Taylor v. Riojas

Summary

The Supreme Court, per curiam, granted certiorari and vacated the Fifth Circuit's judgment, which had affirmed summary judgment for Texas correctional officers on qualified-immunity grounds even though it recognized that six days spent in feces-covered and sewage-flooded cells violated the Eighth Amendment. The Court held that no reasonable correctional officer could have believed it constitutionally permissible to house Taylor in such deplorably unsanitary conditions for such an extended period, because a general constitutional rule already identified in the decisional law applied with obvious clarity to this conduct and nothing in the record showed the conditions were compelled by necessity or could not have been mitigated. The Court remanded for further proceedings, noting that an officer-by-officer analysis of qualified immunity will be necessary.