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Fired prison guard who was harassed by naked inmates wins court ruling
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, April 15, 2008

 (04-15) 09:24 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court has upheld $600,000 in damages to a state prison guard who said she was fired after complaining that she was being harassed by naked male inmates.

The complaints by Deanna Freitag led to an investigation by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's inspector general, who found in 2000 that maximum-security inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison had regularly subjected female guards to "lewd exhibitionism and exhibitionist masturbation" and that the warden and other officials were doing little to stop it.

Freitag, who had worked at the prison in Del Norte County since 1996, was fired by Pelican Bay officials shortly before those findings were issued.

Her bosses accused her of fabricating incidents in the reports she had been filing since September 1998.

In her lawsuit, Freitag said officials brushed off her complaints and disciplined the prisoners mildly, if at all.

A federal court jury in San Francisco awarded Freitag $500,000 for lost wages and $100,000 for emotional distress in a March 2003 verdict against the department, the warden and other prison officials.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that the corrections department had failed to protect Freitag from sexual harassment. But the court returned her case to the trial judge to consider the effect of a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limited government employees' protection from retaliation for criticizing workplace conditions.

In a 2-1 ruling Friday, the appeals court upheld Freitag's damage award, agreeing with U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson that the Supreme Court ruling did not affect her case.

The department chiefly retaliated against Freitag for complaints that she made as a private citizen concerned about prison conditions, and not just as an aggrieved employee, the court majority said. Freitag made the complaints to the inspector general, the director of the corrections department and a state legislator.

Court orders related to the case have led to some improvements at Pelican Bay, including the establishment of a committee to monitor officials'

responses to employee complaints, said Pamela Price, a lawyer for Freitag.

"It has made a difference to the women that work there," Price said. She said Freitag is unemployed and lost her house after being fired.

Deputy Attorney General Vincent Scally said the corrections department had no comment.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

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