153485P.pdf   01/03/2017  Kevin Scott Karsjens  v.  Emily Johnson Piper
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  15-3485
   U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota - Minneapolis   
   [PUBLISHED] [Shepherd, Author, with Murphy and Colloton, Circuit Judges] 
   Civil case - Civil rights: Minnesota Civil Commitment and Treatment Act. 
   In action by civilly committed sex offenders raising a facial and an as 
   applied challenge under Section 1983 claiming their substantive due 
   process rights have been violated by the Act and by the actions and 
   practices of the managers of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, the 
   district court erred in finding substantive due process violations and in 
   entering an expansive injunctive order; claim of judicial bias rejected; 
   challenge to the district court's jurisdiction rejected, as plaintiffs had 
   standing to challenge the Act and the action was not barred by Heck v. 
   Humphrey or the Rooker-Feldman doctrine; the proper standard of scrutiny 
   to be applied to plaintiffs' facial due process challenge was whether the 
   Act bore a rational relationship to a legitimate government purpose, and 
   not the strict scrutiny standard applied by the district court; the Act is 
   facially constitutional because it is rationally related to Minnesota's 
   interests in protecting its citizens from harm causes by sexually 
   dangerous persons or persons with a sexual psychopathic personality; with 
   respect to the plaintiffs' as-applied due process challenge, the court 
   must determine both whether the state defendants' actions were 
   conscience-shocking and if those actions violated a fundamental liberty 
   interest; to determine if the actions were conscience-shocking, the 
   district court must consider whether the actions were egregious or 
   outrageous; none of the six grounds upon which the district court 
   determined the state defendants violated the class plaintiffs' substantive 
   due process rights in an as-applied context satisfy the 
   conscience-shocking standard; the class plaintiffs failed to demonstrate 
   that any of the identified actions of the state defendants or arguable 
   shortcomings of the Program were egregious, malicious or sadistic as is 
   necessary to meet the conscience-shocking standard; the finding of a 
   constitutional violation is reversed, and the court's injunctive order is 
   vacated; remanded for further proceedings on the remaining claims in the 
   class plaintiffs' Third Amended Complaint.