Rehanna v. Hollingsworth

Kellie Rehanna, a transgender woman who was brutally raped while in the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ custody, has been blocked from vindicating her rights after the Bureau failed to protect her and threatened her into silence. The MacArthur Justice Center is dedicated to ensuring erroneous interpretations of state law do not prevent prisoners from holding prison officials accountable for their egregious actions. 

Ms. Rehanna was raped several times by a fellow prisoner at FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey, despite requesting that the prison staff protect her in the days leading up the assaults. Her rapist threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the assaults, and other prisoners whom she did not know also approached her to threaten her into silence. 

As a result of the rapes, Ms. Rehanna suffered incapacitating PTSD, leaving her in a dissociative fog for years. To make matters worse, she was instructed by a captain at Fort Dix to not speak of the rapes to anyone, and the captain threatened that if she did, her rapist would find out, hunt her down, rape her again, and that the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) itself would retaliate against her. The captain instructed her not to contact an attorney until after the BOP had completed its own investigation. 

As a result of the prison captain’s threats and misleading information, along with her debilitating PTSD, Ms. Rehanna did not file suit against the BOP for failing to protect her from the assaults until five and a half years after they occurred. The BOP moved to dismiss her suit based on timeliness, as the state of New Jersey’s personal injury limitation period – which applies to her suit against federal officers – is just two years. 

But the New Jersey legislature passed a package of reforms intended to increase sexual assault survivors’ ability to seek civil recourse, including a two-year revival provision for otherwise time-barred sexual assault-related claims. The legislature also simultaneously codified sweeping equitable tolling rules– a common principle of law stating that a statute of limitations shall not bar a claim in cases where the plaintiff, despite use of due diligence, could not or did not discover the injury until after the expiration of the limitation – for sexual assault cases, in recognition of the many hurdles survivors face in taking legal action. 

Despite those reforms, the district court agreed with the BOP, refusing to apply the two-year revival provision to Ms. Rehanna’s suit. It also erroneously claimed that Ms. Rehanna’s circumstances should not have equitably tolled her claims. 

The MacArthur Justice Center (MJC) represents Ms. Rehanna on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. We challenged the district court’s denial of Ms. Rehanna’s claims against the BOP, and its refusal to apply the two-year revival provision. MJC is grateful to have the support of two amici in this case: the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which was instrumental in helping pass the bill that enacted the revival and tolling provisions at issue, and Lambda Legal. 

UPDATE

In a published opinion, the Third Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision to dismiss Ms. Rehanna’s claims. The Court held that no remedy is available, limiting plaintiffs’ abilities to bring claims like Ms. Rehanna’s against federal officers. The Court also held that the New Jersey revival provision was not applicable.