Woman who claims she was raped by ICE officer may invoke equitable tolling for untimely lawsuit

This is an unpleasant case, but the facts are that the plaintiff, Jane Doe, alleges that she was repeatedly raped and sexually abused by an Immigration and Customs (ICE) officer working for the Department of Homeland Security, and that the defendant used threats of violence and deportation to maintain his control over her. Plaintiff bought a lawsuit outside the two-year statute of limitations, and the district court dismissed the case as untimely. The Court of Appeals reinstates the case under the rules allowing traumatized plaintiffs to file an untimely claim.

The case is Doe v. United States, issued on August 1. Plaintiffs can invoke "equitable tolling" to get around an untimely claim. If the district court denies such tolling, the standard of review is "abuse of discretion," a difficult test for plaintiffs to overcome. Equitable tolling is all about equity, the Court of Appeals notes, making these issues even more unpredictable. What is "abuse of discretion"? What is "equity"? 

The Court summarizes the legal standard: "Before a court may exercise discretion to grant equitable tolling, a litigant must demonstrate as a factual matter the existence of two elements: first, 'that some extraordinary circumstance stood in [her] way' and second 'that [she] has been pursuing [her] rights diligently.'” But in this case, the district court treated the motion to dismiss like a traditional summary judgment motion and held there were no undisputed facts that would favor plaintiff's position on equitable tolling. The district court did not invoke its discretionary authority, a requirement in equitable tolling cases.

This approach was error, the Court of Appeals (Calabresi, Lee and Nathan) holds, because "a reasonable district court acting in a fact-finding capacity could determine that the prerequisites to equitable tolling—extraordinary circumstances and reasonable diligence—are present on this record." As for "extraordinary circumstances," the Court holds, they may exist here because 

Sexual abuse perpetrated by an ICE agent against an undocumented immigrant may give the assailant’s threats a similarly immobilizing effect as those of a prison official against someone in their custody. With these dynamics in mind, the district court could reasonably find on this record that years of violent sexual abuse and threats to Doe’s life gave Doe a “specific and credible basis to fear retaliation”  from  Rodriguez  and  thereby  constituted  an  extraordinary circumstance.

While the sexual abuse stopped after a period of time, plaintiff's failure to file suit any sooner is not a barrier to equitable tolling because she claims that defendant told her, after he had last allegedly raped her, that he would kill her if she told anyone about the sexual assaults. The district court implicitly rejected the inference of ongoing fear because plaintiff finally spoke out when her father was facing deportation and she told immigration authorities that she feared that her father would face persecution in Honduras because others in her community knew about her "involvement" with defendant and thought she might be an informant, which would ultimately place her father at risk. The Court of Appeals holds that even though plaintiff spoke up at this time, she was still scared for her life that defendant would still retaliate against her if she took legal action against him. "As she tells it, Doe was stuck choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea—one course risking her life, the other risking her father’s."

The case is remanded to the district court for the judge to decide the case properly: "the district court should act in a fact-finding capacity and determine whether Doe has demonstrated extraordinary circumstances and reasonable diligence.  If the court determines that she has established these prerequisites for equitable tolling, then it should engage in the discretionary determination of whether to grant her request for equitable tolling."