BREYER, J., dissenting 4 District Court did not address the sufficiency of the time provided by the statute to make the findings required by § 3626(b)(3) in this particular action. Absent that determination, I would not decide the separation-of-powers question, but simply remand for further proceedings. If the District Court determined both that it lacked adequate time to make the requisite findings in the period before the automatic stay would become effective, and that applying the stay would violate the separation of powers, the question would then be properly presented. JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS joins, dissenting. The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA) says that "any party or intervener" may move to terminate any "prospective relief" previously granted by the court, 18 U.S. C. § 3626(b)(1) (1994 ed., Supp. IV), and that the court shall terminate (or modify) that relief unless it is “necessary to correct a current and ongoing violation of [a] Federal right, extends no further than necessary to correct the violation . . . [and is] the least intrusive means" to do so. 18 U. S. C. § 3626(b)(3). We here consider a related procedural provision of the PLRA. It says that "[a]ny motion to modify or terminate prospective relief . . . shall operate as a stay" of that prospective relief “during the period" beginning (no later than) the 90th day after the filing of the motion and ending when the motion is decided. §3626(e)(2). This provision means 4 Neither did the Court of Appeals. It merely speculated that "[i]t may be . . . that in some cases the courts will not be able to carry out their adjudicative function in a responsible way within the time limits imposed by (e)(2)," French v. Duckworth, 178 F. 3d 437, 447 (CA7 1999), without deciding whether this action presented such a situation. The court then concluded that "under Klein [the Congress] cannot take away the power of the court in a particular case to preserve the status quo while it ponders these weighty questions." Ibid. BREYER, J., dissenting approximately the following: Suppose that a district court, in 1980, had entered an injunction governing present and future prison conditions. Suppose further that in 1996 a party filed a motion under the PLRA asking the court to terminate (or to modify) the 1980 injunction. That district court would have no more than 90 days to decide whether to grant the motion. After those 90 days, the 1980 injunction would terminate automatically-regaining life only if, when, and to the extent that the judge eventually decided to deny the PLRA motion. The majority interprets the words "shall operate as a stay" to mean, in terms of my example, that the 1980 injunction must become ineffective after the 90th day, no matter what. The Solicitor General, however, believes that the view adopted by the majority interpretation is too rigid and calls into doubt the constitutionality of the provision. He argues that the statute is silent as to whether the district court can modify or suspend the operation of the automatic stay. He would find in that silence sufficient authority for the court to create an exception to the 90-day time limit where circumstances make it necessary to do so. As so read, the statute would neither displace the courts' traditional equitable authority nor raise significant constitutional difficulties. See Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U. S. 682, 705 (1979) (only "clearest" congressional "command" displaces courts' traditional equity powers); Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building & Constr. Trades Council, 485 U. S. 568, 575 (1988) (the Court will construe a statute to avoid constitutional problems "unless such construction is plainly contrary to the intent of Congress"). I agree with the Solicitor General and believe we should adopt that "reasonable construction"" of the statute. Ibid. (quoting Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 657 (1895), stating "every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality'"). BREYER, J., dissenting I At the outset, one must understand why a more flexible interpretation of the statute might be needed. To do so, one must keep in mind the extreme circumstances that at least some prison litigation originally sought to correct, the complexity of the resulting judicial decrees, and the potential difficulties arising out of the subsequent need to review those decrees in order to make certain they follow Congress' PLRA directives. A hypothetical example based on actual circumstances may help. In January 1979, a Federal District Court made 81 factual findings describing extremely poor-indeed "barbaric and shocking"-prison conditions in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Morales Feliciano v. Romero Barcelo, 497 F. Supp. 14, 32 (PR 1979). These conditions included prisons typically operating with twice the number of prisoners they were designed to hold; inmates living in 16 square feet of space (i. e., only 4 feet by 4 feet); inmates without medical