Block, Sheriff of the County of Los Angeles, et al. v. Rutherford et al. (468 U.S. 576)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided July 3, 1984 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 468 U.S. 576 · 104 S. Ct. 3227
- Decided
- July 3, 1984
- Term
- October Term 1983
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Burger
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Chief Justice Burger delivered the opinion of the Court. We granted certiorari to decide whether pretrial detainees have a right guaranteed by the United States Constitution to contact visits and to observe shakedown searches of their cells by prison officials. I Los Angeles County Central Jail is one of seven principal facilities operated by the Sheriff of Los Angeles County. The three-story jail complex, located in downtown Los Ange-les, is the largest jail in the country, with a capacity of over 5,000 inmates. It is the primary facility in Los Angeles County for male pretrial detainees, the vast majority of whom remain at the facility at most a few days or weeks while they await trial. In 1975, respondents, pretrial detainees at Central Jail, brought a class action under 42 U. S. C. §§1983, 1985, against the County Sheriff, certain administrators of Central Jail, and the County Board of Supervisors, challenging various policies and practices of the jail and conditions of their confinement. Only respondents’ challenges to the policy of the jail denying pretrial detainees contact visits with their spouses, relatives, children, and friends, and to the jail’s practice of permitting irregularly scheduled shakedown searches of individual cells in the absence of the cell occupants are before this Court. The District Court sustained both of these challenges. Rutherford v.…
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