High Court Says NY Can’t Shut Courthouse Door to Prisoner Claims
The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a New York law requiring all federal civil rights claims against prison employees to be heard in a state claims court.
In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said the law violates the supremacy clause, reports the Associated Press. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion in Haywood v. Drown.
“New York is not at liberty to shut the courthouse door to federal claims that it considers at odds with its local policy,” Stevens said in the opinion (PDF). Traditionally, section 1983 suits may be heard in either federal courts or state courts of general jurisdiction.
Stevens said the New York law operates more as an immunity-from-damages provision than as a jurisdictional law. “A jurisdictional rule cannot be used as a device to undermine federal law, no matter how evenhanded it may appear,” he said in the body of the opinion. New York’s law “is effectively an immunity statute cloaked in jurisdictional garb.”
“Because it regards these suits as too numerous or too frivolous (or both), the state’s long-standing policy has been to shield this narrow class of defendants from liability when sued for damages,” Stevens wrote.
Stevens noted that prisoners who pursued their cases in the court of claims did not have the same protections as federal litigants. They were not entitled to a jury trial, for example, had no right to attorney fees, and could not seek punitive damages or injunctive relief.
