MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER I. INTRODUCTION Plaintiffs, the New York State Correctional Officer and Police Benevolent Association and six individual correction officers, commenced this putative class action on May 7, 2021, asserting violations of their Fourteenth Amendment rights. See Dkt. No. 1. Plaintiffs allege that changes in policies and practices related to solitary confinement in New York prisons violate their due process right to be free from state-created danger. Id. at 24. Currently before the Court is Defendants’ motion to dismiss. See Dkt. No. 15. For the following reasons, Defendants’ motion is granted.! II. BACKGROUND A settlement agreement between the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (“DOCCS”) and the New York Civil Liberties Union was approved on April 1, 2016 (“NYCLU Settlement”). See Peoples v. Annucci, 180 F. Supp. 3d 294 (S.D.N.Y. 2016). In Peoples, the plaintiffs had challenged the constitutionality of solitary confinement in New York State prisons. See id. In approving the NYCLU Settlement, the court stated: Five years after Peoples filed his initial complaint, an historic settlement was reached on behalf of thousands of prisoners, in this class action lawsuit challenging solitary confinement practices across the New York State prison system. This settlement, which I approve today, will greatly reduce the frequency, duration, and severity of solitary confinement in New York State prisons. Id. at 297. The NYCLU Settlement “provides for three broad categories of reform: (1) reduction in the frequency and duration of SHU1 sentences; (2) improvements to the conditions of SHU incarceration; and (3) mechanisms for implementation and enforcement of the agreed-upon measures.” Id. at 301. The NYCLU Settlement also includes a mechanism for implementing and enforcing the changes over a five-year period. See Dkt. No. 1 at 53. Continuing New York’s solitary confinement reform, on March 31, 2021, the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act (“HALT”) was signed into law by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo. Id. at 22. The HALT Act limits segregated confinement2 to fifteen consecutive days and twenty days within any sixty-day period. N.Y. Correct. Law §137(6)(i). It also bans segregated confinement for individuals who are twenty-one years or younger or fifty-five years or older; with a physical, mental, or medical disability; or who are pregnant, in the first eight weeks of post-partum recovery period, or caring for a child while in a correctional institution. Id. at §§2(33), (6)(h). For individuals who cannot enter segregated confinement, the HALT Act creates Residential Rehabilitation Units (“RRUs”), which are “therapeutic and trauma-informed, and aim to address individual treatment and rehabilitation needs and underlying causes of problematic behaviors.” Id. at §2(34). Pursuant to the HALT Act, individuals in segregated confinement receive four hours of out of cell programming, including one hour for recreation, and individuals in RRUs receive at least six hours of out of cell programming with an additional hour for recreation. Id. at §137(6)(j)(ii). The HALT Act has an effective date of March 31, 2022. Id. Since the NYCLU Settlement was approved in 2016, segregated or solitary confinement has been eliminated for over forty disciplinary infractions, the average length shortened by thirty-one percent, and the number of individuals in SHUs decreased by nearly fifty-eight percent. See Dkt. No. 1-4; Dkt. No. 1-5. Plaintiffs allege that, beginning in 2012, there has been a 99.8 percent increase in violence perpetuated by incarcerated individuals against staff and an 84.6 percent increase in violence perpetuated by incarcerated individuals against other incarcerated individuals. Dkt. No. 1 at 95. Over this same time period, the number of incarcerated individuals decreased by 36.4 percent. Id. at 19. Plaintiffs allege that changes to solitary confinement from the NYCLU Settlement and HALT Act “create a dangerous living and working environment by permitting those incarcerated individuals who have shown a propensity to violently assault peaceful incarcerated individuals and/or State employees to be placed in congregate settings where they are easily able to repeat such violent acts.” Id. at 18. Plaintiffs further allege that the changes to solitary confinement “have increased workplace danger beyond what is custom in Plaintiffs’ profession and resulted in serious, permanent injuries to Plaintiffs, their fellow employees, and other incarcerated individuals.” Dkt. No. 18 at 11. This, Plaintiffs allege, violates their Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from state-created danger. See Dkt. No. 1 at
