UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 19-6655

VERNON NORMAN EARLE,

Plaintiff - Appellant,

v. SHREVES, C/O; J. RIVERA, Unit Manager for M-Unit at FCI Hazelton; R. DOMAS, Unit Manager for L-Unit; D. WASHINGTON, Operating Lieutenant; MR. GONOUNDY, [SIA] Special Investigative Agent; MR. BRECKON, Assistant Warden of Operations; RACHEL THOMPSON, Administrative assistant/Remedy Coordinator; JENNIFER SAAD, Warden of FCI Hazelton; K. KELLY, Captain of FCI Hazelton; A. GYORKO, Case manager for Unit N-2 and for Plaintiff Directly; C. T. PULICE, Case Manager Coordinator; J. F. CARAWAY, Mid-Atlantic Regional Director; IAN CONNORS, National Inmates Appeals Administrator; MR. SQUIRES, [SIS] special investigative Service Lieutenant,

Defendants - Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, at Elkins. John Preston Bailey, District Judge. (2:17-cv-00004-JPB-RWT)

Argued: December 9, 2020 Decided: March 10, 2021

Before KEENAN and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges, and TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge.

Affirmed by published opinion. Senior Judge Traxler wrote the opinion, in which Judge Keenan and Judge Richardson joined. ARGUED: Olivia O’Hea, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Erin K. Reisenweber, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Martinsburg, West Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Erica Hashimoto, Director, Marcella Coburn, Supervising Attorney, Cynthia Anderson, Student Counsel, Matthew Angelo, Student Counsel, Connor Suozzo, Student Counsel, Appellate Litigation Program, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. William J. Powell, United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Wheeling, West Virginia, for Appellees.

2 TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge:

In this case, we are called on to determine whether the implied constitutional cause of action recognized by the Supreme Court in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), may be extended to include a federal inmate’s claim that prison officials violated his First Amendment rights by retaliating against him for filing grievances. As we will explain, such an extension of Bivens is not permissible after Ziglar v. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843 (2017), and Tun-Cos v. Perrotte, 922 F.3d 514 (4th Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 2565 (2020), and we therefore affirm the district court’s judgment dismissing the action.

I.

Plaintiff Vernon Earle is serving a life sentence after being convicted in the District of Columbia of various charges including murder. In 2015, when the incidents involved in this case occurred, Earle was serving his sentence at a federal correctional institution in West Virginia.

According to the allegations of Earle’s complaint, Earle’s unit was locked down after an inmate punched Defendant Michael Shreves, a correctional officer. During the lockdown, Earle was denied hot meals and other privileges available to other inmates. He subsequently filed two grievances complaining about Shreves’ conduct that precipitated the lockdown. Instead of handling the grievances in the usual manner, officers turned them over to Shreves, who directed another officer to place Earle and another complaining inmate in administrative detention in the Special Housing Unit (SHU). Earle remained in

3 the SHU for 30 days; despite multiple requests, he was never told why he had been placed in segregation.

Earle alleged that after he was released from the SHU, the warden told him he was placed in the SHU because of the grievances he filed. The warden stripped Earle of his prison