Hart v. Sheahan

ARGUED NOVEMBER 30, 2004 This is an appeal from the dismissal, for failure to state a claim, of a suit by female inmates of the Cook County Jail in Chicago against the jail's superintendent and the County. The plaintiffs are pretrial detainees who complain that the defendants, by gratuitously exposing them to dangerous and degrading conditions of confinement, are depriving them of their liberty without due process of law and thus violating the Fourteenth Amendment. They seek an injunction and damages.