Moraga v. Minev

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: April 25, 2025
• Docket: 24-160
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 25 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ROY D. MORAGA, No. 24-160 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellant, 3:21-cv-00482-MMD-CSD v. MEMORANDUM* M. MINEV; J. ISAACSON; D. RICHARD,

Defendants - Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Nevada Miranda M. Du, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted April 1, 2025 San Francisco, California

Before: HURWITZ, KOH, and JOHNSTONE, Circuit Judges.

In this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action, Roy Moraga, a Nevada state prisoner, claims

that Dr. Michael Minev, Nurse Jessica Rambur, and Nurse Danielle Richard

(collectively, the “Defendants”) violated the Eighth Amendment by denying him

monitoring and treatment for Hepatitis C (“Hep-C”). The district court granted

summary judgment to the Defendants. We have jurisdiction over Moraga’s appeal

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and, reviewing de novo, see Gordon v. Virtumundo, Inc.,

575 F.3d 1040, 1047 (9th Cir. 2009), affirm.

1. Moraga contends that by following the staging requirements in Nevada

Department of Corrections Medical Directive 219 (“MD 219”), the Defendants were

deliberately indifferent to his “Eighth Amendment right to be free from the delay or

denial of medical care for Hepatitis C.” The Defendants, however, are entitled to

qualified immunity if it was not clearly established that their actions or inactions

were unconstitutional at the time of the violation. See Carley v. Aranas, 103 F.4th

653, 659 (9th Cir. 2024). “For a right to be clearly established, it must be sufficiently

clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing

violates that right.” Id. at 660 (cleaned up).

We recently held that “between August 2013 and May 2018,” id. at 661, there

was “no decision of the Supreme Court, our court, or a consensus of courts that

would have put [a defendant] on notice that treatment prioritization schemes like

MD 219 violated the Eighth Amendment,” id. at 662-63 (cleaned up). While

Moraga’s alleged denial of care occurred through November 2022, he does not cite

any case since 2018 that clearly establishes that reliance on MD 219 violated the

Eighth Amendment.

Moraga contends that his case involves “the right to receive adequate medical

treatment for Hepatitis C,” while Carley addressed “advanced treatment.” But

2 24-160 because direct-acting antivirals (“DAAs”) are the only treatment for Hep-C that

Moraga sought, the issue is whether the Eighth Amendment clearly required that he

be granted DAA treatment on a more expedited basis than provided for in MD 219,

the precise issue presented in Carley. In any event, as we noted in Carley, Moraga’s

description of the right is too broad to put the defendants on notice that their actions

were unconstitutional. See id. at 661. Carley therefore controls and Defendants are

entitled to qualified immunity.1

2. To the extent that Moraga raises a failure-to-monitor claim, it fails

because no Defendant participated in nor played a direct role in the monitoring of

his Hep-C. See Starr v. Baca, 652 F.3d 1202, 1207-08 (9th Cir. 2011).

AFFIRMED.2

1 We may affirm the district court on any basis supported by the record. Beezley v. Fremont Indem. Co., 804 F.2d 530, 530 n.1 (9th Cir. 1986) (per curiam). 2 Moraga’s requests for judicial notice, Dkt. 22, 37, are denied. The parties’ motions to supplement the record on appeal, Dkt. 24, 31, are denied.

3 24-160