Harbridge vs. Reed

The district court granted qualified immunity to a prison captain who threatened to move Christopher Harbridge away from his family to deter him from complaining – a clear violation of Mr. Harbridge’s First Amendment rights. The MacArthur Justice Center is fighting to ensure jail and prison officials are held accountable for their misconduct instead of shielding it behind the qualified immunity doctrine.  

Mr. Harbridge speaks up when he sees injustice – a practice that has gained him a reputation among prison staff as a persistent advocate for himself and his fellow prisoners. In an attempt to deter him from complaining, a captain at his prison threatened to transfer him to a different prison, far from his family and community. That threat was a clear violation of Mr. Harbridge’s First Amendment right for protected conduct, such as free speech, to be safeguarded against retaliation.

The district court agreed, holding that a jury could find that the captain violated Mr. Harbridge’s constitutional rights. It acknowledged that the clearly established law forbade actually transferring an incarcerated person in retaliation well before 2003, when Mr. Harbridge brought his complaint. It also acknowledged that the clearly established law forbade attempting to transfer an incarcerated person in retaliation well before 2003. But it granted the captain qualified immunity because it believed that the Ninth Circuit didn’t clearly proscribe that an “implicit” retaliatory threat could violate the First Amendment until 2009 – six years after Mr. Harbridge filed his complaint and six years too late for the ruling to be applicable in his case.

The MacArthur Justice Center represents Mr. Harbridge in his appeal to the Ninth Circuit, seeking to correct the district court’s erroneous interpretation of clearly established law.