Kent v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis
821 F.2d 1220 · 1987
Citation profile
125 federal appellate · 2 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 207 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably Michenfelder v. Sumner (1988), Gazette v. City of Pontiac (1994)
125 federal appellate · 2 district ·
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 636 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Conley v. Gibson · Haines v. Kerner · Bell v. Wolfish · Thomas v. Arn · Hudson v. Palmer
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 207 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“have a special sense of privacy in their genitals, and involuntary exposure of them in the presence of people of the other sex may be especially demeaning and humiliating. When not reasonably necessary, that sort of degradation is not to be visited upon those confined in our prisons.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[The] court must construe the complaint liberally in plaintiff’s favor and accept as true all factual allegations and permissible inferences therein. Westlake v. Lucas, 537 F.2d 857, 858 (6th Cir.1976). Dismissals of complaints filed under the civil rights statutes are scrutinized with special care, Brooks v. Seiter, 779 F.2d 1177, 1180 (6th Cir.1985), and pro se complaints are held to even “less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.” Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 [ 92 S.Ct. 594, 596 , 30 L.Ed.2d 652 ] (1972). In the final analysis, a Rule 12(b)(6) motion should not be granted “unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim that would entitle him to relief.” Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46 [ 78 S.Ct. 99, 101-02 , 2 L.Ed.2d 80 ] (1957).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Perhaps it is merely an abundance of common experience that leads inexorably to the conclusion that there must be a fundamental constitutional right to be free from forced exposure of one’s person to strangers of the opposite sex when not reasonably necessary for some legitimate, overriding reason, for the obverse would be repugnant to notions of human decency and personal integrity.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.