Page:Glossip v. Gross.pdf/19

 Cite as: 576 U. S. ____ (2015)

15

Opinion of the Court

Hill, the issue was whether a challenge to a method of execution must be brought by means of an application for a writ of habeas corpus or a civil action under §1983. Id., at 576. We held that a method-of-execution claim must be brought under §1983 because such a claim does not attack the validity of the prisoner’s conviction or death sentence. Id., at 579–580. The United States as amicus curiae argued that we should adopt a special pleading requirement to stop inmates from using §1983 actions to attack, not just a particular means of execution, but the death penalty itself. To achieve this end, the United States proposed that an inmate asserting a method-of-execution claim should be required to plead an acceptable alternative method of execution. Id., at 582. We rejected that argument because “[s]pecific pleading requirements are mandated by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and not, as a general rule, through case-by-case determinations of the federal courts.” Ibid. Hill thus held that §1983 alone does not impose a heightened pleading requirement. Baze, on the other hand, addressed the substantive elements of an Eighth Amendment method-ofexecution claim, and it made clear that the Eighth Amendment requires a prisoner to plead and prove a known and available alternative. Because petitioners failed to do this, the District Court properly held that they did not establish a likelihood of success on their Eighth Amendment claim. Readers can judge for themselves how much distance there is between the principal dissent’s argument against requiring prisoners to identify an alternative and the view, now announced by JUSTICES BREYER and GINSBURG, that the death penalty is categorically unconstitutional. Post, p. ___ (BREYER, J., dissenting). The principal dissent goes out of its way to suggest that a State would violate the Eighth Amendment if it used one of the methods of execution employed before the advent of lethal injection.