Page:United States Reports 546.pdf/367

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546US1

156

Unit: $U14

[08-22-08 15:39:40] PAGES PGT: OPIN

UNITED STATES v. GEORGIA Opinion of the Court

multiple pro se filings in the District Court alleged facts suf­ ficient to support “a limited number of Eighth-Amendment claims under § 1983” against certain individual defendants. App. A to Pet. for Cert. in No. 04–1236, p. 17a, judgt. order reported at 120 Fed. Appx. 785 (2004). The Court of Ap­ peals held that the District Court should have given Good­ man leave to amend his complaint to develop three Eighth Amendment claims relating to his conditions of confinement: “First, Goodman alleges that he is not able to move his wheelchair in his cell. If Goodman is to be believed, this effectively amounts to some form of total restraint twenty-three to twenty-four hours-a-day without penal justification. Second, Goodman has alleged several in­ stances in which he was forced to sit in his own bodily waste because prison officials refused to provide assist­ ance. Third, Goodman has alleged sufficient conduct to proceed with a § 1983 claim based on the prison staff ’s supposed ‘deliberate indifference’ to his serious medical condition of being partially paraplegic . . . .” App. A to Pet. for Cert. in No. 04–1236, pp. 18a–19a (citation and footnote omitted). The court remanded the suit to the District Court to permit Goodman to amend his complaint, while cautioning Goodman not to reassert all the § 1983 claims included in his initial complaint, “some of which [we]re obviously frivolous.” Id., at 18a. The Eleventh Circuit did not address the sufficiency of Goodman’s allegations under Title II. Instead, relying on its prior decision in Miller v. King, 384 F. 3d 1248 (2004), the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s holding that Goodman’s Title II claims for money damages against the State were barred by sovereign immunity. We granted cer­ tiorari to consider whether Title II of the ADA validly abro­ gates state sovereign immunity with respect to the claims at issue here. 544 U. S. 1031 (2005).