Michelle Oritz, Petitioner v. Paula Jordan et al. (562 U.S. 180)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 24, 2011 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 562 U.S. 180 · 131 S. Ct. 884
- Decided
- January 24, 2011
- Term
- October Term 2010
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. We address in this case a procedural issue arising in a civil rights action brought under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 by Michelle Ortiz, a former inmate at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. Plaintiff below, petitioner here, Ortiz filed a complaint in federal court stating key facts on which she based claims for damages against superintending prison officers. On two consecutive nights during her one-year incarceration, Ortiz stated, she was sexually assaulted by a corrections officer. Although she promptly reported the first incident, she further alleged, prison authorities took no measures to protect her against the second assault. After that assault, Ortiz charged, and in retaliation for accounts she gave of the two episodes, prison officials placed her, shackled and handcuffed, in solitary confinement in a Cell without adequate heat, clothing, bedding, or blankets. The treatment to which she was exposed, Ortiz claimed, violated her right, safeguarded by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, to reasonable protection from violence while in custody. Principal defendants in the suit, Paula Jordan, a case manager at Ortiz’s living unit, and Rebecca Bright, a prison investigator, moved for summary judgment on their pleas of “qualified immunity,” a defense that shields officials from suit if their conduct “d[id] not violate clearly…
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