care, without psychiatric care, without beds, without mattresses, without hot water, without soap or towels or toothbrushes or underwear; food prepared on a budget of $1.50 per day and "tons of food . . . destroyed because of . . . rats, vermin, worms, and spoilage"; "no working toilets or showers," "urinals [that] flush into the sinks," "plumbing systems . . . in a state of collapse," and a "stench" that was "omnipresent"; "exposed wiring . . . no fire extinguisher, . . . [and] poor ventilation"; "calabozos," or dungeons, “like cages with bars on the top" or with two slits in a steel door opening onto a central corridor, the floors of which were "covered with raw sewage" and which contained prisoners with severe mental illnesses, "caged like wild animals," sometimes for months; areas of a prison where mentally ill inmates were "kept in cells naked, without beds, without mattresses, without any private possessions, and most of them without toilets that work and without drinking water." Id., at 20-23, 26– 27, 29, 32. These conditions had led to epidemics of communicable diseases, untreated mental illness, suicides, and murders. Id., at 32. The District Court held that these conditions amounted to constitutionally forbidden "cruel and unusual punishment." Id., at 33-36. It entered 30 specific orders designed to produce constitutionally mandated improvement by requiring the prison system to, for example, screen food handlers for communicable diseases, close the "calabozos," move mentally ill patients to hospitals, fix broken plumbing, and provide at least 35 square feet (i. e., 5 feet by 7 feet) of living space to each prisoner. Id., at 39-41. The very pervasiveness and seriousness of the conditions described in the court's opinion made those conditions difficult to cure quickly. Over the next decade, the District Court entered further orders embodied in 15 published opinions, affecting 21 prison institutions. These orders concerned, inter alia, overcrowding, security, disciplinary proceedings, prisoner classification, rehabilitation, parole, and drug addiction treatment. Not surprisingly, the related proceedings involved extensive evidence and argument consuming thousands of pages of transcript. See Morales Feliciano v. Romero Barcelo, 672 F. Supp. 591, 595 (PR 1986). Their implementation involved the services of two monitors, two assistants, and a Special Master. Along the way, the court documented a degree of "administrative chaos" in the prison system, Morales Feliciano v. Hernandez Colon, 697 F. Supp. 37, 44 (PR 1988), and entered findings of contempt of court against the Commonwealth, followed by the assessment and collection of more than $74 million in fines. See Morales Feliciano v. Hernandez Colon, 775 F. Supp. 487, 488, and n. 2 (PR 1991). Prison conditions subsequently have improved in some respects. Morales Feliciano v. Rossello Gonzalez, 13 F. Supp. 2d 151, 179 (PR 1998). I express no opinion as to whether, or which of, the earlier orders are still needed. But my BREYER, J., dissenting brief summary of the litigation should illustrate the potential difficulties involved in making the determination of continuing necessity required by the PLRA. Where prison litigation is as complex as the litigation I have just described, it may prove difficult for a district court to reach a fair and accurate decision about which orders remain necessary, and are the "least intrusive means" available, to prevent or correct a continuing violation of federal law. The orders, which were needed to resolve serious constitutional problems and may still be needed where compliance has not yet been assured, are complex, interrelated, and applicable to many different institutions. Ninety days might not provide sufficient time to ascertain the views of several different parties, including monitors, to allow them to present evidence, and to permit each to respond to the arguments and evidence of the others. It is at least possible, then, that the statute, as the majority reads it, would sometimes terminate a complex system of orders entered over a period of years by a court familiar with the local problem-perhaps only to reinstate those orders later, when the termination motion can be decided. Such an automatic termination could leave constitutionally prohibited conditions unremedied, at least temporarily. Alternatively, the threat of termination could lead a district court to abbreviate proceedings that fairness would otherwise demand. At a minimum, the mandatory automatic stay would provide a recipe for uncertainty, as complex judicial orders that have long governed the administration of particular prison systems suddenly turn off, then (perhaps selectively) back on. So read, the statute directly interferes with a court's exercise of its traditional equitable authority, rendering temporarily ineffective pre-existing remedies aimed at correcting past, and perhaps ongoing, violations of the Constitution. That interpretation, as the majority itself concedes, might give rise to serious constitutional problems. Ante, at 350. |