled four months and 14 days of good
conduct time credits,
"[w]ithout affording plaintiff notice of any charges or a fair
hearing at which plaintiff would have the assistance of counsel and
the opportunity to confront witnesses present evidence on his own
behalf; and a specification of the grounds and underlying facts
upon which the [authorities'] determination was based."
App. 12a. And, further, that the cancellation was an act of
harassment and persecution against him because of his failure to
provide the authorities with certain information.
Id. at
13a.
Respondent Katzoff alleged that he was wrongfully placed in
solitary confinement and deprived of good conduct time as
punishment for certain entries he had made in his diary. According
to an affidavit he filed in District Court, the entries in question
included a reference to one prison official as "a cigar-smoking
S.O.B.," and to another as a "creep." App. 54a.
Respondent Kritasky stated in his complaint that correctional
authorities had deprived him of good time credits without notice of
charges or a fair hearing, and as part of a
"program of harassment and oppression directed at the plaintiff
for having participated in a peaceful and non-violent work strike
which ultimately culminated in legislation being passed. . . ."
App. 100a.
[
Footnote 2/3]
Title 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b) provides:
"An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a
person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall
not be granted unless it appears that the applicant has exhausted
the remedies available in the courts of the State, or that there is
either an absence of available State corrective process or the
existence of circumstances rendering such process ineffective to
protect the rights of the prisoner."
[
Footnote 2/4]
Indeed, Chief Judge Friendly suggested that the "proper course
for the in banc court [would be] to affirm the orders of the
district court without writing opinions." 456 F.2d 79, 80. Judge
Kaufman, who expressed no misgivings about our holding in
Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U. S. 249
(1971), indicated in his concurring opinion that he, too, thought
the judgments of the District Court should have been summarily
affirmed.
Id. at 82.
[
Footnote 2/5]
See Note, Developments in the Law -- Federal Habeas
Corpus, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1038, 1079-1087 (1970).
[
Footnote 2/6]
Indeed, the Court expressly views our prior cases as
establishing
"that a § 1983 action is a proper remedy for a state prisoner
who is making a constitutional challenge to the conditions of his
prison life, but not to the fact or length of his custody. Upon
that understanding, we reaffirm those holdings."
Ante at
411 U. S.
499.
[
Footnote 2/7]
In addition to the cases cited in text, in which we explicitly
indicated that a prisoner might proceed under § 1983 without
exhausting state remedies, we have also repeatedly upheld a
prisoner's right to challenge the conditions of his confinement
under § 1983, without any suggestion that exhaustion of state
remedies is a necessary precondition to the bringing of the suit.
See Haines v. Kerner, 404 U. S. 519
(1972);
Cruz v. Beto, 405 U. S. 319
(1972);
Younger v. Gilmore, 404 U. S.
15 (1971);
Cruz v. Hauck, 404 U. S.
59 (1971);
McDonald v. Board of Election,
394 U. S. 802
(1969);
Lee v. Washington, 390 U.
S. 333 (1968);
Cooper v. Pate, 378 U.
S. 546 (1964).
[
Footnote 2/8]
See, e.g., Sostre v. McGinnis, 442 F.2d 178, 182 (CA2
1971) (conditions of segregated confinement);
Jackson v.
Bishop, 404 F.2d 571 (CA8 1968) (cruel and unusual
punishment);
Hirons v. Director, 351 F.2d 613 (CA4 1965)
(medical treatment);
Pierce v. LaVallee, 293 F.2d 233 (CA2
1961) (religious freedom);
Edwards v.
Schmidt, 321 F. Supp.
68 (WD Wis.1971) (transfer of juveniles to adult facility);
Hancock v. Avery, 301 F.
Supp. 786 (MD Tenn.1969) (solitary confinement).
[
Footnote 2/9]
Indeed, one must inevitably wonder whether the "core" of habeas
corpus will not prove as intractable to definition as the "core" of
another concept that some of us have struggled to define.
Cf.
Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U. S. 184,
378 U. S. 197
(1964) (STEWART, J., concurring).
[
Footnote 2/10]
E.g., Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U.
S. 249 (1971).
[
Footnote 2/11]
E.g., Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U.
S. 639 (1968).
[
Footnote 2/12]
E.g., Cooper v. Pate, 378 U. S. 546
(1964).
[
Footnote 2/13]
E.g., Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.
