On October 23, 2014, a transgender woman in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice ("DCJ") filed this lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The plaintiff sought declaratory, injunctive relief, and damages against the defendants, several officials of DCJ, for violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and §1988. Specifically, the plaintiff alleged that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to the abuse she received from male inmates and refused to place her into secure housing or take other steps to reduce her abuse.

On January 9, 2015, the defendants moved to transfer venue to the Western District of Texas on the grounds that the plaintiff was housed in the Western District from 2011-13 and several defendants work and reside in the Western District. The Court (Judge Alfred H. Bennett) denied their motion as several Defendants resided in the Southern District and the Defendants failed to identify key witnesses that would not be available for testimony if the case remained in the Southern District, instead only offering mere allegations of witness unavailability and inconvenience. 2015 WL 1893737.

The Defendant Executive Director of DCJ moved to the dismiss the case pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) on February 17, 2015. The Defendant contended that the complaint failed to plead any specific facts establishing that the Executive Director participated in the failure to protect the Plaintiff, thus failing to meet the requirement established by the Supreme Court case Ashcroft v. Iqbal that a supervisory official must be personally involved to defeat qualified immunity. The defendant further argued that the injunctive relief claim should be dismissed because there was no actual ongoing controversy, as the Plaintiff no longer resided in the facility where she alleged abuses. Lastly, the defendant argued that retrospective injunctive and declaratory relief claims were improper as they implicated Eleventh Amendment concerns on state sovereign immunity.

The Court denied the Executive Director's Motion to Dismiss on March 14, 2016. The Court found Plaintiff successfully stated a claim as the Executive Director had participated in hearings about prison rape and had been called by the Department of Justice to account for the statistics concerning sexual assault within DCJ. Because of the Executive Director's awareness, the Court found the Plaintiff had sufficiently alleged facts that the Executive Director knew of and was deliberately indifferent to the risk of sexual assault at the facilities. Further, the Plaintiff successfully stated a claim because she sought to hold the Executive Director liable for personally failing to train and supervise DCJ personnel and failing to establish adequate policy, and was not attempting to hold the Executive Director liable via respondeat superior. The Court found that qualified immunity would not apply because sending an LGBT prisoner back to the general population after experiencing multiple attacks is an unreasonable policy to maintain. 169 F. Supp. 3d 687.

The Court next found that the Plaintiff successfully stated a claim for injunctive relief because the plaintiff could be transferred at any time, and thus the fact that she was not currently in a unit where she experienced assault did not render her claim moot. Finally, the Court found that the Executive Director's claim that the Plaintiff sought retrospective injunctive relief was incorrect because the Plaintiff sought expungement of her disciplinary records, and a request for expungement is prospective. 169 F. Supp. 3d 687.

On March 1, 2017, the Court granted a motion to stay proceedings pending the parties' finalization of a settlement agreement. Settlement negotiations continued through February 26, 2018, when the parties submitted a stipulation of dismissal with prejudice pursuant to their settlement agreement. The settlement agreement was private, but was reported to include a monetary payment, systematic policy changes, and training of DCJ staff. Lamba Legal, Lamba Legal Reaches Favorable Settlement for Passion Star, Transgender Woman Sexually Assaulted in Texas Men's Prison, Lamba Legal (March 15, 2018), https://www.lambdalegal.org/blog/20180315_tdcj-settlement.

The case is closed; the settlement apparently did not include any provision for ongoing jurisdiction to enforce its terms.

Cade Boland - 06/15/2018


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