## Facts

- Susan Barney and Kathy Christensen separately served 48-hour sentences at the Box Elder County Jail in Utah.
- During each woman’s confinement, jailer Gerald Pulsipher sexually assaulted her after removing her from the designated female cell and taking her to an unmonitored area.
- Jail policy required a male jailer to notify dispatch before entering the opposite-sex cellblock (to permit camera observation) and prohibited removing a female inmate from her cell without another officer physically present.
- Pulsipher was the only jailer on duty during both confinements and did not follow these safeguards.
- The jail housed women in a single female cell near the officer’s desk; some areas were covered by closed-circuit cameras, but monitoring was not continuous and did not cover all areas.
- Christensen alleged Pulsipher coerced oral sex by threatening to extend her confinement; Barney alleged similar sexual assault conduct.
- Neither plaintiff reported the assaults immediately; Barney later disclosed to a counselor, leading to notification of the sheriff, Pulsipher’s termination, and criminal charges.
- Plaintiffs also alleged unconstitutional jail conditions during their short stays, including dirty bedding and fixtures, poor ventilation and lighting, and unappetizing food.

## Issues

1. Whether Box Elder County and supervisory officials could be liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for Pulsipher’s sexual assaults based on municipal policy/custom or failure to train/supervise, requiring proof of deliberate indifference and causation.
2. Whether the alleged cell conditions over a 48-hour confinement constituted an Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment conditions-of-confinement violation.
3. Whether housing women in a solitary female cell and alleged differences in treatment established an Equal Protection Clause violation.

## Decision

- The Tenth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Box Elder County, the sheriff, and county commissioners on all federal § 1983 claims.
- The court held plaintiffs failed to show deliberate indifference or a policy/custom that was the moving force behind Pulsipher’s assaults.
- The court held the complained-of conditions over the brief 48-hour period were not sufficiently serious to constitute a constitutional violation.
- The court rejected the equal protection claim for lack of evidence of constitutionally impermissible sex-based disparate treatment.

## Legal Principles

- Municipal and supervisory liability under § 1983 cannot rest on respondeat superior; a plaintiff must show an official policy/custom or a supervisor’s actionable failure to train/supervise that caused the injury.
- For failure-to-train/supervise theories, deliberate indifference generally requires evidence of a known or obvious risk, often shown by a pattern of similar violations, and a causal link to the constitutional injury.
- A subordinate’s criminal conduct that violates existing policies does not, without more, establish that policymakers were deliberately indifferent or that deficient policy/training caused the harm.
- Conditions-of-confinement claims require an objectively serious deprivation; duration and severity are assessed together, and brief exposure to unpleasant or unsanitary conditions may be insufficient absent serious risk or injury.
- Equal protection claims require proof of disparate treatment based on sex (or another protected classification) without adequate justification; lawful sex segregation and penological administration, without discriminatory intent or unjustified disparity, do not alone establish a violation.

## Conclusion

The court held that, absent evidence of prior similar misconduct or other facts showing policymakers’ deliberate indifference, the county and supervisory officials were not liable under § 1983 for a jailer’s sexual assaults, and it further concluded that the short-term jail conditions and the asserted sex-based housing arrangements did not amount to constitutional violations.


Barney v. Pulsipher, 143 F.3d 1299 (10th Cir. 1998)