Jackson v. Nixon, et al., No. 12-2531 (8th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that state officials in the WRDCC's Offenders Under Treatmet Program (OUTP) violated his rights under the First Amendment. Plaintiff, as an atheist, participated in OUTP, which "had required meetings [and] invoked religious tenets by using the serenity prayer and religious meditations." Plaintiff eventually left the program and believed that he was denied an early release on parole for failure to complete OUTP. The court concluded that whether plaintiff's withdrawal from the program was indeed voluntary or was the result of coercion was yet to be determined; therefore, dismissal on this ground was premature; plaintiff has pled facts sufficient to state a claim that a parole stipulation requiring him to attend and complete a substance abuse program with religious content in order to be eligible for early parole violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment; and plaintiff has pled facts sufficient to show that the personal involvement required for Defendants Crawford and Salsbury to bear section 1983 liability. As to Defendant Burgess, at this stage of the litigation, he has not. Accordingly, the district court erred in dismissing plaintiff's complaint and the court remanded for further proceedings.
Court Description: Prisoner case - Prisoner civil rights. In this action, plaintiff, a Missouri prisoner, alleged that being required to attend and complete a nonsecular substance abuse program in order to be eligible for early parole violated the Establishment Clause; the district court erred in dismissing the claim on the ground that Jackson voluntarily withdrew from the program and that such a withdraw was fatal to his claims as it could not be determined, at this stage of the proceedings, whether his withdrawal was voluntary or the result of state-sponsored coercion; to evaluate a prisoner's claim of coercion, the court would conduct a three-step inquiry: has the state acted, does the action amount to coercion, and is the object of the coercion secular or religious; the first and third prongs were present here, and based on the allegations of the complaint, the court finds that plaintiff pled facts sufficient to state a claim that a parole stipulation requiring him to attend and complete a substance abuse program with religious content in order to be eligible for early parole violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment; plaintiff's claims against defendants Crawford and Jackson were sufficient to establish their personal involvement in the formation, implementation and enforcement of the policy; his allegations with respect to defendant Burgess were not sufficient; reversed and remanded for further proceedings. Judge Smith, Dissenting. [ March 27, 2014
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.