The Hewitt v. Helms case in 1986 revolved around the issue of whether or not prison officials could be held liable for damages under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when they placed an inmate in administrative segregation without a formal hearing. The plaintiff, Thomas Helms, was a Pennsylvania prisoner who had been put into solitary confinement after being suspected of murdering another inmate. He argued that his placement violated his constitutional rights because he wasn't given a chance to challenge it through a proper hearing process. In their decision, the Supreme Court ruled against Helms and found that while prisoners do have certain due process rights, these did not extend to situations like administrative segregation for safety reasons within prisons. They stated that such decisions were part of maintaining order and security within correctional facilities - tasks which required swift action by administrators rather than lengthy legal processes. Furthermore, they noted that even though state law provided procedural protections before inmates could be segregated as punishment (which would trigger due process requirements), this didn't apply here since Helm's segregation was preventative rather than punitive in nature.

In the dissenting opinion for Hewitt et al. v. Helms, Justice Brennan disagreed with the majority's conclusion that Pennsylvania prison officials were entitled to qualified immunity in a case involving an inmate's prolonged solitary confinement without a hearing. He argued that this violated his due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and was clearly established law at the time of violation, thus disqualifying them from such immunity. Furthermore, he contended that even if there was no clear precedent on this specific issue, any reasonable official should have understood their actions as unconstitutional given general principles of due process jurisprudence. Therefore, they could not claim ignorance or uncertainty about legal standards as defense against liability for constitutional violations.