WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s decision at the Supreme Court in Gutierrez v. Saenz, a case in which the Court considered whether a federal court, as part of its analysis of a Section 1983 plaintiff’s standing to pursue a procedural due process claim against state officials, must make a particularized determination as to whether those officials will redress the plaintiff’s injury by following a favorable declaratory judgment, Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Appellate Counsel Miriam Becker-Cohen issued the following reaction:

Just two years ago, the Supreme Court held in Reed v. Goertz that a Texas death-row prisoner had standing to sue the local prosecutor who denied him access to DNA testing under Section 1983 to vindicate his right to procedural due process. This case presented nearly identical facts and legal issues, but the Fifth Circuit contorted the record and the nature of Ruben Gutierrez’s claim to distinguish Reed and deny Mr. Gutierrez his day in court.

The Supreme Court rightly rejected this attempt to evade the Supreme Court’s decision. In her opinion for the Court, Justice Sotomayor explained that “Reed is indistinguishable,” and held that Mr. Gutierrez has standing to challenge Texas’s DNA testing procedures under the Due Process Clause.

Echoing our brief and the case law it cites, Justice Sotomayor declared: “That a prosecutor might eventually find another reason . . . to deny a prisoner’s request for DNA testing does not vitiate his standing to argue that the cited reasons violated his rights under the Due Process Clause.”

At bottom, as we explained in our brief, access to the courts to pursue a Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process claim does not require plaintiffs to demonstrate certain success with respect to retaining their underlying protected interests. Procedural due process is about the right to a fair proceeding, and courts must closely attend to the nature of the asserted constitutional right in Section 1983 cases.