In a fresh Section 1983 lawsuit verdict concerning a transgender inmate, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit decided on the permissible limits of individual defendants’ qualified immunity. The inmate’s Fourth Amendment claims of unreasonable search and First Amendment retaliation claims made it past the qualified-immunity challenge. This viewpoint, however, met with partial agreement and at the same time dissent from Judge Jane Kelly, who would have also negated the qualified immunity for the individual defendants on the points of the First Amendment’s expressive conduct and the Eighth Amendment’s deliberate indifference claims.
This case, Beard v. Falkenrath, hailed from the misconduct that plaintiff Sease Beard purportedly underwent at the mercy of guards in a Missouri state prison. Beard, a transgender woman, was first diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2017 while in custody in the state’s correctional system. She began hormone-replacement therapy around the end of 2018 and still keeps up with the treatment for her gender dysphoria and the hormone therapy.