U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Castaneda Case: An Opportunity to Make Clear that No Federal Employee May Violate the Constitution without Consequence
By Adele P. Kimmel, Public Justice Managing Attorney
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the Castaneda case, Public Justice’s lawsuit over the medical neglect, penile amputation, and death of immigration detainee Francisco Castaneda. The issue before the Court is whether federal Public Health Service (PHS) officials may be sued for damages for violating the Constitution or whether the people they injure or kill can only sue the United States government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The case is critically important to preserving access to justice because suits against the United States under the FTCA provide significantly narrower remedies than suits against individuals alleging constitutional violations.
Lawsuits under the FTCA borrow state damages caps, bar punitive damages, and ban jury trials. In contrast, suits against individual government officials for constitutional violations—called “Bivens actions,” based on the Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Bivens v. Six Unkown Agents—have no caps on compensatory damages, allow punitive damages, and provide jury trials.
The federal government’s position in the Castaneda case is that, no matter how outrageously the PHS defendants may have acted, only the federal government can be sued. A ruling by the federal district court in Los Angeles and a unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, however, rejected the PHS defendants’ claim of immunity and held that PHS officials, like all other federal employees, may be sued for violating people’s constitutional rights. In the court of appeals’ words, the PHS defendants “provided no explanation for why Congress would want to provide these persons with the privilege, shared with no other federal employees, to violate the Constitution without consequence.” Castaneda v. United States, 546 F.3d 682, 698 (9th Cir. 2008) (emphasis in original).
Given the shameful history of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted by the PHS, there are strong reasons for ensuring that PHS medical personnel are not singled out for “special immunity” from lawsuits alleging constitutional violations. READ MORE.
READ THE SUPREME COURT BRIEF FILED IN THIS CASE.