Thousands of habeas suits are filed by inmates every day, in every state of the union, claiming that their diet, their reading material, their mail status, their prison garb, their required haircut, their visitor status, etc. etc. etc. causes their imprisonment to be "unconstitutional."
Then they should be filing civil lawsuits under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 -- NOT habeas actions. Habeas actions aren't used for such issues.
And if prisoners *are* mistakenly filing lawsuits using habeas (which would suggest they're filing pro se), this Supreme Court decision does nothing to change that, one way or the other.
I maintain that to suggest that the SCOTUS' decision in this case will lead to Gitmo detainees suing over diet, reading material, etc using habeas actions is, again, to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of habeas actions.
Well, yeah, they’re filing pro se. And since they are filing pro se, judges don’t always hold them to technical standards, so long as there is any way they can be found to have stated a claim.
You are standing on technical grounds and that doesn’t work in today’s judicial system in regard to the prison system.
Today inmates may petition either state or federal courts through several avenues. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act of 1976, inmates may allege intentional torts, such as assault, as well as negligence by the prison administration. Examples of negligence include deliberate indifference to the medical or health needs of inmates or improper training of jail or prison personnel. The most frequent avenue for inmate lawsuits is habeas corpus actions. Writs of habeas corpus may challenge three things: (1) the fact of confinement; (2) the length of confinement; and (3) the nature and conditions of confinement, including overcrowding.
And included in the "nature and conditions of confinement" is anything, including diet, hairstyle, etc., that the prisoner can dream of. A federal prosecutor sees LOADS of these habeas cases filed every week.
That said, yes, since these inmates are filing pro se, a lot depends on where they got the complaint they copied and what that previous inmate filed. They also use the FTCA and straight constitutional claims. But it's not incorrect to use "habeas" as a way to MAKE THE POINT that the SCOTUS ruling will dramatically increase inmate filings on all kinds of ludicrous grounds.
Of course, that could be instructive, too. ;)
Anyway, here's the link for the above quote: