## Facts

- Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) housed about 270 convicted female prisoners.
- WCCW adopted a policy requiring male guards to conduct random, nonemergency, suspicionless “clothed body” pat-down searches of female inmates.
- The search technique required intimate touching, including flat-hand contact with breasts and genital areas and squeezing/kneading along the crotch and inner legs over clothing.
- Before the policy, routine pat-down searches were performed by female guards.
- WCCW mental health staff reported an unusually high rate of prior sexual and physical abuse by men among inmates (estimated about 85%), including rape and incest.
- Experts warned the policy would likely trigger serious psychological suffering for some inmates and moderate-to-severe trauma for many others, including retraumatization and PTSD reactions.
- During brief implementation, at least one inmate reportedly suffered a severe dissociative reaction, and another had a breakdown after witnessing a male-conducted search.
- After the district court enjoined the policy, WCCW continued random pat searches using only female guards for several years without record evidence of security or operational impairment.

## Issues

1. Whether requiring male guards to conduct random, nonemergency, suspicionless, intrusive clothed pat-down searches of female inmates, given known abuse histories and likely trauma, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
2. Whether the policy also violated the First or Fourth Amendments (claims presented but not decided en banc).

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed a permanent injunction barring implementation of the male-guard pat-down policy.
- The court upheld relief solely on Eighth Amendment grounds and expressly declined to decide the First and Fourth Amendment claims.
- The court found the policy posed an objectively serious risk of severe psychological harm to a vulnerable inmate population.
- The court found prison officials acted with deliberate indifference because they were warned of the likely harm and proceeded to implement and defend the policy.
- The court concluded the harm was unnecessary in light of the absence of a demonstrated security need for cross-gender pat-downs at WCCW.

## Legal Principles

- An Eighth Amendment conditions-of-confinement claim requires (1) an objectively serious deprivation or risk of harm and (2) deliberate indifference by officials to that risk.
- Severe psychological injury can constitute “pain” for Eighth Amendment purposes even without significant physical injury.
- Deliberate indifference may be shown where officials have notice of a substantial risk of serious harm (including psychological harm) and consciously disregard it.
- Where a practice foreseeably inflicts serious harm and lacks adequate penological justification, it may constitute the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
- The constitutionality of cross-gender searches is context-dependent; this holding was limited to the specific search method, inmate vulnerability, and evidentiary record of likely trauma.

## Conclusion

The en banc Ninth Circuit held that WCCW’s policy mandating random, suspicionless, nonemergency pat-downs of female inmates by male guards violated the Eighth Amendment because it foreseeably caused serious psychological harm to a population with extensive prior male abuse, and officials persisted despite warnings and without showing the policy was necessary for institutional security.


Jordan v. Gardner, 986 F.2d 1521 (9th Cir. 1993) (en banc)