Fifth Circuit Dismisses Sex Abuse Claims Filed by Three Texas Prisoners Against Guard
In a frustrating series of court rulings, three Texas prisoners seeking redress for a guard’s blatant sexual abuse saw their last claims dismissed on April 15, 2025. Though devastating for them, the case offers an important warning to other prisoners that they need to keep open as many legal options as they can, for as long as they can, when suing prison officials.
Amber Simpson, Britney Foster and Stephanie Olivarri were confined by the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) in the Linda Woodman State Jail in Gatesville. There they said that guard Joe Cisneros subjected them to sexual harassment and abuse while they were assigned to work on the plumbing crew that he helmed.
Foster said that Cisneros stood in front of where she sat until their knees touched and gyrated his pelvis to threaten her face with the crotch of his uniform. Simpson said that he also waited outside pipe chases where the crew was working so that they were again faced with his crotch when they crawled from the pipes, as he made inappropriate sexual comments, too.
Oliveri said that the guard followed her closely one day and, when she turned to him, shoved his hand between her legs and rubbed her vagina through her clothes. Simpson said that he groped her, too, once reaching for a screwdriver in her shirt pocket and fondling her breast, another time shoving his hand down her pants and into her underwear to rub her vagina.
No charges against Cisneros were ever reported, and it wasn’t clear if he faced any discipline from TDCJ. But after their release, the three former prisoners secured representation from attorneys James R. Hudson, Jr. and Susan E. Hutchison of Hutchison & Stoy, PLLC in Fort Worth, who filed suit for them in the U.S. Court for the Western District of Texas in August 2020. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, they accused Cisneros and his TDCJ superiors of violating their Eighth Amendment guarantee of freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, also making a Fourteenth Amendment claim for violation of their due process rights.
Accepting a magistrate’s report and recommendation (R&R), the district court dismissed their Eighth Amendment claims. But it refused to do the same with their Fourteenth Amendment claims, ruling that Cisneros was not entitled to qualified immunity (QI) on those. Importantly, Plaintiffs did not object to the R&R. But the guard did. So after his objections were overruled, and the district court accepted the R&R, he filed an interlocutory appeal.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit then reversed the judgment as to the Fourteenth Amendment claims, reasoning that those should be dismissed because the Eighth Amendment was the proper framework for the former prisoners’ complaint. It then remanded the case for the district court to hear the remaining Eighth Amendment claims—except that there was none left against Cisneros that had not been dismissed, and no objection to the dismissal that might have kept them alive.
In its ruling on March 4, 2025, the Fifth Circuit said it wasn’t that the three former prisoners failed to state a Fourteenth Amendment claim; to the contrary, “the substantive component of the Due Process Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment secures the right to be free of state-occasioned damage to a person’s bodily integrity,” the Court said, quoting Tyson v. Sabine, 42 F.4th 508 (5th Cir. 2022).
However, “when a particular constitutional amendment ‘provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection against a particular sort of government behavior,” the Court said it was “that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of substantive due process, [which] must be the guide for analyzing these claims,’” citing Albright v. Oliver, (1994) (quoting Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989)).
Because the Eighth Amendment is “specifically concerned with the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain in penal institutions,” the Court declared, it “serves as the primary source of substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment”—meaning Plaintiffs had no Fourteenth Amendment claim, and the district court erred in recognizing one. See: Simpson v. Cisneros, 129 F.4th 901 (5th Cir. 2025).
Had they objected to the R&R, the Plaintiffs might have returned to the district court to reinstate their Eighth Amendment claims. Since they didn’t, the only live claims left were against Cisneros’ TDCJ supervisors, to whom the district court granted final judgment in its April 2025 order. See: Simpson v. Cisneros, USDC (W.D. Tex.), Case No. 6:20-cv-00716.
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Related legal cases
Simpson v. Cisneros
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 129 F.4th 901 (5th Cir. 2025). |
| Level | Court of Appeals |
Simpson v. Cisneros
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (W.D. Tex.), Case No. 6:20-cv-00716 |
| Level | District Court |
Albright v. Oliver,
| Year | 1994 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 510 U.S. 266 (1994) |
| Level | Supreme Court |