The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case involving the denial of exercise time to an inmate in solitary confinement.

The case centers around Michael Johnson, who was incarcerated at the Pontiac Correctional Center in Illinois. Johnson, who suffers from severe mental health issues, including bipolar depression, severe depression and other diagnosed conditions, was held in solitary confinement for three years. During this period, Johnson was kept in a windowless cell the size of a parking space, which was covered in human excrement. He was permitted out of his cell only once a week, for a 10-minute shower. He was frequently denied outdoor exercise. According to his petition, “for more than one year, Mr. Johnson did not receive even a single hour of exercise.”

Johnson, originally representing himself, filed a complaint arguing that the treatment, particularly the denial of outdoor exercise, violated his Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. His complaint was denied by the district court, and the ruling was affirmed by the circuit court upon appeal.

The lower courts relied on the standard set in Pearson v. Ramos, which ruled that a 90-day period of “no yard privileges” was not cruel and unusual punishment and that multiple, consecutive 90-day period sentences were okay as long as they were issued for “non-trivial” reasons. The circuit court concluded that because Johnson’s extended period of “no yard privileges” was the result of a medical order, it was permissible under Pearson.

Johnson then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court denied review of the case. Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan, dissented from the decision. In her dissent, Justice Jackson said that the lower courts should have weighed whether prison officials acted with “deliberate indifference” to Johnson’s health in denying him exercise time. Jackson described her argument as follows:

In short, rather than faulting Johnson for failing to present arguments or evidence that established the “trivial” nature of the behavioral infractions that precipitated the cumulative yard restrictions, the Seventh Circuit should have abandoned Pearson’s “utterly trivial infraction” rule and applied the well-established deliberate-indifference standard to analyze the state of the evidence concerning Johnson’s Eighth Amendment cumulative no-yard-access claim. If it had done so, the Circuit panel would have had to acknowledge that, at the very least, the deliberate-indifference inquiry presents a genuine issue of material fact for the jury … .