United States Supreme Court Case No. 25-417, 9th Cir. No. 23-15605
Rights Behind Bars represents Kekai Watanabe, a man who was denied medical care after he was severely beaten while incarcerated at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu. After the assault, Mr. Watanabe was placed in solitary confinement and repeatedly asked to be seen; when a prison nurse finally evaluated him, the nurse told him to stop being a “cry baby,” refused his request to go to a hospital, and gave him nothing more than over-the-counter pain medication. He rated his pain a ten out of ten. It was not until some seven months later that he was diagnosed with a fractured coccyx, with bone chips that had migrated into the surrounding soft tissue—and at the time he filed suit, more than a year after the injury, he still had not been seen by a specialist. Acting pro se, Mr. Watanabe sued under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, alleging that the prison’s medical staff were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court dismissed his claim, holding that no Bivens remedy was available.
Rights Behind Bars represented Mr. Watanabe on appeal. In a published opinion, the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that his claim does not arise in a “new Bivens context” and so may proceed. The Court explained that Mr. Watanabe’s claim is identical in every meaningful respect to Carlson v. Green, the 1980 Supreme Court decision recognizing a damages action against federal prison officials who are deliberately indifferent to an incarcerated person’s serious medical needs. The Court also construed Mr. Watanabe’s pro se request for injunctive relief as a standalone claim and remanded for the district court to consider it. The Ninth Circuit denied rehearing en banc, and in June 2026 the Supreme Court granted certiorari. The case is now pending before the Supreme Court, where Rights Behind Bars, together with co-counsel at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, represents Mr. Watanabe in defending the decision.