S. 519 (1972).
[
Footnote 2/14]
That assumes, of course, that a damages claim cannot be raised
on habeas corpus,
ante at
411 U. S. 494,
and that the special
res judicata rules of habeas corpus
would not apply. In any case, we have never held that the doctrine
of
res judicata applies, in whole or in part, to bar the
relitigation under § 1983 of questions that might have been raised,
but were not, or that were raised and considered in state court
proceedings. The Court correctly notes that a number of lower
courts have assumed that the doctrine of
res judicata is
fully applicable to cases brought under § 1983. But in view of the
purposes underlying enactment of the Act -- in particular, the
congressional misgivings about the ability and inclination of state
courts to enforce federally protected rights,
see infra at
411 U. S.
515-518 -- that conclusion may well be in error.
[
Footnote 2/15]
Brief for Respondents 25, citing N.Y.Penal Law § 75.00 and
N.Y.Correc.Law §§ 803, 804 (reformatory-sentenced prisoners).
[
Footnote 2/16]
See, e.g., Hensley v. Municipal Court, ante, p.
411 U. S. 345;
Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U. S. 234
(1968);
Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U.
S. 236 (1963). These decisions have established habeas
corpus as an available and appropriate remedy in situations where
the petitioner's challenge is not merely to the fact of his
confinement.
[
Footnote 2/17]
See Peyton v. Rowe, 391 U. S. 54
(1968),
overruling McNally v. Hill, 293 U.
S. 131 (1934). Under the prematurity doctrine, a
prisoner could not have attacked the deprivation of good conduct
time credits where restoration of the credits would shorten the
length of his confinement, but not bring it immediately to an
end.
[
Footnote 2/18]
Act of Feb. 5, 1867, c. 28, § 1, 14 Stat. 385, now 28 U.S.C. §
2241(c)(3). Prior to that enactment, the writ was made available to
special categories of state prisoners. Note, Developments in the
Law -- Federal Habeas Corpus, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1038, 1048 n. 46
(1970).
[
Footnote 2/19]
Act of July 5, 1948, c. 646, 62 Stat. 967, now 28 U.S.C. §
2254(b), (c). It is agreed that the purpose of the 1948 amendment
was to codify the doctrine as formulated in
Ex part Hawk,
321 U. S. 114
(1944), and other decisions of this Court.
[
Footnote 2/20]
Act of Mar. 3, 1875, c. 137, § 1, 18 Stat. 470, now 18 U.S.C. §
1331.
[
Footnote 2/21]
See generally Chevigny, Section 1983 Jurisdiction: A
Reply, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1352, 1356-1358 (1970).
[
Footnote 2/22]
See, e.g., remarks of Rep. Coburn:
"The United States courts are further above mere local influence
than the county courts; their judges can act with more
independence, cannot be put under terror, as local judges can;
their sympathies are not so nearly identified with those of the
vicinage; the jurors are taken from the State, and not the
neighborhood; they will be able to rise above prejudices or bad
passions or terror more easily."
Cong.Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 460 (1871).
And the remarks of Sen. Pratt:
"[O]f the hundreds of outrages committed upon loyal people
through the agency of this Ku Klux organization, not one has been
punished. This defect in the administration of the laws does not
extend to other cases. Vigorously enough are the laws enforced
against Union people. They only fail in efficiency when a man of
known Union sentiments, white or black, invokes their aid. Then
Justice closes the door of her temples."
Id. at 505.
[
Footnote 2/23]
See, e.g., Wilwording v. Swenson, supra; King v. Smith,
392 U. S. 309,
392 U. S. 312
n. 4 (1968);
Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.
S. 167 (1961);
Bacon v. Rutland R. Co.,
232 U. S. 134
(1914);
cf. Note, Exhaustion of State Remedies Under the
Civil Rights Act, 68 Col.L.Rev. 1201 (1968).
[
Footnote 2/24]
In a case where the habeas corpus statute does provide an
available and appropriate remedy, and where a prisoner's selection
of an alternative remedy would undermine and effectively nullify
the habeas corpus exhaustion requirement, it would, of course, be
possible to view the suit as an impermissible attempt to circumvent
that requirement. But by the same token, if a prisoner seeks to
challenge only the conditions of his confinement -- in which case
the purposes underlying the exhaustion rule do not come into play
-- his filing should be considered a complaint under § 1983 even if
the prisoner terms it a petition for habeas corpus. That result is
consistent with the view that prisoner petitions should be
liberally considered,
Price v. Johnston, 334 U.
S. 266 (1948), and it represents no threat to the
integrity of the exhaustion doctrine. Nothing in today's decision
suggests that the district courts should follow any other
practice.