## Facts

- Arthur Fano and other Massachusetts prisoners were housed at a medium-security facility.
- After fires and alleged inmate misconduct, prison officials transferred several inmates to other Massachusetts prisons with significantly more restrictive conditions.
- The transfers were based on informant reports alleging inmate involvement in criminal activity.
- The prisoners sued, claiming the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause required notice and a fact-finding hearing (including confrontation and cross-examination) before transfer.
- The federal district court and the First Circuit required such procedures; the Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause requires a fact-finding hearing before a duly convicted state prisoner is transferred intrastate to a prison with substantially less favorable conditions when state law or practice does not condition transfers on specified misconduct or events.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed (6–3).
- The Court held that due process does not entitle a duly convicted prisoner to a fact-finding hearing before transfer to a harsher in-state prison, absent a state law or established practice that substantively limits transfer discretion.
- Because Massachusetts law left transfer decisions to official discretion and did not condition transfers on proof of serious misconduct or other triggering events, no protected liberty interest was implicated.

## Legal Principles

- After a valid conviction, the state may confine a prisoner and apply prison rules within constitutional limits; not every adverse change in conditions requires new procedural safeguards.
- The Due Process Clause, standing alone, does not protect a convicted prisoner from transfer between institutions within a state prison system, even if the new prison is markedly less desirable.
- A protected liberty interest in avoiding transfer may arise only from state-created substantive restrictions on official discretion (e.g., rules that permit transfer only upon specified findings); where discretion is unconfined, due process hearing requirements do not attach.
- Extending due process to all substantial deprivations imposed by prison officials would subject broad areas of prison administration to federal judicial review beyond traditional limits.

## Conclusion

The Court held that intrastate transfers to substantially harsher prisons do not trigger procedural due process protections unless state law or established practice meaningfully restricts officials’ discretion to transfer.


Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215 (1976)