## Facts

- Male inmates at the Nebraska State Penitentiary (a maximum-security, all-male facility) brought a class action challenging the use of female correctional officers in posts that provided visual access to inmates in showers, toilets, and cells.
- Facility design and staffing placed officers (including women) in housing units and control rooms where inmates could be observed nude or partially nude during routine monitoring.
- Policy permitted female officers to conduct pat-down searches of clothed male inmates, including contact near the groin area as part of standard search technique.
- Inmates claimed these practices violated a constitutional right to bodily privacy and also violated equal protection because conditions at a women’s prison were allegedly less intrusive.
- Female employees challenged privacy-based limits on their assignments (e.g., restrictions on posts, shifts, and search duties), alleging unlawful sex discrimination affecting job opportunities and advancement.
- The district court rejected the inmates’ equal-protection claim but found a partial privacy violation and entered an injunction requiring “courtesy” adjustments (including honoring some requests for male officers for groin-area pat searches unless too disruptive and making staffing/patrol modifications).
- All sides appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether prison practices allowing female officers to observe male inmates nude or partially nude and to conduct pat-down searches violate inmates’ constitutional privacy rights.
2. Whether differences between procedures at male and female institutions violate male inmates’ equal-protection rights.
3. Whether privacy-based restrictions on female officers’ duties unlawfully discriminate against them under equal-employment principles.

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part.
- The court reversed the district court’s finding of a privacy violation and vacated the related privacy-based injunctive relief.
- The court held that allowing female officers to observe nude or partially nude male inmates during routine duties and to conduct pat-down searches of clothed inmates was constitutional.
- The court affirmed rejection of the inmates’ equal-protection claim based on differences between male and female institutions.
- The court accepted that broad, sex-based limits on female officers’ assignments were not justified where inmate privacy could be protected without restricting equal employment opportunities.

## Legal Principles

- Incarcerated persons retain a limited interest in bodily privacy, but that interest is substantially constrained by legitimate penological interests, including security and operational needs.
- Cross-sex viewing that is incidental to legitimate custodial duties, not conducted to harass or humiliate, does not violate constitutional privacy in a maximum-security setting.
- Routine pat-down searches of clothed inmates by opposite-sex officers are permissible when performed for security purposes and without improper intent; prisons are not required to restructure staffing to accommodate an inmate’s preference for a same-sex searcher.
- Equal protection does not require identical procedures at male and female facilities; differences are permissible when reasonably explained by variations in architecture, security level, and prisoner population.
- Sex-based restrictions on correctional assignments require strong justification; generalized inmate discomfort is insufficient to support broad exclusions that impair women’s equal employment opportunities.

## Conclusion

The court upheld integrated staffing policies allowing female officers to perform routine surveillance and pat-down searches of male inmates, concluding that any resulting invasions of privacy were incidental to legitimate security and staffing needs and not unconstitutional; it also rejected the inmates’ equal-protection challenge and largely dismantled the district court’s privacy-based injunction that burdened prison operations and women’s employment opportunities.


Timm v. Gunter, 917 F.2d 1093 (8th Cir. 1990)