Supreme Court to Hear Private Prison Operator’s Appeal in Lawsuit Over Detainees’ Pay

A federal appeals court previously ruled that the company had no right to appeal a ruling that aimed to halt the lawsuit.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on April 25, 2024. Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo

The Supreme Court will consider whether a private prison operator may quickly appeal a lower court ruling in a lawsuit alleging that immigration detainees were illegally made to work for $1 a day.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit denied the company governmental immunity in the legal proceeding, even though it is a federal contractor.

Sovereign immunity is a legal doctrine that prevents governments from being sued unless they consent to being sued. Derivative sovereign immunity, which is sometimes called Yearsley immunity, is a legal doctrine that extends sovereign immunity to companies contracted to do government work.

The nation’s highest court granted the petition on June 2 in GEO Group Inc. v. Menocal in an unsigned order. The court did not explain its decision. No justices dissented.

The Supreme Court is expected to look at rules governing the litigation process, as opposed to the labor issue that is the focus of the lawsuit.

Lead respondent Alejandro Menocal, who was previously an immigration detainee at a GEO Group facility in Colorado, filed a class action against the company. He argued GEO violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which forbids forced labor, as well as Colorado’s ban on unjust enrichment, according to Menocal’s brief filed on April 21.

Unjust enrichment means a defendant received a benefit at the plaintiff’s expense and it would be unfair for the defendant to keep the benefit without paying for it.

The brief said GEO operates the Aurora Immigration Processing Center in Colorado, which holds individuals awaiting processing in immigration courts. The federal government pays GEO “millions of dollars a year” to prepare meals, do laundry, perform janitorial work, and carry out building maintenance, the brief states.

“The company forced every person detained at the Aurora Center to perform unpaid janitorial work, threatening that if they refuse, they will be sent to ‘the hole’—solitary confinement.” GEO did this even though its contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) forbade it from making detainees in Aurora perform work other than “personal housekeeping,” according to the brief.

In the beginning, GEO paid detained workers $1 per day, plus one bottle of soda each week, but it later reduced total compensation to a flat $1 per day. In addition to performing sanitation duties, detainees “performed virtually all non-security-related work needed to operate the facility,” the brief said.

GEO invoked the doctrine of derivative sovereign immunity, saying that as a government contractor, it could not be sued.

GEO moved to dismiss the lawsuit.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado rejected GEO’s motion in October 2022.

Judge John Kane found that “neither derivative sovereign immunity nor the government contractor defense protect it from liability.”

In October 2024, a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit affirmed, finding that the “district court’s order denying application of the Yearsley doctrine is not subject to interlocutory appeal.”

An interlocutory appeal is one involving a non-final order made during the course of litigation.

GEO said in its petition filed on Jan. 13 that federal courts of appeals are divided on the question of “whether an order denying a government contractor’s claim of derivative sovereign immunity is immediately appealable under the collateral-order doctrine.”

The collateral-order doctrine holds that an interlocutory decision may be appealed if three conditions apply, according to Cornell Law School.

The conditions are that the decision must have conclusively resolved the question in dispute, the question is important and completely separate from the merits of the case, and the decision is “effectively unappealable after a final judgment is handed down.”

GEO argues that in this case, the respondents, who disagree with U.S. immigration policy, are using the courts “to cripple the implementation of the policies they disfavor.” Because sovereign immunity precludes their effort to sue the government directly, “they have instead sued the government’s agent,” the petition said.

The 10th Circuit did not reach the issue of derivative sovereign immunity because it threw out GEO’s appeal after finding that the denial of that immunity does not count as a collateral order that may be appealed, the petition said.

GEO urged the Supreme Court to take up the case to resolve a 5–3 split among federal courts of appeals on that legal issue. This hurts government contractors such as GEO that work across the country because it means they “can vindicate their immunity in some cases but not others, depending only on where the case was filed,” the petition said.

Menocal argued in his brief that the high court should not accept the case because the circuit split that GEO references is based on a misinterpretation of appeals court rulings.

The 10th Circuit’s ruling in this case is correct, his brief said.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in its next term, which begins in October.