Sandin v. Conner
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
9,095 later cases cite Sandin v. Conner; 1,409 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Sandin v. Conner?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Criticized
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The Southern District of New York criticized Sandin as “seemingly contradictory” while recognizing that it remained binding.
Gordon v. Alexander · S.D.N.Y. · filed
The Supreme Court’s seemingly contradictory decision in ... Sandin ... binds this Court.
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The Southern District of New York again criticized Sandin as “seemingly contradictory” while applying it as binding law.
Gordon v. Lemons · S.D.N.Y. · filed
The Supreme Court’s seemingly contradictory decision in ... Sandin ... binds this Court.
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Limited
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The District of New Jersey declined to extend Sandin's prisoner-discipline framework to a parolee's asserted liberty interest in employment.
Doe v. Fauver · D.N.J. · filed
Unlike ... Sandin, ... the matter before this court involves state created liberty interests in the context of New Jersey’s parole regulations, and examines whether under certain circumstances the parolee has a protectable liberty interest in his employment warranting procedural due process protection. ... The parole process does not embrace the punitive function of incarceration ... Thus, that law which attaches to prisoner claims does not necessarily attach to those claims involving parolee rights.
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The Southern District of New York declined to extend Sandin's convicted-prisoner liberty-interest analysis to pretrial detainees.
Benjamin v. Kerik · S.D.N.Y. · filed
Sandin ... concerned the rights of those who had been convicted and not the rights of pretrial detainees. Although the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has not decided whether ... Sandin ... has overruled ... Hewitt ... for pretrial detainees, this Court agrees with the great majority of courts which have concluded that Sandin’s justification for limiting a convicted inmate’s rights under ... Hewitt ... does not apply to pretrial detainees.
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The Second Circuit held that Sandin did not wholly displace Hewitt's mandatory-language inquiry when a prison regulation's violation causes an atypical and significant deprivation.
Tellier v. Fields · Second Circuit · filed
We disagree with defendants' articulation of the effect of Sandin on cases involving prisoners and prison regulations. Defendants argue that Sandin rejected the portion of Hewitt that emphasized examination of regulations for "mandatory language and substantive predicates," Sandin, 515 U.S. at 480-81, 115 S.Ct. 2293, in order to determine whether a regulation created a protected liberty interest. As we have stated in previous cases, we do not read Sandin to have so radically undone the tenets of Hewitt.
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The Ninth Circuit held that Sandin's abandonment of the mandatory-language framework was limited to internal prison disciplinary regulations and did not extend to parole-release rules.
McQuillion v. Duncan · Ninth Circuit · filed
It is clear from the Court’s framing of the problem in ... Sandin, ... and from the fact that ... Sandin ... cited ... Allen ... with approval ... that Sandin’s holding was limited to internal prison disciplinary regulations.
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The Second Circuit declined to extend Sandin's atypical-and-significant-hardship test beyond intra-prison discipline to revocation of temporary work release.
Anderson v. Recore · Second Circuit · filed
Sandin 's reliance on Wolff, which found an important liberty interest in the retention of good time credits, and its earlier citation with approval of Morrissey, a parole revocation case, negate any suggestion that Sandin 's particularized test should be applied outside the intra-prison disciplinary context. Because Anderson, like the petitioners in Morrissey and the plaintiffs in Tracy, lived outside the prison, a comparison to the ordinary conditions of prison life is inappropriate.
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The Central District of California declined to extend Sandin's convicted-prisoner analysis to pretrial detainees and civilly committed people.
Endsley v. Luna · C.D. Cal. · filed
However, Sandin's analysis does not apply to those who have not been convicted of a crime, such as pretrial detainees and the civilly corn-milted.
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The Idaho Court of Appeals held that Sandin did not displace Hewitt's rules governing the process due after a protected liberty interest has been found.
Lerajjareanra-O-Kelly v. Jones · Idaho Court of Appeals · filed
Although it is clear Hewitt was overruled by Sandin in regard to the initial inquiry as to whether an inmate has a liberty interest at stake (with the focus now on the nature of the deprivation rather than the regulation at issue), Sandin did not speak to the process due where a protected liberty interest is found. In this regard, we agree with the Second Circuit, which held the procedural due process protections of Hewitt survived Sandin in cases where a liberty interest is found pursuant to Sandin’s new strictures.
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The Kansas Court of Appeals held that Sandin did not extend to determining liberty interests in parole or other early release.
Tackett v. Pryor · Kansas Court of Appeals · filed
But Tackett's argument misreads Sandin, as the panel in Parks recognized: "In [Sandin], the Court held that regulations related to the day-to-day management of penal institutions or the terms and conditions of confinement of inmates do not create protected liberty interests for those prisoners simply because they are written using mandatory rather than discretionary language. See 515 U.S. 482-87. The Sandin decision did not deal with or affect the determination of a prisoner's liberty interest, if any, in parole or some other form of early or conditional release from incarceration. See Chappell v. Mandeville, 706 F.3d 1052, 1063-64 & n.5 (9th Cir. 2013); Ellis v. District of Columbia, 84 F.3d 1413, 1418 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (Sandin did not overrule Greenholtz with respect to liberty interests in parole); Valles v. Busby, No. CV I4-1360-GAF, 2014 WL 1614615, at *2 n.4 (C.D. Cal. 2014) (unpublished opinion). In turn, Parks' argument that he has some sort of liberty interest in parole requiring procedural due process protections fails." 2014 WL 5801346, at *2. We agree with the assessment in Parks and reject Tackett's point on that basis.
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