Key takeaways:
- Kekai Watanabe alleges that nurse Francis Nielsen denied him treatment after a 2021 prison riot in Hawaii; doctors later diagnosed a fractured tailbone.
- The case tests the reach of Supreme Court rulings allowing constitutional lawsuits against federal officials, including prison staff accused of denying medical care.
- Nielsen’s lawyers seek to overturn the 1971 Bivens ruling, while the Trump administration supports Nielsen without asking the court to overturn it.
The Supreme Court is set to hear a case Monday that could narrow federal prisoners’ ability to sue individual officials who deny them medical care. The dispute centers on Kekai Watanabe, a former inmate who says a prison nurse refused to treat him after a gang riot at a federal prison in Hawaii.
Watanabe says other prisoners beat him in July 2021. NPR reported that he was struck with a makeshift weapon known as a “lock in a sock.” When he complained of serious back pain, nurse Francis Nielsen told him to “stop being a cry baby,” according to NPR. Seven months later, doctors diagnosed Watanabe with a fractured tailbone. NBC News reported that bone chips were found embedded in surrounding soft tissue.
Watanabe, who is no longer in federal prison, sued Nielsen, alleging that the refusal to treat him violated the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. A federal court rejected his lawsuit, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived it in September 2024, NBC News reported.
The case turns on the scope of Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, a 1971 Supreme Court ruling that allowed people to sue federal officials for constitutional violations. In a 1980 case, Carlson v. Green, the court allowed federal prisoners to sue officials for deliberate indifference to their medical needs. The prisoner in that case died from untreated asthma. Nielsen’s lawyers argue that Watanabe’s claim is different because he survived the attack, NPR reported.
Nielsen’s lawyers have also asked the justices to overturn Bivens altogether. The Trump administration filed a brief supporting Nielsen but did not ask the court to take that broader step, according to NBC News. Prisoners have other avenues for seeking relief, including internal grievance procedures and the Federal Tort Claims Act. Under that law, plaintiffs sue the federal government rather than individual officials, and the damages they can recover are limited, NBC News reported.
Opponents of further limits say those alternatives do not provide adequate accountability. In a court filing, MacArthur Justice Center attorney Gregory Cui reported that federal prisoners succeed through the grievance process just 1% of the time when seeking changes to medical care or other prison conditions. “That’s why damages are so important,” Cui told NPR. “Because they’re a way to try to fix things, to give a person the means to pay for medical care or rebuild their life.”
The case comes as alleged constitutional violations by federal immigration agents draw scrutiny. The court narrowed Bivens claims in a 2022 ruling that said Border Patrol agents could not be sued in the case before it. A 2023 NBC News investigation found that ruling played a role in the dismissal of 195 cases. Congress has not advanced legislation giving people a general right to sue federal officials over constitutional violations.
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