U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of Ohio woman assaulted by prison guard

Washington -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday in support of an Elyria woman who was sexually assaulted twice by an Ohio prison guard, then punished for reporting the attacks.

Michelle Ortiz considers this a moral victory, not only for herself but for all women who have been assaulted or punished by the people paid by the public to protect them. Ortiz was sexually assaulted in prison while serving a 12-month sentence in a domestic violence case in which she fought off her physically abusive husband with a knife.

"If this helps one woman that this has ever happened to or that it could ever happen to, then I am just so happy," she said. "Not for the money, but for the verdict."

The ruling reversed a decision by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, that would have denied Ortiz her verdict and a $625,000 judgment. The high court decision was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and has implications for how government attorneys handle lawsuits filed against public employees.

But the case has only narrow ramifications for the general public, despite the compelling story behind it, according to attorneys for the state of Ohio as well as outside legal experts.

"The Supreme Court case was solely about a procedural issue; it involved which procedures to use to challenge certain categories of legal rulings," Lisa Peterson Hackley, spokeswoman for the Ohio attorney general's office, said in an e-mail statement. "While we're disappointed in the outcome, it's always good when courts clear up unclear rules."

Andrew Pollis, a visiting assistant law professor at Case Western Reserve University who assisted Ortiz's lead attorney, David Mills, in the case, agreed that the case could be interpreted to have a limited impact.

"To be honest, this is a narrow procedural issue, so it isn't some new ruling about the way prison officials must treat inmates, although you could tell from the way Justice Ginsburg wrote the ruling that she was displeased with the way prison officials treated Michelle Ortiz," Pollis said.

Ortiz was in the Ohio Reformatory for Women in November 2002 when she reported that a male guard fondled her breasts and warned, "I'll get you tomorrow, watch." He did, returning when Ortiz was asleep to molest her again.

When Ortiz told other inmates about the attack, she was shackled and sent to solitary confinement. The state said this was for her own protection, as well as for the sake of preserving the integrity of their investigation while they looked into Ortiz's claims.

Ortiz sued, and the prison's case manager and an institutional investigator claimed they were just doing their jobs. They said they should be considered immune from the lawsuit unless Ortiz could establish that their conduct violated her clearly established rights.

A trial judge, however, refused to grant their motion for dismissal, or summary judgment, at that point, and the case went to trial. Ortiz won.

That's when the two state employees, Paula Jordan and Rebecca Bright, filed an appeal. The appeals court ruled in a 2-1 vote that the pre-trial motion for dismissal should have been granted.

Ortiz appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court. Mills argued on her behalf that if the two employees were intent on claiming immunity, they should have kept on arguing it after their motion for summary judgment was dismissed, using procedures available during the trial and immediately after the verdict was read.

The Supreme Court agreed.

In a concurring opinion, Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas agreed that the appeals court made a mistake, but they would have sent the case back to that court to consider other issues.

Since the attacks, "Ohio has instituted significant reforms to prevent this type of activity" and, if it occurs, to address it quickly, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Before Monday's ruling, various federal and state courts disagreed on the rules for challenging government-employee immunity if it is rejected before trial. The ruling will send a clear signal about how to proceed, said Alan Chen, director of the constitutional rights and remedies program at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law.