In the case of Cinda Sandin, Unit Team Manager, Halawa Correctional Facility v. Demont R.D. Conner et al., 1994, the U.S Supreme Court ruled on whether a prisoner's due process rights were violated when he was placed in disciplinary segregation for misconduct without a hearing. The court held that states could create liberty interests protected by the Due Process Clause through their laws and regulations but found no such interest in this case because Hawaii’s prison regulations did not mandate an adverse action only upon proof of specific substantive predicates or limit official discretion by particularized standards or criteria. Therefore, they concluded that Conner's discipline in segregated confinement did not present the type of atypical significant hardship necessary to trigger due process protection under Sandin v.Connor (1995). In essence, it established that prisoners do not have a constitutionally protected liberty interest in remaining free from administrative segregation unless conditions impose an "atypical and significant hardship" compared to ordinary incidents of prison life.

In the dissenting opinion for Sandin v. Conner, Justice Ginsburg argued that the majority's decision to limit prisoner rights was misguided and could lead to arbitrary uses of power by prison officials. She disagreed with their interpretation of Hewitt v. Helms, stating that it did not require a detailed procedural checklist but rather an assurance against capricious state action affecting prisoners' liberty interests. She also criticized the majority's new standard for determining when a state-created liberty interest exists as being too restrictive and vague, which she believed would make it difficult for lower courts to apply consistently and fairly in future cases involving prisoners' rights claims under the Due Process Clause of Fourteenth Amendment.