The case arose from an internal investigation into possible misconduct by Gene Hughes, the employee relations director of a Tennessee school system. Vicky Crawford, who had worked for the school system for 30 years but who had not complained about Mr. Hughes, answered questions about him in the investigation.
Justice David H. Souter, writing for himself and six other justices, said Ms. Crawford had described “louche goings-on” involving “gross clowning” and “sexually obnoxious” conduct by Mr. Hughes. According to court papers summarizing her accusations, Mr. Hughes seemed to think it amusing to grab his genitals and ask Ms. Crawford to show him her breasts.
At the conclusion of the investigation, Mr. Hughes received an oral reprimand. Ms. Crawford and two other women who had made accusations against him were fired. In Ms. Crawford’s case, the reason was said to be embezzlement, a charge she denied and which the authorities did not pursue.
The question in the case, Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tenn., No. 06-1595, was whether Ms. Crawford could sue under a provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barring retaliation against people who opposed unlawful employment practices. In 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, dismissed the case before trial, saying the law requires more vigorous opposition than merely answering questions in an internal investigation.
In his opinion reversing that decision, Justice Souter said that lesser forms of opposition count, too. “Countless people were known to ‘oppose’ slavery before emancipation, or are said to ‘oppose’ capital punishment today,” he wrote, “without writing public letters, taking to the streets or resisting the government.”
“Nothing in the statute requires a freakish rule protecting an employee who reports discrimination on her own initiative,” Justice Souter added, “but not one who reports the same discrimination in the same words when her boss asks a question.”
Justice Souter rejected the employer’s argument that ruling in favor of Ms. Crawford would result in fewer investigations. But he said that employees who knew they were subject to firing without recourse if they answered questions from their employer honestly would be less likely to cooperate.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for himself and Justice Clarence Thomas, joined the decision but did not adopt Justice Souter’s reasoning. Justice Alito noted that the number of retaliation claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission doubled from 1992 to 2007 and said that “an expansive interpretation of protected opposition conduct would likely cause this trend to accelerate.”
The court’s ruling, Justice Alito wrote, “does not and should not extend beyond employees who testify in internal investigations or engage in analogous protected conduct.”
Prosecutorial Immunity
In a second decision on Monday, the court unanimously ruled that a California man who had served 24 years in prison for murder based on false testimony from a jailhouse informant could not sue the two senior prosecutors who ran the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office at the time of his trial.
The former inmate, Thomas L. Goldstein, was convicted on the testimony of the aptly named Edward F. Fink. Mr. Fink, according to Mr. Goldstein’s brief, was “a heroin addict and career felon” with “an uncanny knack for extracting confessions from cellmates.”
But Mr. Goldstein did not learn of Mr. Fink’s talents until years later. At Mr. Goldstein’s trial in 1980, Mr. Fink falsely said he had not received favorable treatment in exchange for his testimony in that or other cases. The trial prosecutors apparently did not know and so did not tell Mr. Goldstein’s lawyers that Mr. Fink had repeatedly received reduced sentences for providing prosecutors with favorable testimony in Mr. Goldstein’s case and others.
In 2002, a federal magistrate judge in Los Angeles ordered Mr. Goldstein retried or released. “It is readily apparent to this court that Fink fits the profile of the dishonest jailhouse informant,” Judge Robert N. Block wrote. Prosecutors eventually chose to let Mr. Goldstein go.
Mr. Goldstein then filed a civil suit against John Van de Kamp, who was the district attorney at the time of the trial, and his chief deputy, Curt Livesay. Mr. Goldstein claimed the two men had failed in their administrative duties by not ensuring that trial prosecutors were adequately trained and provided with information about the activities of jailhouse informers.
Prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity for anything they do connected to a particular criminal trial. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for a unanimous court, quoted a 1949 decision from Judge Learned Hand to explain the reasoning behind that protection: “It has been thought in the end better to leave unredressed the wrongs done by dishonest officers than to subject those who try to do their duty to the constant dread of retaliation.”
But the Supreme Court has left open the possibility that some kinds of administrative conduct by supervising prosecutors not connected to the conduct of a trial may be the subjects of lawsuits.
What Mr. Goldstein complained about, Justice Breyer wrote, may have been
administrative but was nonetheless “directly connected with the prosecutor’s
basic trial advocacy duties” in that it concerned whether and when to make
information available to defense lawyers. As a consequence, he wrote, the
defendants in the case, Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, No. 07-854, were entitled
to absolute immunity.