The court also issued decisions concerning the role of federal courts in supervising California’s parole system and appellate procedures in a case arising from sexual assaults in an Ohio prison. All three decisions were unanimous.
Retaliation
In 2002, Miriam Regalado complained to a government agency that her employer, North American Stainless, had paid her less than her male counterparts and twice demoted her on account of her gender. Her fiancé, Eric L. Thomson, also worked at the company. Not long after the company heard about Ms. Regalado’s charge, it fired him.
Mr. Thompson sued under a federal law that prohibits retaliation for the filing of an employment discrimination claim. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, dismissed Mr. Thompson’s case, saying the law was meant to protect only employees who filed discrimination claims or otherwise themselves took action.
On Monday, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a unanimous eight-member court, said that analysis was shortsighted. “We think it obvious,” he wrote, “that a reasonable worker might be dissuaded from engaging in protected activity” like filing a charge of discrimination “if she knew that her fiancé would be fired.”
There might be difficult line-drawing problems in other cases, Justice Scalia said. “What about firing an employee’s girlfriend, close friend or trusted co-worker?” he asked. Might a shareholder upset about the drop in a company’s stock price after it fires “a valuable employee for racially discriminatory reasons” be allowed to sue?
The court largely left those questions for another day. “We expect that firing a close family member” amounts to unlawful retaliation, Justice Scalia wrote, while “inflicting a milder reprisal on a mere acquaintance will almost never do so, but beyond that we are reluctant to generalize.”
Justice Elena Kagan did not participate in the case, Thompson v. North American Stainless, No. 09-291, having worked on it as United States solicitor general.
California Parole
In an unsigned opinion, the court reversed two decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, that had taken issue with California officials’ failure to grant parole to prisoners there.
The Supreme Court’s opinion in the cases, Swarthout v. Cooke and Cate v. Clay, No. 10-333, essentially said that federal courts in California had no business interfering with state parole decisions.
The cases involved Damon Cooke, who was convicted of attempted murder in 1991, and Elijah Clay, who was convicted of murder in 1978. Both were sentenced to seven years to life with the possibility of parole.
The state’s parole board denied Mr. Cooke’s application in 2002, citing the cruelty of his crime, his failure to participate fully in rehabilitation programs and to develop job skills, and his misconduct in prison. The board found Mr. Clay suitable for parole in 2003, but Gov. Gray Davis reversed the board’s determination, saying Mr. Clay remained a threat to others.
The men sought help from state courts in California without success. But two three-judge panels of the Ninth Circuit ruled for the prisoners, saying the state officials’ determinations had been unreasonable.
The Supreme Court used sharp language in reversing those decisions. “The short of the matter is that the responsibility for assuring that the constitutionally adequate procedures governing California’s parole system are properly applied rests with California courts, and is no part of the Ninth Circuit’s business,” the opinion said.
The author of one of the parole decisions reversed on Monday, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, has had a bad week at the Supreme Court. Last Wednesday, the court unanimously reversed two other decisions by Judge Reinhardt that had granted writs of habeas corpus to prisoners convicted of murder.
In one of the decisions reversing Judge Reinhardt, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy criticized what he called “judicial disregard” for “sound and established principles.”
Judge Reinhardt is on the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit that is considering an appeal of a ruling in favor of same-sex marriage in California.
Prison Assaults
The court reinstated a $625,000 jury verdict against prison officials in Ohio who failed to protect an inmate there against a second sexual assault after she complained about the first one.
The officials had asked the trial judge to dismiss the case before trial on the ground that they were immune from suit. The judge denied the motion, saying a jury should sort out the relevant facts.
The question before the court in the case, Ortiz v. Jordan, No. 09-737, was a procedural one: whether the officials were entitled to appeal the denial of their pretrial motion for summary judgment after the trial was over.
The Sixth Circuit agreed to hear the appeal and reversed, saying that appeals of motions concerning immunity claims are an exception to the usual rules and may be considered even after the trial was over.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in an opinion for six justices, disagreed. “Once the case proceeds to trial,” she wrote, “the full record developed in court supersedes the record available at the time” the pretrial motion was filed. The right procedure in the circumstances, she said, is for officials claiming immunity from suit to make a separate motion at the end of the trial and to appeal from that the ruling should it go against them.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr., agreed with the outcome of the case but said the majority should have decided only that the appeal of the pretrial motion was improper. The majority’s additional discussion of post-trial motions, Justice Thomas wrote, was “unwise” given the “difficult and far-reaching questions of civil procedure” involved.